Excerpts from the book “America’s Expiration Date” Part 1

PERSIA’S AGE OF DECADENCE, ITS DECLINE, AND ITS FALL

When empires and great nations decline, there are multiple reasons that are usually interconnected. Such was the case with Persia. People who were not part of the upper class began organizing riots and other revolts against their rulers.

As this rebellion continued, Persian kings embraced “the dark side of the Force” and were perceived as working with evil spirits (Persian mythology viewed life as a struggle between good and evil). Kings became greedy (imagine that!) and started stealing from the nation’s wealth rather than sharing that wealth with the people.

The political structure joined the social structure in decline. Again, weak rulers created a political vacuum, leading to numerous provincial revolts, especially in Egypt, which hated Persian rule. Provisional satraps (regional officials) were becoming increasingly independent, some carrying on their own foreign policies (imagine each member of a US presidential administration doing that). They even waged war against one another. This constant infighting caused serious economic problems. Without a strong ruler who could train armies (and pay for them), and without an ability to gain wealth, the economy began to suffer.

Taxes were raised and quickly became oppressive, which encouraged more revolts and in turn led to more oppression, a vicious cycle. Persian kings started hoarding gold rather than recirculating it, leading to charges they were stealing from the people. There was also a decrease in crop production, which affected trade.

With limited resources, less attention was given to the arts and to buildings. Still today there remains a gap in Persian art because of this decline. It doesn’t help that the mullahs who now run Iran show little interest in anything artistic or creative.

Finally, there was a decline in science, for which Persians (and other cultures throughout the region) had once been known. This decline in science and invention led to a reduction in weapons production, undermining the safety of the empire—the final reason historians believe it collapsed.

…………

It took Gibbon six volumes to explain the history of Rome’s decline and fall, but one paragraph pretty much summarizes why it destroyed itself.

The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.

Source: America's Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers… and the Future of the United States (2020) by Cal Thomas.

The Hydra of Modern Times

From The Epoch Times.com (Jan. 27, 2021):

The myths of the ancient worlds, as we have discussed before, have profound truths and insights to tell us now, if we would but listen to them. One that I find particularly relevant at this present juncture of history is the story of the Lernaean Hydra, or just the Hydra.

To recall, the Hydra was a snake-like monster who in the most authoritative sources had nine heads, one of which was immortal. On top of that, the creature’s breath was a lethal poison and it spat a venom so deadly that there was no cure for it.

The Hydra was the offspring of the loathsome monster Echidna, who mated with the even more ferocious Typhon. It was Typhon who almost defeated the king of the gods himself, Zeus, and in doing so would have destroyed the whole created order if it had been successful. The Hydra lived beside Lake Lerna, guarding an ominous gate leading to the underworld.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that just as the king of heaven had fought and defeated the Typhon monster in the upper world, so here below on earth, it fell to his son, the human hero Hercules, to defeat Typhon’s offspring, the Hydra. This came about as a result of Hercules’s second Labor.

Hercules was ordered by the treacherous and weak king Eurystheus to destroy the Hydra, although Eurystheus’s real objective in setting all 12 of the famous Labors of Hercules was for Hercules himself to be destroyed, for each of the Labors became increasingly difficult, if not impossible to achieve. But, of course, Hercules was half human and half divine; his father was Zeus. This was no ordinary man!

But even being half divine proved not quite enough for Hercules to overcome the Hydra, at least on his own, for as he cut off or clubbed each head to death, another two would sprout in its place. The Hydra thus became more powerful, and Hercules had to retire.

Fortunately, however, Hercules was accompanied by Iolaus, his nephew, and together they resumed the fight. As Hercules destroyed one head, and before it could regenerate into two, Iolaus would sear the neck stump with a red-hot brand and thus prevent its growing again.

Eventually, as one head after another died, the creature also did, leaving only the immortal head. This Hercules chopped off and buried by the roadside. The Hydra, then, was defeated and dead.

So what is the relevance of this story for us? [read more]

REPORT: Joe Biden Rode Record-Breaking ‘Dark Money’ Donations Into The White House

From Daily Caller.com (Jan. 23, 2021):

President Joe Biden rode a record-breaking $145 million in “dark money” donations into the White House, Bloomberg News reported Saturday.

“Dark money” is donations from anonymous donors to outside groups backing a given candidate. Biden’s $145 million is the all-time record for a candidate challenging an incumbent president, according to Bloomberg. Former President Donald Trump received $28 million from such donations.

Many Democrats have called for an end to dark money donations as it is difficult for the public to discover where the donations are coming from.

The pro-Biden outside spending group Priorities USA defended their donations in a statement to Bloomberg.

“We weren’t going to unilaterally disarm against Trump and the right-wing forces that enabled him,” the group’s chairman, Guy Cecil, said in a statement.

Biden’s count tops former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s $113 million in dark money donations from his 2012 challenge to President Barack Obama.

Throughout the entire 2020 campaign season, Trump’s donations totaled $1.96 billion, compared to Biden’s $1.69 billion through November 23. Trump received a heavy fundraising boost between October 15 and November 23 thanks to his challenge to the results of the election.

Trump’s reelection effort had a heavy head start in fundraising, however, given that he didn’t have to go through a party primary. [source]

The 15 Best Zingers, Maxims, And Mic-Drops From Clarence Thomas’ Harvard Concurrence

The Federalist.com (June 30):

The Supreme Court’s Thursday decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College dealt an overdue blow to race-based college admissions, and some of the best punches were thrown by Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurrence.

The court ruled that so-called “affirmative action” at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were in violation of the 14th Amendment and its application via the Civil Rights Act. Policies that discriminate based on race without demonstrating a compelling public interest, the six justices in the majority agreed, are not compatible with our founding principles of equal rights under the law for every American.

In addition to signing on to the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, Thomas wrote a nearly 60-page concurrence to express his horror at the idea of institutionalized racial discrimination in 21st-century America. Here are 15 of his best lines.

1. The best way to fix discrimination is not more discrimination.

[T]he Constitution continues to embody a simple truth: Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right.

2. Courts can’t defer to the discriminating body about whether the discrimination is justified.

Universities’ self-proclaimed righteousness does not afford them license to discriminate on the basis of race. In fact, it is error for a court to defer to the views of an alleged discriminator while assessing claims of racial discrimination. … To the extent past is prologue, the university respondents’ histories hardly recommend them as trustworthy arbiters of whether racial discrimination is necessary to achieve educational goals.

3. Using the 14th Amendment to justify discrimination is “self-defeating.”

Without such guardrails, the Fourteenth Amendment would become self-defeating, promising a Nation based on the equality ideal but yielding a quota- and caste-ridden society steeped in race-based discrimination.

4. Racial preferences don’t end inequality, they increase it.

Both experience and logic have vindicated the Constitution’s colorblind rule and confirmed that the universities’ new narrative cannot stand. Despite the Court’s hope in Grutter that universities would voluntarily end their race-conscious programs and further the goal of racial equality, the opposite appears increasingly true. Harvard and UNC now forthrightly state that they racially discriminate when it comes to admitting students, [and] defend that discrimination as good.

5. History indicates we should be distrustful of “experts” who say racial discrimination is “helpful.”

I would have thought that history had by now taught a “greater humility” when attempting to “distinguish good from harmful uses of racial criteria.” From the Black Codes, to discriminatory and destructive social welfare programs, to discrimination by individual government actors, bigotry has reared its ugly head time and again. Anyone who today thinks that some form of racial discrimination will prove “helpful” should thus tread cautiously, lest racial discriminators succeed (as they once did) in using such language to disguise more invidious motives. … [E]xperts and elites have been wrong before — and they may prove to be wrong again.

6. Dealing unfair advantages to one necessarily means dealing unfair disadvantages to another.

[I]t is not even theoretically possible to “help” a certain racial group without causing harm to members of other racial groups[.] … [T]he zero-sum nature of college admissions — where students compete for a finite number of seats in each school’s entering class — aptly demonstrates the point.

