Month: September 2024

Authored by Richard Truesdell via American Greatness,

On Friday, I did something I hadn’t done since before COVID-19, I went and saw a movie premiere on the day it opened in an actual movie theater. With my childhood friend Susan, whom I’ve known for more than five decades—a dyed-in-the-wool conservative just like me—we went and saw Reagan. And unlike most critics on Rotten Tomatoes who rated it at 18% and elsewhere, we loved it along with a virtually unprecedented 98% of Rotten Tomato viewers.

Right up front, I can say that Reagan is not without flaws. The cinematography in much of the movie is quite dark, especially in the flashback scenes at the start of the film. Also, at 2 hours and 15 minutes, the film is long. While a lot of footage was likely left on the cutting room floor, getting Reagan down to two hours would likely help. When Reagan comes to streaming, I’ll watch it again.

With that out of the way, I will say that Dennis Quaid’s performance as Ronald Reagan is simply outstanding. It’s easily his best work since The Big Easy, one of my all-time favorite movies, a movie I like to say is a guilty pleasure (with equally great chemistry with co-star Ellen Barkin). When Susan and I entered the 530 PM showing, people exiting from the earlier 3 PM showing had tears in their eyes, saying to us that Reagan would pull on our emotions, which it did. Again, and to not spoil it for you, if I were writing the screenplay, the ending is exactly how I would have written it. It generated applause from everyone in the theater.

I could not find fault with any of the performances. Jon Voight as the ex-KGB operative who followed Reagan for decades and narrates the story, and especially Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan, were perfect. We both thought there was great on-screen chemistry between Quaid and Miller.

Remember that during Reagan’s presidency, Nancy was often vilified. Even four decades ago, the mainstream media showed their bias as they have done with every Republican First Lady since then, save for Laura Bush. This while idolizing narcissists like Michelle Obama and especially, until a month ago, “Dr.” Jill Biden. As I like to say, “It is what it is.”

This is what I call a small, big movie. Small in that it’s not told epically. In some ways, the Ron-Nancy love story is intimate. But it’s a big movie in that it tells the story with an all-star (Quaid, Miller, Voight, and many others) cast. The production was interrupted by the COVID lockdowns, so it took about five years from when Quaid was first cast as Ronald Reagan (he also portrayed Bill Clinton earlier in his career) to its debut last Friday.

But as I mentioned earlier, Reagan has been savaged by the critics, and the reviews fall along ideological lines. Most egregious, of course, was at the New York Times. There, Glenn Kenny couldn’t help himself. Amazingly, the bias at the New York Times permeates everything it touches, going beyond its news coverage to its best-selling books list to even its movie reviews. Kenny closed his review by saying, “It all makes for a plodding film, more curious than compelling.”

Tell that to the viewers who loved it, you jackass. You simply can’t help yourself.

(I would like to contrast how the critics loved Oppenheimer. Of course, the New York Times fell all over itself in praising Oppenheimer, a far less satisfying film, saying “Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s staggering film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb.”

Staggering film? Again, when the story fits its agenda, it gets a gushing review.

As I said earlier, the New York Times simply can’t help itself.

As biopics, both films have their flaws, especially in length. All films do. But as entertainment as well as telling a historic story, Oppenheimer is much more flawed than Reagan.)

As I sorted through other reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, especially the less-than-positive ones, one word kept appearing: hagiographic. Even though I have a better-than-average command of the English language and volcabulary, I had never used or even seen that word. So I went online and looked it up. The definition is “excessively flattering.” It’s as if reviewers got their reviewers’ talking points directly from the DNC. The reviews of Reagan are just like any other political commentary, like anything connected in the mainstream media to “Orange Man Bad.” Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery on the third anniversary of Abbey Gate at the invitation of the next-of-kin of the fallen 13 is a perfect example.

This hagiography nonsense starts with Ty Burr at the Washington Post. “The faithful for whom ‘Reagan’ was made aren’t likely to see that it’s a hagiography as rosy and shallow as anything in a Kremlin May Day parade. As pop-culture propaganda—popaganda, if you will—the movie’s strictly for true believers. As history, it’s worthless.”

It’s as if Burr is channeling his inner Hillary Clinton, viewing anyone who enjoyed Reagan as deplorable.

It continues with Joshua Peinado at In Review Online, who said, “It’s one thing to go the route of hagiography and never mention the notable failures of Reagan and his presidency…but Reagan makes the stranger choice to give voice to the issues of his conservatism and then, promptly, forget all about them.”

