Biden-Harris wasted $8.5 billion in taxpayer money to lose 15,000 jobs at Intel

 Well, ladies and gentlemen: the chips are down — literally and figuratively.

Two years ago, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris touted their “Chips Act” to bring the semiconductor industry back home from Taiwan, China and Singapore.

The price tag on the bill: a cool $280 billion of corporate handouts. It was arguably the largest corporate welfare bill in American history.

Intel, Micron, Global Foundries, Polar Semiconductor, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Samsung, BAE Systems, and Microchip Technology have been the direct beneficiaries of the law.

This was supposed to be one of the “Crown Jewels” of the Biden-Harris admin. A massive job creator that would allow America to take back its technological
leadership.

Even many Republicans in Congress shamelessly voted for the handouts at a time when the federal government was already borrowing more than $1 trillion a year.

Heavy failures

But today, the failures far outweigh the successes — and in spectacular fashion.

Intel was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Chips Act, receiving an $8.5 billion grant announced in March, a $25 billion sweetheart tax incentive and likely the lion’s share of an $11 billion federal loan program. That’s only the opening act.

What did we get in exchange? Intel this week announced it was laying off 15% of its workforce — 15,000
positions.

America lost twice: billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

Meanwhile, Nvidia, which took no government money, has been the top-performing stock over the past 18 months and has made hundreds of billions of dollars for American shareholders. Its chips are mostly made in Taiwan, but it creates thousands of jobs here at home.

This Chips Act was supposed to be the Biden-Harris crowning achievement. A giant job creator. Hundreds of billions of government handouts to bring the semiconductor industry back home. Now, it’s looking like the Titanic.

Maybe these layoffs make business sense and will help Intel become the powerhouse it once was. But the company’s new government-dependent status means all of its decision-making is being directed by Washington — not the marketplace.

Their strategy has been to maximize taxpayers’ dollars — not creating value for their customers.

How many times can we learn the same lesson? Government is terrible at picking winners and losers. Remember Solyndra and Fisker Auto?

Corporate welfare woes

Politicians gamble — with your money — and go broke again and again.

Corporate welfare almost never works. We’ve tried it with steel, autos, solar panels and electric
batteries.

Just look at how this policy has hobbled the electric-vehicle industry. Biden has handed out tens of billions in handouts, mandates and other Hershey kisses to an industry that was well on its way to success when Donald Trump left office. Now the car companies are losing billions of dollars even as they chase down all this “free” money.

EV sales would be much higher today if politicians had simply kept their paws off of it.

Or consider that the Biden administration passed its Green New Deal —dishonestly called the “Inflation Reduction Act” — with hundreds of billions for solar and wind companies.

Today, the industry is still flat on its back — providing less than 10% of American energy. Meanwhile the nonsubsidized oil and gas and coal industries still supply 80% of our energy. The oil and gas industry actually pays taxes rather than just taking government money.

Poor policy

The theory of national industrial policy is based on the idea that some sectors are of such paramount importance that they can’t be left to the private sector. That may make sense when it come to defense industries.

But as we’ve seen with electric vehicles and green energy in recent years, trusting the government to take charge is about the worst way for any business to succeed.

Ironically, the Biden-
Harris administration wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% on our successful corporations — the ones that actually make a profit and don’t need government subsidies — and use that money to prop up the loser industries.

It’s no way to run a country. It is the way socialist regimes have all gone broke.

The two of us have suggested that America should pass a law preventing the government from giving any company a subsidy if it has more than $100 million in sales. Use the savings to cut tax rates for everyone.

The failure of the Chips Act is a reminder of the maxim that the best government policy for the economy is: don’t meddle.

In the meantime, Congress should suspend the $100 billion that the semiconductor industry hasn’t already spent and wasted. Never throw good money after bad.

Stephen Moore is chairman of Unleash Prosperity and Phil Kerpen is executive director. Moore also serves as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation while Kerpen Heads American Commitment.

https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/opinion/biden-harris-wasted-8-5-billion-in-taxpayer-money-to-lose-15000-jobs-at-intel/

'Biden Pledges New Military Deployments To Defend Israel In Netanyahu Call'

 President Biden in a Thursday phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that the United States would help defend Israel in the event of reprisal attacks from Iran in the wake of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's assassination in Tehran.

"The President reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis," the White House call readout stated.

Alarmingly, Biden also informed the Israeli prime minister that he is readying new deployments to the Middle East. This even as the US Commander-in-Chief was essentially forced to bow out his campaign for reelection due to health and mental acuity concerns, including speculation over dementia.

And all of this is happening with basically zero Congressional input, meaning a somewhat senile and elderly President Biden could be taking the nation into yet another war and Middle East quagmire with no additional oversight or Constitutional checks and balances whatsoever (of course, this is the entire legacy of the GWOT as well). 

"The President discussed efforts to support Israel’s defense against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive US military deployments," the readout continued.

The White House confirmed that Vice President and presumed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was on the call. Previously the administration and the Dems touted here supposed foreign policy experience and credentials.

On Wednesday, within hours after the Haniyeh assassination, Biden's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was the first to announced that the Pentagon would play an active role in any potential Iranian attack on Israel:

"If Israel is attacked, we certainly will help defend Israel," U.S. Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, told the media aboard the USNS Millinocket during a visit to the Philippines. "You saw us do that in April; you can expect to see us do that again," he said.

The U.S., along with other Israeli allies like the U.K. and France, were involved in intercepting an unprecedented Iranian drone and missile barrage fired at Israel from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen in mid-April. "We helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles," U.S. President Joe Biden said at the time.

Already according to The Washington Post the US has assembled 12 warships in Middle East regional waters prepared to respond to any attack on Israel. Currently the USS Theodore Roosevelt and six US Navy destroyers are in the Persian Gulf. An additional five Navy ships are already patrolling the Eastern Mediterranean, including two destroyers.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said the military is on "high alert", also as it monitors threats from Iranian-linked group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This week also saw the assassination of Hezbollah’s military chief in Beirut, for which the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah is vowing a severe response. However, neither side appears to have the appetite for a bigger all-out war at this point which would plunge all of Lebanon into greater suffering.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-pledges-new-military-deployments-defend-israel-netanyahu-call

Treatment that can kill glioblastoma cells in newly-discovered brain pathway

 A new pathway that is used by cancer cells to infiltrate the brain has been discovered by a team of Canadian and American research groups led by the Singh Lab at McMaster University. The research also reveals a new therapy that shows promise in blocking and killing these tumors.

The research, published in Nature Medicine on Aug. 2, 2024, offers new hope and potential treatments for glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer.

With existing treatments like surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, the tumors often return, and patient survival is limited to only a few months. With this new treatment, the returning cancer cells were destroyed at least 50% of the time in two of the three diseases tested in preclinical animal models.

To discover the pathway cancer cells use to infiltrate the brain, researchers used large-scale gene editing technology to compare gene dependencies in glioblastoma when it was initially diagnosed and after it returned following standard treatments. By doing this, researchers discovered a new pathway used for axonal guidance—a signaling axis that helps establish normal brain architecture—that can become overrun by cancer cells.

"In glioblastoma, we believe that the tumor hijacks this signaling pathway and uses it to invade and infiltrate the brain," says co-senior author Sheila Singh, professor with McMaster's Department of Surgery and director of the Center for Discovery in Cancer Research. The research was also co-led by Jason Moffat, head of the Genetics and Genome Biology program at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids).

"If we can block this pathway, the hope is that we can block the invasive spread of glioblastoma and kill tumor cells that cannot be removed surgically," says Singh.

Promising new therapeutic

To stop the invasion of cancer cells, researchers targeted the hijacked signaling pathway using different strategies including a drug developed by John Lazo's group at the University of Virginia, and also by developing a new therapy with help from Kevin Henry and Martin Rossotti at the National Research Council Canada using CAR T cells to target the pathway in the brain.

