Much work still to be done for man who talks about need for depopulation while investing in toxic mRNA shots under guise of ‘saving’ lives. Now he’s demanding digital IDs to rein in ‘misinformation’.
For Bill Gates, the thought of growing older and having to scale back his work to less than full-time scares him to death.
In fact, he says he wants to work another 20 to 30 years.
Gates, who recently turned 68, says he hopes to follow in the footsteps of his longtime friend Warren Buffett, who serves as chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at age 94 and has no imminent plans to retire. Buffet has donated at least $43 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation over the years, roughly half of all the money taken in by the foundation, so it’s easy to see why Bill Gates considers Buffett such a good friend.
Gates told CNBC:
“My friend Warren Buffett still comes into the office six days a week. So, I hope my health allows me to be like Warren.”
Gates told the outlet he still has so much he wants to accomplish. He remains a technology advisor for Microsoft and spends much of his time using his net worth — estimated at $128 billion— to fund potential solutions for the global issues he sees as most pressing. These include creating new synthetic mRNA “vaccines” for nearly every disease known to man, ending poverty, and pushing the climate change agenda, part of which involves a war on food (at least real food) and global depopulation.
Gates has openly called for depopulating the earth by “10 to 15 percent.”
So, unless the Lord decides otherwise, the world apparently has many more years to endure Bill Gates.
Folks like Gates, Fauci, Buffett, George Soros, Henry Kissinger, Klaus Schwab, they don’t tend to take their billions and ride off into the sunset. They stay busy. Kissinger lived to 100 and worked a full schedule almost to the end.
What’s that saying? Evil never rests?
Gates has also gone public recently with his antagonistic view of the First Amendment’s free speech protections, which he says hinder efforts to combat online “misinformation.”
In his discussions, highlighted in an upcoming Netflix series and through dialogue with Stanford experts, Gates argues in favor of digital IDs to verify online identities to help curb this “misinformation.”
“Gates’ proposed approach ostensibly aims to curb the spread of fake content and ensure that only verified individuals can publish information which means that online content can be matched to real-life identities.
“However, this raises significant concerns about privacy and the potential for excessive surveillance and control over digital spaces, something Gates has never been too keen to defend.”
“The US is a tough one because we have the notion of the First Amendment and what are the exceptions like yelling ‘fire’ in a theater.”
Reclaim the Net rightly notes that Gates’ commentary on the First Amendment, using the flawed “fire in a theater” analogy suggests a readiness to dilute foundational free speech principles to implement digital solutions.
Gates added:
“I do think over time, with things like deepfakes, most of the time you’re online you’re going to want to be in an environment where the people are truly identified, that is they’re connected to a real-world identity that you trust, instead of just people saying whatever they want.”
Imagine that. People “saying whatever they want.” That used to be a bedrock American freedom that everyone took for granted — the right to express one’s opinion, anonymously or not.
Gates is just one of many elitist globalists in the West who have decided it’s time to declare war on freedom of speech.
France just recently arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, because his platform does not allow the government to have a back door into the Telegram system for censorship.
Brazil just banned Elon Musk’s X platform.
Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, recently admitted his federal agency is working on a project to use A.I. to monitor the internet and flag content considered by the federal government to be “misinformation.”
The United Nations has called for a crackdown on “misinformation” as has Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, a notorious globalist, has also taken up the cause, calling in a recent interview for further restrictions on online speech.
Now is the time to speak up louder and more boldly than ever in favor of free speech. It might not be around much longer even in the limited doses we see today.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-09-11 08:52:112024-09-11 08:52:11Bill Gates says he has no plans to retire, ever, while joining the chorus for crackdowns on online speech
A 90-minute debate, with charge and countercharge flying back and forth, is complex to unpack and fact-check in a short article. We will leave that to others. This is being written right after the debate. We have not listened to other commentaries as it will muddy our own impressions.
We want to examine the goal and context of the debate. The Presidential race is very close and will be decided by independents and uncommitted low-information voters.
Those who love Trump love him and his performance will not change their minds. For those committed to Kamala Harris, her positions were largely unknown. Polls show that up to 70% of her supporters don’t know her positions on a variety of topics. She has been an intellectual lightweight and prone to “word salads” when asked questions, so expectations for her were low.
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Going into the debate, news broke about an ACLU questionnaire that she filled out in 2019 expressing many radical left-wing positions. Even CNN commentators were stunned. It looked like a night when the PR front could be shattered.
She rose well above those low expectations. She got under his skin about the size of his crowds, his multiple legal battles, and the defection of some prominent never-Trump Republicans.
The objective of the debate for Harris was to strengthen her base, protect herself from the failed record of the Biden/Harris years, and obscure her radical and extreme leftist ideology. Both candidates needed to convince the marginal fence-sitters and undecided. Trump missed some key opportunities to expose her and draw the undecided heavily toward him. Harris exceeded the low expectations the media and her side had set for her.
Trump was often so defensive he did not strongly unmask her as the radical she is, so the low-information voter is left with emotional impressions. The impression was that she was more competent than supposed, and he was the same grumpy guy recalling the 2020 election loss.
From January 6th to Charlottesville, she repeated many falsehoods, but importantly, she was on the offensive, and Trump looked irritated throughout much of the debate. She smiled and was seemingly empathetic, but he failed to expose her extreme positions. She did not cackle or filibuster. She knew her lines and delivered them.
Her face did tell when Trump landed a point but she remained calm and sounded almost rational.
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Trump seemed to have decided to wing it. He landed several strong punches and memorable statements about his opponent’s failings but he did not crush her to achieve a commanding lead going forward.
He did make some good points about inflation and weak foreign policy, especially regarding Iran. But again, people will remember impressions more than positions. He was particularly good on immigration issues and inflation, the two critical issues where he clearly has the advantage with most voters.
For her, there were few convoluted sentences. She was well rehearsed. Instead of Trump unmasking her as an extreme San Francisco liberal, she put him on the defensive for the chaos of his first term. He, in fact, often as he does, uses elliptical sentences that don’t land squarely on the question being asked.
Of course, the chaos of Trump’s first term was engineered by Democrats and our intelligence agencies. Still, though, she exploited people’s memories. Remember, the mainly undecided get their news from the corporate news networks, so she brought back the false media-driven impressions of those years.
She was particularly influential on abortion, painting Trump as an extremist, even though some in the right-to-life movement are mad at him because of his more moderate position.
The last point is important because Trump is weak with urban women. Instead of pointing out that Democrats are defining women out of existence with their radical transgender agenda, he said the states would deal with the abortion issue following the SCOTUS overturning of Roe v. Wade, which left him vulnerable to the claim that “women will have to go out of state to get healthcare” canard.
I wanted to reach through the television screen and say, “Donald, land some haymakers.” A key strategy could have been to ask her what she knew about Biden’s failing mental condition. If she had said he was healthy and capable, he could have asked, “Then why are you here?” If she said she was concerned about it, Trump could have asked why she lied continuously about his actual cognitive condition for over three years.
Or, he could have said, “How can she be supportive of women when she and her administration are legally defining them out of existence?” Notice these are not long sentences.
He asked who was running the White House but did not follow up and paint her as an essential conspirator, hiding the actual mental condition of the President from the public.
I am not saying the debate was a disaster. Trump has momentum and there is still time. But it was a setback in establishing her as the radical she truly is.
She came off better than expected. He missed some key opportunities to expose her failed incumbency and well documented far-left ideology.
He failed to reach out to the middle and the undecided. From that perspective, he did not advance his cause.
My emotional response was one of disappointment because a critical pivotal point in the campaign was somewhat squandered.
This opportunity is important because Kamala is being sold like soap, with slogans and advertising. Much like Biden, she has been in hiding. She finally came out, and Trump failed to put her on the defensive for almost four miserable and damaging years of governing.
Are we entering a period in which we now elect figureheads, political holograms, so to speak, that are really election tokens? At the same time, party bureaucrats and the deep state govern.
I am afraid so, and that is why this debate was so important.
Like him or not, when you vote for Trump, you know what you are getting and who will at least attempt to be in charge of the Washington blob.
With Kamala Harris, we will continue to pretend we choose our president, but others will do the real governing. Who are they? The people who ably prepared Kamala are just in charge of maintaining the false front. The “blob” continues to grow behind the facade.
Needless to say, this was not the outcome of the debate that I had expected. The job of unmasking Kamala Harris must continue. If the American people can learn of her truly radical positions, we still have an excellent chance to win.
TAKE ACTION
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-09-11 02:32:002024-09-11 02:32:00About the Debate: A Lost Opportunity
Editors’ Note: For those who howled about the cost of the Trump Border Wall and did so much to delay and obstruct its construction, it would seem the cost of not building the wall has been much higher. In addition, proposals from the likes of Senate candidate Gallego to increase Border Patrol personnel are a nonstarter. If the role of law enforcement is to act as a concierge service, providing housing, food, and transportation, increasing the number of patrol agents increases the number of butlers and drivers to serve illegals. Law enforcement personnel should be used to enforce the law, that is, detain and deport those who have broken our immigration laws. Entry should be allowed only for those who comply with our existing immigration laws. Those nonprofits and NGOs active in breaking our immigration laws should be prosecuted as well, including organizations associated with the Catholic Church. Federal employees who have actively violated the law should also be held accountable.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy’s office has detailed the ‘breadth and depth’ of the destruction in the report titled, ‘America Invaded.’
The border czar has some explaining to do. But don’t count on a complicit corporate media to ask Democrat Party presidential hopeful Kamala Harris to answer questions about the mayhem the Biden-Harris administration has caused with their deadly open border policies.
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Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, intends to press the point, however. His office has detailed the “breadth and depth” of the destruction in a new 36-page white paper titled, “America Invaded: How the Biden-Harris Border Crisis is Fundamentally Transforming the United States.” The Texas Republican and his constituents in the Lone Star State’s 21st Congressional District have lived with the damage for nearly four years, as have so many other places in the nation dealing with a tsunami of illegal immigrants that has brought the border to their backyards.