Christopher Lloyd writing for The Film Yap, giving the film two out of five stars says, “The Gipper gets a goober of a biopic—schmaltzy, hagiographic, and ham-handed—though Dennis Quaid nails the portrait of his self-effacing charm hiding a steely resolve.”

I could go on and on, but what’s the point?

But the bottom line is that a couple that will spend $40 and up (the cost of the tickets plus a bucket of popcorn and two overpriced sodas) for a date night out will love Reagan.

Overall, I’m torn between giving it four or five stars out of five, so I’ll give it a 4.5. It’s an emotional film in many ways. For those of us who came of age during the Cold War and watched the Soviet Union disintegrate in the early 1990s, you will find Reagan an enjoyable way to spend 2 hours and 15 minutes. It’s a satisfying, emotional film. To me, it’s a far superior film (as entertainment) to the Oscar-honored but plodding Oppenheimer. Being a history person, I really wanted to like Oppenheimer but felt the earlier Fat Man and Little Boy with Paul Newman told the development of the atom bomb story far better.

To get the flavor of Reagan, here’s a link to the trailer.

So if you are looking for something to fill your time on the last day of the long Labor Day weekend, I can recommend Reagan without reservation.

A Pennsylvania court has ruled that election officials cannot reject mail-in ballots with incorrect dates or no dates as long as they were submitted before the filing deadline.

A panel of the Commonwealth State Appeals Court ruled on Aug. 30 that the state’s legal requirement for mail-in ballot envelopes to have dates written violates the state constitution.

“Simply put, the refusal to count undated or incorrectly dated but timely received mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors violates the fundamental right to vote recognized in and guaranteed by the free and equal elections clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution,” wrote Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler for the 4-1 majority.

The ruling applies to both Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, and strikes down a 2019 law – Act 77 – which included a provision requiring voters to date the envelope in which the mail-in ballots are enclosed.

As the Epoch Times notes further, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged that and other provisions, arguing that they are unconstitutional as they sued Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, the Philadelphia County Board of Elections, and the Allegheny County Board of Elections.

The Pennsylvania Republican Party and the Republican National Committee intervened in the case and said the provisions do not violate the state Constitution.

The majority declined to rule against other provisions but said the date requirement is unconstitutional.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a social media statement that the court “got it right: an eligible voter’s minor error of forgetting to date or misdating a ballot envelope cannot be cause for disenfranchisement.”

The appeals court said in the ruling that officials still have the authority to make sure mail-in ballots comply with other requirements, including deadlines for submission.

Pennsylvania’s Department of State said that “multiple court cases have now confirmed that the dating of a mail-in ballot envelope, when election officials can already confirm it was sent and received within the legal voting window, provides no purpose to election administration.”

The office has not said how the decision might alter its guidance to counties that run elections. In July, the Department of State told counties that return envelopes should be printed to include the full year, “2024,” leaving voters to add the accurate month and day.

Mike Lee, executive director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, said the ruling “preserves the votes of thousands of voters who make this mistake in every election, without undemocratic, punitive enforcement by the counties.”

According to data presented to the court, more than 10,000 mail-in ballots were not counted in the 2022 midterm election and 4,000 were rejected in the primary elections earlier this year because the ballots did not comply with the ballot date requirement.

Tom King, who represents the state and national Republican Party groups in the case, said he was disappointed in the decision and “absolutely will appeal.”

Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough said in a dissent that the date requirement was “perhaps the least burdensome of all ballot-casting requirements” and that the groups that challenged the provision had not met the burden of showing that the requirement was so difficult as to deny voters their right to vote.

“It seems to me that the majority was swayed by the raw numbers and avoided applying the true test for evaluating a Free and Equal Elections Clause claim,” she wrote.

“Today the majority says that requiring the date on the voter declaration on a mail-in or absentee ballot envelope is subject to strict judicial scrutiny and cannot be enforced because doing so unconstitutionally denies the voting franchise altogether. I must wonder whether walking into a polling place, signing your name, licking an envelope, or going to the mailbox can now withstand the majority’s newly minted standard.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized a new COVID-19 vaccine from Novavax, giving Americans an alternative to shots from Moderna and Pfizer.

Novavax’s protein-based vaccine will be available soon after regulators granted emergency authorization to the Maryland-based company for the product.

FDA officials said that animal testing data supported the decision.

“Today’s authorization provides an additional COVID-19 vaccine option that meets the FDA’s standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization,” Dr. Peter Marks, who directs the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an Aug. 30 statement.

The FDA cleared vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer that are built on messenger ribonucleic acid technology (mRNA) earlier in the month.

