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Good Stocks To Invest In Now? 5 Industrial Stocks To Check Out

With earnings season hype and President Biden’s infrastructure bill making strides, these industrial stocks are in focus.
The post Good Stocks To Invest In Now? 5 Industrial Stocks To Check Out appeared first on Stock Market News, Quotes, Charts and…

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5 Top Industrial Stocks To Watch In 2021

With the broader stock market moving sideways, industrial stocks could be worth looking at. For the most part, investors could be treading cautiously this week given the current market conditions. To begin with, concerns over a slowdown in the reopening trade were somewhat eased as the 10-year Treasury yield mostly held steady. Adding to that, consumer demand for goods continues to drive momentum in the manufacturing space now. Meanwhile, the spread of the delta coronavirus variant would be another key factor to consider now. Namely, the U.S. seven-day average of coronavirus cases hit 72,790 last week, topping peak figures seen last year.

Now, what does all this mean for industrial stocks? Well, some would argue that industrial stocks are in an interesting position now. On one hand, should economic growth persist with the help of anti-coronavirus measures, the bull theory for the sector would hold up. On the other hand, if the pandemic has a greater effect on the economy than anticipated, industrial stock would be trading at more attractive price points. This would especially be the case as investors consider the post-pandemic prospects for industrials.

Not to mention, President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill is already boosting investor sentiment among the top industrial stocks now. We only need to look at the likes of Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: FCX) and John Deere (NYSE: DE) to see this. Evidently, both FCX stock and DE stock have more than doubled in value over the past year. Given all of this, would you consider investing in one of these top industrial stocks in the stock market today?

Top Industrial Stocks To Buy [Or Avoid] This Week

Nucor Corporation

Nucor Corporation is a producer of steel and related products with headquarters in North Carolina. The company and its affiliates have operating facilities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. It produces carbon and alloy steels in the form of bars, beams, sheets, and plates. Also, Nucor serves a wide number of industries, which include automotive, construction, oil & gas, and transportation. NUE stock currently trades at $105.36 as of 1:09 p.m. ET.

On July 22, 2021, the company announced record quarterly earnings for its second quarter of 2021. Net sales for the quarter increased by 103% year-over-year to $8.79 billion. The company also reported second-quarter earnings of $5.04 per diluted share, marking the highest quarterly earnings in the company’s history. It also expects to set a new record for quarterly earnings in the third quarter of 2021 as demand remains robust and virtually all the steel end-use markets continue to grow. All things considered, will you buy NUE stock?

industrial stocks (NUE stock)
Source: TD Ameritrade TOS

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General Motors Company

General Motors is a multinational corporation that designs and distributes vehicles and vehicle parts. The company has made significant investments into moving to an all-electric vehicle for its range of automobiles. Notably, its Ultium battery platform, which will power everything from its mass-market to high-performance vehicles will play a crucial role in ensuring that the company transforms into an all-electric vehicle company. GM stock currently trades at $57.77 as of 1:10 p.m. ET.

Last month, the company reported that it continues to receive sustained robust momentum in China for its second quarter. Impressively, the company delivered more than 750,000 vehicles in the country, an increase of 5.2% from a year earlier. It also announced that it has formed a strategic investment and commercial collaboration with Controlled Thermal Resources to secure local and low-cost lithium. This lithium will be used for GM’s next-generation EV batteries and will be produced through a closed-loop process with low carbon emissions. For these reasons, will you consider buying GM stock?

best industrial stocks (GM stock)
Source: TD Ameritrade TOS

[Read More] 4 Semiconductor Stocks To Watch Right Now

Plug Power Inc.

Plug Power is an industrial company that develops hydrogen fuel cell systems that replace conventional batteries in equipment and vehicles. Also, it has essentially revolutionized the material handling industry with its full-service GenKey solution. GenKey is designed to increase productivity, reduce carbon footprint, and lower operating costs in a reliable, cost-effective way. PLUG stock currently trades at $26.37 as of 1:11 p.m. ET.