They honed in on a protein called Roundabout Guidance Receptor 1 (ROBO1) that helps guide certain cells, similar to a GPS.

"We created a type of cell therapy where cells are taken from a patient, edited and then put back in with a new function. In this case, the CAR T cells were genetically edited to have the knowledge and ability to go and find ROBO1 on tumor cells in animal models," says lead author Chirayu Chokshi, a former Ph.D. student who worked alongside Singh at McMaster University.

Singh and Chokshi say the treatment can also apply to other invasive brain cancers. In the study, researchers examined models for three different types of cancer including adult glioblastoma, adult lung-to-brain metastasis, and pediatric medulloblastoma. In all three models, treatment led to a doubling of survival time. In two of the three diseases, it led to tumor eradication in at least 50% of the mice.

"In this study, we present a new CAR T therapy that is showing very promising preclinical results in multiple malignant brain cancer models, including recurrent glioblastoma. We believe our new CAR T therapy is poised for further development and clinical trials," Singh says.

Work on the study was performed with samples derived from patients treated by neurosurgeons with Hamilton Health Sciences. Proteomics discovery which helped to elucidate the new glioblastoma targets was done in collaboration with Thomas Kilinger at Princess Margaret Cancer Center and University of Toronto.

The research was made possible through collaboration with the National Research Council Canada, University of Virginia, University of Pittsburgh and the Princess Margaret Cancer Center.

More information: Nature Medicine (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03138-9

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-08-therapy-treatment-glioblastoma-cells-newly.html

Drug for pancreatic cancer shows promise against aggressive medulloblastoma

 A drug that was developed to treat pancreatic cancer has now been shown to increase symptom-free survival in preclinical medulloblastoma models—all without showing signs of toxicity

Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor in children. Survival rates vary according to which one of the four subtypes a patient has, but the worst survival rates, historically at about 40%, are for Group 3, which this research focused on.

Jezabel Rodriguez Blanco, Ph.D., an assistant professor who holds dual appointments at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center and the Darby Children's Research Institute at MUSC, led the research, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Her research focused on the drug triptolide and its water-soluble prodrug version, Minnelide. A prodrug is an inactive medication that the body converts into an active drug through enzymatic or chemical reactions.

MYC is an oncogene, or gene that has the potential to cause cancer. MYC is dysregulated, or out of control, in about 70% of human cancers, and it shows up in much higher levels in Group 3 medulloblastoma than in the other medulloblastoma subgroups. Despite its well-known role in cancer, this oncogene historically has been considered impossible to target with drugs.

Despite its poor druggability, previous research in other cancers had shown that triptolide and its derivatives had the ability to target MYC. When Blanco was still a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Miami, her mentor, David Robbins, Ph.D., attended a presentation by the research team that showed that the more copies of MYC that a tumor has, the better that triptolide works

"He came to me, and he told me, 'You know, as Group 3 medulloblastoma has many MYC copies, you should get some research models and try the drug,'" Blanco recalled. She started the project from scratch. "I started talking to people, getting cell lines and animal models, learning how to propagate them, getting the drug, using it."

Even as she started her faculty position at MUSC and began to focus most of her research on the Sonic Hedgehog subgroup of medulloblastoma, she continued to work on the Group 3 research as a side project. She knew how well triptolide was working in these hard-to-treat tumors, and she did not want her initial results to fall through the cracks.

Determining the mechanism of action has been the most challenging part of the project, she noted, due to the drug's multiple effects, and there could still be additional mechanisms beyond those that Blanco identified.

"It was affecting MYC gene expression by affecting the RNA pol II activity, and then it was affecting how long the protein lasts. So, the fact that it's working through two different mechanisms on this oncogene may explain why it's so effective in tumors that have extra copies of MYC," she said, explaining that RNA polymerase II is a protein that helps to make copies of DNA instructions, which are used to produce proteins in the cell.

Despite the challenges of narrowing down the mechanism of action specific to the cancer, it was quite clear that however it worked, it did work, she said.

The efficacy was 100-times higher in the Group 3 tumors with extra MYC copies than in the Sonic Hedgehog tumors with normal levels of MYC, she said. She found that Minnelide reduced tumor growth and the spread of cancer cells to the thin tissues that cover the brain and spinal cord, called leptomeninges. It also increased the efficacy of the chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide, which is currently used in treatment.

Blanco decided to move forward with publication rather than waiting to write a manuscript that answered all possible questions. Knowing that most parents whose children receive a Group 3 medulloblastoma diagnosis will lose their child in less than two years was the incentive she needed to push this work out.

"There was a point at which I could not hold these data anymore because it was working so well that it needed to go out," she said. "The preclinical models were showing such a nice efficacy that it was like, OK, I cannot keep on holding this work, digging deeper into the mechanism of action because the kids that have Group 3 medulloblastoma are dying while we are doing those experiments."

Minnelide has been tested or is currently in testing in Phase I and Phase II clinical trials of adults with different types of cancer, including pancreatic cancer, where it showed some efficacy.

Blanco is hopeful that, with this new research on Group 3 medulloblastoma, a clinical trial for children with this disease can be launched.

Her paper is dedicated to the memory of Insley Horn, a 9-year-old Charleston girl who succumbed to one of these aggressive brain tumors. Research, Blanco said, is the only tool we have to prevent the loss of lives like Insley's.

More information: Jezabel Rodriguez-Blanco et al, Triptolide and its prodrug Minnelide target high-risk MYC-amplified medulloblastoma in preclinical models, Journal of Clinical Investigation (2024). DOI: 10.1172/JCI171136

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-08-drug-pancreatic-cancer-aggressive-medulloblastoma.html

'ChatGPT still not very good at diagnosing human ailments'

 A team of medical researchers at Western University's Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry has found that despite being trained on terabytes of data, the LLM ChatGPT is still not good at diagnosing human ailments. In their study, published on the open-access site PLOS ONE, the group trained the popular LLM on 150 case studies and prompted it to provide a diagnosis.

Prior research and anecdotal evidence have shown that LLMs such as ChatGPT can provide impressive results on some prompts, such as to write a love poem for a girlfriend, but it can also return incorrect or bizarre responses. Many in the field have suggested caution when using the results produced by an LLM for important topics like health advice.

For this new study, the team in Canada evaluated how well ChatGPT would diagnose human ailments if given symptoms of real patients as described in actual case studies. They chose 150 case studies from Medscape, an online website created and used by medical professionals for informational and educational purposes, that were accompanied by a known accurate diagnosis. They trained ChatGPT 3.5 with pertinent data, such as patient history, lab results and office exam findings, and then asked it for a diagnosis and/or a treatment plan.

After the LLM returned an answer, the research team graded its results based on how close it came to the correct diagnosis. They also graded it on how well it reported its rationale in reaching its diagnosis, including offering citations—an important part of medical diagnostics. They then averaged the scores received for all the case studies and found that the LLM gave a correct diagnosis just 49% of the time.

The researchers note that while the LLM scored poorly, it did do a good job describing how it reached its diagnosis—a characteristic, the team suggests, that might prove useful for medical students. They also noted that the LLM was reasonably good at ruling out possible ailments. They conclude by suggesting that LLMs are not yet ready for use in diagnostic settings.

More information: Ali Hadi et al, Evaluation of ChatGPT as a diagnostic tool for medical learners and clinicians, PLOS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0307383

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-08-chatgpt-good-human-ailments.html

'Biden Angry Over Being Kept In The Dark On Israel's Operation To Kill Hamas Chief'

 Fresh reporting by Barak Ravid of Axios has revealed that President Biden held a "tough" phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursdsay wherein the Israeli leader was urged to stop stoking tensions in the region which puts any potential hostage deal in extreme jeopardy. 

Israel's Wednesday assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh has put the whole region on a war footing. But Netanyahu and his government without doubt sees this as justified and necessary revenge for the Oct.7 terror attacks on southern Israel. Biden officials are said to be deeply frustrated at the ripple effects from both the Haniyeh killing and the assassination of Hezbollah's top military commander in Beirut this week

The White House, through Secretary Antony Blinken, has insisted that it was kept in the dark concerning the Israeli Mossad operation to kill Haniyeh. This after Iran issued a formal condemnation alleging Washington's involvement in the plot.

The whole Axios report paints a picture of Biden being played by America's closest Mideast ally, even after Washington has injected billions into Israel's defense.

Biden and his officials "feel that Netanyahu kept Biden in the dark over his plans to carry out the assassinations, after leaving the impression last week that he was attentive to the president's request to focus on getting a Gaza deal."

Or to translate: the White House is belatedly catching up to what most of the world including the Israeli domestic opposition already understood very well - that Netanyahu has prioritized the military fight to eradicate Hamas over the return of the hostages.

According to Ravid's reporting, "One U.S. official said Biden complained to Netanyahu that the two had just spoken last week in the Oval Office about securing the hostage deal, but instead Netanyahu went ahead with the assassination in Tehran."

And apparently Biden got angry: "At the end of the meeting with Netanyahu in the Oval office last Thursday, Biden became emotional, raised his voice and told Netanyahu he needs to reach a Gaza deal as soon as possible, three Israeli officials with knowledge of the meeting told Axios," per the report.

Yet once again this is a US administration pursuing two contradictory polices at once, allowing the US to get bogged down in escalation messes of Israel's own making. On the one hand Biden is angrily demanding that Tel Aviv get serious about a ceasefire and hostage exchange, but on the other is vowing to defend Israel if it gets attacked by Iran.

In addition to a potential Iran conflict, it remains to be seen if and when PM Netanyahu orders an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon amid the ratcheting daily tit-for-tat:

Israeli ministers authorized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense chief Sunday to decide on the “manner and timing” of a response to a rocket strike in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children and teens, and which Israel and the United States blamed on Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.

According to The Washington Post the US has already assembled 12 warships in Middle East regional waters prepared to respond to any attack on Israel. Currently the USS Theodore Roosevelt and six US Navy destroyers are in the Persian Gulf. An additional five Navy ships are currently patrolling the Eastern Mediterranean, including two destroyers.

"shouldn't count on the US to bail him out..."

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said the military is on "high alert", also as it monitors threats from Iranian-linked group Hezbollah in Lebanon. The US ships are on standby also in case there needs to be an emergency evacuation of US nationals from Lebanon, which has yet to be initiated at this point

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-angry-over-being-kept-dark-israels-operation-kill-hamas-chief

SPAC Drugs Made In America Acquisition files for a $500 million IPO

 Drugs Made In America Acquisition, a blank check company targeting pharmaceutical businesses in the US, filed on Thursday with the SEC to raise up to $500 million in an initial public offering.

The Fort Lauderdale, FL-based company plans to raise $500 million by offering 50 million units at $10. Each unit consists of one share of common stock and rights to one-tenth of a share. At the proposed deal size, Drugs Made In America Acquisition would command a market value of $706 million.

The company is led by CEO and Executive Chair Lynn Stockwell, the founder and Chair of Bright Green (Nasdaq: BGXX), and CFO Glenn Worman, a partner at SeatonHill Partners and the CFO of Insight Acquisition (NYSE: INAQ). The company plans to target a pharmaceutical business in the United States.

The Fort Lauderdale, FL-based company was founded in 2024 and plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol DMAAU. EF Hutton is the sole bookrunner on the deal.

Relevant Profile: DMAAU

https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/105980/SPAC-Drugs-Made-In-America-Acquisition-files-for-a-$500-million-IPO