Critics say that the agency should not be making an assertion about safety and effectiveness in the absence of clinical trial data.

“The assertion rings hollow when FDA has not required manufacturers of the mRNA biological [products] to provide scientific evidence to the public that safety and effectiveness has been demonstrated,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times previously via email.

Novavax President and CEO John C. Jacobs said in a statement that the company’s vaccine showed “robust cross-reactivity against JN.1 lineage viruses” in animals.

JN.1 was displaced in the spring by KP.3 and other variants, according to sequencing performed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC estimates that KP.3 and the closely related KP.3.1.1 caused about four in 10 cases in the two weeks ending Aug. 3. The agency estimated that KP.3.1.1 became the dominant strain by the end of August.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines target KP.3.

FDA officials initially advised manufacturers to target JN.1 but later recommended they target KP.3.

Because Novavax’s vaccine is built on different technology, it takes longer to manufacture than the mRNA shots. Company officials told FDA advisers over the summer that they were planning to continue manufacturing a JN.1-based vaccine and believed it would perform well against KP.3 and other strains from the JN.1 lineage.

The authorization is for people aged 12 and older. People who have never received a vaccine can get two doses of Novavax’s vaccine about three weeks apart. People who have received a vaccine before can get a single dose.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are available for individuals who are at least 6 months old.

The CDC is recommending vaccination for all people aged 6 months and older.

The United States ended the COVID-19 public health emergency in 2023 but extended the emergency declaration under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act until the end of 2024. The FDA issued the emergency authorization under that authority.

COVID-19 levels have plummeted since early 2022, although data from wastewater and other sources have indicated a recent uptick.

Twenty-eight states are reporting high levels of COVID-19 and two states are reporting very high levels, based on wastewater, according to the CDC. Hospitalizations and deaths attributed to COVID-19 have also been climbing, although the numbers are far lower than the highs recorded in 2021 and 2022.

By Liz Heflin of Rmxnews.com

From April to June, the European Union bought more than 12.7 billion cubic meters from Russia and 12.3 billion cubic meters from the United States.

Director of the Russian Department of Economic Cooperation of the Foreign Ministry, Dmitri Birichevski, says Russia now supplies 15 percent of the total volume of natural gas imported by the European Union. This despite the EU’s REPowerEU instituted back in May 2022 to shift away from Russia and cut it off from its flow of energy profits.

Birichevski noted, in particular, the fact that France imported 4.4 billion cubic meters of liquid natural gas (LNG) in the first quarter of 2024, more than double the circa 2 billion it imported in 2023.

Norway is still in first place, having supplied the EU with 23.9 billion cubic meters in Q2. Prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia held the top spot.

The German government maintains it no longer imports any gas from Moscow. However, many member states clearly do.

In the face of renewed demands to end Russian imports and defund Putin’s war chest, the energy policy spokesman for the Free Democratic Party (FDP) suggested that the EU “pay a fixed amount of aid and arms supplies to Ukraine for every cubic meter of imported Russian gas.“

After Hungarian FM Szijjártó’s meeting with Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller, Hungary doubles down on Russian gas, saying it is not a matter of ideology but physics.

The government has repeatedly put families and households first when it comes to securing energy supply, and with the… pic.twitter.com/iBL0Rl6J3p

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 30, 2024

The matter of Russian gas imports has been an ongoing saga, with reports of shipments from Russia being essentially laundered through other countries and pipelines to avoid being stamped as “Russian.”

This new data comes in the face of no less than 14 sanctions packages, including the latest one adopted in June, which specifically prohibits the transit of Russian LNG.

As we’ve been highlighting since 2016, polls are not to be trusted thanks to various ‘tricks of the trade’ – most commonly, oversampling.

Last month we noted how the founder of the main outside spending group backing Kamala Harris for president says their own internal opinion polling is “much less rosy” than public polls.

“Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public,” said Future Forward super PAC president Chauncey McLean said during a Monday event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

Now, the Washington Times reports that some pollsters are even sounding the alarm over Vice President Kamala Harris’ so-called ‘surge’ in the polls – which Harris pulled ahead in after replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee on July 21.

Since the switch, Harris is leading Trump nationally by nearly 2 percentage points and is either leading or tied with him in all seven battleground states. However, Republican analysts argue that these polling numbers may not accurately reflect voter sentiment due to biased polling methodology.

If you want to see examples of polling bias, click into this thread on X…

In the meta data from the call centers college educated Dems are 3-4x more likely to answer than non-college. While weighting can help minimize the bias if done correctly it won’t totally eliminate the problem.

