They’re ALL WRONG on why Trump beat Kamala
They’re ALL WRONG on why Trump beat Kamala
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLFlB0v9AyM
Iran has developed fentanyl-based chemical weapons
“The US and its allies have warned for years that Iran is developing pharmaceutical-based weapons in breach of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the manufacture and use of “toxic chemicals,” defined as “chemical action on life processes [that] can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals.” Treaty signatories — including Iran — are obligated to destroy existing stockpiles.
Still, evidence suggests Iran is pursuing PBAs. “In 2014, Iran’s Chemistry Department of IHU [Imam Hossein University] sought kilogram quantities of medetomidine — a [veterinary] sedative it has researched as an aerosolized incapacitant — from Chinese exporters, according to a 2023 US State Department’s report. “The Chemistry Department has little history of veterinary or even medical research, and the quantities sought (over 10,000 effective doses) were inconsistent with the reported end use of research.”
In September 2023, Iranian anti-government hackers “posted confidential documents detailing an Iranian military university’s development of grenades meant to disseminate medetomidine,” the State Department said.
Of particular concern were references in Iranian literature to the 2002 Dubrovka incident, when Russian security forces pumped pharmaceutical-based gas — probably fentanyl or carfentanyl, another synthetic opioid vastly more potent — into a crowded Moscow theater to subdue Chechen rebels who had taken almost a thousand hostages. Commandos then stormed the building and killed the incapacitated rebels — but the gas also killed more than 130 hostages.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-developed-fentanyl-based-chemical-101201210.html
China delimits a contested South China Sea shoal in a dispute with Philippines
“China has published baselines for a contested shoal in the South China Sea it had seized from the Philippines, a move that’s likely to increase tensions over overlapping territorial claims.
The Foreign Ministry on Sunday posted online geographic coordinates for the baselines around Scarborough Shoal. A nation’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zone are typically defined as the distance from the baselines.
Both China and the Philippines claim Scarborough Shoal and other outcroppings in the South China Sea. China seized the shoal, which lies west of the main Philippine island of Luzon, in 2012 and has since restricted access to Filipino fishermen there. A 2016 ruling by an international arbitration court found that most Chinese claims in the South China Sea were invalid but Beijing refuses to abide by it.
Ships from China and the Philippines have collided several times as part of increased confrontations, and the Chinese coast guard has blasted Philippine vessels with water cannons.
China’s move came two days after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed two laws demarcating the government’s claims in the disputed waters.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-delimits-contested-south-china-105051495.html
States Will Choose Whether To Adopt or Abandon Ranked Choice Voting
“On a ranked choice ballot, instead of picking one candidate from a list, voters rank each candidate in order of preference. If one candidate wins an outright majority, then that person wins; if not, then the lowest-performing candidate is eliminated, and their ballots are re-tallied and allotted to whomever they picked as their second choice. This process repeats until one candidate passes 50 percent.”
https://reason.com/2024/09/26/states-will-choose-whether-to-adopt-or-abandon-ranked-choice-voting/
How Much Would an American-Made Toaster Actually Cost?
“Start with that $30 toaster made overseas. Now, slap a 10 percent tariff on it, so that consumers must pay $33 to buy it. That means the Treasury Department collects $3 in new revenue, but it also means that domestic toaster-makers can sell their wares for $32 and undercut the imported models.
If tariffs cause consumers to switch to those domestic-made toasters, Cass acknowledges that consumers are out two bucks. This is what economists call a “deadweight loss” and it’s one of the major reasons why tariffs harm the economy.
Cass, the head of American Compass and a prominent proponent of the conservative moment’s shift toward central planning, wants to focus on the benefits of those higher prices. “The share of the $32 purchase price that would once have gone to a Chinese factory and its workers now goes to an American firm and its workers instead,” he argues. “It pays American taxes and supports American families in American communities.”
All of that for just $2 more. Wow, what a great deal!
Unfortunately, Cass is wrong about the math and wrong about the underlying economics.
Tariffs can, of course, be used to make foreign-produced goods (like toasters) more expensive. That doesn’t mean that manufacturing firms will radically redesign their supply chains to produce more toasters in the United States. And if they did do that, those new toasters wouldn’t cost a mere $2 more than the ones available at Home Depot now. Cass is making several wild logical leaps here, and offers no evidence to substantiate this claim of a hypothetical $32 American-made toaster.
How much would that toaster actually cost? More than $250.
That’s the figure offered by Ed Gresser, the former assistant U.S. Trade representative who is currently the director of trade and global markets for the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Unlike Cass, Gresser understands how tariffs and trade work.
More importantly, he also shows his work. Because there are no kitchen appliance manufacturers making toasters in the United States right now, he examined the prices of toasters made in other wealthy, western countries like Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. At the lowest end, those toasters cost the equivalent of $250, and some would be significantly pricier.
“In sum, ‘developed’ high-income countries do make home toasters. But they are profitable at prices about ten times those you’d find in mainstream U.S. retail outlets.,” writes Gresser. “So to achieve Vance’s apparent goal, mainstream toaster prices would probably have to rise to Neiman Marcus levels, say $300 each.””
…
“there would be far more toaster-buying consumers than toaster-making workers—and the consumers would be far worse off. Indeed, the workers would be worse off too, since they become consumers as soon as they clock out for the day.