In July, the company announced that it has hired David Mindnich, a 15-year leader in manufacturing who spearheaded operations for Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) Gigafactory. Moreover, Mindnich will join the company as executive vice president of global manufacturing and will lead the modernization of Plug Power’s manufacturing operations by creating process efficiencies and transforming its operations. He will be responsible for optimizing the performance of the company’s global manufacturing capabilities with his experience with high-volume global manufacturing. Given the excitement surrounding this piece of news, will you consider PLUG stock to your portfolio?

best industrial stocks (PLUG stock)
Source: TD Ameritrade TOS

[Read More] 4 Robotics Stocks To Watch Amid Rising Shifts To Automation

Hollysys Automation Technologies Ltd.

Another industrial name making waves in the stock market today is Hollysys Automation Technologies. In short, Hollysys is a leading provider of automation control system solutions in China. Through a combination of tech and deep industry insight, Hollysys provides its manufacturing customers with a wide selection of services. Primarily, this revolves around its full spectrum of industrial automation hardware, software, and related services. The likes of which span field devices, control systems, enterprise manufacturing management, and cloud-based applications.

More importantly, HOLI stock currently trades at $19.49 a share as of 1:11 p.m. ET. Notably, this is thanks to gains of over 25% since today’s opening bell. This would likely be on account of Hollysys evaluating a non-binding offer to be acquired in an all-stock transaction. In detail, the current offer from Superior Emerald Limited would value HOLI stock at $23.00 per share. Given the relevance of Hollysys’ offerings in the current age of automation, Superior Emerald could see more value in the company. Likewise, investors seem to be keen on HOLI stock given its latest update. Would you consider yourself in the same boat?

top industrial stocks to watch (HOLI stock)
Source: TD Ameritrade TOS

[Read More] 5 Top Infrastructure Stocks To Watch In August 2021

Micron Technology Inc.

Following that, we have Micron Technology. In brief, the company primarily designs and manufactures computer memory and data storage hardware. This includes but is not limited to dynamic random-access memory (dRAM), flash memory, and USB flash drives. Given the recent uptick in digital acceleration trends across the board, Micron’s wares would be relevant in the current market. After all, organizations and consumers alike will likely be using more digital memory as a result of work-from-home initiatives.

Now, with MU stock trading at $80.40 a share as of 1:13 p.m. ET, would it be worth buying? If anything, Micron seems to be doing well across the board. This is evident as the company is initiating a quarterly dividend of $0.10 as of earlier today. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra cites the company’s “outstanding position” as a core reason for this move. With Micron looking to provide more shareholder value, would you consider MU stock a top buy now?

industrial stocks to buy now (MU stock)
Source: TD Ameritrade TOS

The post Good Stocks To Invest In Now? 5 Industrial Stocks To Check Out appeared first on Stock Market News, Quotes, Charts and Financial Information | StockMarket.com.

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How The Democrats Plan To Steal The Election

How The Democrats Plan To Steal The Election

Authored by Llewellyn Rockwell via LewRockwell.com,

Biden and Trump have clinched the nominations…

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How The Democrats Plan To Steal The Election

Authored by Llewellyn Rockwell via LewRockwell.com,

Biden and Trump have clinched the nominations of their parties for President. Everybody is gearing up for a battle between them for the election in November. It’s obvious that Biden is “cognitively impaired.” In blunter language, “brain-dead”. Partisans of Trump are gearing up for a decisive victory.

But what if this battle is a sham? What if Biden’s elite gang of neo-con controllers won’t let Biden lose?

How can they stop him from losing? Simple. If it looks like he’s losing, the elite forces will create enough fake ballots to ensure victory. Our corrupt courts won’t stop them. They have done this before, and they will do it again, if they have to.

I said the Democrats have done this before.

The great Dr. Ron Paul explains one way they did this in 2020. The elite covered up a scandal that could have wrecked Biden’s chances:

“Move over Watergate. On or around Oct. 17, 2020, then-senior Biden campaign official Antony Blinken called up former acting CIA director Mike Morell to ask a favor: he needed high-ranking former US intelligence community officials to lie to the American people to save Biden’s lagging campaign from a massive brewing scandal.

The problem was that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had abandoned his laptop at a repair shop and the explosive contents of the computer were leaking out. The details of the Biden family’s apparent corruption and the debauchery of the former vice-president’s son were being reported by the New York Post, and with the election less than a month away, the Biden campaign needed to kill the story.