7. Young people today are not liable for the sins of generations past.

[U]niversities’ discriminatory policies burden millions of applicants who are not responsible for the racial discrimination that sullied our Nation’s past. … Whatever their skin color, today’s youth simply are not responsible for instituting the segregation of the 20th century, and they do not shoulder the moral debts of their ancestors.

8. A hyperfocus on race communicates to new generations that they should allow racial differences to influence their perception of others.

[S]orting by race … increasingly encourage[s] our Nation’s youth to view racial differences as important and segregation as routine.

9. The end goal of affirmative action is a world in which people are defined by the color of their skin.

What, then, would be the endpoint of these affirmative action policies? Not racial harmony, integration, or equality under the law. Rather, these policies appear to be leading to a world in which everyone is defined by their skin color, demanding ever-increasing entitlements and preferences on that basis. … That is the same naked racism upon which segregation itself was built. Small wonder, then, that these policies are leading to increasing racial polarization and friction.

10. The only solution to racism is true equality under the law.

Racialism simply cannot be undone by different or more racialism. Instead, the solution announced in the second founding is incorporated in our Constitution: that we are all equal, and should be treated equally before the law without regard to our race. Only that promise can allow us to look past our differing skin colors and identities and see each other for what we truly are: individuals with unique thoughts, perspectives, and goals, but with equal dignity and equal rights under the law.

11. People are defined by their choices, not by their circumstances.

Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything — good or bad — that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism.

12. Elites at institutions such as Harvard should not be picking “racial winners and losers.”

History has taught us to abhor theories that call for elites to pick racial winners and losers in the name of sociological experimentation.

13. Victimization perpetuates itself with no end.

Must others in the future make sacrifices to re-level the playing field for this new phase of racial subordination? And then, out of whose lives should the debt owed to those further victims be repaid? This vision of meeting social racism with government-imposed racism is thus self-defeating, resulting in a never-ending cycle of victimization.

14. Meritocracy is a “great equalizer.”

[M]eritocratic systems have long refuted bigoted misperceptions of what black students can accomplish. … Such scales have always been a great equalizer — offering a metric for achievement that bigotry could not alter. Racial preferences take away this benefit, eliminating the very metric by which those who have the most to prove can clearly demonstrate their accomplishments — both to themselves and to others.

15. To override the Constitution with a racial agenda is to make the same error as segregationists of the past.

The great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny. And, the tragic failure of this Court was its misinterpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments, as Justice Harlan predicted in Plessy. We should not repeat this mistake merely because we think, as our predecessors thought, that the present arrangements are superior to the Constitution.

[source]

Google DeepMind’s CEO Says Its Next Algorithm Will Eclipse ChatGPT

From Wired.com (June 26):

IN 2016, AN artificial intelligence program called AlphaGo from Google’s DeepMind AI lab made history by defeating a champion player of the board game Go. Now Demis Hassabis, DeepMind’s cofounder and CEO, says his engineers are using techniques from AlphaGo to make an AI system dubbed Gemini that will be more capable than that behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

DeepMind’s Gemini, which is still in development, is a large language model that works with text and is similar in nature to GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT. But Hassabis says his team will combine that technology with techniques used in AlphaGo, aiming to give the system new capabilities such as planning or the ability to solve problems.

“At a high level you can think of Gemini as combining some of the strengths of AlphaGo-type systems with the amazing language capabilities of the large models,” Hassabis says. “We also have some new innovations that are going to be pretty interesting.” Gemini was first teased at Google's developer conference last month, when the company announced a raft of new AI projects.

AlphaGo was based on a technique DeepMind has pioneered called reinforcement learning, in which software learns to take on tough problems that require choosing what actions to take like in Go or video games by making repeated attempts and receiving feedback on its performance. It also used a method called tree search to explore and remember possible moves on the board. The next big leap for language models may involve them performing more tasks on the internet and on computers.

Gemini is still in development, a process that will take a number of months, Hassabis says. It could cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, said in April that creating GPT-4 cost more than $100 million.

Playing Catch-Up

When Gemini is complete it could play a major role in Google’s response to the competitive threat posed by ChatGPT and other generative AI technology. The search company pioneered many techniques that enabled the recent torrent of new AI ideas but chose to develop and deploy products based on them cautiously.

Since ChatGPT’s debut Google has rushed out its own chatbot, Bard, and put generative AI into its search engine and many other products. To juice up AI research the company in April combined Hassabis’ unit DeepMind with Google’s primary AI lab, Brain, to create Google DeepMind. Hassabis says the new team will bring together two powerhouses that have been foundational to the recent AI progress. “If you look at where we are in AI, I would argue that 80 or 90 percent of the innovations come from one or the other,” Hassabis says. “There are brilliant things that have been done by both organizations over the last decade.”

Hassabis has experience with navigating AI gold rushes that roil tech giants—although last time around he himself sparked the frenzy.

In 2014, DeepMind was acquired by Google after demonstrating striking results from software that used reinforcement learning to master simple video games. Over the next several years, DeepMind showed how the technique does things that once seemed uniquely human—often with superhuman skill. When AlphaGo beat Go champion Lee Sedol in 2016, many AI experts were stunned, because they had believed it would be decades before machines would become proficient at a game of such complexity. [read more]

Another article on DeepMind:

Google DeepMind AI Breakthrough Could Help Battery and Chip Development

Democrats Need to Be Destroyed

From Derek Hunter on Town Hall.com (Mar. 27, 2022):

How do you negotiate with a terrorist? You can’t. They want you dead, you don’t want to be dead; where is the compromise? Can you be half-dead? One-quarter dead? Can you offer them an arm if they’ll just leave the rest of you alone? If they accepted, would you believe them? You’d be an idiot to do so, just like you’d be an idiot to believe anything coming out of the mouths of Democrats these days. No “good faith effort” is going to make them honest, they are lying frauds out to destroy everything great in this country. They’re a Terminator for American Exceptionalism. As such, they have no conscience, they can’t be reasoned with, they must be destroyed.

Rush Limbaugh used to say he wanted to convince everyone over to conservatism, but he wanted a few liberals around still just to show people what they were like, otherwise no one would believe there were people that crazy. That was a couple of generations of insanity ago. What currently calls itself Democrats bears no resemblance to what once was “Democrats.”

Just 25 years ago, there was no question that Democrats knew what a “woman” was. Do you really think Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy were confused by the concept? No man has come forward claiming to have been sexually assaulted by them, so they either knew or managed to bat 1.000 with their guesses.

Nowadays, what a woman is has reverted to a mystery. All the knowledge accumulated throughout all of human history on the subject has been tucked back, far out of sight, so as to obscure even a chromosome test. Even God is confused, having made so many “mistakes” that even the angels in Heaven lost all understanding of what the other gender is. There are now men and other people who may or may not be men, or they’re something else, there’s simply no way to know.

The nation’s hotel doormat, USA Today, ran the dumbest piece ever written in any language in a desperate attempt to defend Ketanji Brown Jackson from criticism over not being able to define “woman.” (The answer, by the way, is: adult human female. Pretty simple.) Entitled, “Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji Brown Jackson to define 'woman.' Science says there's no simple answer,” this is a skillful piece of propaganda that would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

………

Sorry to say it, but Rush was wrong about this. We don’t need to keep a few around as cautionary tales, we can read about them in books or watch old TV shows or movies. You don’t keep a few termites around to remind you of the damage they’ve done to your house, and we don’t need any Democrats to remind us of the damage they’ve done to the country. Destroy them all. [read more]

He has good points. The Left after all wants to destroy the Right or anyone who doesn’t go along with their agenda or their twisted narrative or world view. And the way to destroy the Left is to take away their power. Vote them out of office and even vote them off the boards of corporations if you are a stock holder. Stock holders have that privilege.

The Lefts tactics and beliefs:

• Rousseau, Guevara, Marx and More: The Moral and Intellectual Bankruptcy of the Left
• The Philosophical Background of Our Anti-Social Democratic Party
• EXPOSED: Far-left efforts to DATA MINE and CONTROL our kids [video]
• Democrats are operating a series of 51 'fake news' websites pushing left-wing stories in toss-up states in a bid to turn the midterms in their favor, shocking investigation finds
• Democrats Urged to Wage Psychological War Against Trump
• Democrat bill requires vasectomies for Alabama men
• These 86 Democrats Voted Against Condemning Socialism
• Civilization Versus the New Nihilists
  

'No veterans left behind': Group of almost 60 veterans deboard plane after one was told he wasn't able to fly

From The Blaze.com (May 26, 2022):

Onlookers described it as a powerful show of solidarity. A group of nearly 60 U.S. veterans on their way home from Washington, D.C., decided to deboard a plane when one veteran was told he couldn't fly due to safety concerns.

The group of veterans, all residents of Oklahoma, had just completed a four-day trip to the nation's capital organized by Northeast Oklahoma Veterans Freedom Tour, a nonprofit dedicated to taking veterans on tours of memorials and monuments all around the country.

According to KOTV-TV, they were seated on a plane in Charlotte, N.C., and ready for take-off back to Tulsa when they learned that one member of their group was unable to fly. His oxygen concentrator had run out of batteries and couldn't be recharged using the plane's electrical outlets.

With no way to charge the medical device, American Airlines determined it would be unsafe for the veteran to undertake the flight, per company policies. In the interest of his safety, they informed him that he couldn't fly.

After hearing the unfortunate news, the other veterans aboard the flight made the decision to follow him off the aircraft. One of the group's leaders, Wayne Perego, told KOTV they didn't make the decision lightly; rather, they had made a promise.

"No veteran left behind," Perego recalled in an interview with the outlet.

"We just decided that you know what, we are going to go off the plane also if he's going off. If they're gonna take him off, the whole bunch was gonna go off," he said.

Back inside, the group started looking for other flights or modes of transportation and also where to get more batteries for the oxygen concentrator. They stayed at the airport until 5 a.m. while American booked hotel rooms and taxis.

The next morning, American provided pizza and transport back to the airport. The airline was also able to deliver extra batteries flown in from Norfolk, Virginia, and book the group on a chartered flight — just for the veterans.

When they finally touched down in Tulsa, a crowd of supporters was there to welcome them home.

In a statement, the nonprofit that sponsored the trip wrote, "On behalf of the Northeast Oklahoma Veterans Freedom Tour, we want to apologize to our Veterans for the issue at the Charlotte airport and we wish this would have never happened, we wanted to show our Respect and Honor to each of you during this trip." [source]

Shameful that one veteran wasn’t allowed to fly on the plane.

China Seeks to Buy Eight Pacific Island Nations While Joe Biden and His State Department Are Comatose

From Red State.com (May 25, 2022):

In April, Forbes reported on a “mutual security” pact signed by the Solomon Islands and Communist China. The agreement states that the Chinese Navy (technically, the People’s Liberation Army Navy or PLAN) ‘[M]ay, according to its own needs and with the consent of the Solomon Islands, make ship visits to, carry out logistics replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in the Solomon Islands.’ The agreement also requires China, upon request of the Solomon Islands government, to send riot control and crowd control assistance, or intervene militarily to prop up the government.

The agreement was the source of profound shock to Australia, which only in November had sent police to assist in restoring order in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara. Oddly enough, one of the targets of the riots was ethnic friction between the Solomon Islanders and, you guessed it, the ethnic Chinese population.

Read more on this deal by my colleague Mike Miller: US Marines Won the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1943 — 79 Years Later, Joe Biden Is Losing It.

Last week, the Financial Times broke the story that China was in talks with Kiribati and one other unnamed South Pacific nation to finalize a similar agreement.

China is intensifying its drive for influence in the Pacific by negotiating security deals with two additional island nations following a pact with the Solomon Islands, according to officials in the US and allied countries.

Beijing’s talks with Kiribati, a Pacific island nation 3,000km from Hawaii where US Indo-Pacific Command is based, are the most advanced, the officials said.

“They are in talks with Kiribati and at least one more Pacific island country over an agreement that would cover much of the same ground as that with Solomon Islands,” said an intelligence official from a US ally.

The warning that Beijing is trying to further increase its clout in the Pacific came as President Joe Biden begins a visit to Asia intended to reassure allies of US commitment to regional security amid China’s push for influence.

The negotiations with Kiribati follow the deal Beijing signed with the Solomon Islands, which some experts believe will allow China to build a naval base in the country located north-east of Australia.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi is about to embark on a bribery, corruption, and influence-buying tour of the South Pacific. [read more]

Oklahoma gas station employee wanted to go home early, so he asked someone to rob him at work: Police

From The Blaze.com (June 23):

An Oklahoma gas station employee wanted to leave work early, so he asked someone to rob his store, according to police.

Police responded to a robbery at a gas station convenience store in Tulsa on June 5.

Isaias Jones, the store clerk, allegedly told police that a masked man walked into the convenience store and handed him a note that read: "Give me all your money or I will shoot you." Jones reportedly told police that he complied with the thief and handed over the money from the store's cash register.

Tulsa Police Department identified the alleged robber as Steven Jones – no relation to the gas station clerk. The suspect was arrested on June 8. He admitted that he had robbed the store, but he claimed that his friend had invited him to rob the store.

Alyia Locke, a mutual friend of both men, allegedly asked Jones to rob the gas station store at the behest of the gas station worker.

The Tulsa Police Department said in a statement, "She confessed to setting up the robbery. Locke also provided text messages from Isaias Jones asking for someone to rob the store so he could leave early."

The store clerk was arrested and reportedly told detectives that he asked "Locke to find someone to rob the store because he was tired and wanted to go home," police said.

Isaias Jones purportedly paid Locke after the crime was committed.

Isaias Jones was charged with embezzlement and conspiracy to commit a felony. Steven Jones was charged with conspiracy to commit embezzlement and possession of a firearm after a former conviction of a felony. Alyia Locke was arrested for an outstanding warrant and could also face charges of embezzlement.

The Tulsa Police Department quipped, "Our human resources department, and likely every H.R. department in the world would like to advise people that this is not the recommended way to leave work early."

Both men were reportedly released on bond, but Locke remains in the Tulsa County Jail. [source]

What a stupid snowflake! Didn't he think he would get caught? And the people who helped the employee are boneheads.

16 Bombshells on Hunter Biden From The IRS Whistleblowers

From Free Beacon.com (June 24):

Two IRS whistleblowers leveled serious allegations about Hunter Biden and the government’s investigation of the troubled first son, according to transcripts of testimony released this week.

The whistleblowers, IRS supervisory criminal investigator Gary Shapley and a second unnamed IRS investigator, provided evidence to the House Ways and Means Committee that top Justice Department officials stonewalled an investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business ventures. They also call into question President Biden’s repeated denials that he has no knowledge of his son’s business dealings.

Here are 16 of the biggest revelations from transcripts of their interviews:

Hunter linked dad to Chinese deal in threat to business partner

Hunter Biden invoked his father’s name in a text message, threatening his Chinese business partner to come down on him with their full weight if the business partner did not fulfill his "commitment."

Biden claimed he was sitting right next to his father in an encrypted message on July 30, 2017, to an associate at CEFC China Energy. While the message does not verify that Joe Biden was sitting with his son, the Washington Free Beacon obtained photographic evidence that places Hunter Biden at his father’s Delaware home the day of the text message.

"I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father," Hunter Biden wrote to CEFC official Henry Zhao. Hunter pressed Zhao to call him to discuss a delay in payment as part of the multimillion-dollar consulting agreement.

"I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. All too often people mistake kindness for weakness—and all too often I am standing over top of them saying I warned you," Hunter wrote.

Joe Biden attended other business meetings with Hunter and his Chinese partners

Biden family friend and business partner Rob Walker told the FBI that the elder Biden often attended business meetings with his son, including when he was vice president.

The bombshell claim undermines Joe Biden’s claims to have never been involved in his son’s business ventures.

Walker said he was present when Joe Biden stopped by a meeting at the Washington, D.C., Four Seasons hotel with executives from CEFC China Energy.

The FBI authenticated Hunter Biden's laptop almost a year before we knew it existed

The FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop as far back as November 2019 and knew the device was not part of a foreign disinformation campaign.

Democrats had questioned the authenticity of the laptop after it was released in October 2020. They cast doubt on Delaware computer shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, who said Biden had abandoned his computer at his store in April 2019. The Biden campaign even orchestrated an initiative to portray the laptop as a Russian intelligence operation.

But FBI agents authenticated the laptop as Biden’s in November 2019 and found no evidence that its contents were manipulated, according to IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley.

Investigators also obtained evidence that placed Hunter Biden near Isaac’s computer shop on the day he allegedly dropped it off for repairs. [read more]

The other bombshells:

1. Hunter deducted hooker and sex club payments from his taxes
2. The FBI division that investigates foreign spies was involved in Biden probe
3. The investigation into Biden had porn-related origins
4. Prosecutors wanted to charge Hunter with felonies, but he ended up with misdemeanors
5. Biden’s Department of Justice blocked investigation at multiple turns
6. The IRS whistleblower’s boss corroborated bombshell claims
7. Hunter won’t ever pay tax on $400,000 income from Ukraine
8. Agents wanted to search Biden family homes, but were shot down due to ‘optics’
9. IRS wanted search warrant for Hunter’s storage locker, but prosecutor tipped off his lawyers
10. A mole tipped off Hunter that FBI wanted to interview him
11. Hunter’s lawyer said prosecutors would be committing ‘career suicide’ if he was charged
12. Joe Biden visited FBI Delaware office during investigation
13. Hunter deducted hotel rooms for father and drug dealer from his taxes

Another article on the subject:

Joe Biden ABSOLUTELY benefited from Hunter’s foreign business

 

Excerpts from the book Skin in the Game Part 2

Beware of the person who gives advice, telling you that a certain action on your part is “good for you” while it is also good for him, while the harm to you doesn’t directly affect him.

……..

Laws come and go; ethics stay.

……..

No person in a transaction should have certainty about the outcome while the other one has uncertainty.

…….

The more confined our ethics, the less abstract, the better it works.

……..

Society doesn’t evolve by consensus, voting, majority, committees, verbose meetings, academic conferences, tea and cucumber sandwiches, or polling; only a few people suffice to disproportionately move the needle. All one needs is an asymmetric rule somewhere—and someone with soul in the game. And asymmetry is present in about everything.

…………

The underlying structure of reality matters much more than the participants, something policymakers fail to understand.

Under the right market structure, a collection of idiots produces a well-functioning market.

The researchers Dhananjay Gode and Shyam Sunder came to a surprising result in 1993. You populate markets with zero intelligence agents, that is buying and selling randomly, under some structure such that a proper auction process matches bids and offers in a regular way. And guess what? We get the same allocative efficiency as if market participants were intelligent.

……….

Leave people alone under a good structure and they will take care of things.

Source: Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (2018) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Forget the Marxists: Here's the Real Enemy of America

From American Thinker.com (May 25, 2022):

To win any fight, we must first know our enemy.  There are those who argue we are in a struggle with Marxism, though in reality, we battle the organizational and operational tenets of the Marxist tree, not the ideology itself.  We know that this is not a Marxist movement because it ignores Marxism's core clientele: the workers.  In fact, these people despise the Marxist's traditional constituents.  Instead, they toil for a small minority of the "marginalized" in society whom middle Americans find to be fringe and anathema to their core values.

Even then, their movement doesn't seek a revolution of the marginalized.  They define the ills of society so that governments can unilaterally impose restitutive "justice": defunding law enforcement and prosecution, promoting violence and riots, and forcing curriculum indoctrination throughout the educational system.  They seek power through chaos.

If there is a power that wishes to usurp a democratic and free market society, then to attack with the chaos of a Marxist "revolution" will drive those most affected to willingly surrender freedom for security — You will own nothing and be happy! — and into the warm arms of the promise of a new civilization dedicated to the progress of mankind.  Italy once succumbed to the promises and adopted fascism upon the bourgeoisie's and governing elites' fears from the encroaching evils of socialism, as had been witnessed in Soviet Russia.

Don't be fooled by rhetoric.  Fascism is an evolution of socialism.  The difference is how the economy is managed.  Ludwig von Mises summarized the primary differences between socialism (the Russian pattern) and fascism (the German pattern).  Socialism owns everything, and the individual is simply a serf to the state; fascism "preserves private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary markets," though these markets are highly controlled by the state.  The German pattern, Nazism, introduced, through its barbarity, the dark specter of fascism, but fascism's evil birth was in Italy.

Disillusionment following WWI was the catalyst for fascism.  Benito Mussolini, an avowed socialist, too became disillusioned and, with the partnership of neo-Hegelian philosopher Giovanni Gentile (who stated, "Fascism is a form of socialism; in fact, it is its most viable form") developed a system and philosophy that nationalized the will of the people and integrated limited markets into the state.

Socialism enslaves the soul; fascism enslaves the illusion of freedom.

Fascism has been described as Corporatism.  Many mistakenly believe that it was centered on capitalism and nationalism and was thus a right-wing movement.  It was not.  Mussolini termed Corporatism (the state) as a means of economic and societal organization and control within the confines of fascism; the state is the corporation, and the individual silos of the economy, which he termed syndicates, are the means to collectivize society.

In a 1926 speech, Mussolini laid out the role of markets within the state:

The Ministry of Corporations is not a bureaucratic organ, nor does it wish to exercise the functions of syndical organizations which are necessarily independent, since they aim at organizing, selecting and improving the members of syndicates[.] ... [I]n the centre and outside, [the] integral corporation becomes an accomplished fact, where balance is achieved between interests and forces of the economic world. ... The achievement of these aims is speeded up by the fact that all economic organizations, acknowledged, safeguarded and supported by the Corporative State, exist within the orbit of Fascism; in other terms they accept the conception of Fascism in theory and in practice.

It is the actual structure of Mussolini's fascism — the partnership between governmental authority and economic syndical cooperation — that is the model for current attempts at using fascism to infiltrate and control global economic, political, and cultural institutions.

Capitalism has the power to shape society and act as a powerful catalyst for change. ...  When we harness the power of both the public and private sectors, we can achieve truly incredible things.

—Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, 2022 Letter to CEOs

No, Larry Fink, Bill Gates, George Soros, nor any of the other Davos creeps is a Mussolini lurking in the weeds.  Each of them is a steward of individual syndicates, but the power rests in the corporation: the World Economic Forum.

Today, we see the WEF as the binding strap on the fascio, or syndicates.  It acts as both an ideological center and an organizing force for universally stated goals for the management of mankind.  A brief listing of these WEF U.S.-based partner corporations (below) demonstrates the syndicates organized under the umbrella of the corporation.

As we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery, this initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of the leaders engaged across the Forum's communities, the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.

— World Economic Forum, the Great Reset

The implementation of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance), as an example, has been ordered from the WEF to the world financial syndicates, and Mr. Fink is taking his orders seriously by aggressively pushing ESG.  ESG is fast becoming the great culling of industry.  While there has been recent pushback, Davos and the WEF are not deterred.  ESG uses metrics to provide social responsibility scores for corporate commitment to woke management and the war against climate change.  ESG will be a requirement for Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings in the near future.  It is already having deleterious effects on the oil and gas industry and is one of the origins of our current energy crisis.  The energy syndicate, too, has followed its orders.

The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people.

— Fascism Doctrine and Institutions, by Benito Mussolini, Giovanni Gentile (1932)

Those outside fascism hold no value.  We must fight back against the tirades of these infantile intellectual dwarfs; fight back against woke capitalism; fight back against the indoctrination of your children; fight back against their unleashing of chaos upon our streets.  Use your two votes, at the ballot box and in your wallet, to push back as much as you can, but there will be more for us to do. 

We are not fighting Marxism, socialism, or communism.  This is a top-down revolution.  We are fighting a fascism that surpasses Mussolini's and Hitler's dreams of complete power over the people, for this is global in nature.  The sooner we can develop the strategy to stave off these attacks and possibly even beat them back, the sooner we can start the long march toward freedom once again.  Without defining and understanding the enemy, we will lose. [source]

FBI Says it Foiled Plot to Kill George W. Bush in Revenge for Iraq War

From Newsmax.com (May 24, 2022):

A plan by terrorists to kill former President George W. Bush in retaliation for the 2003 Iraq War was uncovered earlier this year, according to an FBI search-warrant application filed March 23 and unsealed this week in the Southern District of Ohio, Forbes reported on Tuesday.

Behind the plot was an Iraqi man, Shihab Ahmed Shihab, who was based in Columbus, Ohio, and accused of being connected to ISIS operatives. He traveled to Dallas in November to take video around Bush's home, as well as organizing a squad of fellow Iraqis he hoped to smuggle into the United States over the Mexican border in order to carry out the assassination.

The FBI said the plot was uncovered by two confidential informants, in addition to surveillance of Shihab's WhatsApp messaging platform.

Shihab entered the U.S. himself in 2020 and had an asylum application pending, according to the FBI's search-warrant application.

Last November, Shihab told one of the FBI insiders about his plans and asked him if he knew how to "obtain replica or fraudulent police and/or FBI identifications and badges" to help implement the plan, according to Forbes.

He also asked if it was possible to smuggle the plotters out of the U.S. in the same manner they entered after carrying out the assassination.

George Washington University's Program on Extremism deputy director Seamus Hughes told Forbes that "it's clear this was a sophisticated counterterrorism operation with a lot of moving parts. It was both far reaching and unique in its targeting."

He added that "we haven't seen a plot of this scale in a number of years. It shows that while domestic terrorism rightly takes a good amount of counterterrorism focus, the threats are not there alone."

Bush gave a response through Freddy Ford, chief of staff for the Office of George W. Bush, saying "President Bush has all the confidence in the world in the United States Secret Service and our law enforcement and intelligence communities." [source]

China Is Fueling Hamas Attacks | Opinion

From Newsweek.com (Nov. 26):

One of China's most cynical strategies in its all-encompassing struggle against the United States is to cast itself as a peacemaker while claiming that America fuels conflict. Beijing propagates this false narrative even as it ignites bonfires.

This Chinese doublespeak was on display at the BRICS virtual summit last week, when President Xi Jinping proposed a six-point plan to permanently stop the fighting in Gaza. The Chinese ruler called for an end to "all violence and attacks against civilians," the securing of "humanitarian corridors" and additional aid for Gaza, "the establishment of an independent State of Palestine," the convening of an "international peace conference," the adoption of U.N. General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, and the implementation of "practical measures to prevent the conflict from spilling over and endangering stability in the Middle East as a whole."

Many foreign observers are buying Beijing's China-desires-peace propaganda line. "What China really wants in the Middle East is order," writes Omer Aziz, a former foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government, in the Globe and Mail. "A regional war is not in China's interests if it wants to grow economically and keep its own interests—principally Taiwan—in line."

Yet Xi Jinping is not promoting peace in the Middle East. He is rather continuing to stoke war. China's actions in recent years reveal not just that China has been pushing war in the Middle East, but that it knew it was doing so. China, after all, has been continually backing Iran's militant Shiite regime, which openly talks about war and consistently works to destabilize the Sunni states in the Gulf region.

China has for decades been aiding the relentless drive of the Islamic Republic of Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Iran received Chinese uranium-enrichment technology and equipment through the China-sponsored nuclear-black-market ring of Pakistan's A. Q. Khan. And China-proxy North Korea could never transfer ballistic missiles to Iran without Chinese approval, something it has done consistently in recent decades.

Moreover, China has been supplying arms used by proxies of the Islamic Republic. Hamas, for instance, appears to possess old Chinese-made weapons, presumably supplied through Iran. Likewise, the U.S. Navy in 2021 and this year seized Chinese weapons in transit to the Houthi militia in Yemen, another Iranian proxy. Richard Fisher, a China military analyst at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, told me that Beijing also provides weapons to Hezbollah, Iran's third major proxy. [read more]

Not surprising. The Chi-Coms will do just about anything to hurt America and our allies. Definitely not a friend. And yet they will discriminate and oppress the Uyghurs.

U.S. Navy Captures Terrorists Who Tried To Hijack Tanker Tied To Israel

From Daily Wire.com (Nov. 26):

A U.S. Destroyer took five individuals into custody on Sunday after they attempted a terrorist hijacking of an Israeli owned tanker in the Gulf of Aden.

The Liberian-flagged Central Park chemical tanker — which is managed by Zodiac Maritime, a U.K. based firm that is part of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group — was believed to have been seized earlier in the day.

“US Navy personnel from the USS Mason responded to a distress call from the crew onboard an Israeli linked tanker,” said Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin. “5 armed gunmen tried to hijack the ship in Gulf of Aden. US Navy pursued toward Yemen. Warning shots fired. Gunmen now being interrogated.”

The incident marked the second time over the last few days that terrorists have tried to hijack the ship after Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists previously tried.

“The 5 gunmen boarded from a skiff by pulling up alongside the tanker which I am told ‘has a low free board’,” Griffin said. “The crew had locked themselves in the Citadel (safe room). A Japanese destroyer assisted the USS Mason with the interdiction. 2 Chinese Navy warships in the area did not render assistance.”

The terrorists tried to gain access to the safe room by breaking down the door but were unsuccessful.

“The hijackers exited the vessel and were making their way back to the shores of Yemen when the US Navy personnel pursued and arrested them,” Griffin said. “Warning shots were fired by the U.S. Navy personnel and a U.S. helicopter gunship flew cover. The 5 hijackers who tried to overtake the Israeli linked tanker are now being questioned by the U.S. military under counter piracy authorities.” [source]

Good. Glad the navy captured the terrorists.

Excerpts from the book Skin in the Game Part 1

The flaws of global interventionistas:

1. The first flaw is that they are incapable of thinking in second steps and unaware of the need for them—and about every peasant in Mongolia, every waiter in Madrid, and every car-service operator in San Francisco knows that real life happens to have second, third, fourth, nth steps.
2. The second flaw is that they are also incapable of distinguishing between multidimensional problems and their single-dimensional representations—like multidimensional health and its stripped, cholesterol-reading reduction. They can’t get the idea that, empirically, complex systems do not have obvious one-dimensional cause-and-effect mechanisms, and that under opacity, you do not mess with such a system.
3. The third flaw is that they can’t forecast the evolution of those one helps by attacking, or the magnification one gets from feedback.

The interventionista case is central to our story because it shows how absence of skin in the game has both ethical and epistemological effects (i.e., related to knowledge). We saw that interventionistas don’t learn because they are not the victims of their mistakes, and, as we hinted at with pathemata mathemata:

The same mechanism of transferring risk also impedes learning.

More practically,

You will never fully convince someone that he is wrong; only reality can.

Actually, to be precise, reality doesn’t care about winning arguments: survival is what matters.

For

The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding,

or better at explaining than doing.

So learning isn’t quite what we teach inmates inside the high-security prisons called schools. In biology, learning is something that, through the filter of intergenerational selection, gets imprinted at the cellular level—skin in the game, I [the author] insist, is more filter than deterrence. Evolution can only happen if risk of extinction is present. Further,

There is no evolution without skin in the game.

This last point is quite obvious, but I keep seeing academics with no skin in the game defend evolution while at the same time rejecting skin in the game and risk sharing. They refuse the notion of design by a creator who knows everything, while, at the same time, want to impose human design as if they knew all the consequences. In general, the more people worship the sacrosanct state (or, equivalently, large corporations), the more they hate skin in the game. The more they believe in their ability to forecast, the more they hate skin in the game. The more they wear suits and ties, the more they hate skin in the game.

Returning to our interventionistas, we saw that people don’t learn so much from their—and other people’s—mistakes; rather it is the system that learns by selecting those less prone to a certain class of mistakes and eliminating others.

……….

To summarize so far,

Skin in the game keeps human hubris in check.