…
“Now, imagine what would happen if you told them that the price of jeans would have to increase tenfold, as would be the case with toasters. I suspect that Cass—and Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), who is making a version of this same argument on the campaign trail—is relying on faulty math and bad economics because he’s aware that the real numbers would be unpalatable to just about everyone.”
https://reason.com/2024/09/27/how-much-would-an-american-made-toaster-actually-cost/
How Biden’s Gaza pier project unraveled
“The resulting pier mission did not go well.
It involved 1,000 U.S. troops, delivered only a fraction of the promised aid at a cost of nearly $230 million, and was from the start beset by bad luck and miscalculations, including fire, bad weather and dangers on shore from the fighting between Israel and Hamas.”
…
“The U.S. military aimed to ramp up to as many as 150 trucks a day of aid coming off the pier.
But because the pier was only operational for a total of 20 days, the military says it moved a total of only 19.4 million pounds of aid into Gaza. That would be about 480 trucks of aid delivered in total from the pier, based on estimates by the World Food Programme from earlier this year of weight carried by a truck.
The United Nations says about 500 truckloads of aid are needed daily to address the needs of Palestinians in Gaza.
Just days after the first shipments of aid rolled off the pier in Gaza, crowds overwhelmed trucks and took some of it.
Israel’s killings of seven World Central Kitchen workers in April and its use of an area near the pier as it staged a hostage rescue recovery mission in June also dented the confidence of aid organizations, on whom the U.S. was relying to carry the supplies from the shore and distribute to residents.
A senior U.S. defense official acknowledged that aid delivery “proved to be perhaps more challenging than the planners anticipated.”
One former official said Kurilla had raised distribution as a concern early on.
“General Kurilla was also very clear about that: ‘I can do my piece of this, and I can do distribution if you task me to do it,'” the former official said.
“But that was explicitly scoped out of what the task was. And so we were reliant on these international organizations.”
Current and former U.S. officials told Reuters that the United Nations and aid organizations themselves were always cool to the pier.
At a closed-door meeting of U.S. officials and aid organizations in Cyprus in March, Sigrid Kaag, the U.N. humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, offered tacit support for Biden’s pier project.
But Kaag stressed the UN preference was for “land, land, land,” according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The United Nations declined to comment on the meeting. It referred to a briefing on Monday where a spokesperson for the organization said that the U.N. appreciated every way of getting aid into Gaza, including the pier, but more access through land routes is needed.
The underlying concern for aid organizations was that Biden, under pressure from fellow Democrats over Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza, was pushing a solution that would at best be a temporary fix and at worst would take pressure off Netanyahu’s government to open up land routes into Gaza.
Dave Harden, a former USAID mission director to the West Bank and Gaza, described the pier project as “humanitarian theater.”
“It did relieve the pressure, unfortunately, on having the (land border) crossings work more effectively.””
https://www.reuters.com/world/how-bidens-gaza-pier-project-unraveled-2024-07-25/
North American Energy Preeminence Forum
In a series of panels about promoting North American gas, oil, and uranium energy in ways that will boost the economy and make North America strong and independent vis-a-vis world challenges, people are worried about the effects of Trump’s proposed tariffs which will hurt both countries’ economies and make energy more costly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkoFy1itP9I
Understanding Israel’s Strike on Iran, and More: Shock and Awe in Lebanon, Part V
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGkpWjjIy8E
America’s Trial Courts Have a NIMBY Problem
“a judge struck down Arlington, Virginia’s missing middle reforms that had briefly allowed smaller, four- to six-unit multifamily developments in the D.C. suburb’s single-family neighborhoods.
In a Friday ruling, Judge David Schell said that the county had violated a number of procedural requirements when it unanimously passed its Enhanced Housing Option (EHO) last year and had failed to adequately study the impact of increased residential density.”
https://reason.com/2024/10/01/americas-trial-courts-have-a-nimby-problem/
Qatar agrees to kick Hamas out of Doha following US request, sources say
“Qatar agreed in recent weeks to kick Hamas out of its country following a request from the US to do so, capping off months of failed attempts to try to get the militant group – whose top leaders reside in the Qatari capital of Doha – to accept a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the Israel-Hamas war, US and Qatari sources told CNN.
With efforts to pause the war – which has been a top priority for President Joe Biden – firmly stalled, US officials informed their Qatari counterparts about two weeks ago that they must stop giving Hamas refuge in their capital; Qatar agreed and gave Hamas notice about a week ago, sources said.
“Hamas is a terrorist group that has killed Americans and continues to hold Americans hostage,” a senior administration official told CNN. “After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, its leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner.”
Throughout the course of the war and negotiations to bring the hostages home, US officials have asked Qatar to use the threat of expulsion as leverage in their talks with Hamas. The final impetus for Qatar agreeing to kick Hamas out came recently after the death of American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Hamas’ rejection of yet another ceasefire proposal.
Qatar has been a major player in efforts over the past year to try to secure a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, in no small part because senior members of the militant group are based in Doha. Major negotiations have taken place in the Qatari capital for that reason.
Exactly when Hamas operatives would be exiled out of Qatar – and where they would go – are unclear.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/qatar-agrees-kick-hamas-doha-232635018.html