So, according to newly-released transcripts of Morell’s testimony before the House judiciary Committee, Blinken “triggered” Morell to put together a letter for some 50 senior intelligence officials to sign – using their high-level government titles – to claim that the laptop story “had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

In short, at the Biden campaign’s direction Morell launched a covert operation against the American people to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election. A letter signed by dozens of the highest-ranking former CIA, DIA, and NSA officials would surely carry enough weight to bury the Biden laptop story. It worked. Social media outlets prevented any reporting on the laptop from being posted and the mainstream media could easily ignore the story as it was merely “Russian propaganda.”

Asked recently by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) why he agreed to draft the false sign-on letter, Morell testified that he wanted to “help Vice President Biden … because I wanted him to win the election.”

Morell also likely expected to be named by President Biden to head up the CIA when it came time to call in favors.

The Democrats and the mainstream media have relentlessly pushed the lie that the ruckus inside the US Capitol on Jan. 6th 2021 was a move by President Trump to overthrow the election results. Hundreds of “trespassers” were arrested and held in solitary confinement without trial to bolster the false narrative that a conspiracy to steal the election was taking place.

It turns out that there really was a conspiracy to steal the election, but it was opposite of what was reported. Just as the Steele Dossier was a Democratic Party covert action to plant the lie that the Russians were pulling strings for Trump, the “Russian disinformation campaign” letter was a lie to deflect scrutiny of the Biden family’s possible corruption in the final days of the campaign.

Did the Biden campaign’s disinformation campaign help rig the election in his favor? Polls suggest that Biden would not have been elected had the American electorate been informed about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop. So yes, they cheated in the election.

The Democrats and the mainstream media are still at it, however. Now they are trying to kill the story of how they killed the story of the Biden laptop. This is a scandal that would once upon a time have ended in resignation, impeachment, and/or plenty of jail time. If they successfully bury this story, I hate to say it but there is no more rule of law in what has become the American banana republic.” See here.

But the main way the election can be rigged is by fraudulent “voting.” It’s much easier to do this with digital scanning of votes than with old-fashioned ballot boxes.

Dr. Naomi Wolf explains how electronic voting machines make it easier to steal elections:

“People could steal elections in this ‘analog’ technology of paper and locked ballot boxes, of course, by destroying or hiding votes, or by bribing voters, a la Tammany Hall, or by other forms of wrongdoing, so security and chain of custody, as well as anti-corruption scrutiny, were always needed in guaranteeing accurate election counts. But there was no reason, with analog physical processing of votes, to query the tradition of the secret ballot.

Before the digital scanning of votes, you could not hack a wooden ballot box; and you could not set an algorithm to misread a pile of paper ballots. So, at the end of the day, one way or another, you were counting physical documents.

Those days are gone, obviously, and in many districts there are digital systems reading ballots.” See here.

This isn’t the first time the Left has stolen an election. It happened in the 2020 presidential election too. Ron Unz offers his usual cogent analysis:

“There does seem to be considerable circumstantial evidence of widespread ballot fraud by Democratic Party forces, hardly surprising given the apocalyptic manner in which so many of their leaders had characterized the threat of a Trump reelection. After all, if they sincerely believed that a Trump victory would be catastrophic for America why would they not use every possible means, fair and foul alike, to save our country from that dire fate?

In particular, several of the major swing-states contain large cities—Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta—that are both totally controlled by the Democratic Party and also notoriously corrupt, and various eye-witnesses have suggested that the huge anti-Trump margins they provided may have been heavily ‘padded’ to ensure the candidate’s defeat.” See here.

In a program aired right after Biden’s pitiful State of the Union speech, the great Tucker Carlson pointed out that Biden’s “Justice” Department has already confessed that it plans to rig the election. It will do this by banning voter ID laws as “racist.” This permits an unlimited number of fake votes:

“If Joe Biden is so good at politics, why is he losing to Donald Trump, who the rest of us were assured was a retarded racist who no normal person would vote for? But now Joe Biden is getting stomped by Donald Trump, but he’s also at the same time good at politics? Right.

Again, they can’t win, but they’re not giving up. So what does that tell you? Well, they’re going to steal the election. We know they’re going to steal the election because they’re now saying so out loud. Here is the Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer of this country in Selma, Alabama, just the other day.

