Badlands News Brief

Debt Debacle, Russia Rages & Woke Whines

The News Cycle is almost impossible to track these days. At least, to do so fully.

That’s where we come in.

In the Badlands News Brief, the Badlands Media team hand picks news items of interest from the previous days to give you an overview of the biggest goings-on relevant to the Truth Community.

Some items feature original commentary from members of our growing team of citizen journalists. Feel free to follow the corresponding link to see their other work.

Now, onto the news from Tuesday, May 30 …

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The Great Student Loan Nonpayment Boondoggle Is Over And Household Spending Is About To Collapse

According to Goldman, the agreement announced on Saturday between uniparty leaders Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy titled hilariously the “Fiscal Responsibility Act”, prohibits the Biden Administration from extending the pause on student loan repayments in place since March 2020, even if it does not block the Administration's student loan forgiveness plan, which would wipe out up to $20,000 in federal loans per borrower and is currently being weighed by the Supreme Court (the plan was announced last year but has not yet implemented).

Here are the details: late last year, Biden extended the repayment pause, which postpones roughly $5bn per month in student loan repayments, until 60 days after the Supreme Court ruled on the separate $400bn loan forgiveness plan the - the Supreme Court is likely to rule on loan forgiveness in June, so this likely would mean a restart of payments after August 2023.

And now, the debt limit agreement prohibits further extension of the payment pause, but remains silent on the student loan forgiveness plan which however will be nixed by SCOTUS much to the chagrin of screaming libs and lifelong members of the "free $hit" army. Prior to the announced debt limit deal Goldman had already assumed the repayment pause would end on schedule, though there was clearly a chance the White House might have extended it once again. The debt limit agreement eliminates that possibility (“except as expressly authorized by an act of Congress") and should result in a restart of student loan payments in September 2023.

What happens then?

Well, according to Jefferies, the return of monthly loan payments presents risks similar to the effects of the 2013 fiscal cliff, when tax increases led to reduced consumer spending. And in a note released Monday (available to pro subscribers), JPMorgan’s chief US economist Michael Feroli said that the end of the payment moratorium will reduce annual disposable personal income by $38 billion, which will reduce consumer spending. — ZeroHedge

Our Take: “There’s a LOT to pull out of the Debt Ceiling fiasco in terms of the Actual, and there are a LOT of opinions on everyone’s roles in getting the thing passed, from the Uniparty Establishment to the Freedom Caucus ostensibly standing in its way.

That said, I tend to be more interested in the Narratives that overlay the Actual, if for no other reason than the fact that they tend to be more immediate, and can be projected out with more surety.

And I think this entire ‘crisis’ has all the markings of a trap for said Uniparty Establishment.

As the sleuths at ZeroHedge wisely surmise, not only is this package set to strip the cultural Marxists from one of their big ‘wins’ of the Biden Era—the allure of student loan forgiveness in the form of continued, seemingly perpetual delays in repayment—but it’s also going to help shift the ‘real’ US economy into a spending collapse the likes of which we haven’t seen in ages.

You may be wondering how I could possibly see that as good news.

Well, it’s quite simple, really: I believe the Biden Admin and the Uniparty currently being paraded around in front of the American people have been put on center stage for a reason—we’re in the midst of the biggest disclosure Op ever attempted on the American people, and more wake up and join our ranks in the Truth Community every day as a result of the blatant disregard for fiscal responsibility being exercised in the halls of what SHOULD be OUR government.

Sometimes Bad News is Good News in the Mind War.” — Burning Bright

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Lindsey Graham: Russia issues arrest warrant for top Republican

Russia has issued an arrest warrant for US Senator Lindsey Graham, after an edited video appeared to show him celebrating Russian troops' deaths.

The footage, which spliced together two separate moments, was posted by President Volodymyr Zelensky's office after the pair met in Kyiv on Friday.

In it Senator Graham called aid to Kyiv as "the best money we've ever spent", noting Russian troops were "dying".

The senior Republican said he would wear the warrant as a "Badge of Honor".

"To know that my commitment to Ukraine has drawn the ire of Putin's regime brings me immense joy," Senator Graham wrote in a Twitter post on Monday. "I will continue to stand with and for Ukraine's freedom until every Russian soldier is expelled from Ukrainian territory."

"Finally, here's an offer to my Russian 'friends' who want to arrest and try me for calling out the Putin regime as being war criminals: I will submit to jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court if you do," he added.

After Moscow criticised Senator Graham's comments last week - with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling reporters "it's hard to imagine a greater shame for the country than having such senators" - Ukraine uploaded the full, unedited clip to social media on Sunday.

The footage showed that Senator Graham made the comments during two separate parts of the meeting, subsequently edited by President Zelensky's office to appear immediately after each other. — BBC News

Our Take: “War, it's an ugly game. People die. That's the point. Do we need to candy coat it?

No. But taking a dehumanizing approach, like Graham did, isn't a good idea either.

I would argue, war is necessary when refusal to negotiate takes place, but reveling in the death of others—other children of God—seems a step too far.

Grace is important. Grace is what Graham lacks and lacked in his recent comments to Zelensky in Ukraine.

War is also political—it's mostly political, I would argue. It's about image, narrative, and public opinion tactics, at least here on the home front.

The Russians are framing the other side, the globalists side, the side of the cabal as the 1984-esque tyrannies of the world—those nations and groups who have been deceived by the ‘satanic elite’ that Putin has refered to in the past.

Like Trump here in the West, Putin in the East is pushing a narrative that the West has been hijacked by warmongering eugenist drug pushers and freedom hating globalists. Putin's operation in Ukraine is no dimwitted effort by an impatient mad dog tyrant, as the Western media has suggested. Putin appears to be a freedom asset, working at the very least toward the same goal as freedom fighters here in the West. Putin has initiated a domino that will, in due time, pull back the curtain on the globalists for all the world to see. But I suspect this endgame scenario for the globalists is a few years off. Trump needs to achieve in the US what Putin has already achieved in Russia—a recognition that the challenges of the modern age are, in effect, manufactured by a satanic elite for globalist ambitions.

The narrative weaponry deployed here is moral in nature. Putin is making a moral stance, and it's an extremely effective position to take—in part because the globalists’ main agenda is in pushing immorality, getting the world to become blind to the truth about morality and in doing so, getting the world to accept the inverse of objective morality—the embrace of debauchery and malevolence.

Putin, and Russia in general, represent a competing moral axis of power in the world, which has competed against the spiritually denatured Vatican seat of power since the beginning of the Romanov Dynasty. This stance of moral superiority is what helps Putin and those who support him maintain their support from their people, who, despite their faults, possess a more effective moral social-cultural foundation. Issuing this arrest warrant fits this strategy perfectly.

With it, Trump and his allies here in the West need not say much.

Trump has to be careful. He has to simultaneously walk the line of calling out the globalists here in the West, while doing the flag waving against longstanding supposed enemies of the West, such as Russia. If Trump is too buddy-buddy with Putin et al, the globalist media will unleash attacks trying to paint Trump as a Russian ally and enemy of the West. If Trump says nothing, Putin and our true allies in freedom elsewhere in the world might not be able to link up with the West later—the growing America First MAGA conservative-base.

Nevertheless, Trump is doing what he does best, adeptly navigating the narrative war (shout out to you, BB) for the benefit of all freedom-seeking people, be they in the US or beyond.

In time, the storm that has been raging behind the scenes for decades will come out in the open—a plot twist most out there never would have suspected.” — Justin Deschamps

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The Regime Is Terrified of Robert Kennedy Jr. Who Is Polling Higher than DeSantis but Ignored by Liberal Pollsters – RFK Jr. Speaks Out

On Memorial Day hundreds of people flocked to Humphreys by the Bay in San Diego to watch Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy speak at his campaign event.

In his speech, Kennedy paid respect to members of the US military who were killed in action by quoting his uncle President John F. Kennedy, and said “The most important way for us to honor the men and women who gave their lives for our country is to protect the rights that they died to give us.”

Kennedy later on switched gears and talked about how the corporate media has been treating his campaign.

The longtime environmental lawyer stated, “They still treat me as a fringe candidate and they say ‘he doesn’t have a chance’ and they don’t even put me in the polls a lot of times.”

[…]

After his speech concluded Kennedy was given a standing ovation.

Kennedy’s comments regarding being left out of polls comes after a Harvard Poll excluded RFK Jr. from its list of presidential candidate’s.

A recent CNN poll has Kennedy polling at 20% and other polls has the Democratic presidential candidate polling much higher. — The Gateway Pundit

Our Take: “The fact that Harvard is keeping RFK Jr. out of the polls makes me like him even more as a potential Democratic frontrunner (no matter how unlikely). This election, assuming there somehow isn't extensive fraud and interference, belongs to Donald Trump just as much as the last one did, but I would love to see RFK as the frontrunner for the Democrats. Imagine the debates between two candidates who, as far as we can tell, are America First and don't simply exist to parrot the deep-state narratives. It would be the first honest presidential debate in my lifetime, for sure.

But if you listen to RFK's Memorial Day speech, you'll realize how difficult of a hurdle he has in front of him in this fight to win hearts and minds on the left; he unapologetically loves this country, but his voter base does not. At the very least, he can use this platform to raise hell regarding Anthony Fauci, and I hope he does.” — Ryan DeLarme

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AI industry and researchers sign statement warning of ‘extinction’ risk

Dozens of AI industry leaders, academics and even some celebrities on Tuesday called for reducing the risk of global annihilation due to artificial intelligence, arguing in a brief statement that the threat of an AI extinction event should be a top global priority.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” read the statement published by the Center for AI Safety.

The statement was signed by leading industry officials including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; the so-called “godfather” of AI, Geoffrey Hinton; top executives and researchers from Google DeepMind and Anthropic; Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer; Bruce Schneier, the internet security and cryptography pioneer; climate advocate Bill McKibben; and the musician Grimes, among others.

The statement highlights wide-ranging concerns about the ultimate danger of unchecked artificial intelligence. AI experts have said society is still a long way from developing the kind of artificial general intelligence that is the stuff of science fiction; today’s cutting-edge chatbots largely reproduce patterns based on training data they’ve been fed and do not think for themselves. — CNN

Our Take: “At first glance, I am thrilled to see business leaders finally, albeit belatedly, speak about safety and ethics when it comes to emerging technologies.

The Center for AI Safety's statement is signed by all the major players in artificial intelligence and, upon second glance, it appears that they are attempting to put the genie back in the lamp. Indeed, CAIS Director Dan Hendrycks compared the statement to atomic scientists 'issuing warnings about the very technologies they’ve created.' That's not at all terrifying.

CNN asserts in this article that ChatGPT 'has helped heighten an arms race in the tech industry over artificial intelligence.' ChatGPT can't get out of its own way—remember 'Dan Mode'?—but it's important to understand that emerging technologies have enjoyed little oversight to date, and us plebes have no idea the level of capability they've actually achieved. We only know what we're told. The established regulatory order cannot secure our basic freedoms when it comes to the internet or data privacy, and they rely on lobbyist experts to shape ethical decisions about technology—lobbyist experts with a vested interest in minimal oversight.

While the scientists' warnings about the monster they created have strong Mary Shelley vibes, I can't help but wonder: Why now?

Hendrycks used the example of atomic scientists warning about their creation, a warning which took place in 1939. Six years later, in 1945, their monster was deployed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Is CAIS' warning just as prophetic for an AI extinction event?” — Ashe in America

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Opinion: Trump in Campaign Ad Vows to End Birthright Citizenship, 'Hey, DJT, Leave Them Kids Alone'

Former President Donald Trump is repeating a previous campaign promise in his quest to retake the White House. On Tuesday, Trump released a campaign video that said that he would end birthright citizenship for children he referred to as “anchor babies” from parents he called “illegal immigrants.” Trump also calls the practice “birth tourism.” The former President indicated he would accomplish this by executive order, on “day one.” In the video, Trump says:

“As part of my plan to secure the border, on day one of my new term in office I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law going forward the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship.”

Trump laments that these American-born children will qualify for “taxpayer-funded” benefits and the right to vote. Okay, Sir, but they will be tax-paying American citizens, too. Trump just warned us that people could end up with… rights. Sound the alarm! People born here would have “rights” if we don’t stop them!

I do not believe that citizenship is an issue to be addressed via executive order, as it sits well outside the purview of the president’s authority. As far as my knowledge goes, American citizenship is a constitutional issue, namely stemming from the 14th Amendment. Of course, interpretations, and sometimes unfortunate ones, are in the scope of the high courts.

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As I see it, Trump is now running on a platform of “Making Americans Not Americans, Again.” — Red State

Our Take: “I have to respectfully call out Red State on this one.

I disagree that this falls on President Trump. President Trump is pointing out a longstanding problem where people enter the country to have children, then feed off our benefits. While the writer argues the 13th & 14th Amendments and executive orders should not be used to decide this issue, I would pose a few questions.

Before I even get to my questions, to even remotely compare this situation to Dred Scott and slavery is inherently very poor. Slavery was awful, we can all agree, but to use a coined term, ‘birth tourism’ has become a blank check that is crippling America. This isn't about ending dreams of coming to America—it's about regulating illegal immigration.

Two questions:

What about our citizens’ unalienable rights?

Why must American citizens take a back seat constantly in the name of woke excuses?

I do agree that we need immigration reform in the sense that we need a clear path for people who want to work and become tax-paying citizens the right way. However, in contrast, the writer brings up the assumption that Reagan would not have voted for this. I would point out that neither would Bush. No offense to Ronald Reagan, but he and Bush were quiet proponents of illegal immigration, much like Clinton, because it was financially beneficial to the government powers that be.

I find it odd of Red State to allow such a pedantic and asinine argument, even for an opinion article, (albeit not my first with R.S.,) but I digress.

Lastly, I would add, at least President Trump understands what the phrase ‘cut off the bleeding’ refers to.” — Johnny Q

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LGBTQ Activists Warn Corporate America — ‘You Need to Be Our Ally’

LGBTQ activists called for new campaigns Monday to warn corporate leaders not to heed opposing voices while chastening those who relent in the face of public pressure.

The call to action follows Target’s announcement last week it removed products and relocated Pride displays to the back of certain stores in response to public protest, as Breitbart News reported.

AP reports California State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) a member of the LGBTQ legislative caucus, led the call for corporations to stand firm by pledging:

“We need a strategy on how to deal with corporations that are experiencing enormous pressure to throw LGBTQ people under the bus.

We need to send a clear message to corporate America that if you’re our ally — if you are truly our ally — you need to be our ally, not just when it’s easy but also when it’s hard.”

Target is just one corporate entity to have fallen under continued criticism over the past several weeks due to its overt promotion of woke gender ideology and the LGBTQ agenda, despite the fact those who identify as such make up a small percentage of the U.S. population.

Customers voted with their feet – and their wallets – and simply ignored the Target outlets across the country. — Breitbart

Our Take: “Tomorrow marks the first day of ‘Pride Month,’ or as I refer to it, ‘Shove Our Sexuality Down Your Throat Month.’ And this year, the rainbow terrorist coalition is expected to be more brazen than ever in light of recent conservative boycotts.

‘You need to be our ally, not just when it's easy but also when it's hard,’ reads the pledge signed by the California LGBTQ legislative caucus.

The demands follow Target's $9B loss in market cap, in just one week, following the nationwide reaction to their children's pride display. The long-celebrated box store partnered with satanic artist Eric Carnell on three of the products in the display. Target's useful idiots on social media attempted to debunk the claim of Carnell's involvement only to have Snopes confirm his participation with an unequivocal ‘True’ rating. ‘For me,’ Carnell wrote on Instagram, ‘Satan is hope, compassion, equality, and love.’ Let's hurry up and let that guy around our children, right?

This is an interesting moment in the culture war, particularly as it's being fought, at least for now, in the free market. Conservative customer outrage led to, in many cases, Target moving or modifying the display. Then leftist customers expressed outrage at Target's response to conservative outrage, and Target now finds itself stuck with a business-limiting choice: Profit or Ideology?

I have long hypothesized that, during this great reset, global corporations are measuring success with a second set of metrics. That is, they're not tracking traditional business metrics with the same weight we would expect. Consider Disney's continued woke programming despite customer rejections—revenue, viewership, brand value, and all other traditional business metrics are down. Disney is close to five year lows in market cap, but they continue to choose ideology over revenue and profit. Why? Because they're measuring something else.

Bud Light, Target, and now Kohl's face the same limiting choice of profit or ideology, and my gut says they will ultimately choose the latter. That said, the fact that these corporations find themselves in a position where they have to choose is, itself, a win. The rainbow terrorists' demands that these companies must stay committed ‘when it's hard,’ is a demand to stay committed even when losing billions of dollars.

If nothing else, these demands mean that the rainbow terrorists' coalition isn't big and strong enough to win in the market, hence the appeal (read: veiled threats) for an ideological response to a business decision.

If Conservatives hold the line, refuse to compromise, and shop somewhere else, we can test my hypothesis with Target: Will they double down on ideology despite losing their metaphorical rainbow-themed shirts? I think yes, but I personally can't stop shopping at Target as I already stopped shopping at Target during the mid 2000s. That's when I learned their school give back program overtly funded baby murder via donations to Planned Parenthood. This vile, debased corporation has been committed to darkness for decades. Seriously, why are you still shopping there?” — Ashe in America

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We hope you enjoyed this brief look back at the major news items you might have missed in this ever-escalating and ever-accelerating news cycle as the Information War continues to rage on around us.

The Badlands Media team will continue to combine our cognitive powers in order to slow things down and find the signal amidst the noise as this series expands.

As always, if you have any thoughts on these news items or the MANY others swirling in the digital ether, drop into the comments below to share them with your fellow Badlanders.