— Mark Davin Harris (@markdharris) August 16, 2024

Critics point out that many polls have been sampling a disproportionately smaller share of Republican voters compared to exit poll data from the 2020 presidential election. The result, they say, is a misleading “phantom advantage” for Ms. Harris. According to them, this skewed sampling could be a strategic move to boost enthusiasm and fundraising for Ms. Harris’ campaign.

Trump campaign strategist Jim McLaughlin echoed this sentiment, stating, “They undersample Republicans” intentionally “to tamp down support and donations for Trump.” He added that the polls are part of a larger effort to create a narrative that favors Harris.

Trump has openly criticized the poll results. “It’s fake news,” Trump declared during a rally in Michigan. “They can make those polls sing.”

“They are on to us, we can’t keep oversampling Democrats anymore to rig the polls”

“Here’s an idea: let’s just massively oversample women to push Kamala, they’ll never figure that one out”

“Brilliant, comrade!” pic.twitter.com/SqH58tHOQU

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 29, 2024

Harris’ recent poll numbers have indeed helped fuel excitement among her supporters, as evidenced by her campaign’s announcement of a $540 million fundraising haul in July, more than four times what Mr. Trump raised in the same period. Still, the growing skepticism over the legitimacy of the polls has prompted some to question whether the surge in support is as real as it appears.

Recent polls that show a Harris lead, such as the Suffolk University/USA Today poll, included more respondents identifying as Democrats (37.1%) than Republicans (33.8%). The poll found Ms. Harris leading Trump by 5 percentage points, a significant turnaround from earlier in the year when Trump was ahead by 4 points vs. Biden. Similarly, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released on August 27 found Ms. Harris ahead of Mr. Trump by 1 percentage point, with Democrats making up 33% of respondents compared to only 29% for Republicans.

The discrepancy in party sampling is causing concern among poll watchers. Data from the 2020 exit polls showed a nearly equal split, with 36% identifying as Republican and 37% as Democrat. Yet, recent polls seem to favor Democrats disproportionately, leading to claims of deliberate skewing.

Mr. Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, has argued that these polls are designed to suppress support for Mr. Trump. In a memo, he stated, “Once again, we see a series of public surveys released with the clear intent and purpose of depressing support for President Trump.”

Pollsters like Don Levy of the New York Times/Siena Poll counter that these claims lack substance. They argue that any gaps between recalled 2020 vote and actual 2020 results are not evidence of intentional bias but may reflect the complexity of polling dynamics, including response bias where Democrats are more likely to participate in polls.

Despite these excuses, the controversy surrounding these polls has left many wondering about the true state of the race. Polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight shows Ms. Harris’ approval rating ticking up to 42.3%, up from 37.1% in early July. Yet, doubts persist over how she has managed to rise in the polls without significantly improving her historically low job approval ratings.

In what may be described as an attempt to sabotage her own election odds, moments after the close Bloomberg reported that Kamala Harris’ Justice Department – because let’s be honest, Joe Biden is officially a vegetable – sent subpoenas to Nvidia and other companies as it seeks evidence that the chipmaker violated antitrust laws, an escalation of its investigation into the dominant provider of AI processors, in the process sending the stock prices sliding even more.

The DOJ, which had previously delivered questionnaires to companies, is now sending legally binding requests that oblige recipients to provide information, Bloomberg reported citing sources. That takes the government a step closer to launching a formal complaint against a company, which may well have its flaws but monopolizing the industry, when its competitors such as Intel are simply criminally incompetent, is not one of them.

According to antitrust officials, Nvidia is making it harder to switch to other suppliers and penalizes buyers that don’t exclusively use its artificial intelligence chips. Which is idiocy: if anything, it is the capabilities of Nvidia chips that are forcing every tom, dick and harry to order one even if the chatGPT idiocy is nowhere near the paradigm shifting discovery idiots on TV make it seem to be. Meanwhile, all Nvidia is doing is sitting back and capitalizing by selling the “picks and shovels” to those same idiots who in about a year will realize that they spent millions on chips to power chatbots that generate zero returns.

Nvidia shares, which already suffered a record-setting rout on Tuesday when they lost a historic $280 billion in market cap, fell further in late trading after Bloomberg reported on the subpoenas, bringing its total drop today to $340 billion!

Some speculated if the idiots that are runnings Kamala’s campaign are now intentionally looking to sabotage her election odds by crashing the market-leading generals ahead of the November elections.