“This document lays out the breadth and depth of the continuing damage to our country — which has morphed from a strong nation built on the rule of law that welcomes immigrants in accordance with that law, to a lawless, dangerous, and unrecognizable collection of individuals without common bond,” Roy said in a press release announcing the report’s release.
The numbers are breathtaking. According to the report, Since President Joe Biden and his No. 2 took office, more than 8.5 million illegal immigrants have crossed the U.S. southwest border, approximately the population of the state of Virginia. The Biden-Harris catch and release programhas sent at least 5.6 million illegal aliens into the interior of the country, while some 1.9 million “got-aways” have slipped the attention of “distracted and exhausted” U.S. Border Patrol agents. All told, more than 7 million illegals have poured into the United States on the Biden administration’s watch.
‘Terrible Scourge’
Deadly fentanyl, horrific crimes, and a mountain of dead bodies have accompanied wave after wave of illegal immigrants. According to the report, fentanyl drug overdoses (poisonings) claimed the lives of 75,000 Americans in 2023 — “an average of over 200 deaths a day.” The epidemic is brought to you by the Mexican drug cartels and killer chemicals made in China smuggled across the border.
“Almost all of us know someone — a family member, a friend, or a neighbor — who has been affected by the terrible scourge of opioid overdose, especially from fentanyl,” said Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes follodeaths have torn apart families, schools and communities, and we grieve for the loss of so much life, talent and goodness.” Utah alone counted 541 dead from drug overdoses in 2022, with opioids like fentanyl accounting for three-quarters of the fatalities, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
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There are thousands more victims of myriad crimes, including some of the more heinous homicides and assaults on record, Roy’s report points out. Consider the families of Laken Riley,Kayla Hamilton, 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was reportedly lured under a bridge, assaulted for two hours and strangled to death by two illegal immigrants. The little girl’s body was found bound and stripped in a Houston bayou.
“While Border Patrol has intercepted increasing numbers of criminals, DHS [Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers revealed on August 11, 2024, that as many as 950,000 violent criminals have gone unidentified,” the Roy report states. “In some cases, CBP did not collect DNA for nearly 70% of illegal border crossers.”
Welcoming Terrorists
On Sept. 10, 2001, the nation was ill-prepared for the hell that was about to hit it. The border crisis, security officials warn, has potentially planted the seeds of another 9/11.
As the Roy report notes, terrorists are “streaming cross the border in record numbers.” In fiscal year 2023, 169 known or suspected terrorists were arrested at the southern border. How many “got-away” terrorists slipped through is anyone’s guess.
“At least 99 illegal aliens on the terror watchlist were released into the U.S. after being apprehended at the southern border between fiscal years 2021 and 2023,” the report notes.
“Alarmingly, individuals and groups with known or suspected ties to terrorism have capitalized on our porous border by smuggling foreign nationals, some of whom originate from terror-prone countries, into the U.S.,” the report continues.
Meanwhile, drug cartels have been emboldened. According to Roy’s report, the criminal operations are hauling in more than “$13 billion a year off human trafficking alone.” The abuses are horrifying. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s Management Alert issued last month showed the Biden-Harris administration has lost track of up to several hundred thousand illegal immigrant children, many at risk of being victims of “trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”
“Mexican cartels have joined forces with Chinese crime syndicates to produce fentanyl and traffic it into American communities,” the white paper states.
‘Absolutely Bizarre’
None of this should be surprising after Biden rolled out the welcome mat for illegal immigrants even before he took office. In one of his first orders of business, Biden pledged a 100-day moratorium on deportations and moved to protect the sanctuary cities — that have been invaded by the illegal immigrants — from ICE and other federal law enforcement authorities. Early on, Biden urged illegals seeking asylum to “surge” to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We could afford to take in a heartbeat another two million,” Biden said at an Iowa campaign event in 2019, CNN reported. “The idea that a country of 330 million people cannot absorb people who are in desperate need and who are justifiably fleeing oppression is absolutely bizarre.”
Contrary to the gaslighting by Democrats and their allies in corporate media, Biden made his vice president “border czar” and placed her in charge of investigating the “root causes of migration,” which, it turns out, are Biden-Harris border policies.
As illegal immigration became a top concern of the American people — and a significant political liability for Biden and Harris, who stepped over the octogenarian’s political corpse on the way to the Democratic presidential nomination — the gruesome duo have awkwardly tried to distance themselves from a crisis of their own making. Even Democrat Party press agent CNN has had to begrudgingly report that the new “Build that Wall” Kamala Harris running for president sounds nothing like the sanctuary candidate for president in 2019 and the vice president under Biden.
Paying the Cost
The Biden-Harris border debacle has come with a huge cost for the U.S. taxpayer. The Roy report shows the tab for the southwest border states has been draining, with Texas alone forced to spend $13 billion on border security initiatives “to do the job the federal government refuses to do.” Biden has fought Texas’ efforts to secure its border in federal court. As of January, “60 Texas counties have invoked disaster declarations over the border crisis, and 50 Texas counties have passed resolutions declaring an invasion,” according to the report.
“What many people fail to comprehend is that Texas is facing a real threat to the safety and security of our citizens,” Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith told the Center Square. “This is not an immigration policy debate playing out but a constitutional threat to the sovereignty of Texas.”
The border crisis is gobbling up billions more dollars in lodging costs for illegals, the report notes. Sanctuary city New York City alone has spent more than $1 billion housing the influx of immigrants. And the health care system, public schools, and social service agencies are facing unanticipated costs in caring for illegal aliens. A House committee report earlier this year on the impact of illegal immigrants on social services asserts nearly 60 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants “use one or more major welfare programs.”
‘Flames Have Spread’
The long list of victims includes illegal immigrants themselves. In fiscal year 2022, according to the report, a record 853 foreign nationals died attempting to cross the southwest border. That number includes the deadliest human smuggling case in U.S. history when 53 people, including eight children, were “cooked alive” in a tractor-trailer beneath the San Antonio sun.
Last year, there were more than 8,000 migrant deaths recorded on migratory routes worldwide, the deadliest year in history, according to the Migration Data Portal.
Sadly, the report asserts, the invasion has been carried out in the name of naked politics. America is much less safe because Democrats under Biden-Harris have attempted to harvest the next crop of leftist voters. The regime has fought tooth and nail against legislation like the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), which would require documented proof of citizenship to register to vote. As The Federalist has reported, Virginia recently removed more than 6,300 foreign nationals from its voter rolls. Texas did the same, clearing potentially 6,500-plus noncitizens from its voter database.
The white paper calls for passage of the Secure the Border Act, not the failed Senate bill Biden and Harris have pressed for that lawmakers have called a “joke.” As critics note, among the many warts of the “deal” is the fact that it would commit to law up to 5,000 border crossings per day before the president shuts down the border.
“Radical progressive Democrats have caused the worst border crisis in recent history, and the flames have spread to almost every state and locality in the nation. This crisis is rooted in a fundamental desire to remake and cement one party rule built on dependence on the state,” the report states.
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-09-11 02:30:002024-09-11 02:30:00New Report Details Hefty Price Americans Are Paying For Biden-Harris’ Open Border Mayhem
Tucker Carlson recently favorably praised and interviewed Darryl Cooper as one of the best historians around and as a podcaster with a substantial following. Tucker’s admired guest spouted off a Churchill-hating, Hitler-loving, anti-semitic distortion of history. For him, Churchill was “psychotic” and largely responsible for WWII, while Hitler was a deeply, misunderstood man of peace. Tucker’s reception of this idiocy in the interview would make Dana Bash blush. You can find the full interview here.
Tucker has made many important contributions to the conservative movement but has gradually, even before leaving Fox, started to drift into questionable positions. He is the proverbial boy who when “He is good, he is very good and when he is bad, he is very, very bad”. Perhaps this emerges in part from his sensationalist style of “journalism”. He often seems awestruck, with mouth agape, rendering his guests more profound than they are, and often succeeds in transferring that sentiment to his audience.
He had bugged me for a while but my suspicions came to a head around his broadcasts on the Russia/Ukraine war. I had understood there have always been legitimate criticisms of Ukraine yet I strongly opposed Putin’s invasion. What got me was Tucker mouthing Putin’s lies in almost the same words I had read and heard from pro-Russian commentators. It wasn’t even “decent” plagiarism.
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Trump, in contrast, went to the heart of it. He declared a quick end to military solutions through a negotiated settlement. He famously promised to end the war starting the first 24 hours of his Presidency with consequences for those continuing it. He wisely maintained strategic ambiguity but you could sense Trump’s hot breath towards Putin.
Putin has now come out for Harris over Trump and suddenly declared himself open for negotiations. To openly support one American candidate over another reveals Putin’s panic over a Trump victory. Tucker’s softball interview of Putin was an assist for the dictator in this battle.
Cooper also posted in August of 2023, the following claim that God sent the Romans “to destroy the leprous temple and put an end to the Israelite religion for all time.” He is a thorough-going anti-semite which is likely to be informing his pro-Hitler views. Or perhaps, it’s the other way around. You can’t always know with these lunatics.
Jew Hatred is the Western world’s most ancient hatred. It rests below the surface ready to emerge with or without provocation. It has zero place in the MAGA movement and always has thanks to President Donald J. Trump and other true, patriotic conservatives. His policies towards Israel while in office, his lifelong behaviors towards the many Jews he has known and worked with and his beloved daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism which he honored all attest to the authenticity of his convictions.
Donald Trump rests firmly in the mainstream of the conservative tradition which sees America as a Christian nation based upon Judeo-Christian values. This tradition goes back to George Washington and the Founding Fathers.
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The MAGA right is the answer to these harmful views in our historical moment. We must always make clear our distance from those such as Candace Owen, a “conservative” who has become a full-blown anti-semite. And we must separate ourselves from retrograde Christian positions so contrary to our mainstream and the authentic message of Christianity.
There is also a practical political reason to draw the line sharply. The left, specifically the communist left, which now operates through cultural Marxism and Wokeness, evokes the principle of the “united front against fascism”. This strategy has guided the left ever since Georgi Dimitrov, Stalin’s henchman, articulated it in 1935. Today it is called intersectionality on campuses. This trope is behind all attacks on the right and on Trump as a fascist or fascist enabler. Any links to Hitler’s beliefs or the holder of such beliefs are used to paint all conservatives with the same brush. It is a key component of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Tucker should quickly and loudly disavow Cooper. He is scheduled to do an interview with J.D. Vance shortly and you can bet that the longer Tucker remains in apparent admiration of a history revisionist Hitler lover, the longer the left will have a field day against the right seeking to fuse us into one big fascist movement in waiting.
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Editors’ Note: We have on several occasions expressed similar fears that due to the excessive issuance of Treasuries, the price will tend to fall, causing interest rates to rise more than would otherwise be the case, even while normal experience would be for interest rates to decline when the economy slides towards recession. Oversupply may not stop the decline in rates due to recession, but it may well reduce the decline. Additionally, oversupply will tend to “crowd out” other private entities that need credit. Further, the use of bonds by financial advisors to hedge against recession, and to balance out equities in a diversified portfolio, may now be in jeopardy because the government budget is so far out of whack it is flooding the market with bonds. In short, the normal portfolio function of bonds, diversification, and safety, are eroded by government financial profligacy. In other countries during such a crisis, the government may resort to the use of the force of law to require institutions and individuals to purchase treasuries, to create artificial demand to fund the government. This spreads the hazard because requiring the market to buy bonds, forces the bad credit risk onto others, converting once solid “safe haven bonds” into certificates of confiscation. The other alternative would be for the Central Bank to print money out of thin air, and purchase bonds for their own account to fund the deficit. That creates currency depreciation or inflation. In the absence of any political opposition to modulate government spending, the only remaining discipline will be the markets. That is a recipe for financial chaos.
U.S. Treasuries have functioned as a safe haven for investors during global turmoil for decades. Here’s Investopedia describes their role in providing financial stability:
“Treasure bills (T-bills) are debt securities that are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government and, hence, are considered safe havens even in tumultuous economic climates. T-bills are also seen as risk-free, as any principal invested is repaid by the government when the bill matures. Investors, therefore, tend to run to these securities during times of perceived economic chaos.”
The perception of U.S. government debt as the world’s premier safe-haven asset is changing. The CEOs of both U.S. and foreign financial institutions warn of the dangers they’ve seen develop in recent years as U.S. Treasuries have become riskier investments.
U.S. Treasuries No Longer Risk-Free
A new paper by Roberto Gomez-Cram, Howard Kung, and Hanno Lustig underscores that change. Presented at the U.S. Federal Reserve’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in August 2024, it points to the U.S. government’s debt-financed spending response to the coronavirus pandemic as the cause of the change.
Central banks and governments need to ensure that bond markets function smoothly. Before the arrival of COVID, the U.S. had not witnessed large responses to fiscal shocks in Treasury markets in the past decades, including during the GFC. Based on extrapolation from recent U.S. experience, one might have expected Treasury yields to be insensitive to fiscal news when bond markets function well.
The U.S. Treasury market’s actual response to COVID was markedly different from its response during the GFC and more in line with the predictions of standard valuation models. Throughout COVID, U.S. Treasurys were marked down along with the sovereign bonds issued by the governments of other advanced economies, such as France, Germany, and the U.K. We provide direct high-frequency evidence that these U.S. Treasury yield increases were concentrated on days with significant fiscal news, the footprint of the risky debt regime. In a large class of standard asset pricing models, the valuation of the government’s IOUs is marked down when the economy is hit by unfunded spending increases.
In March of 2020, foreign investors did not flee to the safety of U.S. Treasurys. Instead, they sold long-dated U.S. Treasurys in a flight from maturity. The convenience yield on long-dated Treasurys declined throughout the COVID period. During COVID, U.S. Treasurys were not trading as the world’s safe asset of choice, but rather, Treasurys were trading much like the sovereign bonds issued by other mature economies. Towards the end of the sample, AAA corporates are priced as close substitutes for long-dated Treasurys.
In response to COVID, U.S. Treasury investors seem to have shifted to the risky debt model when pricing Treasurys. Policymakers, including central banks, should internalize this shift when assessing whether bond markets are functioning properly. In the risky debt regime, valuations will respond to government spending shocks, which may involve large yield changes in bond markets. In this environment, large-scale asset purchases by central banks in response to a large government spending increase have undesirable public finance implications. These purchases, which provide temporary price support, destroy value for taxpayers but subsidize bondholders. These purchases may also distort the incentives of governments and impair the price discovery in government bond markets. It is not inconceivable that governments in some mature economies have overestimated their true fiscal capacity as a result of these large-scale asset purchases.
That last point is highly significant. Even though the U.S. government’s debt-fueled spending response began as a national emergency under former President Trump, excessive spending continued under the Biden-Harris administration. It continued long after the emergency faded and continues today.
By continuing it, the Biden-Harris administration squandered the opportunity to refill the U.S. government’s credit reservoir to restore its risk-free status. They could have reduced spending to sustainable levels after the pandemic ended, but instead, they failed this basic test of fiscal responsibility.
The national debt in relation to the U.S. economy has now reached levels not seen since the end of World War 2. It may be helpful to consider how politicians of that time tackled this challenge. After the war, they adjusted their spending habits and stopped investing money in a war that had already ended. This decision ensured that the U.S. government’s credit reservoir would be replenished for future generations.
It’s a history lesson that today’s politicians either never learned or have chosen to ignore. Because they haven’t heeded the lesson, debt issued by the U.S. government has become riskier to the nation’s creditors. Because it has become riskier for those who lend money to the U.S. government, that same debt has become much more costly to U.S. taxpayers.
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
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From multiple sources in Texas, I began receiving last week reports on increased Venezuela gang activity in a couple of communities along with a large oil field in west Texas. These activities followed the reports of Venezuela gang activity in Auro, Colorado and Chicago. There was not sufficient information regarding the attack on the oil field until receiving the report below under today’s date.
There is consistency with the reports on the makeup of the Venezuela gangs; in that, males, 16-30yoa, well-armed with automatic weapons, aggressive behavior and not hesitant to confront security or law enforcement. The reports further state the gangs appear well organized and even slightly tactical in their movements along with “lookouts” and the ability to move and escape smoothly and quickly.
As I write this, I am receiving a report of 20,000 Haitians overwhelming Springfield, Ohio.
It is my opinion, and I want to write this statement again, it is my opinion what we are beginning to hear are still “probes” by very aggressive, very criminal minded gangs testing the response of law enforcement, the judicial system, and even citizens. The compromise of the judicial system with socialist judges, city and county attorneys is a massive concern. Likewise, city councils have been neutered by “woke” and socialist members. These factors are well known to these gangs, and even if not well known there is little to no concern by the illegals that have been brought into our country as to the Rule of Law, etc. I will also state as my opinion, the growing gang activity is more than establishing turf. A battle has begun to collapse the Rule of Law, societal norms and traditions, and the prodigious number of ex-hard-core prisoners removed from prisons in foreign countries will bring a threat to law enforcement and Americans heretofore not known.
Violent gangs from Venezuela have made their way into Texas where they are now targeting critical energy infrastructure in America’s top oil field. According to reports, a Texas-based oil and gas company issued a memo to its employees notifying them that both local law enforcement and the FBI are aware of migrant gangs from both Venezuela and Cuba that are committing thefts and other crimes in the Permian Basin. “Industry peers and law enforcement in West Texas (WTX) are aware of a recent increase in organized criminal activity inclusive of violent crimes, gang activity and oil field thefts in and around WTX operational areas,” the memo states. “These individuals and groups are armed, violent in nature and will not hesitate to use force.”
The memo goes on to explain that the crimes being committed include theft of:
Oil
Diesel fuel
Copper wire and catalyst elements
“Recent incidents have also included two assaults by water haulers who were attempting to steal oil from WTX oilfield sites,” the memo continues. “After the thieves were observed by witnesses who drove up to investigate, the thieves attempted to use their vehicles to run the witnesses off the road.” “In another incident, a thief, acting as a spotter and following a water hauler who had stolen oil, also attempted to run a witness off the road. There have been numerous reports of second vehicles acting as spotters for water haulers committing oil thefts.”
EXCLUSIVE: Texas-based oil company issued a memo to employees warning them about security concerns from violent migrant gangs.
The gangs are allegedly attacking oil workers and attempting to steal oil, fuel, and copper from oil fields in Texas. pic.twitter.com/LeTDz2USya
(Related: Is Venezuela’s recent controversial election a harbinger of things to come for America as the 2024 U.S. presidential election approaches?)
Illegals control America
It should be noted that Texas is not a sanctuary state, nor are the areas in and around the Permian Basin where illegal migrants are running amok stealing things. Even so, these criminal gangs have taken aim at domestic energy production in the Lone Star State in their latest escapades. What we are learning from this ongoing crisis, which also saw alien migrants terrorize Aurora, Colo., a suburb of Denver, is that illegal aliens are everywhere. It almost does not matter who wins the upcoming election because for all intents and purposes, illegal aliens now control the nation.
It will not matter who wins the election. The flood of illegals have a purpose in the overall plan that has been unfolding. Chaos as far and wide as possible. Massive spread across the nation!
To get an idea of how things are being run in America’s sanctuary cities and states, check out the following video showing discourse between a citizen and a cop about an illegal alien who committed a double homicide but was then set free due to sanctuary status. “We do not report illegals, undocumented immigrants,” the police officer says plainly. A cop tells a citizen who is reporting a crime committed by an immigrant: “I’ve arrested a double homicide suspect in this city before, I let him walk out the door because we’re a sanctuary city. We do not report illegals, undocumented immigrants.”
HOLY FVCK! A cop tells a citizen who is reporting a crime committed by an immigrant: “I’ve arrested a double homicide suspect in this city before, I let him walk out the door because we’re sanctuary city. We do not report illegals, undocumented immigrants.” CITIZEN: “So you’re gonna let a person who went to prison, he committed crime in America, who’s illegal right now, you re gonna let him go free right now?” OFFICER: “That’s exactly what I’m saying because we are sanctuary city” This is going to be Harris’ America!
Imagine how much worse things will be if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are installed into the White House. If you think open borders are a problem now, just wait until there are illegal aliens roaming the streets of Everywhere, USA bringing terror and destruction with them wherever they go.
The breakdown of society is accelerating as illegal migrants flood the nation, bringing with them terror and destruction.
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A gaggle of American hunters sounded off Tuesday about reports that Haitian migrants are eating local ducks and geese in Ohio.
While some of the exact details are fuzzy, a number of resident testimonies and news reports point to an influx of Haitian migrants in Ohio catching wild avian creatures for the purpose of chowing down. Several pissed off hunters, who chose to remain anonymous to avoid prosecution from the Biden-Harris Department of Justice, told the Caller it’s an unfair infringement on the wildfowl ecosystem.
“I spent Saturday morning in a goose blind and Saturday afternoon hunting dove, so I do not begrudge the hunter. It’s a truly great American time,” one hunter told the Daily Caller.
“But $109 in federal duck stamps, migratory licenses and hunting passes aside, a real important part of civilization is knowing when and when not to kill things,” he said.
“This is Haitian privilege. Illegal immigrant privilege. Normal people have to get licenses and stamps. Normal people have to spend a bunch of money hiring guides and paying off the government,” another hunter told the Caller.
“Why would I do any of that if I could just go to the park with my shotgun and start blasting? It’s ridiculous.”
Viral stories of people grabbing ducks “by they necks,” cutting their heads off and eating them are circulating on social media.
The unlikeable birds aren’t the only victims, hunters told the Caller; so too is the good hunter with a gun, and their feathers are ruffled.
“As someone who has been hunting ducks and waterfowl my entire life, it is absolutely shocking to see Haitians illegally harvesting them in small towns across America,” another hunter told the Caller.
“Us duck hunters believe in conservation and go through proper steps as U.S. citizens to acquire our federal waterfowl stamps, hunting licenses, migratory game bird stamps and more, depending on the state,” he continued.
Vice President and Border Czar Kamala Harris bragged about granting temporary protected status to over 100,000 Haitian migrants in 2022 during an interview.
Springfield, a town with fewer than 60,000 people, has somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 immigrants now living there, according to the town’s website.
While local police deny that there are any credible reports of migrants engaging in illegal activities, local residents are saying just the opposite.
“These Haitians are running into trash cans they’re running into buildings they’re … flipping cars in the middle of the street … Bro they’re in the park grabbing up Ducks by they neck and cutting their head off and walking off with them and and eating them!” Anthony Harris, a 28-year-old resident of Springfield, told the Springfield City Commission in August.
It remains unclear why the Haitian migrants would be killing and eating random birds in broad daylight, but some have speculated it could be the product of voodoo, a spiritual system practiced by a majority of the population of the small nation that can involve animal sacrifice.
If they really are catching wild animals and eating them with no licenses, their actions are flying in the face of the hunters who have to jump through hoops and red tapes in order to shoot a bird.
“If I don’t have a piece of plastic in my shotgun magazine whilst sitting in a swamp during duck season, the state will take my gun, my truck, and tens of thousands of dollars from me,” the popular Twitter account Oilfield Rando mused.
“Haitian imports can stroll down to the park and snatch up a tame duck for dinner,” he concluded.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-09-10 19:52:182024-09-10 19:52:18‘Illegal And Sickening’: American Duck Hunters Decry ‘Haitian Privilege’ Run Amok In Springfield, Ohio
A couple months ago, Kamala Harris was the worst VP in American history. Now, she’s heralded as the Savior of the Republic.
Suffering from whiplash? We are too. That’s why we set out to expose how this inexplicable 180 happened.
The Daily Caller’s new documentary, “Cleaning Up Kamala,” shows that one doesn’t just become a warm, joyful “Momala” overnight. It takes a whole billion-dollar media effort.
“Cleaning Up Kamala” debuts Sept 13. and is available exclusively for Patriots subscribers. Catch a first glimpse below.
First, the Daily Caller uncovered the true cost of the Defund the Police movement in “Lawless.” Then “Rigged” exposed the issue Democrats fear most: how their political machine managed to secure Joe Biden the presidency in 2020. Now, with “Cleaning Up Kamala,” we take on a corrupt corporate media establishment that built a new presidential candidate, their candidate, out of whole cloth.
Harris was nobody’s first choice. Voters resoundingly rejected her in the 2020 primaries. Joe Biden chose her as VP to check an identity box, but she proved more incompetent than anyone could have imagine. A revolving door of staffers found it unbearable to work with her. She failed miserably as the border czar and her cackle made everyone uncomfortable. Unsurprisingly, her approval rating stood deep underwater — until she was made into the new Queen of the Democratic Party.
With hilarious clips and insightful interviews, “Cleaning Up Kamala” shows how the media turned this trainwreck into a tulip.
The Daily Caller’s documentary productions are made possible by our faithful Patriots members, and we wouldn’t be able to do it without them. To watch “Cleaning Up Kamala” on Sept. 13, and to help support future investigative documentaries, please consider subscribing.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-09-10 19:52:172024-09-10 19:52:17‘Cleaning Up Kamala’ | TRAILER OUT NOW
The attorney helping Vice President Kamala Harris with debate preparation is also defending Google from the antitrust lawsuit brought by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ), which government transparency advocates say presents a conflict of interest.
Karen Dunn, who is helping Harris prepare for Tuesday’s debate against former President Donald Trump, gave the opening statement Monday during Google’s trial. While there is nothing explicitly preventing Dunn from taking on both roles, experts say the campaign’s decision to work with her should raise concern.
“Somebody in the Harris Campaign should google ‘conflict of interest,’” Protect the Public’s Trust Director Michael Chamberlain told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Imagine being a DOJ attorney, working on this case in good faith. Your potential future boss is entrusting her campaign to someone who is working for one of DOJ’s most formidable opponent litigants — against you. That’s disheartening.”
Chamberlain noted there is “tremendous potential for abuse with the overlap of the Vice President’s political world and an executive branch agency.”
“Relationships like these ignite howls of outrage when they involve other campaigns,” he said.
Dunn has helped Democratic candidates in every presidential election since 2008 prepare for debates, according to The New York Times.
Matt Stoller, director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, told the NYT that “you can’t serve both sides.”
“If these were legal cases, she would be ethically barred from doing what she’s doing,” Stoller said.
Stoller told the DCNF that there’s no formal ethics rule restricting Dunn because “the Harris campaign is a political campaign, not a lawsuit.”
While Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, told the DCNF he sees the “theoretical conflict,” he also explained that “helping with debate prep is a way of volunteering for a campaign.”
“Lots of people and organizations both volunteer for campaigns and provide financial backing to campaigns that have business before the federal government,” Painter said.
The Trump campaign called Harris out over the potential conflict in August.
“Kamala Harris will never stand up to Big Tech because she’s being coached on what to say in the debates by Google’s top lawyer,” Trump campaign senior adviser Tim Murtaugh told Fox News. “Think about how outrageous it is — their administration is suing Google, but Harris is taking political advice from the defendant’s lawyer.”
The debate between Harris and Trump, which will take place at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is scheduled for 9 p.m. Tuesday on ABC News.
The Harris campaign and Dunn did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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This Wednesday marks the 23rd Anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on America and the God-given freedoms we so cherish. We remember with anger and anguish the nearly 3,000 Americans murdered by Muslim terrorists in the name of Islam. We also remember and honor those first responders, many of whom lost their lives trying to save others.
This is also a time to remember the thousands of American soldiers who were killed, wounded, or are still suffering in the ensuing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and places unknown. We honor all those who answered our Nation’s call to Arms. We also remember the sacrifices made by their families.
On this 23rd Anniversary of 9/11, let us rededicate ourselves to the defeat of this evil. We will never forget September 11; and we must keep the flame of retribution burning until Radical Islam is wiped from the face of the Earth.
Please pray for all our men and women who are in harm’s way today in service of our Nation.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-09-10 19:52:152024-09-10 19:52:159/11 ─ We Will Never Forget
Several key medical journals, including JAMA, have identified the profound harms caused by medical and health misinformation. They assert that health misinformation on social media disproportionately harms female adolescents, racial and ethnic minority youth, LGBQT+ youth, and other marginalized groups.
There’s been a backlash against the very concept of misinformation. Independent researchers who study how to halt it are under attack by activists and advocacy groups. Many social media platforms are scaling back their content moderation programs. Institutions working to stop misinformation and improve health communication are facing lawsuits to halt their work. Health misinformation … is a global harm with drastic consequences, like disrupting population health efforts and increasing health inequities.
The most recent egregious example of misinformation occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic during which a strident diaspora of lay people and medical practitioners decried vaccinations and recommended ineffective and dangerous treatments like ivermectin to treat the virus.
In a commendable display of assertion and common sense, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) revoked certification for two physicians who fronted an organization that promoted ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19 and that offered treatments for people who had suffered “vaccine injury.” The physicians challenged the decision on the grounds that it was an attack on freedom of speech but they lost their appeal, leaving them limited to no avenues for re-certification. ABIM spokesperson said, “There are limits to what you can do.”
This is apparently not the case when it comes to gender identification and medicalized gender treatments for minors. In this realm, the misinformers have been granted immunity to do harm using treatments that have no sound evidence base.
I have reached this conclusion after reading a paper published last year and endorsed by the National Institute of Health, Current Opinion in Paediatrics:
Medical treatments for GD have a positive effect on mental health, suicidality, psychosocial functioning, and body satisfaction…Political targeting and legal interference into social inclusion for TGD (transgender and gender dysphoric youth) and medical treatments for GD are rooted in scientific misinformation and have negative impacts on their wellbeing.
Almost every word in this statement is demonstrably false. Reviews in the UK, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, many systematic reviews, amicae briefs in various states of the USA, including a recent one from Alabama, and the Cass review all beg to differ.
I have recently written about the shameful organization, WPATH, whose muddled, misguided misinformation about “gender affirming care” is a scourge on a generation of children, adolescents and their families. Yet the very organization and the journal that elsewhere recognizes the harms of misinformation, JAMA, wrote an endorsement of the WPATH guidelines, citing its expanding evidence base of mostly flawed and rejected studies!
NSW equality legislation
Against this background of misinformation about the nature of sex and gender, in Australia, Alex Greenwich, independent state MP, and the Greens party in the state of New South Wales are attempting to push through the Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Bill 2023.
The primary objective of the Bill is “to provide full equality for LGBTIQA+ communities in New South Wales by amending various Acts to address discrimination and promote inclusivity.” This Bill affects no fewer than 20 other pieces of legislation. This proposed legislation creates disturbing cognitive dissonance and downright confusion. Below are a few of the proposed amendments consequent to the passing of this Bill.
Amendment of Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 No 48: Schedule 1[3]–[5] provides that for the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 a transgender person is a person who lives as a member of another sex. This is an extraordinary definitional assertion of how to define a transgender person, using the terms “another sex” with no mention of “gender identity” that is purportedly the foundational definitional identifier.
Amendment of Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 No 103 Schedule 15[9]: provides that a strip search must not be conducted in the presence or view of a person who is a different sex to the person being searched, except for a parent, guardian or personal representative of the person being searched, or a medical practitioner, with the consent of the person being searched.
Again, sex is asserted to be primary. Will the legislation allow for a transman (biological woman) to strip search a transwoman (biological male)? Or a cisman to strip search a transman?
Amendment to the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1995. Proposed changes will allow individuals to alter the record of their sex. But it seems that the Bill cannot explain itself without reference to the prohibited binary or the conflation of sex with gender/gender identity. An example of the incomprehensibility of the text of this Bill is contained in Schedule 14.
“… a word or expression that indicates one or more particular genders is taken to include every other gender. A word or expression that indicates a person’s relationship with another person by reference to the person’s gender is taken to include any person in the same relationship, regardless of gender. A word or expression that indicates one or more physical or body attributes or body capacity by reference to a particular gender are taken to be a reference to every person with the physical or body attribute, regardless of gender.”
In general, the language throughout the Bill is inconsistent, referring in various places to “recognised transgender person” (Section 38B), “another sex” (s.38A), “acknowledgement of sex” (Schedule 2), “male and female” and “opposite sex” (s.23 & s.34A), “former sex” and “different sex” [s. 38B(1)(c)].
Bizarrely, there is no mention of gender identity, or those citizens who choose to identify as non-binary, queer, genderqueer, genderfluid, or agender. Are these descriptors referring to different sexes? Does this proposed legislation even address these identification categories? Is it sufficient in law to identify as a sex other than one’s anatomical sex if that person has not undergone any medicalized sex altering interventions?
On what hospital wards do we place non-binary persons or self ID trans females who remain fully male bodied? This section of the proposed legislation appears to require only a “recognition certificate” to permit an individual to be treated as if s/he were of the sex stated in the recognition certificate.
Further, there are no provisions in the Bill for children under the age of 18. Lower age limits are not even mentioned. How could the political leaders of a nation draft such a nonsensical Bill?
As concluded in the Genspect submission in relation to this Bill:
…the amendments are profoundly anti-women and anti-parent and present a danger to children. Legal recognition of a supposed change of sex is a powerful psychological message for a gender questioning child that will lock them into a pathway of lifelong medical treatment and health harms. Allowing a change of “sex” on a birth certificate (including to categories that are not sexes) falsifies data, perpetuates a myth that sex change is indeed possible, and does not encourage an individual [to develop] a healthy acceptance of [his/her] body.
Tickle v Giggle
The recent Federal Court of Australia ruling in the matter of should fill us with disquiet. The case was essentially a legal contest about the category “woman” and who can properly qualify for membership. It is the first case brought to court arguing gender identity discrimination in which a trans female was banned from a women only app on the grounds that she was not a woman. It is no surprise that the Federal Court ruled in favour of Tickle, disseminating the message that sex can be changed at will, and that gender identity trumps biological sex, which, of course, is the basis of the proposed Self ID legislation.
In addition to erasing the meaning of biological sex, this proposed legislation boasts in its title that it is an “equal legislation amendment.” In fact, it does the reverse—it renders other categories including women and lesbian and gay communities disadvantaged by denying them safe single-sex spaces and criminalizes those who assert their rights under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984.
Australia now lags far behind our more enlightened counterparts in the northern hemisphere. Can we please return to a semblance of sanity regarding the nature of reality and the immutable fact of biological sex? And perhaps we can send Alex Greenwich, at taxpayers’ expense, to enrol in courses in logic, English expression, and biology.
Dr. Dianna T. Kenny is a retired Professor of Psychology at The University of Sydney and currently an expert psychologist who offers a range of services including individual adult psychotherapy, child, adolescent, couple, and family therapy, mediation and family dispute resolution, and medico-legal consultancy. She specializes in psychotherapy for gender dysphoric young people and their families. Her book, “Gender Ideology, Social Contagion, and the Making of a Transgender Generation” will be published later this year by Cambridge Scholars Press.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-09-10 08:52:182024-09-10 08:52:18We need to fight the misinformation campaign waged by the trans lobby
Unprecedented levels of immigration are reshaping the foundation of the U.S. economy, the American labor force, according to a recent analysis. Writing for The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, economics reporter Paul Kiernan stated, “Immigrants are swelling the population and changing the makeup of the U.S. labor force in ways that are likely to reverberate through the economy for decades.”
Kiernan explained that at least nine million immigrants have come to the U.S. since the end of 2020 and are still here — both legally and illegally. “That’s nearly as many as the number that came in the previous decade,” Kiernan wrote of the immigrants remaining in the U.S. Less than 30% of those entered and currently remain in the U.S. legally, Kiernan reported.
Noting the declining birth rate among U.S. citizens, Kiernan pointed out that the immigrants who have entered the U.S. over the past four years are “younger and more likely to be of working age than U.S.-born Americans.” He wrote, “Of foreigners who arrived since 2020, 78% are between the ages of 16 and 64, compared with 60% of those born in the U.S., according to the monthly census data.” The WSJ reporter continued, “Of recent immigrants age 16 or older, 68% — the participation rate — are either working or looking for a job, compared with 62% for U.S.-born Americans. In raw numbers, that likely amounts to more than five million people, equal to roughly 3% of the labor force.” Kiernan also anticipated that the rate of immigrants seeking and claiming jobs in the U.S. “is likely to climb further in coming years.”
While border states are, naturally, heavily impacted by immigration (especially illegal immigration), Kiernan observes that the top five “destination states” for illegal immigrants are Florida, Texas, California, New York, and New Jersey.
Prior reports have placed the numbers of immigrants in the U.S. workforce much higher than WSJ’s estimates. As The Washington Stand previously reported, a new study shows that a staggering 30 million immigrants — again, both legal and illegal — have entered the U.S. labor force just since 2022. While just over 22 million of those immigrants are in the U.S. legally, over eight million are working and living in the U.S. illegally.
Robert Law, the director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), told TWS at the time, “The Biden-Harris administration’s border security and economic policies have significantly harmed the wages, economic opportunities, and security of the American people.” He explained that jobs being taken by immigrants “are not jobs Americans won’t do.” Instead, he suggested that Americans “are being sidelined by administration policies that put American workers last.”
Immigration (again, especially of the illegal variety) has been linked to skyrocketing violent crime and a worsening drug crisis, in addition to the suffering job market. Election integrity has also become a point of concern, as Republicans move to ensure that only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote. Numerous Democrat-led cities and states are expected to spend millions and, in some cases, billions of dollars on housing illegal immigrants and providing them with health care and other related benefits.
Americans are increasingly unhappy with the state of immigration in the U.S. under incumbent President Joe Biden and his deputy, Vice President Kamala Harris. For example, 84% of Americans ranked illegal immigration a “serious” issue, including 61% who ranked it “very serious.” In fact, immigration has consistently been ranked as the second-most-pressing issue facing voters ahead of November’s election, immediately behind inflation and the economy. Continuing reports, like Kiernan’s in WSJ, suggest that the two issues are closely related.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-09-10 07:51:382024-09-10 07:51:38Reports Warn Exponential Immigration Reshaping U.S. Labor Force
The Trump conundrum is now well understood. Though his positions and decisions as president were surprisingly good in some ways, his self-centeredness, history of crudeness, and penchant for insults have led many to say their Christian conscience won’t allow them to vote for him. A growing number claim their Christian conscience is so offended by Trump they feel compelled to vote for Kamala Harris to ensure Trump doesn’t take office. “Evangelicals for Harris,” a group that recently hosted a Zoom call attended by 200,000, declares on their X bio they are “voting for someone who better reflects Christian values.”
To her credit, Harris doesn’t have an insulting nickname for everyone she perceives as a political obstacle, but she is the most radically pro-abortion presidential candidate our country has ever seen. She is in favor of taxpayer-funded abortion up to the point of birth and favors no restrictions of any kind. When, as attorney general of California, she learned the abortion industry was illegally harvesting and selling aborted baby body parts, she did nothing to the people who dissect babies but aggressively went after David Daleiden, the man who exposed it. She is also the first vice president to visit an abortion facility, a move intended to demonstrate just how supportive of abortion she is.
Unfortunately, abortion is just the beginning of her joyful war on the Imago Dei. Harris has aggressively opposed state legislation protecting minors from chemical and surgical mutilation. She staged a photo op in the White House with a bearded man in a dress as if men in dresses and six-inch heels have always been discussing important ideas in the White House. She is also the first vice president to appear on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” to show her solidarity with drag queens.
Not only was she an early proponent of same-sex marriage, she refused to defend California’s natural marriage law as AG even when it was her sworn duty to do so. Though Harris talks about the importance of following the law, she doesn’t follow laws she doesn’t like either.
America’s vice president formally opposes everything God said was good. She denies God made us male and female. She denies God ordained marriage to be a relationship between a man and a woman. She denies we should be fruitful and multiply but believes people are a threat to the planet, part of the reason she is an evangelist for reducing the population generally. But never mind all that, she laughs a lot.
Christians are forced to navigate the reality that perfect people are never on the ballot, so we’re always picking sinners — and it’s appropriate to have minimum qualifications for our leaders. But not all sin is the same. Yes, all sin separates us from God and requires forgiveness, but not all sin is equally harmful. This is part of the reason Jesus warns us not to neglect logs in favor of specks and mentioned that those who delivered Jesus to Pilate were guilty of “greater sin” (John 19:10-11). It’s also the reason Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for straining at gnats while they swallowed camels (Matthew 23:24). Indifference to grave evil because you’re busy being outraged over real but less serious matters is its own form of sin.
We do not want our children speaking disrespectfully to their teacher, but even more than that we don’t want them planting pipe bombs in the school bathroom. “Evangelicals for Harris” is overlooking the pipe bomb in Johnny’s backpack so long as he promises not to talk back to his teacher.
Kamala Harris works to advance the agendas of people who dissect babies and sell their organs for profit. Other things are also evil, but there is nothing worse than that. However bad you think January 6 was, it’s less bad than dissecting babies. Just because good-looking people in expensive suits are telling you it’s not a big deal doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal. If you can get over baby organ harvesting because it’s done with joy, but you can’t get over the fact that Trump is insensitive, that’s not a Christian conscience in operation.
Yes, Trump has made repeated, awful statements about women — including jokes about assaulting them. There’s no excuse for it. But if your moral outrage compels you to affirmatively support someone who facilitates the mutilation and sterilization of children in response, that’s a cultural conscience, not a Christian one. That’s a conscience formed by “The View,” not the Bible.
People have convinced themselves that because they agree with God slavery is wrong, they’re on God’s team. Not so fast. While we have fortunately reached a consensus about the evils of slavery, the test of whether you have a Christian conscience or a cultural conscience occurs when the culture and God disagree. There’s no cost to taking God’s side on the issue of slavery, but there is a cost to taking God’s side on gender, marriage, identity, sexuality, sin, and a host of other issues. If you take sides with the culture against God every time there’s a conflict, you don’t get to claim to be on God’s team just because you also want to help the poor. Everyone wants to do that. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.
A blessing of living in a free country is that we get to vote for anyone we want or abstain entirely. Obviously, I have opinions, but this is less an effort to persuade you to agree with me and more an effort to get us to stop lying to ourselves. Efforts like “Evangelicals for Harris” are lying to themselves and others. Take your “better reflects Christian values” nonsense elsewhere. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. There are a lot of people in the process of straining out gnats and swallowing camels right now. Kamala Harris is at war with God, and I’m not joining that war.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-09-10 07:51:372024-09-10 07:51:37The Difference between a Christian Conscience and a Secular Conscience
Former President Donald Trump is launching a new initiative to bolster his support among American Catholics. On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign launched the “Catholics for Trump” coalition.
“The Catholics for Trump Coalition is committed to safeguarding the vital principles of religious liberty and the sanctity of life that President Donald J. Trump has ardently championed,” the coalition’s mission statement says. “Under President Trump’s leadership, our nation witnessed unprecedented support for religious freedoms, with significant victories both domestically and globally. President Trump restored protections for faith-based organizations and bolstered the rights of religious institutions against governmental overreach.”
“Unlike the Harris-Biden administration, which has systematically undermined these fundamental rights, President Trump has stood unwaveringly in defense of traditional values and the sanctity of human life,” the mission statement continues. “Catholics for Trump stands with President Trump to continue building a nation where the rights of every individual to practice their faith freely is protected. Together, we have the opportunity to secure a future that honors the principles of freedom, faith, and life that are integral to our American heritage.”
Trump has been encouraging Catholics to back his reelection, noting the anti-Catholic policies of his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D). Trump recently posted on social media, “Catholics are literally being persecuted by this Wack Job, just ask the Knights of Columbus. They say that she is the most Anti-Catholic person ever to run for high office in the U.S.” He called on “ALL CATHOLICS TO VOTE AGAINST KAMALA…”
While polling over the years has shown Trump — and the Republican Party more generally — gaining support from American Catholics, especially as the Democratic Party embraces increasingly extreme positions on abortion, a more recent EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research survey found that Trump is trailing Harris among Catholic voters, though neither candidate has the support of a clear majority. Abortion has proven to be a dividing issue, with Trump’s declaration that the federal government has no role in abortion-related legislation finding little favor among Catholic voters. Like most Americans, Catholics rank inflation and the economy, as well as border security and illegal immigration, the most pressing issues ahead of November’s election.
The Catholic Church is strictly and directly opposed to abortion, unequivocally declaring the practice a grave moral evil. Trump’s positions on abortion, voiced over the course of this year, along with the positions of his running mate, Catholic convert and Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), have caused some concern among pro-life Americans, including Catholics. For example, Trump recently suggested that he would support an amendment to Florida’s state constitution allowing abortion, which is currently prohibited past the sixth week of pregnancy in the Sunshine State. In response to backlash from pro-lifers, including Catholic pro-life activist Lila Rose, Trump reversed his position and announced that he would be voting against the amendment. The former president’s abortion-related comments have thus been a source of consternation for Catholic voters.
In comments to The Washington Stand, Catholic League President Bill Donohue explained, “Most practicing Catholics are pro-life (the non-practicing ones are more in tune with the secular pro-abortion side), but they also want to win, and that means we need to be pragmatic.” While Donohue did say that Trump “did the right thing initially” by focusing on politically winning issues like inflation, the economy, and illegal immigration, his more recent comments on abortion show that he has “faltered” and needs “to rebound” on the issue. “He will find a sympathetic audience with Catholics, and most Americans, if he talks about the real extremists — Democrats who favor late-term abortions and who vote against bills that protect the life of a child who survives a botched abortion. He needs to be more consistent on this issue,” Donohue continued.
He added, “Trump won the Catholic vote in 2016, 52% to 45%, but he barely won it in 2020. Given the anti-Catholic animus of the FBI, and other agencies under Biden-Harris, the Catholic vote should be his in 2024.”
The “Catholics for Trump” coalition boasts that, while in office, Trump “did more for Catholics than any administration in history!” Among the achievements listed are conscience protections to ensure that Catholics in the health care industry are not forced to commit or support abortions, pro-life executive orders, and Trump’s address to the annual March for Life — the first time a sitting U.S. president ever spoke to attendees of the event.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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President Joe Biden won Virginia by ten points in 2020, but the Trump campaign isn’t writing the state off in 2024.
In 2021, in a state that had decisively chosen a Democratic candidate for president, Glenn Youngkin ran a campaign that had even the White House concerned about former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s fate. While harping on education and culture issues, Youngkin ran an extensive get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort throughout the state of Virginia that stunned the nation.
At the end of August, polling from Roanoke College showed that Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t have the big lead Biden captured in 2020 in Virginia. Instead, she’s holding just a three point lead, slightly better than Biden was doing earlier in the year.
With talk of the state being in play, the Trump campaign has plans to tap into Youngkin’s star power and his 2021 get-out-the-vote efforts to turn the state red, state officials told the Daily Caller. Trump himself said during an August press conference that “he’s leading our whole campaign in Virginia,” referring to Youngkin.
“As the campaign goes further on and we get into the early vote rallies and to get-out-the-vote events, the governor is going to be pivoting not just to making the case for us, but also bringing all those [get-out-the-vote] volunteers together in a coordinated effort in the different parts of the state,” Jeff Ryer, Virginia Trump campaign spokesperson, told the Caller. Ryer added that Youngkin is scheduled in the coming weeks to appear at at least a dozen rallies for Trump’s get-out-the-vote effort — Trump Force 47.
Trump Force 47 has been largely touted as the former president’s ground game. While a portion of the party’s get-out-the-vote efforts are outsourced to grassroots organizations, Trump Force 47 has found footing in several states such as Virginia.
In 2021, the governor’s campaign focused on the promotion of early voting through rallies and messaging. Youngkin held rallies across the street from early polling locations to encourage attendees to vote. The Youngkin campaign also poured $7.1 million into his early vote promotion which funded a door-knocking effort to help Virginians find a voting site or request a mail-in ballot.
Rich Anderson, chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, told the Caller that the GOP is working with the Trump campaign to replicate the ground game that won Youngkin the state in 2021. To do so, the GOP has established 15 regional campaign offices all around the state and Youngkin has even attended a few of the grand openings, Anderson told the Caller.
“The joint goal of the Trump 2024 campaign team and [Republican Party of Virginia] is to certify 5,000 Trump Force 47 volunteers for GOTV operations. With less than 70 days to election day, we’ve now certified 75% of our goal and therefore forecast that we will exceed our goal by the time early voting starts on Sep. 20th,” Anderson told the Caller.
“These 5,000+ GOTV volunteers will be augmented by 500 election attorneys at polling locations across Virginia,” Anderson said, adding that they party does not have an estimate for how many doors it will knock on.
The party chair added that in addition to its GOTV efforts, the GOP has a strong election integrity presence throughout the state. Alongside the campaign, the Virginia GOP is deploying 5,000 poll watchers 45 days before election day in addition to 500 election attorneys.
“I think that Trump Force 47 fits in very neatly to what the Youngkin campaign accomplished in the state in 2021,” Ryer told the Caller.
A Youngkin adviser told the Daily Caller that the governor plans to be very present on the campaign trail and will participate in early vote rallies in the coming weeks. The adviser added that the governor is focused on making the election fair, secure and something that Virginians can be confident in. In August, Youngkin issued Executive Orders 31 and 35 which addressed various election security precautions such as strengthening Virginia’s voter rolls and counting machine testing.
“The governor previously said this, you really got to turn out the rural parts of the southwest and south side, and you’ve got to do better than Republicans usually do in Northern Virginia. And then a lot of it comes down to Richmond and Hampton Roads,” a Youngkin adviser told the Caller. Anderson told the Caller that the party has set its targets on Culpeper, Farmville, Fairfax, Stafford, Gloucester, Manassas, Virginia Beach, Williamsburg, Yorktown, Richmond and Chesterfield.
Virginia voters have a 45-day window to vote early in person or by mail. In 2021, Youngkin brought in early vote numbers that exceeded expectations, which many attributed his success to. In that off election year, 1.2 million ballots were cast during the early voting period. Youngkin won 46% of early in-person votes and 24% of absentee ballots cast.
“The governor has been incredibly focused on keeping the party united. He didn’t endorse any primaries this year, and I think a big piece of it too, would be the election executive order that he issued. Which is part of making sure Republicans understand that in Virginia we have fair and secure elections and voters can be confident that their ballot is going to be counted,” the Youngkin adviser told the Caller.
Targeting specific voter demographics was a key part of the Youngkin ground game, former top Youngkin strategists Jeff Roe and Kristin Davison told Politico. The campaign went after the vote of “African-American Virginians, Asians, Hispanics [and] women,” Davison told the outlet.
Anderson explained that its operation was targeting different demographics ahead of the election, but stressed the importance of the veteran vote in the 2024 campaign.
“We have significant immersion in the Veterans Committee. I spent 30 years in the Air Force as a veteran so that’s especially important to me,” the state party chairman explained.
“In 2021, we stood up in Virginia an organization called AVV, which is the American Veterans Vote. And they have pivoted and are playing a prominent role in turning out the veterans vote here in Virginia. It’s great because a majority of veterans are conservative in their thinking and in their politics, not all of them, but a majority of them. And so we were able to leverage that in 2021 for Glenn Youngkin, such that it made a significant impact on his eventual election. He won by two points,” he added.
But the 2024 operation doesn’t just come down to its get-out-the-vote efforts — the party is focused on tactical messaging similar to what was deployed in 2021.
As Davison explained to Politico in 2021, Youngkin chose to focus his campaign messaging around “cost of living, education and safety.” By contrast, Davison added, Democrats on a national level were talking about defunding the police, higher taxes and eliminating parents’ oversight in the classroom. McAuliffe put himself in the middle of the education talk, and in direct contrast to Youngkin.
“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” McAuliffe said in 2021. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Youngkin capitalized on the message, and his focus on education and cultural issues such as abortion helped him defeat McAuliffe.
Trump and Vance stand in direct contrast to Harris and Walz on issues like education and parental rights within the classroom. Anderson told the Caller he expects Youngkin’s 2021 messaging to be embraced in 2024.
“In 2021, Gov. Youngkin spoke to the issue of up-to-the-moment-of-birth abortion in a way that aligned with the views of Virginia voters. He also gave voice to the role that parents feel they must play in the education of their children,” he said.
“Senior Republican officials and the Republican Party of Virginia will continue to remind voters of the extremist views held by Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz on life and education. Republicans will continue to represent the views broadly held by Virginia voters,” Anderson added.
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“A secret police system may become a menace to free government and free institutions because it carries with it the possibility of abuses of power which are not always quickly comprehended or understood.” — Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone, 1924
“We want no Gestapo or Secret Police; FBI is tending in that direction.” — President Harry Truman, 1945
“Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.” — Lord Acton
“Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.” — Lord Acton
“The truth was that all men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” — James Madison
“The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” — Selwyn Duke
House Republicans held a forum on the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump on August 26th. They were not chosen to be on the House task force, but wanted to get to the truth of why there were so many failures. Representatives, Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Cory Mills (R-FL), and Chip Roy (R-TX) hosted a forum on the attempted assassination of former President Trump.
Dan Bongino, a former United States Secret Service special agent; Erik Prince, former United States Navy SEAL officer; and Ben Shaffer, a Washington regional SWAT operator, were the witnesses who discussed the timeline of events in Butler, Pennsylvania; communications and rules of engagement between law enforcement; and whether negligence by Secret Service displayed incompetence or potentially nefarious intent.
The forum was two hours and every minute was illuminating. You can listen to the full program on C-Span or Rumble. I know most folks don’t have the time, so I’ll include some of the most relevant information that has not been in mainstream media.
Obama’s weaponization of federal intelligence was on full display in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) came close to ending in DIE for former President Donald J. Trump.
Whistleblowers have told Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) that Department of Homeland Security agents with minimal protective training and experience were assigned to protect former President Donald Trump during an assassination attempt. Hawley added that an SS whistleblower revealed that HQ discouraged agents from asking for additional staff for Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The MSM Silence is Deafening
If you search the web for updates on the Trump assassination attempt, the majority of articles are from July. One article from September 4th states that the House Trump Assassination Task Force was interviewing local law enforcement. Seven Republicans and six democrats were chosen by House Speaker Mike Johnson.
U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, (R-PA), the task force chairman, and ranking member Rep. Jason Crow, (D-CO), sent several letters on September 3rd requesting records on planning, operations and communications and seeking interviews by September 30th from Butler County and Beaver County agencies that were supporting the U.S. Secret Service and Pennsylvania State Police at the rally. Kelly votes with the constitution 46% of the time, and Democrat Crow never votes with the constitution.
Former police officer, Congressman Clay Higgins (R-LA) blasted the FBI for releasing attempted Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’ body to his family for cremation days after the shooting — calling it “disturbing” that the agency would impede further investigation.
“On July 23rd, Crooks was gone. Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5th, including the County Coroner, law enforcement, Sheriff, etc.” Higgins described the FBI’s actions “as an obstruction to any following investigative effort.” The Congressman claimed that while the body was under the Butler County Coroner’s authority, the coroner would “have never released Crooks’ body to the family for cremation or burial without specific permission from the FBI.”
Along with revealing the “disturbing fact” of Crooks’ body, Higgins blasted the FBI for its handling of the crime scene, stating the law enforcement agency released the area after three days.
The New York Post reported that the parents of Thomas Crooks have retained high-powered attorneys as the feds probe what they knew and when. The Crooks family is being represented by Quinn Logue — a top Pittsburgh law firm, according to Daily Mail. Veteran lawyers, John Quinn and Matthew Logue, specialize in personal injury, legal malpractice and employment litigation cases, according to their website. The firm also does criminal defense — though the partners in the firm seem to focus more on civil litigation, based on their biographies.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who is on a bipartisan Senate investigation into the attempt on Trump’s life, vented his frustration at the progress of the investigation so far.
“All I can really tell you is the Secret Service and FBI are basically dragging their feet. They’re stonewalling us,” Johnson said on Fox News.
The FBI is a political weapon of a larger institution that is now focused almost entirely toward supporting a radical communist agenda to destroy civil society in the United States.
House Republicans Conduct Independent Inquiry
Meanwhile, a handful of House Republicans with military and security backgrounds who were not tapped for the bipartisan group are conducting an independent inquiry featuring frequent broadsides of the Secret Service and FBI.
However, the one thing not discussed was the figure on the water tower who was thought to zipline down the tower and drive away. Veterans at the rally saw the figure and even stated that it was a perfect place for a second shooter. However, once Crooks was dead, there was no reason for a second shooter to out himself.
Prior to the actual C-Span forum, the Dan Bongino Show invited Andy Biggs, Eli Crane, Cory Mills and Chip Roy to a roundtable discussion. Bongino opened with, “The acting SS Director now, who was the deputy director previously, was one of the guys in the decision chain that said, ‘We’re not going to employ counter sniper assets to a Trump rally if it’s not within driving distance of DC. And you’ve got to be thinking to yourself, what the hell are we paying for?”
Congressman Biggs stated, “Look, we’re talking about a $3.3 billion dollar budget. If you are going to restrict the protection service that are designed to protect, then somebody needs to be fired.” Biggs goes on to say that the House is in charge of funds and they need to either stop the funding or reorganize the entire Secret Service.
Congressman Roy exposed the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) practices by former SS Director Cheatle which actually destroys the ability of the agency to function in the manner in which they were established. “DEI has been implemented throughout the federal government and it’s killing us.”
Rep. Cory Mills said, “Given the fact of the untimeliness at which point this is being conducted, you will see at this stage, where I think that criminal gross negligence and purposeful intent will be indistinguishable. When we look at all of this, the failure to communicate properly, it draws me away from just negligence and pulls me into that purposeful intent arena that I don’t necessarily need to get into.”
He continued and said, “Eli Crane and I went out there. We’re not yes men. We’re not people who will say yes to go along to get along and that’s why we’re not picked for these committees. Every single one of us here will tell you, we can’t trust the FBI when they admit to 287,000 violations of FISA where they were spying on American people, all of which we did not vote to authorize or reauthorize. What’s even worse though is when I sat there in the briefings. We had the Intelligence Community (IC) sitting there and we were talking about this FISA reauthorization which I was against to begin with, just like the Patriot Act, which I think is a complete spy on the American people, but they were like, ‘we have a 98% reform.’”
“I looked at them and said, ‘Let me get this straight, you’re telling me that I have to go to the American people and tell them I’m only spying on 4,000 people illegally now this year?’ My whole point is that we can’t trust government to investigate government, which is why we set up this individual task force and is why we’re bringing independent people who have expertise such as yourself (Bongino), and Eric and others so that we can get to the facts and make it transparent. And also, not hide behind some low-level classification where we’re not being transparent to the American people. That’s one of the things that’s my biggest stickler. They’ll use the lowest level classifications and try and put it in a back room. The American taxpayers pay for our salaries, pay for that office, and pay for that information. We need to be transparent and gain accountability and that’s what this is for.”
Bongino comments that there wasn’t a counter-surveillance team from the SS, so nothing was done when Crooks showed up with a range finder. He said that if they were at that site, there was zero chance that they wouldn’t have seen Crooks.
Congressman Mills stated that local law enforcement had actually offered a drone but it was refused by the SS. “After all these weeks, we are now at a point where criminal gross negligence and purposeful intent are indistinguishable.”
The bottom line here is that the American people no longer trust these institutions.
Crooks, who left several explosive devices in his car, had searched for information about bomb components as early as 2019. The day after the forum, Bongino exposed the level of sophisticated bombs and remote detonators that Crooks built and that work. They could not have put together only by the young shooter.
