Source: Fox News Forum
by US Senator Roger Marshall, MD
“It’s not a regulatory issue. It’s a bailout. We’ve heard the spin from the White House and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that taxpayers won’t have to pay for Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, but it is inevitable. When the FDIC assesses an extra fee of $25K to $1M for community banks to bailout SVB, local banks will do everything possible to tighten their belts and absorb the additional costs. Still, eventually, those fees will trickle down to its consumers. Sadly, hard-working Americans in small towns across America will pay more to recover money for a bank they’ve never heard of in Silicon Valley, CA. But that is not the crux of this issue. The most dangerous part of this bailout is the message this administration is sending depositors, that your money is safer in big banks even when they fail.” (03/23/23)
“As I wander, I finally run into one of my classmates, now ‘a skinny old man with bushy white hair, wearing a loose deer skin.’ And yes, whatever happened (that ‘great invasion’) while I was underground in, as anyone of that period would have known, a private nuclear-fallout shelter, is unclear. Still, in the world I find on emerging, all my former classmates, whom I meet one after another in joking fashion, now live in caves. In other words, it had obviously been devastated. … more than 60 years later, it strikes me that we kids who had learned to ‘duck and cover’ at school … in preparation for a Russian nuclear attack, already had a deep sense not of future promise but of doom to come.” (03/23/23)
“Mississippi will set tighter restrictions on who can gather other people’s absentee ballots, under a bill that Gov. Tate Reeves signed Wednesday. The Republican governor said the law, which takes effect July 1, will ban political operatives from collecting and handling large numbers of absentee ballots. Reeves described the practice as ‘ballot harvesting,’ a pejorative [sic] term for dropping off completed ballots for other people. ‘This process is an open invitation for fraud and abuse, and can occur without the voter ever even knowing,’ Reeves said in a video statement. Opponents said the new restrictions could hurt candidates, campaign workers, nursing home employees or others who make good-faith efforts to help people obtain and mail absentee ballots.” (03/23/23)
“The way the Pulitzer Prizes work seems simple enough – an Ivy league university hands out annual awards that ostensibly recognize important journalism. In practice, however, my former colleague Phil Terzian, a Pulitzer finalist who has served on the nominating committee, described the inner workings of the Pulitzers this way: ‘The Pulitzer Prizes are a singularly corrupt institution, administered by Columbia University and the management of the New York Times largely for the benefit of the New York Times and a limited number of favored publications and personalities….’ While the Pulitzer Prizes have always been little more than self-dealing masquerading as journalistic beauty pageant, it was a lot easier to believe in this manufactured prestige back when journalism was at least slightly more competent and concerned with the appearance of objectivity.” (03/23/23)
“World Athletics has banned transgender women from competing in the female category at international events. The governing body’s president, Lord Coe, said no transgender athlete who had gone through male puberty would be permitted to compete in female world ranking competitions from 31 March. A working group will be set up to conduct further research into the transgender eligibility guidelines. ‘We’re not saying no forever,’ he said. Under previous rules, World Athletics required transgender women to reduce their amount of blood testosterone to a maximum of 5nmol/L, and stay under this threshold continuously for a period of 12 months before competing in the female category. Lord Coe added the decision was ‘guided by the overarching principle which is to protect the female category.’ He noted that there are currently no transgender athletes competing internationally in the sport.” (03/23/23)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“In response to questions he received during a press conference on Monday about Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin cementing a ‘new era’ in strategic partnership between China and Russia, the White House National Security Council’s John Kirby made no fewer than seven assertions that the US is the ‘leader’ of the world. … The illusory truth effect is a cognitive bias which causes people to mistake something they have heard many times for an established fact, because the way the human brain receives and interprets information tends to draw little or no distinction between repetition and truth. Propagandists and empire managers often take advantage of this glitch in our wetware, which is what’s happening when you see them repeating key phrases over and over again that they want people to believe.” (03/23/23)
“TikTok’s chief executive faced tough questions on Thursday from lawmakers who are convinced the Chinese-owned short video app should be barred for being a ‘tool’ of the Chinese Communist Party and because it carries content that can harm children’s mental health. CEO Shou Zi Chew’s testimony before Congress capped a week of actions by the Chinese company aimed at convincing Americans and their lawmakers that the app creates economic value and supports free speech. Instead, members of Congress accused the company of spying and deception, adding to calls to ban the app. TikTok, which has more than 150 million American users, was repeatedly hammered in the ongoing hearing where no lawmaker offered any support.” (03/23/23)
“Ukrainians, and many Europeans and Americans, are defining an envisioned Ukrainian victory as the complete expulsion of all Russians from its 2013 borders. Or, as a Ukrainian national security chief put it, the war ends with Ukrainian tanks in Red Square. But mysteries remain about such ambitious agendas: What would that goal entail? Giving Ukraine American F-16s to strike bases and depots in Mother Russia? The gifting of 1,000 M1 Abrams tanks? Using American Harpoon missiles to sink the Russian Black Sea fleet? A huge arsenal that would guarantee total victory rather than not losing? Russia’s cruel strategy is to grind down Ukraine and turn its eastern regions into a Verdun-like deathscape. So is a brave Ukraine really winning the war when it loses about 0.6 soldiers for every Russian it kills?” [editor’s note: We don’t know what the ratio of troops lost to enemy troops killed, because both sides lie and keep secrets – TLK] (03/23/23)
“South Carolina’s embattled top accountant will step down next month after a $3.5 billion error in the year-end financial report he oversaw, according to a resignation letter written Thursday that was obtained by The Associated Press. Republican Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom’s decision to leave the post he has held for 20 years came after intense scrutiny of his performance following the blunder and amid rising calls for him to either quit or be removed. The Senate panel investigating the financial misstatement issued a damning report last week accusing Eckstrom of ‘willful neglect of duty.’ As recently as last week, however, Eckstrom had said he would not resign.” (03/23/23)
“U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday introduced the Federal Reserve Independence Act to prevent bank executives from serving on regional Fed boards that are responsible for regulating their institutions. The bill — which would also bar the U.S. central bank’s board members and employees from owning any stock or investing in any company that is regulated by the Federal Reserve — comes as Fed leadership is under fire for recent interest rate hikes and regulatory rollbacks that preceded the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank failures. ‘I think it would come as a shock to most Americans to find out that Gregory Becker, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank who successfully lobbied for the deregulation of his financial institution, was allowed to serve as a director of the same body in charge of regulating his [other] bank, the San Francisco Federal Reserve,’ Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. ” (03/23/23)