Kamala’s admin crashing the market by destroying the most important stock in the world 2 months before the election is a bold strategy. https://t.co/KbYeegquMr

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 3, 2024

As part of the probe, investigators have been contacting other technology companies to gather information. The DOJ’s San Francisco office – where one Kamala Harris was Attorney General not that long ago – is taking the lead running the inquiry.

As Bloomberg reports, in the DOJ probe, regulators have been investigating Nvidia’s acquisition of RunAI, a deal announced in April. That company makes software for managing AI computing, and there are concerns that the tie-up will make it more difficult for customers to switch away from Nvidia chips. Regulators also are inquiring whether Nvidia gives preferential supply and pricing to customers who use its technology exclusively or buy its complete systems.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said he prioritizes customers who can make use of his products in ready-to-go data centers as soon as he provides them, a policy designed to prevent stockpiling and speed up the broader adoption of AI.

While the stated reason for the DOJ probe is laughable, what is far more likely is that in typical Democrat fashion, the administration is making it clear it will get its pound of flesh in bribes, kickbacks and penalties, from what is at the moment, the world’s most important company.  Analysts project that Nvidia will generate over $120 billion of revenue in calendar 2024, up from $16 billion in 2020, with most of that money coming from its data center unit. In fact, Nvidia is set to bring in more profit this year than the total sales of its nearest rival, Advanced Micro Devices. As for one-time chip giant icon Intel, well… rest in peace.

By Raleigh Adams of The College Fix

Yale’s Divinity School coerced students to read from a “spell” written by a “witch” as part of its Before the Fall Orientation.

The three-day orientation between Aug. 21 to 23 saw a series of talks and activities preparing incoming students for the year ahead, interspersed with small group discussions.

One of these small group periods was the first activity of orientation. Participating as an incoming student in one of these circles, I saw how the discussion opened with a set of “Restorative Circle Rules.” These rules boiled down to a warning to be open minded: all viewpoints were expected to be heard, that you only have to take what you want from the circle and participate as wanted – at least nominally.

 

After this show of inclusion, we as students were led to read aloud, line by line and one by one, from Adrienne Brown’s “Radical Gratitude Spell.”

Brown (pictured) has been described by Meeting of Minds as a “mixed-race Black queer American writer, community organizer, facilitator, witch and- may I say- goddess.”

Brown herself ascribes to witchcraft, and it informs her public work. Her website describes her as someone who “grows healing ideas in public” through “her writing, which includes short- and long-form fiction, nonfiction, spells, tarot” and “her music, which includes songwriting, singing and immersive musical rituals.”

This context of Brown, her work, and her particular spiritual inclinations was not given to students before participating in the reading. As such, the group reading of the spell took on an undeniable coven-like feeling, with students unable to fully consent to the pseudo-ritual knowingly, despite the Circle Rules.

A second-year student, who requested to remain anonymous, expressed to me a deep concern over this act by the orientation staff. The student called the provided spell “bizarre,” and “gross,” especially for students to not be told of the author or intentions behind the spell before being led to participate.

Other recent Yale College graduates and members of the campus Catholic community commented to me in conversation, in a simultaneously tongue in cheek, yet serious manner, that “the very campus of the Divinity School needed prayer.”

They were unsurprised at the inclusion of the spell into orientation. Apparently, it is a popularly known fact amongst more conservative and religious circles in the Yale community that there is little still “divine” about the Divinity School.

As a student who experienced the “Radical Gratitude Spell” first hand, it was a deeply concerning experience for the state of higher education.

Under the name of inclusion, acts of pagan spirituality are being blindly normalized in educational spaces, Yale Divinity School being a prime example of such.

Conversely, the preference for diversity comes at the expense of the sanctity of other students’ faith. While it was proclaimed that “you only have to take what you want from this circle,” personally I did not feel safe to opt out of the spell, being all too aware of the power imbalance and the risk of social stigma against me in this completely new environment. I cannot imagine myself being the only one to feel this way.

Diversity and nominal comfort come at a cost. Its inclusion in orientation raises deep concerns over the boundary that exists between said diversity and the religious rights of individual students.

This worry is especially poignant in the nearly blind way which the spell was integrated into our first moments as students at Yale.

For years people have suspected that their smartphones, laptops, and home assistants were secretly eavesdropping on their private conversations. Now, a leaked pitch deck seems to confirm that our devices are, in fact, listening—and the implications are far-reaching.

A leaked pitch deck presentation from Cox Media Group (CMG) – major player in the digital advertising space, appears to detail how its “Active-Listening” software uses artificial intelligence to capture and analyze “real-time intent data” from users’ conversations. The presentation, obtained by 404 Media, lays out how CMG’s software could listen to everything spoken near a microphone-equipped device—whether it’s a phone, laptop, or home assistant like Amazon’s Alexa, the Daily Mail reports.

Active-Listening: A Six-Step Process to Harvest Voice Data

The pitch deck outlines a six-step process for CMG’s Active-Listening software, which turns seemingly benign conversations into targeted advertising gold. The first slide describes how the software listens to your conversations and extracts real-time intent data, which advertisers can then pair with behavioral data to target “in-market consumers.” In simple terms, it means that if you mention a product or service in a conversation, advertisers can target you with ads for that very item.

For instance, if you’re talking about Toyota cars with a friend, you might soon find yourself inundated with ads for Toyota’s latest models. This alleged use of private conversations for ad targeting represents a significant breach of what most people consider to be their personal privacy.

The slideshow goes further, showcasing tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon as clients of CMG, suggesting they may use this controversial technology. These companies have long denied listening to user conversations through device microphones, but this leaked document raises new questions.

Tech Giants in Hot Water: Denials, Uncertainties, and Potential Backpedaling

Following the leak, Google swiftly removed Cox Media Group from its “Partners Program” website, a move that suggests a distancing from the controversial practice. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, responded by stating it is reviewing CMG for any potential violations of its terms of service. Meanwhile, Amazon declared that its advertising division “has never worked with CMG on this program and has no plans to do so.” However, their spokesperson left the door slightly ajar, stating that if a marketing partner violates their rules, action will be taken.

The mixed responses leave the status of these relationships somewhat murky. Are these denials simply a strategy to buy time while the companies reassess their partnerships with CMG, or are they genuinely unaware of these practices?

Is Active Listening Legal?

Although the notion of listening to conversations may seem like an egregious violation of privacy, CMG claims it is entirely legal. In a now-deleted blog post from November 2023, CMG wrote, “We know what you’re thinking. Is this even legal? The short answer is: yes. It is legal for phones and devices to listen to you.”

The legality, CMG argues, comes from the lengthy and often-overlooked “terms of use” agreements that consumers must accept when downloading new apps or updates. Buried in the fine print of these agreements, the software’s Active Listening feature is sometimes included, making the practice legally permissible—if ethically questionable.

This might explain how CMG operates in states like California, where wiretapping laws typically prohibit recording someone without their knowledge. If users unknowingly consented to these practices when they accepted an app’s terms of service, then companies like CMG can claim they are within their rights.

A Long-Running Speculation, Now Potentially Validated

For years, users have speculated that their phones or tablets were eavesdropping on their private conversations, only to serve up eerily targeted ads shortly after. Tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have consistently denied these claims. Meta’s online privacy center even states, “We understand that sometimes ads can be so specific, it seems like we must be listening to your conversations through your microphone, but we’re not.”

However, the leaked pitch deck paints a different picture. It appears to confirm what millions have long suspected: tech giants and their marketing partners could be cashing in on what users say in the privacy of their homes.

New Revelations Spark Further Concerns

This revelation follows a series of similar findings that have ignited debates over privacy in the digital age. Just a day after the CMG leak, 404 Media exposed another AI marketing company, MindSift, which boasted on a podcast about using smart device speakers to target ads.

As more details emerge, the extent of privacy violations continues to grow. The question now is, what steps will regulators, companies, and consumers take in response to these revelations? Will there be a move toward more stringent privacy protections, or will these practices become more ingrained in the digital advertising landscape?

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

The Biden-Harris Department of Justice has threatened to sue two small towns in Wisconsin over their refusal to use electronic voting machines to cast and tabulate votes, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.

In July, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke threatened to file a lawsuit against the State of Wisconsin, the state Elections Commission and Administrator Meagan Wolfe, and the towns of Thornapple and Lawrence, as well as the towns’ clerks and boards of supervisors, because the towns allegedly did not offer voting equipment at their polling places in the April presidential primary election.

Clarke warned the potential plaintiffs in a letter that by not offering voting equipment for people with disabilities, they were in violation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

Among the federal requirements is that each voting system must be “accessible for individuals with disabilities, including nonvisual accessibility for the blind and visually impaired, in a manner that provides the same opportunity for access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other voters,” the letter states.

Voting systems used for federal elections therefore have to have “at least one direct recording electronic voting system or other voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities at each polling place,” the letter said.

The letter went on to state that federal investigators had determined that the towns had failed to make “at least one direct recording electronic voting system or other voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities available at each polling place, including during the April 2, 2024, federal primary election.”

Clark said to avoid litigation, town officials needed to negotiate a “consent decree” with the federal government.

“We hope to resolve this matter amicably and to avoid protracted litigation. Accordingly, we are prepared to delay filing the complaint briefly to permit us time to negotiate a consent decree to be filed with the complaint,” she wrote.

Despite this warning, Thornapple, population 8,297, allegedly conducted the August primary election using only hand-counted, paper ballots. The Thornapple township board reportedly voted to eliminate electronic voting machines last Spring. In Wisconsin, most voters use paper ballots that are tabulated by electronic counting machines.

Suzanne Pinnow, Thornapple’s Treasurer, has disputed that voters with disabilities were unable to use an accessible voting machine during the April election. “No one’s been turned away,” she told the Journal- Sentinel in May.

Pinnow also told Votebeat that nobody in the town had been unable to vote because of the decision not to have accessible voting machines.

“I wish I could talk. I wish I could,” Pinnow said. “I wish I could because I think more people need to hear and understand and know why. But at this time, I can’t … because if it for some reason would go to litigation, I don’t want anything out there that I’m spewing this or that or saying something that I didn’t say.”

The Wisconsin Elections Commission issued a guidance in June mandating that accessible voting equipment must be provided for all elections administered by a municipality, in addition to federal elections.

A Complaint filed this week with the commission alleged that Thornapple is breaking the law by refusing to make voting machines available to voters with disabilities during the April and August primaries.

“By ceasing to use electronic voting equipment and, instead, exclusively using paper ballots completed and tabulated by hand, Respondents are no longer using voting systems that are accessible for individuals with disabilities in a manner that provides the same opportunity for access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other voters,” the complainant, Disability Rights Wisconsin (DRW) argued.

The left-wing disability rights group asked the Wisconsin Elections Commission to order Thornapple to make accessible voting machines available.

DRW Director of Legal and Advocacy Services Kit Kerschensteiner told Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) that “the goal is to ensure all town residents are able to cast private ballots in the November presidential election.”

“This is not the situation of a machine that just isn’t functioning that day at the polling place,” Kerschensteiner said. “This is a place that has chosen specifically, knowing that they were disenfranchising individuals with disabilities, and choosing to go ahead and do that, which we find to be unacceptable.”

Thornapple Town Board Supervisor Tom Zelm told the Journal-Sentinel in May that the decision to pull voting machines was made in June 2023.

Town voter and Rusk County Democratic Party chair Erin Webster told the paper she believed the decision was tied to former President and current GOP nominee Donald Trump’s claims about the rigged 2020 presidential election.

Webster posted on YouTube a recording of her phone call with town Supervisor Jack Zupan, in which he said the board believes that “there was a stolen election and the computers have to go because they are full of error.”

“There are court cases right now that show that anybody can hack into and manipulate that machine within a matter of just a couple of minutes,” Zupan added.

“Oh, so you’re also a conspiracy believer!” Webster retorted.

But it’s true that there are court cases have been examining these claims. In the Colorado Vs. Tina Peters case, for instance, “nationally recognized computer cybersecurity experts” who examined forensic images from the hard drives of Dominion voting systems computers independently concluded:

Dominion voting systems (1) are not auditable, as required by federal and state law (2) they can connect to the internet during elections, which violates federal and state law; and (3) they are capable of manipulating ballots and vote tabulations, which violates federal and state law; (4) the software overwrites Windows Operating System log files that are recorded during elections, which are required by federal and state law to be preserved. All these deficiencies make Dominion voting systems illegal to use in Colorado elections.

In fact, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a report in 2020 on the security and vulnerabilities of “Election Infrastructure” throughout the country ahead of the  election that year. Election infrastructure includes voter registration databases and IT systems, voting machines and systems, and software used for casting votes.

According to CISA:

• 76% of EI entities for which CISA performed a Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA) had spearphishing weaknesses, which provide an entry point for adversaries to launch
attacks;
• 48% of entities had a critical or high severity vulnerability on at least one internetaccessible host,4 providing potential attack vectors to adversaries;
• 39% of entities ran at least one risky service on an internet-accessible host, providing the opportunity for threat actors to attack otherwise legitimate services; and
• 34% of entities ran unsupported operating systems (OSs) on at least one internet accessible host, which exposes entities to compromise.

CISA said election entities could “significantly reduce their cybersecurity risk by performing additional investigation and analysis of the findings described in this report. CISA encourages entities to implement
standard cyber hygiene practices and applicable mitigations identified in this report to reduce their exposure.”

Yesterday, when we observed that the Labor Day holiday had spared US markets from a selloff that spread across the rest of the world on the first trading day of September, we said that we had a bad feeling about today.

And boy were we right: traditionally the worst month for stocks, bonds, gold and bitcoin, September started off with a bang – not a whimper – which saw the S&P plunge 2.4%, its biggest drop since the August 5 meltdown and the worst start to a month since May 2024 when the S&P plunged 2.8%.

Or in the immortal words of Ron Burgundy…

And while the move in the VIX was not nearly as stunning as the Aug 5 Volmageddon 2.0 event, the 7 vol spike from 15 to a session high of 21.99 – also the highest since August 5 – has left quite a few volatility sellers suffering another round of huge margin calls less than a month since the last one.

It wasn’t just the S&P: the Dow (which has become a meaningless index) also tumbled back under 41,000, but the biggest loser by far was the increasingly fragile Nasdaq, which crashed more than 3%, its biggest drop also since the August 5 collapse, and the 3rd biggest one-day drop in the past year…

… thanks to a sudden liquidation of the momentum leaders of 2024, the Mag7 which was most apparent in today’s performance of semiconductor stocks, which suffered their biggest drop since March 2020.

And while it is unclear what exactly sparked today’s rout (see “What’s Behind Today’s Tech Carnage: Goldman’s Trading Desk Explains“) that won’t cheer NVDA longs who are watching their favorite stock plunge a massive 10% and a whopping 18% in just the past week…

… wiping out more than $280 billion in value, which makes it the biggest one-day market cap loss in history, surpassing Meta’s previous record of $251BN in market cap lost after its February 2022 earnings report.

And while the tech sector was crushed, there was no rotation out of it today, with small caps plunging 3%, their biggest drop also since August 5…

… and while it’s not a small cap just yet, the 8% plunge in Boeing – on merely a downgrade (from Wells Fargo of all banks) – shows just how truly jittery the market has become.

While normally on days like today – when favorite names are getting blown out – the most shorted names rise, not even that worked today, and in a repeat of the Aug 5 plunge, the Goldman most shorted basket tumbled 4% erasing almost half the gains from the past month.

Notably, today’s carnage wasn’t confined to stocks: commodities were also hammered, with Brent tumbling almost 5%, back under $74, and wiping out all 2024 gains, as WTI flirted with $70/barrel…

… on fears China’s economy will pass recession and proceed straight to depression just as Libya restarts its own oil supply firehose, while seemingly nobody cares at all about potential geopolitical risk factors around the world.

Even gold, that stalwart outperformer in 2024 and the best performing asset of the year, wasn’t immune from today’s selloff, and after trading above $2500 for much of of the past 2 weeks, the yellow metal dipped back under.

Amid this carnage, which was at least in part sparked by the a stagflationary ISM print, which saw employment and new orders tumble…

… while prices paid jumped, and hinted at a rebound in the CPI…

… coupled with absolutely devastating commentary from the US PMI report, which hinted not so much at a recession as a manufacturing depression…

“A further downward lurch in the PMI points to the manufacturing sector acting as an increased drag on the economy midway through the third quarter. Forward looking indicators suggest this drag could intensify in the coming months.

“Slower than expected sales are causing warehouses to fill with unsold stock, and a dearth of new orders has prompted factories to cut production for the first time since January. Producers are also reducing payroll numbers for the first time this year and buying fewer inputs amid concerns about excess capacity.

“The combination of falling orders and rising inventory sends the gloomiest forward-indication of production trends seen for one and a half years, and one of the most worrying signals witnessed since the global financial crisis.

“Although falling demand for raw materials has taken pressure off supply chains, rising wages and high shipping rates continue to be widely reported as factors pushing up input costs, which are now rising at the fastest pace since April of last year.”

… the one thing that actually did work was treasuries, with 10Y yields sliding almost 10bps and back to where they were just after the Aug 5 crash.

Yet while stocks – and bonds – have fully priced in more than 200bps of Fed rate cuts over the next 12 months, a pace of easing that is unheard of outside recessions, the risk or rather reality, is that on Friday the Kamala BLS will report a much stronger jobs number than most expect… and why not: the BLS already kitchen-sinked just how ugly the jobs market was with its 818K downward revision, so it can once again start making up numbers.

Putting it all together: today was brutal for most, but with the Nasdaq wiping out 3.1% or about 75% of its average September loss from the past decade in one trading day, it is likely that much of the pain is already in the history books. And we are confident that the BTFD crew will be up early tomorrow ready to start buying it all right back up…