Record numbers of people ended their lives in Oregon last year in America's most advanced doctor-assisted suicide program, which now lets out-of-state 'death tourists' get lethal drug cocktails on the West Coast.

Last year, 431 people received fatal prescriptions under the state's Death With Dignity Act (DWDA), and 278 people used them to end their lives, Oregon Health Authority said in its annual report.

That's a jump from 383 scripts and 238 deaths the previous year.

The Kyiv Independent, a Western-backed pro-Ukraine propaganda outlet, released a remarkably honest article on Wednesday detailing the bleak outlook for Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut.

From The Kyiv Independent, "Battle of Bakhmut: Ukrainian soldiers worry Russians begin to 'taste victory'":

Just days before heading back to fight in the Battle of Bakhmut, a Ukrainian soldier Volodymyr, 54, said he felt ill-prepared.

"When they drive us to Bakhmut, I already know I'm being sent to death," Volodymyr told the Kyiv Independent during his brief stay in Kramatorsk, a city in Donetsk Oblast some 25 kilometers west of the front line.

Volodymyr, an infantryman from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, said he struggled to eat after fighting in Bakhmut for months. He looked shaken as he talked.

For two months, Volodymyr's unit was tasked with guarding Bakhmut against small Russian assault groups creeping into the city. The brigade was constantly under mortar fire as soldiers were outdoors where shrapnels could wound or kill them at any moment.

"(The Russians) keep firing at us, but we don't have artillery – so we have nothing to attack them back with," Volodymyr said. "I don't know if I will return or not. We are just getting killed."

An earthquake of 7.1 magnitude struck the Kermadec Islands region in New Zealand on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The quake was estimated at a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles) USGS added. A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, the U.S. Tsunami Warning System said.

Update (21:00ET): And so, the "bailout" arrives just a few hours before the Europe open, Credit Suisse said it’s planning to borrow from the Swiss National Bank up to CHF50 billion ($54 billion) under a covered loan facility which is "fully collateralized by high quality assets". It wasn't immediately clear what high quality assets CS has left to pledge but in a time of BTFP, we are confident they found something. 

The bank also announced  offers by Credit Suisse International to repurchase certain OpCo senior debt securities for cash of up to about CHF3 billion, which will help the bank pick up a few pennies in bond discount, even as it faces tens of billions in deposit flight.

Dr. Peter McCullough has been a voice of reason in a medical system crazed with COVID hysteria.

As a leading cardiologist, he worked to educate us all on what – and what isn’t – the science behind COVID and the vaccines.

And his warnings about vaccines have been borne out.

Readers will recall that, for the last several months, I have noted that US oil production per the EIA's weekly Petroleum Status Report was inconsistent with the data from the EIA's monthly Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) 

The graph below shows that state of play as of last week.  The two red arrows at right show the contradictory trends, with total oil production essentially flat while shale oil production is shown rising at a healthy clip.  I have noted that this contradiction would have to be resolved by either increasing the weekly numbers or reducing shale oil output.  

We now have the answer.  

The graph below shows the state of play as of March 14th, when the EIA issued the March DPR.  It shows simply massive downward reductions in US shale oil output.  In the March report, shale oil output from the key plays is reduced by 443,000 bpd for January and 250,000 bpd for February.  If we go back one more month to the January DPR, shale oil production has been reduced by 542,000 bpd for December 2022.  This is a huge revision, more than 4% of total US crude and condensate production over a two month period.

With this revision, as the current graph (below) shows, US shale oil production is largely flat over the last four months, and trends in shale oil supply are consistent with the overall US crude oil supply (including conventional onshore wells, Gulf of Mexico offshore, and Alaska).  I need hardly point out that this is not good news, as the visible peak of horizontal oil rigs is now beginning to pair up with plateauing oil production, just as we would expect. 

Remember the mega-hit book The Bonfire of the Vanities? While a work of fiction, the book shone a harsh light on the all-too-real world of lies, corruption, and hypocrisy in high places. In one of my favorite scenes, the power-couple protagonists attend a party at the home of the aptly named Bavardage family, where all the guests blab at each other with deep-fake enthusiasm, making sure to display their “boiling teeth” at all times.