Source: Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (2018) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

The Globalists: Here is the full roster of Davos 2022 attendees

From Dossier.today (May 19, 2022):

The infamous World Economic Forum (WEF) will host its annual meeting in Davos next week, and we are going to make sure you know who is attending the invite-only gathering.

For those of you who are new to this nefarious organization: 

The World Economic Forum (WEF), through its annual Davos conference, acts as the go-to policy and ideas shop for the ruling class. The NGO is led by a comic book villain-like character in Klaus Schwab, its megalomaniac president who articulates a truly insane, extremist political agenda for our future.

Heard one of your politicians declaring support for the “Build Back Better” agenda?

How about the “Great Reset?”

All of those bumper sticker political narratives were popularized by the World Economic Forum.

Have you read about the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) movement?

That’s also a WEF favorite.

Davos 2022 includes the usual components of WEF’s “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” totalitarian eco statist agenda. Topics discussed and panels at the 2022 meeting will include:

Experience the future of cooperation: The Global Collaboration Village

Staying on Course for Nature Action

Future-proofing Health Systems

Accelerating the Reskilling Revolution (for the “green transition”)

The ‘Net’ in Net Zero

The Future of Globalization

Unlocking Carbon Markets

And of course, a Special Address by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine

The American contingent will include 25 politicians and Biden Administration officials. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo will join Climate Czar John Kerry as the White House representatives there. They will be joined by 12 democrat and 10 republican politicians, including 7 senators and two state governors

Without further delay, I’ve provided the entire list of attendees who are showing up to Davos next week. I’ll list the Americans below and the rest are linked below that in an attached document.

Gina Raimondo Secretary of Commerce of USA USA

John F. Kerry Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the United States of America

Bill Keating Congressman from Massachusetts (D)

Daniel Meuser Congressman from Pennsylvania (R)

Madeleine Dean Congresswoman from Pennsylvania (D)

Ted Lieu Congressman from California (D)

Ann Wagner Congresswoman from Missouri (R)

Christopher A. Coons Senator from Delaware (D)

Darrell Issa Congressman from California (R)

Dean Phillips Congressman from Minnesota (D)

Debra Fischer Senator from Nebraska (R)

Eric Holcomb Governor of Indiana (R)

Gregory W. Meeks Congressman from New York (D)

John W. Hickenlooper Senator from Colorado (D)

Larry Hogan Governor of Maryland (R)

Michael McCaul Congressman from Texas (R)

Pat Toomey Senator from Pennsylvania (R)

Patrick J. Leahy Senator from Vermont (D)

Robert Menendez Senator from New Jersey (D)

Roger F. Wicker Senator from Mississippi (R)

Seth Moulton Congressman from Massachusetts (D)

Sheldon Whitehouse Senator from Rhode Island (D)

Ted Deutch Congressman from Florida (D)

Francis Suarez Mayor of Miami (R)

Al Gore Vice-President of the United States (1993-2001) (D)

Full list of confirmed attendees of 2022 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting [source]

More articles and videos about the WEF:

• UNMASKING REPUBLICAN ATTENDEES AT WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM MEETING [video]
• A WEF Op-ed Is Calling for Global Censorship. We Really Need to Cut Ties With These Commies
• World Economic Forum Lists ‘Misinformation’ As A Top Risk Threatening The World
• The True Evil of the World Economic Forum
• World Economic Forum Wants To Use AI To Automatically Censor Speech On The Internet
• World Economic Forum Recommends Humans Become Cyborgs, Implant Brain Chips: There Are ‘Solid, Rational’ Reasons For Children To Be Microchipped
• Reporter: I was FRISKED by the World Economic Forum's police [video]

French City To Replace Mother and Father with ‘Parent 1’ ‘Parent 2’ On Civil Documents

From Breitbart.com (May 18, 2022):

The city of Marseille is moving to update its civil status forms, such as administrative documents and marriage certificates, to become “more inclusive, in coherence with the law” according to deputy mayor Jean-Marc Bonnaffous.

So far the forms have been updated in select boroughs in the city but Marseille is hoping to implement the new changes across the entire city as part of the initiative, the newspaper La Marseillaise reports.

Along with the changes to the forms, around 300 civil registrars are also being trained in LGBT issues, according to deputy mayor Sophie Roques, indicating the registrars will be trained on sexual lifestyles as well as gender identity issues.

Last November, the French Minister Delegate for Citizenship Marlène Schiappa announced that civil status forms would become more inclusive to same-sex couples and that they would no longer automatically list a father and a mother.

“This will indicate when this is the case, that you have two moms or two dads, or that you are two moms and two dads,” Schiappa said.

President of the Association of Homoparental Families Alexandre Urwicz welcomed the change but claimed it had taken eight years for the policy as gay marriage legislation had been passed in France in 2013.

As early as 2019, however, the French parliament voted to remove mother and father from school forms and replace them with “parent 1” and “parent 2”, a move law lecturer Aude Mirkovic described as being unfair to the majority of families.

“But, precisely, parents are not only legal guardians, in the same way as a guardian or a delegate of parental authority. They have the constitutive dimension of indicating to the child his origin, and the measures that reduce them to legal guardians deprive both children and parents of this affiliation,” she said.

France is not the only country in which there have been calls to abandon terms like mother and father in the name of inclusivity. Last April, schools in Melbourne Australia were called on to drop various gendered terms and use neutral terms such as parent instead. [source]

Stupid.

Whitaker to Newsmax: Hunter Got More Than Sweetheart Deal

From News Max.com (June 24):

Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Newsmax Saturday that the plea deal reached in the federal case against Hunter Biden is "not consistent" compared to those charged with similar crimes.

"I can tell you from being a U.S. Attorney for 5.5 years, in addition to my experience at [the Department of] Justice, this deal is not consistent with what the Department of Justice typically does in these types of cases," Whitaker said during "Saturday Report." "I think this whistleblower's revelations that the main tax charges, the felonies, that could have been brought were allowed to expire under the statute of limitations and can't be brought. I think that probably tells you everything you need to know, which is more than a sweetheart deal. This is a deal only the son of the president could get."

The DOJ charged President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, with two misdemeanor counts of evading taxes and a felony charge of lying on a gun application about his drug use.

In a plea deal, Hunter Biden will enter a pre-trial diversion plan.

Whitaker said details about the investigation, including testimony from a whistleblower that the DOJ gave Hunter Biden a heads-up on a planned search warrant execution, shows that Attorney General Merrick Garland is not being forthcoming on the influence his agency had regarding the investigation.

"My reaction is that — knowing how these types of things work — I've been trying to reconcile what Merrick Garland has been saying, which is that he did not interfere with this investigation," he said. "At the same time, hearing that ... possibly the U.S. attorney in the District of Colombia rejected charges being brought, that the Los Angeles U.S. attorney rejected charges being brought, this search warrant of the guesthouse at Joe Biden's home in Delaware — here are so many steps that were not allowed to happen. And all I can think is that everybody knew the tune they were singing."

Whitaker said Garland did not have to influence the agency because everyone was on the same page as to how the investigation and prosecution would play out.

"Merrick Garland didn't need to put his thumb on the scale because he knew everyone that was supportive of the Biden administration, and the Biden administration would do their part to make sure that this case was never brought the way it should have been," he said. [source]

22 states now require high school financial literacy courses

From K12 Dive.com (June 21):

With the recent passage of a Louisiana law requiring a financial literacy course for high school graduation, 22 states now have similar requirements on the books as of June, according to finance education advocacy nonprofit Next Gen Personal Finance.

Momentum has grown over the last several years to establish financial literacy curriculum requirements, with five new states approving such laws this year alone.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards signed the financial literacy bill into law on June 9, and it is expected to take effect Aug. 1. The required course will cover balancing a checkbook and basic principles of money management like general spending practices and managing debt. The class must also include understanding federal and state finance laws, contesting an incorrect billing statement, receiving an inheritance and more.

As of March, Next Gen Personal Finance reported, 40.5% of students lived in states that require high schools to offer a personal finance class to graduate. But outside of those 17 states, only 1 in 10 high school students were taking a financial literacy course before graduation.

Additionally, gaps remain in access to these courses in the 33 states that have not adopted a semester-long personal finance requirement for high schoolers, the organization said.

High school students living in rural areas are three times more likely to take a financial literacy course than those at urban schools, according to Next Gen Personal Finance. And high schools where more than 75% of students are Black or Hispanic are half as likely to require these courses compared to schools where fewer than 25% of students are Black or Hispanic, the organization found.

Based on a school’s poverty level, Next Gen Personal Finance reports, only 5% of high schools where over 75% of students qualify for free and reduced-price meals require a personal finance class for at least one semester. 

While access continues to grow for high school financial literacy courses, the Next Gen Personal Finance data reflects previous findings on persistent disparities. For instance, a 2022 report by the organization found only 1 in 20 students have access to financial education courses in schools where more than 75% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals or where more than three-quarters of the population are students of color. [source]

Sounds like a good idea since we live in a free market country.

God Designed Our Limitations

From Breakpoint.org (March 22, 2022):

If there’s a term our culture has little appreciation for, it’s “limitations.” The reality of our limitations, as intended by God, is exactly what makes Kelly Kapic’s newest book You’re Only Human worth reading. Either intentionally or implicitly, we think of our physical, interpersonal, and spiritual limits as things to be ignored, rejected, or transcended. Even in Christian circles, it’s common to constantly feel exhausted or guilty, as if we haven’t done enough for God and His Kingdom. Dr. Kelly Kapic, a professor of theology at Covenant College, provides a compelling counter thesis:

“Many of us fail to understand that our limitations are a gift from God, and therefore good. This produces in us the burden of trying to be something we are not and cannot be.”

Human limitation is different from the idea of “sin” or even “fallenness.” As a feature of time and space, “limitations” are a built-in aspect of God’s design. We need things like food and rest. We were not created to do everything by ourselves, even something as simple as finding our own individual identities. Ultimately, we are dependent, and our dependency is meant to draw us closer to the God who created us.

Recently, Dr. Kapic joined my colleague Kasey Leander for a special episode on the BreakPoint podcast. Their conversation is an especially relevant counter to dangerous assumptions that are shaping our world.

One of these assumptions has to do with physicality. Seized by what some have called a “gnostic impulse,” much of modern life downplays physical limitations. Digital technology tells us we don’t need to “go” anywhere to “be” with people. We sexualize everything, and in the process destroy the possibility of normal, everyday physical touch. The most extreme example of this gnostic impulse is  transgender ideology, which tells people they can only and finally feel fulfilled outside the physical reality of biology.

In God’s original design, the physical world was created “good.” We flourish best, not when we “transcend” our God-given physical limitations, but when we live in accordance with them. This doesn’t mean everything is perfect: Some of our limitations, of course, actually are caused by the fall. However, even in a world infected by evil, Christians have hope in a renewed, physical creation. If God loves our bodies, we should too.

Kapic also highlights the idea of faithfulness in the Christian life. Too often, we’re driven by a desire to do everything, ignoring our limited resources of time and energy. “It was Ben Franklin who said time is money,” he tells us, “and as Christians we have baptized that.”

It makes me wonder what Jesus would make of modern busyness. The Son of God never shied away from challenges or difficulty … yet he spent an inordinate amount of time simply praying and resting. As the Agent of creation and the second Adam, Christ set the standard for a life well lived.

A third takeaway from You’re Only Human. has to do with the Church, the Bride of Christ:

“God extends his love, provision, and values through the people who make up his church. His offer to be a refuge and strength frequently comes through his church. When he wants to bring a word of grace, a safe hug, a warm meal, it often comes through his church. Even when the church cannot do everything itself, it keeps seeking to promote the common good.”

The Christian walk demands community, and our collective limitations also point at something significant about our human limitations. Kapic continues:

“The central mission of the church is to point people continually to the Messiah: he alone fully reveals the love of the Father and pours out his Spirit on us. The goal of all our good efforts is to draw people to the embrace of the triune God, not to serve as a replacement for him. All the gifts we exercise must ultimately point back to the true Giver.”

This is why Christians can read the news without losing hope. We cannot heal or restore our broken world, but Christ can and will. In that respect, our limitation isn’t weakness. It makes us rely on the only true Source of strength. [source]

Powerful ‘Machine Scientists’ Distill the Laws of Physics From Raw Data

From Quanta Magazine.org (May 10, 2022):

In 2017, Roger Guimerà and Marta Sales-Pardo discovered a cause of cell division, the process driving the growth of living beings. But they couldn’t immediately reveal how they learned the answer. The researchers hadn’t spotted the crucial pattern in their data themselves. Rather, an unpublished invention of theirs — a digital assistant they called the “machine scientist” — had handed it to them. When writing up the result, Guimerà recalls thinking, “We can’t just say we fed it to an algorithm and this is the answer. No reviewer is going to accept that.”

The duo, who are partners in life as well as research, had teamed up with the biophysicist Xavier Trepat of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, a former classmate, to identify which factors might trigger cell division. Many biologists believed that division ensues when a cell simply exceeds a certain size, but Trepat suspected there was more to the story. His group specialized in deciphering the nanoscale imprints that herds of cells leave on a soft surface as they jostle for position. Trepat’s team had amassed an exhaustive data set chronicling shapes, forces, and a dozen other cellular characteristics. But testing all the ways these attributes might influence cell division would have taken a lifetime.

Instead, they collaborated with Guimerà and Sales-Pardo to feed the data to the machine scientist. Within minutes it returned a concise equation that predicted when a cell would divide 10 times more accurately than an equation that used only a cell’s size or any other single characteristic. What matters, according to the machine scientist, is the size multiplied by how hard a cell is getting squeezed by its neighbors — a quantity that has units of energy.

“It was able to pick up something that we were not,” said Trepat, who, along with Guimerà, is a member of ICREA, the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies.

Because the researchers hadn’t yet published anything about the machine scientist, they did a second analysis to cover its tracks. They manually tested hundreds of pairs of variables, “irrespective of … their physical or biological meaning,” as they would later write. By design, this recovered the machine scientist’s answer, which they reported in 2018 in Nature Cell Biology.

Four years later, this awkward situation is quickly becoming an accepted method of scientific discovery. Sales-Pardo and Guimerà are among a handful of researchers developing the latest generation of tools capable of a process known as symbolic regression.

Symbolic regression algorithms are distinct from deep neural networks, the famous artificial intelligence algorithms that may take in thousands of pixels, let them percolate through a labyrinth of millions of nodes, and output the word “dog” through opaque mechanisms. Symbolic regression similarly identifies relationships in complicated data sets, but it reports the findings in a format human researchers can understand: a short equation. These algorithms resemble supercharged versions of Excel’s curve-fitting function, except they look not just for lines or parabolas to fit a set of data points, but billions of formulas of all sorts. In this way, the machine scientist could give the humans insight into why cells divide, whereas a neural network could only predict when they do.

Researchers have tinkered with such machine scientists for decades, carefully coaxing them into rediscovering textbook laws of nature from crisp data sets arranged to make the patterns pop out. But in recent years the algorithms have grown mature enough to ferret out undiscovered relationships in real data — from how turbulence affects the atmosphere to how dark matter clusters. “No doubt about it,” said Hod Lipson, a roboticist at Columbia University who jump-started the study of symbolic regression 13 years ago. “The whole field is moving forward.” [read more]

A Trilogy of Meditations on AI and Art (Part One)

From AM Greatness.com (June 17):

Originating in late 18th century England, Luddism was a populist movement by middle-class, skilled workers in response to the burgeoning Industrial Revolution’s supplanting of their labor by machines. Throughout the centuries, the movement has been mischaracterized.

According to Historic U.K.’s Jessica Brain:

The Luddites were not, as has often been portrayed, against the concept of progress and industrialization as such, but instead the idea that mechanization would threaten their livelihood and the skills they had spent years acquiring. The group went about destroying weaving machines and other tools as a form of protest . . . 

Some inclined to look through the prism of history have reviled or romanticized the Luddites’ struggle. In both instances, such views can elide how the movement did not wholly rely on self-defeating destruction to redress their grievances. As Brain notes: “In an attempt to halt or at least make the transition smoother, the Luddites initially sought to renegotiate terms of working conditions based on the changing circumstances in the workplace . . . These attempts at bargaining proved futile.”

The result was a tragic vindication of the Luddites’ belief that mechanization would “prove disastrous for the artisans of their craft, who had spent years perfecting and honing their skills only to be replaced by less skilled, underpaid workers operating machinery.”

Today, even those less inclined to look through the prism of history can see the parallels between the Luddite movement’s response to the Industrial Revolution and today’s workers at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI). While current workers have not organically coalesced into a movement with an eponymous name based upon a mythic figure and engaged in civil disorder to press their claims against AI, earlier manifestations of the inchoate, palpable public angst against globalization manifested itself in riots and acts of mayhem by nominally “populist” leftist organizations, both foreign and domestic.

In the specific instance of AI, some of those whose vocations are most at risk have chosen to negotiate first. The outcome may lay a cornerstone of how other occupations—blue collar or white collar—endeavor to come to terms with AI. More importantly, it also raises the question of how everyone must grapple with what it means to be human.

Recently, Variety cited director Joe Russo, who estimated that within “two years,” AI could be “engineering and changing storytelling,” and making movies. With a tinge of resignation evoking the Luddites, Russo realistically mulled the peril to the creative process by impending onslaught of AI:

I’m gonna speak from my experience of being on the board of those companies, [so] there are AI companies that are developing AI to protect you from AI. And unfortunately, we’re in that world, and you will need an AI in your life because whether we want to see it developed or not, people who are not friendly to us may develop it anyways. So, we’re going to be in that future. The question is, then, how we protect ourselves in that future?

That question is one of the critical issues the Writers Guild of America (WGA) is grappling with in its negotiations with studios and streaming companies. The WGA is trying to protect both its members’ financial interests and, more importantly for everyone, the future of artistic creation, per a Vanity Fair report: “There’s also an effort to get ahead of burgeoning technologies like artificial intelligence that threaten writers’ jobs.”

But while discussing the entire situation, one gleans the goal is not the knee-jerk eradication of AI, but rather a more realistic goal: “‘To safeguard ourselves from it getting worse,’ as one writer-producer explains.” Getting worse would be the termination of human authors and the ubiquitous utilization of low-cost AI programs to generate content for production companies and streaming outlets.

Granted, while a Philistine view, it is true that written works are commodities, like a shoe. Yet, as in a master shoe maker’s product, the sum of an author’s written work is greater than the sum of its inputs.

When the Luddites ultimately lost, the guilds were decimated and their skilled workers impoverished; and the human element in producing shoes—experience, knowledge, artistry, etc.—was lost, except for pockets of artisans serving as repositories of their craft’s traditions, customs, techniques, and talents. With mechanization, shoes became less expensive, and the world little noticed the plight of the skilled shoemakers. Why? Because, in many ways, the purpose of a shoe is a practical one capable of mass production—the protection of one’s feet. All things being equal, in a pinch any shoe will do.

Not so with art. What AI will decimate with authors and all artistic creators is the very essence of art: a human being crafting a work for the purposes of escapist and/or thought-provoking entertainment; and to express and affirm the essence of his own humanity and the universality of the human experience to another person.

Can AI craft a story? Perhaps. Can AI bring to bear the unique individual essence of a writer? No—and not even if the characteristics of said author are programmed into AI. For AI’s product is a derivative replication, not a unique creation; an act of mimicry, not artistry; a work of machine, not man.

It is the difference between a symphony and a jam session. A symphony is structured; a jam session is spontaneous. Incapable of being replicated again, a jam session relies upon the unique, inimitable experiences, abilities, and instincts of its players—all of whom, like the collective experience, are themselves individually unique. No matter how seemingly structured the work, inside every artist’s mind is a jam session of soul and synapses connecting disparate ideas, inspirations, and emotions and synthesizing them into a work that has never been seen throughout history. And no matter its programming, it is a work of art the AI can only simulate, emulate, imitate, and replicate, but can never create. 

CT Insider once reported how Paul McCartney “believes in a magical, mysterious nature to songwriting and can often feel like a conduit. ‘I have to [believe in magic]. Because some of the things that have happened to me in songwriting are pretty amazing.’” This is a traditional view of the artist as a conduit for God or an otherwise defined mystical inspiration. In fact, the postmodern view is that the true work of art is not the piece, but the artist himself—his life the ultimate canvas for creation.

Thus, in the current battle of artificial intelligence against artists’ imagination, like the Luddites before them, the WGA is not only bargaining for its members’ livelihoods. It is fighting for their artistic lives.

Godspeed in the good fight, WGA. [source]

Top 10 Hunter Biden bombshells from IRS whistleblower testimonies

From Just the News.com (June 22):

Two IRS whistleblowers who worked on the Hunter Biden tax investigation testified to the House Committee on Ways and Means in recent weeks attesting to the Department of Justice's hamstringing of U.S. Attorney David Weiss and his ability to pursue the case.

Biden reached a deal with the DOJ earlier this week to plead guilty to two tax charges and a gun violation that could potentially be dismissed. The DOJ is recommending he receive no prison time.

Gary Shapley, who led the IRS agents working on the case, initially came forward alleging that political officials had intervened to prevent the bringing of charges against the first son and that Weiss lacked sufficient authority to do so on his own. After Shapley came forward, the DOJ removed his entire team from the case.

One of his subordinate agents, who remains unidentified, has since come forward to corroborate most of Shapley's claims. The pair testified to the committee in separate interviews, revealing the extent to which the DOJ hampered the case.

File

Whistleblower 1 Transcript_Redacted.pdf

File

Whistleblower 2 Transcript_Redacted.pdf

Here are the top 10 takeaways from their testimonies:

Prosecutors resisted IRS efforts to ramp up the investigation before the election

The unnamed whistleblower recounted disagreements between the IRS whistleblowers on the case and the prosecutors about taking aggressive steps to pursue the investigation.

"So one of the first disagreements I recall between the IRS investigators and the prosecutors was the idea of going overt," he said. "When we work criminal tax investigations, there's an IRS policy in place that we need to interview the subject within 30 days of elevating the investigation."

The agent insisted that he lobbied heavily for the case to "go overt" as a means of putting Hunter on notice and to preserve relevant materials, but was overruled, allegedly due to concerns that it would compromise evidence on the FBI side of the case.

"I was overruled during multiple meetings almost to the point that I couldn't bring it up anymore to the attorneys, and they would get visually upset with me. And I was continually being told that we had to stay covert to preserve potential evidence from the FBI side of the investigation," he continued. "So we did not end up going overt and conducting interviews until after the 2020 election on December 8th, 2020, after I continually pushed the issue at various meetings."

Shapley indicated that the team had prepared documentation to support more aggressive investigative efforts in April 2020, including interviews and searches, but that career DOJ officials "dragged their feet" on the IRS pursuing them.

"By June 2020, those same career officials were already delaying overt investigative actions. This was well before the typical 60- to 90-day period when DOJ would historically stand down before an election. It was apparent that DOJ was purposely slow-walking investigative actions in this matter," he said. [read more]

Yea, more and more it looks like an FBI coverup.

The other bombshells:

1. DOJ repeatedly squashed search warrants
2. Shapley and his team never managed to interview Hunter, nor other Bidens
3. Prosecutors limited questions about Joe Biden
4. IRS agents couldn't get access to the Hunter Biden laptop
5. A key Biden appointee blocked the pursuit of some of the most serious charges
6. DOJ rejected Weiss's request to be named special counsel
7. WhatsApp Messages connected Joe Biden to Hunter's business deals
8. Biden met CEFC, Chinese business client of Hunter’s
9. Agents never saw the Biden FD-1023 Form

Another article on the subject:

16 Bombshells on Hunter Biden From The IRS Whistleblowers