[Now Carlson quotes the Attorney General, Merrick Garland:]

“The right to vote is still under attack, and that is why the Justice Department is fighting back. That is why one of the first things I did when I came into office was to double the size of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division. That is why we are challenging efforts by states and jurisdictions to implement discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes and voter ID requirements. That is why we are working to block the adoption of discriminatory redistricting plans that dilute the vote of Black voters and other voters of color.

[Carlson then comments on Garland:]

“Did you catch that? Of course, you’re a racist. That’s always the takeaway. But consider the details of what the Attorney General of the United States just said. Mail-in balloting, drop boxes, voter ID requirements. The chief law enforcement officer of the United States Government is telling you that it’s immoral, in fact racist, in fact illegal to ask people for their IDs when they vote to verify they are who they say they are. What is that? Well, no one ever talks about this, but the justification for it is that somehow people of color, Black people, don’t have state-issued IDs. Somehow they’re living in a country where you can do virtually nothing without proving your identity with a government-issued ID without government-issued IDs. They can’t fly on planes, they can’t have checking accounts, they can’t have any interaction with the government, state, local, or federal. They can’t stay in hotels. They can’t have credit cards. Because someone without a state-issued ID can’t do any of those things.

But what’s so interesting is these same people, very much including the Attorney General and the administration he serves, is working to eliminate cash, to make this a cashless society. Have you been to a stadium event recently? No cash accepted. You have to have a credit card. In order to get a credit card you need a state-issued ID, and somehow that’s not racist. But it is racist to ask people to prove their identity when they choose the next President of the United States. That doesn’t make any sense at all. That’s a lie. It’s an easily provable lie, and anyone telling that lie is advocating for mass voter fraud, which the Attorney General is. There’s no other way to read it. So you should know that. You live in a country where the Attorney General is abetting, in fact calling for voter fraud, and that’s the only chance they have to get their guy re-elected.” See here.

Because of absentee ballots, the voting can be spread out over a long period of time. This makes voting fraud much easier. Mollie Hemingway has done a lot of research on this topic:

“In the 2020 presidential election, for the first time ever, partisan groups were allowed—on a widespread basis—to cross the bright red line separating government officials who administer elections from political operatives who work to win them. It is important to understand how this happened in order to prevent it in the future.

Months after the election, Time magazine published a triumphant story of how the election was won by “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”  Written by Molly Ball, a journalist with close ties to Democratic leaders, it told a cheerful story of a “conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes,” the “result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”

A major part of this “conspiracy” to “save the 2020 election” was to use COVID as a pretext to maximize absentee and early voting. This effort was enormously successful. Nearly half of voters ended up voting by mail, and another quarter voted early. It was, Ball wrote, “practically a revolution in how people vote.” Another major part was to raise an army of progressive activists to administer the election at the ground level.

Here, one billionaire in particular took a leading role: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg’s help to Democrats is well known when it comes to censoring their political opponents in the name of preventing “misinformation.” Less well known is the fact that he directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an organization led by Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla, gave more than $400 million to nonprofit groups involved in “securing” the 2020 election. Most of those funds—colloquially called “Zuckerbucks”—were funneled through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a voter outreach organization founded by Tiana Epps-Johnson, Whitney May, and Donny Bridges. All three had previously worked on activism relating to election rules for the New Organizing Institute, once described by The Washington Post as “the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry.”

Flush with $350 million in Zuckerbucks, the CTCL proceeded to disburse large grants to election officials and local governments across the country. These disbursements were billed publicly as “COVID-19 response grants,” ostensibly to help municipalities acquire protective gear for poll workers or otherwise help protect election officials and volunteers against the virus. In practice, relatively little money was spent for this. Here, as in other cases, COVID simply provided cover.

According to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Georgia received more than $31 million in Zuckerbucks, one of the highest amounts in the country. The three Georgia counties that received the most money spent only 1.3 percent of it on personal protective equipment. The rest was spent on salaries, laptops, vehicle rentals, attorney fees for public records requests, mail-in balloting, and other measures that allowed elections offices to hire activists to work the election. Not all Georgia counties received CTCL funding. And of those that did, Trump-voting counties received an average of $1.91 per registered voter, compared to $7.13 per registered voter in Biden-voting counties.

The FGA looked at this funding another way, too. Trump won Georgia by more than five points in 2016. He lost it by three-tenths of a point in 2020. On average, as a share of the two-party vote, most counties moved Democratic by less than one percentage point in that time. Counties that didn’t receive Zuckerbucks showed hardly any movement, but counties that did moved an average of 2.3 percentage points Democratic. In counties that did not receive Zuckerbucks, “roughly half saw an increase in Democrat votes that offset the increase in Republican votes, while roughly half saw the opposite trend.” In counties that did receive Zuckerbucks, by contrast, three quarters “saw a significant uptick in Democrat votes that offset any upward change in Republican votes,” including highly populated Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb counties.

Of all the 2020 battleground states, it is probably in Wisconsin where the most has been brought to light about how Zuckerbucks worked.

CTCL distributed $6.3 million to the Wisconsin cities of Racine, Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, and Kenosha—purportedly to ensure that voting could take place “in accordance with prevailing [anti-COVID] public health requirements.”

Wisconsin law says voting is a right, but that “voting by absentee ballot must be carefully regulated to prevent the potential for fraud or abuse; to prevent overzealous solicitation of absent electors who may prefer not to participate in an election.” Wisconsin law also says that elections are to be run by clerks or other government officials. But the five cities that received Zuckerbucks outsourced much of their election operation to private liberal groups, in one case so extensively that a sidelined government official quit in frustration.

This was by design. Cities that received grants were not allowed to use the money to fund outside help unless CTCL specifically approved their plans in writing. CTCL kept tight control of how money was spent, and it had an abundance of “partners” to help with anything the cities needed.

Some government officials were willing to do whatever CTCL recommended. “As far as I’m concerned I am taking all of my cues from CTCL and work with those you recommend,” Celestine Jeffreys, the chief of staff to Democratic Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, wrote in an email. CTCL not only had plenty of recommendations, but made available a “network of current and former election administrators and election experts” to scale up “your vote by mail processes” and “ensure forms, envelopes, and other materials are understood and completed correctly by voters.”

Power the Polls, a liberal group recruiting poll workers, promised to help with ballot curing. The liberal Mikva Challenge worked to recruit high school-age poll workers. And the left-wing Brennan Center offered help with “election integrity,” including “post-election audits” and “cybersecurity.”

The Center for Civic Design, an election administration policy organization that frequently partners with groups such as liberal billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, designed absentee ballots and voting instructions, often working directly with an election commission to design envelopes and create advertising and targeting campaigns. The Elections Group, also linked to the Democracy Fund, provided technical assistance in handling drop boxes and conducted voter outreach. The communications director for the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, an organization that advocates sweeping changes to the elections process, ran a conference call to help Green Bay develop Spanish-language radio ads and geofencing to target voters in a predefined area.

Digital Response, a nonprofit launched in 2020, offered to “bring voters an updated elections website,” “run a website health check,” “set up communications channels,” “bring poll worker application and management online,” “track and respond to polling location wait times,” “set up voter support and email response tools,” “bring vote-by-mail applications online,” “process incoming [vote-by-mail] applications,” and help with “ballot curing process tooling and voter notification.”

The National Vote at Home Institute was presented as a “technical assistance partner” that could “support outreach around absentee voting,” provide and oversee voting machines, consult on methods to cure absentee ballots, and even assume the duty of curing ballots.

A few weeks after the five Wisconsin cities received their grants, CTCL emailed Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, to offer “an experienced elections staffer that could potentially embed with your staff in Milwaukee in a matter of days.” The staffer leading Wisconsin’s portion of the National Vote at Home Institute was an out-of-state Democratic activist named Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein. As soon as he met with Woodall-Vogg, he asked for contacts in other cities and at the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Spitzer-Rubenstein would eventually take over much of Green Bay’s election planning from the official charged with running the election, Green Bay Clerk Kris Teske. This made Teske so unhappy that she took Family and Medical Leave prior to the election and quit shortly thereafter.

Emails from Spitzer-Rubenstein show the extent to which he was managing the election process. To one government official he wrote, “By Monday, I’ll have our edits on the absentee voting instructions. We’re pushing Quickbase to get their system up and running and I’ll keep you updated. I’ll revise the planning tool to accurately reflect the process. I’ll create a flowchart for the vote-by-mail processing that we will be able to share with both inspectors and also observers.”