Like the high society portrayed in the book, the Covid regime was replete with rot, from taped-up basketball nets and masked toddlers to vaccine passports and… slogans. Some of the slogans were carefully crafted by governments, while others sprang from the weeds of social media. They all drew from the same playbook, capitalizing on fear and using emotional manipulation to activate people’s guilt circuits. They served as thought-stopping mantras that precluded honest communication about the pandemic. To anyone with even a slightly nuanced worldview, their plodding earnestness grated like an earworm.  

With three years of pandemic history behind us, it’s high time to put these clunkers to bed.

I’ve collected a baker’s dozen of the slogans that have dogged us for the past three years, and explain why they deserve to be torched and thrown into an unmarked grave. 

Never before has it been clearer how useless ESG investing has become than in the case of Silicon Valley Bank. The bank, which donated to Black Lives Matter causes and frequently touted its virtuous diversity and equity policies, has blown a hole directly through "woke" capital allocators who sought it out for this appeal.

...as opposed to...you know...the quality of the bank's assets and its ability to generate cash. 

"Hundreds" of ESG managers have been stung by the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, Bloomberg has reported. A new report says that "915 funds registered under European Union regulations as either 'promoting' ESG or declaring it as their 'objective' had exposure" to the bank. 

The bank "tick[ed] several boxes" for these managers, including a low carbon footprint. However, the "G" in ESG - which stands for governance - seemed to take a back seat to the "E" and the "S". 

Sasja Beslik, a sustainable finance veteran who’s now the chief investment officer at NextGen ESG told Bloomberg: “There are a lot of lazy asset managers taking ESG scores for granted. The bank's failure was a sign that managers who go “all in on carbon are not necessarily managing other risks.”

Webmaster addition: Get woke, go broke, applied on a national scale!

As the Green Party’s fortunes sink, the fortunes of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party rise, with the AfD now polling ahead of the Greens for the first time since 2018 in two separate surveys.

In a survey from YouGov, the AfD jumped to 17 percent, while the Greens were one point behind at 16 percent.

Because of the polarized nature of our political landscape, there is an undeclared competition among municipal officials to make their cities the most extreme, anti-borders advocates in the land. By virtue of its recently passed law that establishes city elections with no meaningful eligibility rules for voters, Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Washington, D.C. City Council have served notice that our nation’s capital takes a backseat to no one in the pro-illegal-alien woke wars.

The D.C. City Council last month passed the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act, which requires only that residents live in the District for 30 days prior to becoming eligible to vote in city elections. There is no citizenship requirement, not even a lawful presence requirement. This represents a new low bar for voter eligibility. Under the act, voting rights would be extended to illegal aliens and even foreign diplomats from countries with regimes that openly despise America such as Iran and North Korea.

Under the D.C. Home Rule Act, Congress reviews all legislation passed by the city council before it can become law and retains authority over the District’s budget. As part of that review process, the GOP-led House passed a resolution to block D.C.’s voting law. Given the slim Democratic majority in the Senate and Joe Biden’s penchant for prioritizing those who violate our laws, however, Republican opposition may be insufficient to torpedo this dangerous change in the law.

In an effort to establish a "world-class" diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program, the United States Air Force is actively recruiting for several senior-level DEI managers at various locations throughout the country.

Fox News Digital reports that since the beginning of March, the Air Force has posted job listings for four high-ranking DEI-related positions, each offering a minimum salary of $82,000.

The Pentagon is providing the most lucrative opportunity, with a salary exceeding $180,000 per annum. In Arlington, Virginia, the Air Force seeks to appoint a DEI official who will serve as a first-level supervisor within the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. This "supervisory diversity equity inclusion and accessibility officer" will receive an annual compensation ranging from $155,700 to $183,500. The role entails ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, meeting customer needs, and implementing world-class DEI initiatives.

Webmaster addition: