The reputation of major US institutions is headed to hell in a handbasket.
“To think that such trading is acceptable because it is supposedly allowed by Fed’s current policies only highlights that the Fed’s policies are woefully deficient,” Kelleher told CNBC.
Trump later said he picked Milley to spite Mattis, who has since criticized his former boss.
More.
Did the CDC release the Sep 10 study the day before the 9/11 anniversary hoping everyone would ignore it?
The 10th was also a Friday, the usual day for the government to publish the bad news while everyone is getting ready for the weekend.
The study is also noteworthy for its "Look! Over there! A deer!" quality, repeatedly framing how everything "is higher in unvaccinated than vaccinated persons".
And look how that title assiduously avoids using the word "breakthrough", too.
It's like a whole package of screams shouting "Nothing to see here!"
None dare call it vaccine failure. CDC just calls it lower VE, vaccine effectiveness.
It's buried in paragraph 10:
During April 4–June 19, fully vaccinated persons accounted for 5% of cases, 7% of hospitalizations, and 8% of deaths overall; these percentages were higher during June 20–July 17 (18%, 14%, and 16%, respectively).
Using the reported 37% vaccination coverage for the 13 jurisdictions during April 4–June 19 and an assumption of 90% VE, vaccinated persons would have been expected to account for 6% of cases (close to the 5% observed). With 53% coverage reported during June 20–July 17, vaccinated persons were expected to account for 10% of cases at a constant VE of 90%; the observed 18% would have been expected at a lower VE of 80%.
So as the vaccines wear off, even though you have increased vaccine coverage in the interim, meaning the percentage of the population vaccinated has increased, you get more breakthrough cases, more hospitalizations, and more deaths than you would earlier with less "coverage" because vaccine effectiveness was previously stronger.
In other words, the absence of breakthrough cases early in the mass vaccination effort was simply an illusion, an artifact of not enough time having passed for the VE to decay.
CNN reports the sad story of a 66 year old immunocompromised mother who died of COVID-19 in early September even though she was fully vaccinated in March. She had traveled to Mississippi in July. In her obituary her family blames the unvaccinated in Mississippi for her death.
That's appalling, because waning vaccine effectiveness is to blame, along with her misplaced faith in the vaccines, derived from the 24/7 propaganda sales campaign of the CDC, the federal government and the medical establishment, which have whipped up an hysteria about getting vacccinated to avoid a serious outcome, an outcome which it is increasingly clear this vaccine cannot provide over the long haul.
That's why the booster shot is being teed up.
But the way this is going, you are going to need a booster every few months for the damn thing to do you any good.
And at this point no one knows whether that will be dangerous or not.
But know this. The Powers That Be have heard the objections at the FDA that the most serious side effects to the vaccines come after the second shot. What will happen after a third? A fourth? A fifth?
They do NOT KNOW.
The vaccines do not make you bullet-proof. The vaccines wear off. And your misplaced faith in them means you can spread the virus asymptomatically, as the July 4 study in Provincetown showed, and eventually you can become more vulnerable to getting COVID-19 yourself.
But while 81.3% of people over 16 have received two vaccine doses, there are currently 8,340 COVID-19 patients in hospital in Britain, compared to just 1,066 a year ago.
Reuters, here.
In mid-October 2020, top Pentagon officials grew concerned about intelligence they'd seen. It showed the Chinese were consuming their own intelligence that had made them concerned about the possibility of a surprise U.S. strike against China, three sources familiar with the situation tell Axios.
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“If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” Milley said.
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Climate Update for KGRR: August 2021
What a hoot.
The paper, the SCIENCE, comes out a week before Biden is expected to announce booster shots.
The scientists in The Lancet review include Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and deputy director Phil Krause. Both are departing the FDA after they were reportedly frustrated over the ... booster shots. ...
They said there are risks to distributing boosters too soon, including the potential for side effects such as a rare heart inflammation condition known as myocarditis, which is more common after the second dose of mRNA vaccines. ...
wide distribution of boosters is “not appropriate at this stage in the pandemic.”
More.
In the first year to Mar 7, 2021, there were 29.034 million total announced cases and 0.524646 million deaths, for a case fatality rate of 1.80%.
From Mar 7, 2021 to Sep 7, 2021, just past, six months, there were 11.349 million total announced cases and 0.126368 million deaths, for a case fatality rate of 1.11%, 38% less severe.
Compared with the first six months of the pandemic to Sep 7, 2020, the first six months of year two have been even less deadly still.
Through Sep 7, 2020 there had been 6.317 million total announced cases, and 0.189083 million deaths, for a case fatality rate of 2.99%, 2.7 times worse.
All data is from The New York Times.
Phony Diagnoses Hide High Rates of Drugging at Nursing Homes :
Starting at the 20:00 mark.
Government unions have already said, Not so fast!
In April Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, said "We cannot require someone to be vaccinated" (at about 1:30 below).
We'll see how long that lasts.
Probably about as long as Joe's promise to get every last American out of Kabul.
None of his supporters want to talk about that stupid load of BS Trump tried to sell.
The 640k mark was crossed on August 31.
Wrong again.
The United States has added 7 million cases since achieving 50% vaccination with one dose on June 1, and that spike continued strong despite achieving 50% full vaccination on August 14.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's senior official for infectious diseases, predicts the United States could begin to achieve early stages of herd immunity against the deadly coronavirus by late spring or summer. And if that happens, Fauci anticipates, "we could really turn this thing around" toward the end of 2021.
In a wide-ranging interview Tuesday on Morning Edition, NPR's Rachel Martin asked Fauci how many Americans need to receive the vaccine to have an impact on the number of COVID-19 infections.
"I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact," Fauci said. "But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity."
"Certainly it’s not going to be a pandemic for a lot longer, because I believe the vaccines are going to turn that around,” Fauci said. “Vaccines will help us. What we’ve got to do is just hang on and continue to double down on the public health measures.” ... The public also needs to be prepared for the likelihood that protection against the virus -- whether from vaccines or from fighting off Covid -- will probably only last for a year, perhaps two, he said. That’s based on experience with similar viruses and the growing number of documented cases of people being infected with this coronavirus twice, he said.
Everyone on the right is fixated on Joe Biden encouraging Ghani to paint a rosier picture to the press about the progress of the war in exchange for "aid".
In other words, Joe was trying to bribe Ghani to lie. The scenario is very reminiscent of VP Joe Biden's intimidation of the Ukrainians involving his threat to withhold US aid unless they fired a prosecutor who was looking into the Ukrainian activities of Biden's son, Hunter.
But this framing is a diversion, and a misrepresentation.
The call, to the extent Reuters has reported on it, shows Ghani reciting a litany of woe to Joe Biden about how catastrophe is imminent.
In what world does it make sense for Joe to respond to that with the offer of "aid" to a man who is clearly convinced that the end is nigh? Ghani was reciting that litany because everything was falling apart precisely because of the American pull-out. Just three weeks prior the US pulled out of Bagram in the dead of night Jul 2, from which point everything began to cascade out of control.
Ghani had to find what he was hearing from Biden incredible, in particular the promise of "continued close air support".
But close air support had already been withdrawn from Jul 2. It wasn't "continuing". It had already ended weeks prior. That was the problem, AND BIDEN DIDN'T KNOW IT. And even if he once knew it because his generals and advisers told him, HE FORGOT IT. Biden is behaving in the call as if he has resources at his command which are no longer there.
Imagine being Ghani having to deal with such unreality coming out of the mouth of the American president.
By the time of the call, Jul 23, the US withdrawal was already more than 95% complete according to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, as reported by CNBC on Jul 21:
At the Pentagon on Wednesday, the nation’s highest military officer told reporters that the U.S. has completed more than 95% of the herculean task of withdrawing from Afghanistan.
“The sheer volume of movement involved in this operation has been extraordinary,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, adding that the U.S. conducted more than 980 airlifts of cargo in less than three months.
“Furthermore, all the military operating bases, outside of Kabul, have been fully transferred to the Afghan Ministry of Defense and the Afghan security forces.”
Joe Biden was in no position to act as Commander in Chief in Afghanistan on Jul 23 because there was nothing left to command. In truth, he hasn't been fit since before the election, during which he campaigned from the safety of a bunker, protected by the media in the tank for him.
His unfitness for the duties of the office is self-evident to anyone paying attention day to day, except that everyone pretends not to see.
They just smile and pass.
But Ghani didn't pretend. He prepared himself an out. That's why he escaped and is alive today and living in the UAE.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, is living in la la land.
California is in blue in the graphs, Texas in pink, and Florida in green. New York, the most devastated state at the beginning of the pandemic, is shown in gray for reference.
Hysterical media reports about hospital problems do not reflect the overall reality. At the worst in New York the percent of hospital beds taken by C19 patients was about 36% and neither California nor Florida got that bad this time or last. Texas is an also-ran.
When things get serious hospitals simply have to stop elective procedures and devote more resources to the pandemic. They hate doing that because it's not PROFITABLE. Counting as many deaths as possible as C19 deaths to get federal reimbursements hardly comes close to making up for that.
That's what all the caterwauling in the press is really about.
If keeping you healthy were really the aim of government and the medical establishment, THEY WOULDN'T MAKE ANY MONEY AT IT.
Do yourself a favor. Stay healthy and starve THE BEASTS.
During that same period of time (August 11th – August 19th), the SNHD’s total COVID Deaths (those of both vaccinated and unvaccinated), rose from 4936 to 5032, or 96 deaths. Of the total deaths, 50 of them were fully vaccinated, meaning 52% of the deaths were fully vaccinated patients. As previously discussed, only 46% of the county is vaccinated, showing that vaccinated people were more likely to die from a COVID-19 infection from this sample than were the unvaccinated. At 52%, a 6 point swing isn’t drastic enough to justify saying the vaccine is more dangerous than being unvaccinated, but the narrative that the vaccine makes it so you are less likely to die from COVID-19 doesn’t hold water in this case.
More.
The pandemic of the vaccinated.
Full time as a percentage of population rose to 49.18 in August after peaking in July, as is typical, at 49.28.
The measure ebbs after summer and flows in the spring, mirrored by a peak oscillation in usually part-time employment in the winter, which is a much smaller part of the population, historically averaging 27+ million in the years before the latest catastrophe.
The 48.3% average to date in 2021 is one full point ahead of the average for 2020 at 47.3%, but remains far off the 2019 average at 50.4%, which itself hardly represented a return to what was normal before the Great Financial Crisis.
Full time work never recovered after GFC I, which exposed the hollowed out character of the US economy after decades of out-sourcing, off-shoring, and mass low-wage immigration.
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All presidents since Reagan/Bush have failed to prioritize US hard-target kill capability, including Trump, so our enemies both in Russia and China have been compensating for that.
Eroding the certainty of destruction erodes deterrence.
The Chicoms haven't been emphasizing concrete manufacturing just to build vacant buildings and roads to nowhere.
Mark B. Schneider:
In 1985, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Vessey briefed President Ronald Reagan about the need for improved hard-target kill capability, including the need for 100 MX (Peacekeeper) ICBMs. We actually got 50. Of the three U.S. hard target capable systems created by the Reagan administration, two (the Peacekeeper ICBM and the Advanced Cruise Missile) were eliminated by the George W. Bush administration. This left only the high-yield WW-88 Trident warheads. Reportedly, the U.S. produced only 400 of the high-yield WW-88 warheads for the Trident II missile. Obviously, they can’t all be used against Chinese silos even if one makes a number of best-case assumptions. Moreover, it is not clear that the 1990 accuracy of the Trident II will be adequate if the Chinese are building silos based upon the new 30,000 psi super concrete now commercially available. The 1970 accuracy of a Minuteman III, while a great achievement in 1970, is hardly the same today against really hard targets. Unfortunately, the Minuteman III life extension program did not aim to upgrade the accuracy of the Minuteman.[8] It is not comparable to the Peacekeeper. There are plenty of important targets, including hard targets, the Minuteman III can cover, but super hard targets are not among them.
Even before the discovery of the new Chinese silos, a case could be made from a targeting standpoint for a strategic nuclear force of 2,700-3,000 nuclear warheads. There is a great difference between target coverage (assigning a warhead to a target) and damage expectancy (the probability of target destruction). Claims by Minimum Deterrence advocates, such as the Global Zero "Commission" report that a small nuclear force can do effective counterforce targeting are bogus. Regarding China, the report’s targeting plan involved “(85 warheads including 2-on-1 strikes against every missile silo), leadership command posts (33 warheads), war-supporting industry (136 warheads).” With the new Chinese silos, this targeting approach would require almost 1,000 warheads. Moreover, the approach itself is flawed because it ignores the Underground Great Wall, which protects the Chinese mobile ICBM force, the Chinese Navy and Air Force, and the large Chinese force of nuclear-capable theater-range missiles. The Global Zero report also assigned two warheads against every Russian silo. The report talked about target coverage, not damage expectancy, because its recommended force structure would likely have performed very badly against the facilities it targeted.
Against the very deep hard, and deeply targets (HDBTs) [sic; should read "very hard deeply-buried targets] there is essentially zero chance that they can be destroyed with a single U.S. nuclear warhead. The 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review only partially reversed the Obama administration’s decision to eliminate the two most effective U.S. bombs against HDBTs, the B61 Mod 11 and B-83. These bombs will be retained longer than planned but not be life extended. Once again, numbers matter, and we no longer have the numbers. Conventional weapons have little and declining capability against HDBTs.[9] As one report stated, “One GBUJ-57A/B [Massive Ordnance Penetrator] can only penetrate 8 meters of 10,000 psi rock or concrete. This could drop to 2 meters of 30,000 psi material.”
More.
From Bill Gertz:
China is building a third missile field that will hold more than 100 new DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles, The Washington Times has learned.
Construction of a silo array for DF-41s was identified from satellite imagery by U.S. intelligence agencies in the past several weeks and appears equal in size to two other new Chinese missile fields recently identified, according to Pentagon officials familiar with intelligence reports on the strategic development.
Adm. Charles Richard, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, said Thursday that the first two missile fields being built are part of China‘s “explosive” expansion of nuclear forces. ...
Analysts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, first told The Washington Post in June that commercial satellite photos had revealed the construction of scores of silos near Yumen in China‘s Gansu province for the new missiles. Some missile sites were placed underneath a 230-foot cover in an attempt to conceal the silos from the prying eyes of satellite spies.
Last month, the Federation of American Scientists discovered the second DF-41 field some 240 miles northwest of Yumen near the city of Hami in Xinjiang Province. Xinjiang is also the location of China‘s active nuclear testing site, which the Pentagon said recently had begun increased operations after years of limited, irregular activity.
Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon nuclear policymaker, said the discovery of a new missile field is significant and indicates that Beijing’s ICBM force will soon be more powerful than U.S. nuclear forces were at the height of the Cold War.
“It is now beyond any reasonable doubt that China is going for large-scale strategic nuclear superiority over the U.S.,” said Mr. Schneider, now with the National Institute for Public Policy. “The new silos will give China the ability to deploy thousands of strategic nuclear warheads on DF-41 ICBMs.”
Mr. Schneider said he believes the main motivation for the large buildup is that Beijing is planning some type of military action in the next few years and hopes to deter a U.S. military response to action against one of China‘s neighbors, such as Taiwan. ...
Until the discovery of the DF-41 silos, China‘s land-based, silo-deployed ICBM force consisted of around 20 DF-5 ICBMs.
More.
Deaths Apr-Aug 2020 were 179k, but fewer than 89k in 2021 for the same months.
And every one of those months in 2021 was lower than its corresponding month in 2020.
We'll be happy to see that be the case also in September.
Politicians always telegraph their greatest failures.
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U.S. Central Command chief Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan, as did his son, appeared somewhat stunned when he spoke to the press on Monday, detailing surprisingly civil interactions with Taliban commanders who oversee the network he has fought to defeat for two decades. When asked how he felt about that, he demurred.
"I was very conflicted," McKenzie said in a candid moment during a televised briefing at the Pentagon from his headquarters in Tampa, Florida. "I am going to be thinking about that in the days ahead."
He described Taliban cooperation with the U.S. evacuation mission in recent days as "actually very helpful and useful to us as we closed down operations."
McKenzie detailed that despite assertions from Biden and other top leaders, the U.S. did not withdraw all of its own citizens, nor the Afghans it had pledged it would protect in exchange for their cooperation in the war effort. The military presence on the ground at the airport retained the ability to bring them out of the country, but many were not able to get to the airfield amid the chaos in the capital city.
"The military phase is over, but our desire to bring these people out remains as intense as it was before," McKenzie said. "The Department of State will now take the lead on it."
The U.S. would not have been able to accomplish that mission if it had stayed for an additional week or so, he added, batting down suggestions from Capitol Hill and elsewhere that Biden should have ordered an extension to his deadline. ...
McKenzie assesses as many as 2,000 "Hardcore ISIS fighters" are operating in Afghanistan now, some of whom were freed in recent days from jails the U.S. originally ran at Bagram and elsewhere.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies reported Monday that Osama bin Laden's chief of security returned to his hometown in Afghanistan earlier in the day accompanied by a band of heavily armed Taliban fighters in brand new military trucks.
"The video of al Haq is evidence that Al Qaeda commanders now feel secure enough to appear publicly in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan," the foundation's Bill Roggio wrote in an analysis note.
More.
Yeah, like 55,000 score.
I guess the kids think that's a fancy word for "a lot".
Holiday weekend help is already on duty, apparently.
In the first year of the pandemic, 2.2% of cases globally died. 2.2% of global population would mean almost 175 million deaths. In 2019 just 58 million died globally from all causes, pre-pandemic.
There's no guarantee 2.2% will die of COVID going forward, but Typhoid Annie is still stark, raving mad.
It also looks as if the India variant has been not only less deadly, but less infectious as well, not more as most experts had been saying.
The January outbreak remains the dominant one of all the waves so far as to cases, but as to deaths we are clearly seeing a step down in severity.
I'm sure vaccine advocates will chalk it all up to the success of the vaccines, ignoring that the latest wave began on the first day of summer, fully six months into the mass vaccination effort, which most certainly did not prevent infection and transmission as the US CDC continues to say to this day. Pointing this out on Twitter a few days ago got Alex Berenson finally and permanently banned.
The Vaccine Church wants to credit the dramatic decline in cases since January to the vaccines, but refuses to own the wave of July and August. Instead it blames the unvaccinated at the same time it admits that vaccinated people get infected and spread the disease, as was proven by the dramatic Provincetown, Massachusetts, incident. Conveniently for the investors in big pharma, the CDC doesn't count breakthrough cases unless they end up in hospital or die, excluding from the statistics an entire class of superspreaders. There are literally hundreds of millions of them.
Meanwhile as to deaths few will consider that the easy fruit had already been harvested by the Grim Reaper before the India variant even arrived, that as to cases prior infection immunized millions while millions more who were vaccinated relaxed masking and social distancing, with official encouragement, spreading the virus.
There is also the simple fact of seasonality, which may loom larger than we know.
No one can really say.
There isn't just one variable to blame or credit, but that is what tired, frightened, small, greedy, and often hysterical minds end up doing.
It's human nature.
The virus may or may not peter out, but we'll always have human nature.
Israel's high vaccination rate isn't high enough. The country jumped out ahead of all other countries on vaccines, and 78% of eligible Israelis over 12 years old are vaccinated.
More.
Mish is a long time popularizer of the Austrian School of Economics.
This response epitomizes what has been wrong with US policy in Afghanistan since 9/11, and everywhere, frankly.
America treats this like a matter of law enforcement instead of like what it is, a war.
It cannot bring itself to punish the nation and destroy its ability to make war, pretending justice for an individual is sufficient.
That's why we've been there for 20 years, hunting down individuals. We make fine but false distinctions between ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban, etc., instead of destroying them all.
The Taliban, now America's chosen people in Afghanistan, has simply run out the clock and exhausted us with our own inadequate, enervated Rules of Engagement.
Trump used to understand this but quickly was co-opted by The Blob, because his character was and remains weak, the fundamental reason why his presidency was such a disappointment.
And so temporarily, or so they say, the state has been forced to set up five natural gas power plants in order to avoid rolling blackouts. This move is the result of an emergency order signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last month.
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