Once early voting started, Woodall-Vogg would provide Spitzer-Rubenstein with daily updates on the numbers of absentee ballots returned and still outstanding in each ward­­—prized information for a political operative.

Amazingly, Spitzer-Rubenstein even asked for direct access to the Milwaukee Election Commission’s voter database:

“Would you or someone else on your team be able to do a screen-share so we can see the process for an export?” he wrote.

“Do you know if WisVote has an [application programming interface] or anything similar so that it can connect with other software apps? That would be the holy grail.”

Even for Woodall-Vogg, that was too much.

“While I completely understand and appreciate the assistance that is trying to be provided,” she replied, “I am definitely not comfortable having a non-staff member involved in the function of our voter database, much less recording it.”

When these emails were released in 2021, they stunned Wisconsin observers. “What exactly was the National Vote at Home Institute doing with its daily reports? Was it making sure that people were actually voting from home by going door-to-door to collect ballots from voters who had not yet turned theirs in? Was this data sharing a condition of the CTCL grant? And who was really running Milwaukee’s election?” asked Dan O’Donnell, whose election analysis appeared at Wisconsin’s conservative MacIver Institute.

Kris Teske, the sidelined Green Bay city clerk—in whose office Wisconsin law actually places the responsibility to conduct elections—had of course seen what was happening early on. “I just don’t know where the Clerk’s Office fits in anymore,” she wrote in early July. By August, she was worried about legal exposure: “I don’t understand how people who don’t have the knowledge of the process can tell us how to manage the election,” she wrote on August 28.

Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich simply handed over Teske’s authority to agents from outside groups and gave them leadership roles in collecting absentee ballots, fixing ballots that would otherwise be voided for failure to follow the law, and even supervising the counting of ballots. “The grant mentors would like to meet with you to discuss, further, the ballot curing process. Please let them know when you’re available,” Genrich’s chief of staff told Teske.

Spitzer-Rubenstein explained that the National Vote at Home Institute had done the same for other cities in Wisconsin. “We have a process map that we’ve worked out with Milwaukee for their process. We can also adapt the letter we’re sending out with rejected absentee ballots along with a call script alerting voters. (We can also get people to make the calls, too, so you don’t need to worry about it.)”

Other emails show that Spitzer-Rubenstein had keys to the central counting facility and access to all the machines before election night. His name was on contracts with the hotel hosting the ballot counting.

Sandy Juno, who was clerk of Brown County, where Green Bay is located, later testified about the problems in a legislative hearing. “He was advising them on things. He was touching the ballots. He had access to see how the votes were counted,” Juno said of Spitzer-Rubenstein. Others testified that he was giving orders to poll workers and seemed to be the person running the election night count operation.

“I would really like to think that when we talk about security of elections, we’re talking about more than just the security of the internet,” Juno said. “You know, it has to be security of the physical location, where you’re not giving a third party keys to where you have your election equipment.”

Juno noted that there were irregularities in the counting, too, with no consistency between the various tables. Some had absentee ballots face-up, so anyone could see how they were marked. Poll workers were seen reviewing ballots not just to see that they’d been appropriately checked by the clerk, but “reviewing how they were marked.” And poll workers fixing ballots used the same color pens as the ones ballots had been filled out in, contrary to established procedures designed to make sure observers could differentiate between voters’ marks and poll workers’ marks.

The plan by Democratic strategists to bring activist groups into election offices worked in part because no legislature had ever imagined that a nonprofit could take over so many election offices so easily.

“If it can happen to Green Bay, Wisconsin, sweet little old Green Bay, Wisconsin, these people can coordinate any place,” said Janel Brandtjen, a state representative in Wisconsin.

She was right. What happened in Green Bay happened in Democrat-run cities and counties across the country. Four hundred million Zuckerbucks were distributed with strings attached. Officials were required to work with “partner organizations” to massively expand mail-in voting and staff their election operations with partisan activists. The plan was genius. And because no one ever imagined that the election system could be privatized in this way, there were no laws to prevent it.

"Such laws should now be a priority.” See here.

Let’s do everything we can to publicize the steal. That way, we have a chance to prevent it.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/20/2024 - 19:00

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$500 Per Hour Tutors Are Back In Vogue Now That Colleges Have Decided SATs Are, In Fact, A Necessity

$500 Per Hour Tutors Are Back In Vogue Now That Colleges Have Decided SATs Are, In Fact, A Necessity

It was just about a month ago we noted…

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$500 Per Hour Tutors Are Back In Vogue Now That Colleges Have Decided SATs Are, In Fact, A Necessity

It was just about a month ago we noted that SATs were once again being reconsidered by colleges who had reduced or eliminated their requirement due to (pick one: diversity, racism, climate change, equity, gender affirmation). 

As a result of the comeback, Bloomberg noted this week that tutors, sometimes costing $500 per hour, are all of a sudden back in vogue. 

Bloomberg wrote that demand for SAT tutoring and prep centers is surging as several top colleges reintroduce mandatory SATs, and students adapt to the SAT's new digital format.

Kaplan reported a significant enrollment increase, attributed to digital testing and the reinstatement of testing requirements by institutions and three Ivy League schools—Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown—have reinstated mandatory SATs, alongside MIT and the University of Texas at Austin. This shift has left many students scrambling for preparation before early application deadlines.

Companies like The Princeton Review have also seen a spike in interest for prep services.


Parents Bloomberg profiled are once again investing in tutoring services for their children to improve their chances of success. The debate over standardized testing's fairness persists however, with critics arguing it favors wealthier students who can afford extensive prep. But those winning the argument still claims that standardized tests provide valuable benchmarks for admissions, potentially aiding in diversifying the applicant pool.

We noted last month in a piece from American Greatness, that according to Axios, multiple colleges used the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to weaken the importance of SAT and ACT test scores in most student applications. But in recent weeks, several schools have reversed course; Yale is considering repealing its prior policy of making SAT/ACT requirements optional, with Dartmouth already reinstating the requirements earlier this month. MIT reversed a similar policy back in 2022.

Other schools that have eliminated SAT/ACT requirements include Harvard and Columbia. Harvard, along with Cornell and Princeton, have extended their policy of making the scores optional, while Columbia’s policy remains permanent.

One of the motivating factors behind the reversal is ongoing research showing a clear correlation between students’ standardized test scores, and their subsequent academic performance and graduation rates in college. Some schools had previously opposed the test requirements for reasons of “diversity,” baselessly accusing the tests of being “racist” and against minority students.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/20/2024 - 17:20

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Study: Life’s building blocks are surprisingly stable in Venus-like conditions

If there is life in the solar system beyond Earth, it might be found in the clouds of Venus. In contrast to the planet’s blisteringly inhospitable surface,…

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If there is life in the solar system beyond Earth, it might be found in the clouds of Venus. In contrast to the planet’s blisteringly inhospitable surface, Venus’ cloud layer, which extends from 30 to 40 miles above the surface, hosts milder temperatures that could support some extreme forms of life. 

Credit: Credit: JAXA/J. J. Petkowski

If there is life in the solar system beyond Earth, it might be found in the clouds of Venus. In contrast to the planet’s blisteringly inhospitable surface, Venus’ cloud layer, which extends from 30 to 40 miles above the surface, hosts milder temperatures that could support some extreme forms of life. 

If it’s out there, scientists have assumed that any Venusian cloud inhabitant would look very different from life forms on Earth. That’s because the clouds themselves are made from highly toxic droplets of sulfuric acid — an intensely corrosive chemical that is known to dissolve metals and destroy most biological molecules on Earth. 

But a new study by MIT researchers may challenge that assumption. Appearing today in the journal Astrobiology, the study reports that, in fact, some key building blocks of life can persist in solutions of concentrated sulfuric acid. 

The study’s authors have found that 19 amino acids that are essential to life on Earth are stable for up to four weeks when placed in vials of sulfuric acid at concentrations similar to those in Venus’ clouds. In particular, they found that the molecular “backbone” of all 19 amino acids remained intact in sulfuric acid solutions ranging in concentration from 81 to 98 percent.  

“What is absolutely surprising is that concentrated sulfuric acid is not a solvent that is universally hostile to organic chemistry,” says study co-author Janusz Petkowski, a research affiliate in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).

“We are finding that building blocks of life on Earth are stable in sulfuric acid, and this is very intriguing for the idea of the possibility of life on Venus,” adds study author Sara Seager, MIT’s Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences in EAPS and a professor in the departments of Physics and of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “It doesn’t mean that life there will be the same as here. In fact, we know it can’t be. But this work advances the notion that Venus’ clouds could support complex chemicals needed for life.”

The study’s co-authors include first author Maxwell Seager, an undergraduate in the Department of Chemistry at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Seager’s son, and William Bains, a research affiliate at MIT and a scientist at Cardiff University.

Building blocks in acid

The search for life in Venus’ clouds has gained momentum in recent years, spurred in part by a controversial detection of phosphine — a molecule that is considered to be one signature of life — in the planet’s atmosphere. While that detection remains under debate, the news has reinvigorated an old question: Could Earth’s sister planet actually host life? 

In search of an answer, scientists are planning several missions to Venus, including the first largely privately funded mission to the planet, backed by California-based launch company Rocket Lab. That mission, on which Seager is the science principal investigator, aims to send a spacecraft through the planet’s clouds to analyze their chemistry for signs of organic molecules. 

Ahead of the mission’s January 2025 launch, Seager and her colleagues have been testing various molecules in concentrated sulfuric acid to see what fragments of life on Earth might also be stable in Venus’ clouds, which are estimated to be orders of magnitude more acidic than the most acidic places on Earth.

“People have this perception that concentrated sulfuric acid is an extremely aggressive solvent that will chop everything to pieces,” Petkowski says. “But we are finding this is not necessarily true.”

In fact, the team has previously shown that complex organic molecules such as some fatty acids and nucleic acids remain surprisingly stable in sulfuric acid. The scientists are careful to emphasize, as they do in their current paper, that “complex organic chemistry is of course not life, but there is no life without it.” 

In other words, if certain molecules can persist in sulfuric acid, then perhaps the highly acidic clouds of Venus are habitable, if not necessarily inhabited. 

In their new study, the team turned their focus on amino acids — molecules that combine  to make essential proteins, each with their own specific function. Every living thing on Earth requires amino acids to make proteins that in turn carry out life-sustaining functions, from breaking down food to generating energy, building muscle, and repairing tissue. 

“If you consider the four major building blocks of life as nucleic acid bases, amino acids, fatty acids, and carbohydrates, we have demonstrated that some fatty acids can form micelles and vesicles in sulfuric acid, and the nucleic acid bases are stable in sulfuric acid. Carbohydrates have been shown to be highly reactive in sulfuric acid,” Maxwell
Seager explains. “That only left us with amino acids as the last major building block to
study.”

A stable backbone

The scientists began their studies of sulfuric acid during the pandemic, carrying out their experiments in a home laboratory. Since that time, Seager and her son continued work on chemistry in concentrated sulfuric acid. In early 2023, they ordered powder samples of 20 “biogenic” amino acids — those amino acids that are essential to all life on Earth. They dissolved each type of amino acid in vials of sulfuric acid mixed with water, at concentrations of 81 and 98 percent, which represent the range that exists in Venus’ clouds. 

The team then let the vials incubate for a day before transporting them to MIT’s Department of Chemistry Instrumentation Facility (DCIF), a shared, 24/7 laboratory that offers a number of automated and manual instruments for MIT scientists to use. For their part, Seager and her team used the lab’s nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer to analyze the structure of amino acids in sulfuric acid. 

After analyzing each vial several times over four weeks, the scientists found, to their surprise, that the basic molecular structure, or “backbone” in 19 of the 20 amino acids remained stable and unchanged, even in highly acidic conditions.

“Just showing that this backbone is stable in sulfuric acid doesn’t mean there is life on Venus,” notes Maxwell Seager. “But if we had shown that this backbone was compromised, then there would be no chance of life as we know it.” 

The team acknowledges that Venus’ cloud chemistry is likely messier than the study’s “test tube” conditions. For instance, scientists have measured various trace gases, in addition to sulfuric acid, in the planet’s clouds. As such, the team plans to incorporate certain trace gases in future experiments. 

“There are only a few groups in the world now that are working on chemistry in sulfuric acid, and they will all agree that no one has intuition,” adds Sara Seager. “I think we are just more happy than anything that this latest result adds one more ‘yes’ for the possibility of life on Venus.”

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Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News

Paper: “Stability of 20 Biogenic Amino Acids in Concentrated Sulfuric Acid: Implications for the Habitability of Venus’ Clouds”

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2023.0082


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