Congressman Michael Waltz, a Green Beret who dealt with explosives, told Bongino that the level of sophistication with the explosive device is way beyond the capacity of this kid. He must have had some help. Bongino said, “Somebody was incentivizing this guy to do this. Was it a foreign actor through a proxy? I don’t know, but the oddities in this case are adding up.” He said the SS didn’t even pick up the local radios that were left with them. Had they picked up the radios, they would have heard, for over an hour, that Crooks was being tracked by the local police.
Bongino commented, “Layered incompetence is intent.”
Rep. Eli Crane, U.S. Navy SEAL, said, “Can you imagine if this had been a ten-man Hezbollah team and not this 20-year-old kid who got within 130 yards of President Trump with an AR-15? He had multiple explosive devices with a remote detonator on them and flew a drone. What if this was a real threat and what message does this send to the rest of the world? What message does it send to the ayatollahs in Iran, what message does it send to North Korea, to Vladimir Putin, to others who would love to make sure President Trump doesn’t get back into office? To me it sends a message, ‘open season’ because this SS is not up to the job.”
Cory Mills adds that the cartels at the border are incentivized to protect their revenue which means not allowing Trump back into office.
At the C-Span forum, Cory Mills spoke about the SS “layers of incompetence.”
“We have to ask, why was the venue selected not having adequate security? Why were the higher vantage points not covered? Why was there not a, either comparable or compatible, communications system established? Where was the security plan, the coms plan, the data range cards? Where was the actual overwatch? Where were the ground teams as far as their rates of instruction? What were the tactical techniques procedures that were to be utilized without identifying and mitigating all existing threats? Why was there not an early morning briefing with all to ensure communications and last-minute security plans? Why was a surveillance drone not utilized even though it was offered? And who, ultimately, is responsible or accountable for one of the truly most life changing incidents for a lot of us, where we almost lost the former president of the United States?”
Rep. Mills goes on to list previous failures:
“August 14, 2024, was a reported failure that a SS agent abandoned her post without permission to breastfeed child before Donald Trump was scheduled to arrive in North Carolina.
“August 12, 2024, was reported that a SS special agent who was the official site agent for July 13, Butler, PA rally was under investigation for posing videos and photos from protective assignments to social media.
“July 27, 2024, a SS agent covered the security camera of a local salon in Pittsburgh, Massachusetts before an event featuring Kamala Harris where the salon was closed, but opened it up without approval and utilized restrooms for an hour and a half while the building’s security alarm was going off.
“July 2, 2023, it was reported that former SS Director Cheatle, the senior agency leader, sought to destroy the cocaine found in the White House in July 2024. The evidence was not destroyed due to pushback from individuals in the SS forensics service division.
“May 20, 2024, a man enters the U.S. SS Miami field office through a propped open door and was not removed from the building until the following morning.
“April 24, 2024, a special agent assigned to Harris’ detail had a mental breakdown where the agent reportedly had physically attacked a commanding agent in charge at the base, after verbal disputes with other agents.
“Sometime between 2023 and 2024, at least two people breached President Obama’s Hawaii residence. Though the president wasn’t there, his two daughters were on the premises at the time.
“April 2023, a drunken intruder entered the home of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in the middle of the night. The man was able to gain access to Sullivan’s home despite 24/7 SS protective services due to the sensitive nature of Sullivan’s position.
“This is not a new problem as Mr. Bongino has stated, and with a $3 billion dollar budget, I would think that we would start evaluating those mistakes to make those corrective actions. Would you agree that there should be a much better security for protectives than we’re seeing today?”
Bongino agreed and stated, “The SS has a culture problem Congressman.” He goes on to tell how many agents could not meet even basic protective functioning skills and criminal investigative skills, but met other criteria, completely irrelevant to job performance, who were pushed through and told they were to graduate. Bongino was a SS Agent from 1999 to 2011.
Conclusion
Listening to both these forums is of the utmost importance for Americans to be knowledgeable as to how President Obama and his minions, Valerie Jarrett, John Brennan, James Clapper and Eric Holder succeeded in “fundamentally transforming” America. Not only was the intelligence community weaponized against Americans, but the entire federal government and much of the judiciary has been changed. A tyrannical, authoritarian and despotic power is now in charge.
I lived through the 1960s and saw the murders of four men, President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. All were allegedly carried out by “lone gunman.” Evidence on all four murders has shown the lone gunman was not the assassin.
The CIA has been blamed for both JFK’s and RFK’s murders by RFK, Jr. How many more are there?
The question always remains, “Who ordered the hit?”
If Democrats believed in their positions, they wouldn’t have to deceive.
People with nothing to hide usually don’t.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s campaign is another Democratic Party hoax. Their strategy is to talk about “joy,” “vibes,” January 6, and Donald Trump’s conviction in New York, while gaslighting voters about their far-left agenda and Trump’s policy positions. They refuse to discuss their deeply-held tenets because they, and the mandarins who selected them, know that most voters would reject them. They lie about Trump, because the effectiveness of their attacks based on January 6 and lawfare has already peaked, and may now be helping him. They fear that Trump’s populist agenda is converting traditional Democratic voters, and to blunt this, they distort his positions to make him appear extreme.
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This is the modern Democratic playbook. Think the Russia hoax, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Biden’s crime family and acuity hoaxes, social media censorship, “very fine people,” drinking bleach, and many others. With support from most of the media, academia, and the administrative state, Democrats have every reason to believe their prestidigitation is infallible. It is now so prosaic for Democrats to deceive voters that veteran anchor Chris Matthews admitted on MSNBC that Harris has “to avoid the left-wing corner. They cannot put her in that left-wing because a woman of color who’s also in the hard left is not going to sell.” In other words, if Democrats want to win, they have to lie, and they don’t have to be bashful about doing so.
Harris and Walz are pretending to reinvent themselves, and the media embraces the charade. They expect to deceive enough voters in battleground states to eke out a victory. They might succeed.
As Harris hides from policy discussions and her proxies claim she has abandoned her convictions, the media shamelessly overlooks that Harris is the incumbent vice president who has pushed the administration to the Left, and accuse Republicans of being disingenuous for holding Harris and Walz to their records. This week, Politico criticized J.D. Vance for “tr[ying] to tie Harris to the Biden administration’s policies.” That’s the Biden-Harris Administration, during which Harris has supposedly been the “last person in the room.” As White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained two weeks ago, Harris shares full responsibility for all major administration policies, she and Biden are fully aligned, and there is no daylight between them.
While Biden pandered to the far-left, Harris and Walz are the far-left. In 2019, GovTrack, ranked Harris as the “most liberal compared to All Senators.” Once Democrats took the Minnesota House, CNN termed Walz a “progressive champion.”
Amust-see television ad run by Republican Pennsylvania senate candidate Dave McCormick includes video of Harris supporting decriminalization of illegal aliens; resolutely opposing fracking and offshore drilling; suggesting workers in the fossil fuel industry should transition to other jobs; supporting the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; dismissing putting more police officers on the street as “wrongheaded thinking;” considering giving felons the right to vote; endorsing a mandatory buyback for assault weapons; calling for the elimination of private health insurance, even for people who want to keep their insurance; and supporting free health coverage for “all people,” including illegal aliens.
As San Francisco district attorney, Harris promised not to impose the death penalty—even on cop killers—a position she reiterated as a presidential candidate in 2019. She led efforts to promote a bail fund that helped free convicts, including murderers, serial domestic abusers, and violent rioters in the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots. She effectively supported dismantling the 10th Amendment when she advocated a plan to require prior federal review and clearance of state laws involving reproductive health care. Harris said she would abolish the filibuster to pass the Green New Deal. After first equivocating on whether she supports court packing, she endorsed Biden’s call to force long-serving conservative justices off the Court.
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Harris has remained largely silent about the outbreak of anti-Semitism in the U.S. and Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. She boycotted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in July and selected far-left advisors for outreach to Jews and Muslims. Following a meeting with Netanyahu, Harris vowed not to be “silent” about Palestinian suffering and issued only conditional support for Israel’s right of defense, saying, “Israel has a right to defend itself and how it does so matters. What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating.”
Harris sought to require companies with more than 100 employees to pay men and women equally, regardless of differences in their experience or job specifics. She has been a leader in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement, by which jobs, promotions, and business opportunities are allocated by race and gender identification, rather than experience, capabilities, or merit. The Biden-Harris Administration mandates DEI in all federal programs, employment, promotions, and contracting (see here, here, here, and here).
Just a few months ago, Harris attacked Special Counsel Robert Hur for questioning Biden’s mental acuity, asserting Hur “could not be more wrong on the facts.” From July 18, 2023, to July 17, 2024, the public calendar shows that Harris shared at least 25 meetings, eight lunches, and 46 events with Biden. Yet Harris consistently—and falsely—defended Biden’s capacity to serve as president. “Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong,” Harris said in June. She added, “I spend a whole lot of time with our president, be it in the Oval Office or the Situation Room and in other places. And I can tell you…not only is he absolutely authoritative in rooms around the globe but in the Oval Office, meeting with members of Congress, meeting with leaders in industry, meeting with community leaders.”
The Trump campaign should run a loop of McCormick’s spot, together with a video of Harris vigorously embracing other far-left positions, her implausible, credibility-busting conversion to centrist, and a selection of her best word salads. This will give voters unvarnished information they have a right to know.
Harris instead prefers to con voters. The Harris campaign website has no policy or issues section, and with few exceptions, she avoids discussing policy in her speeches. Against this wall of silence, anonymous campaign officials are walking back her long-held positions. A July 29, 2024 New York Times article titled “Why the Kamala Harris of Four Years Ago Could Haunt Her in 2024” admitted that Harris ran in 2020 on the Left, but complained, “Now, in a tough general election, Republicans are digging up her old stances.” Shades of “Republicans pounce.”
The Times acknowledged that even after she dropped out of the last presidential election, Harris “joined other Democrats in supporting progressive ideas.” The once great broadsheet attacked Republicans for using Harris’s words against her: “One presidential cycle later…video clips of her old statements and interviews are being weaponized as Republicans aim to define her as a left-wing radical who is out of step with swing voters.”
Unintentionally poignant, the Times reported, “The Harris campaign will rebut most of Republicans’ attacks by arguing that they are exaggerating or lying about her record, said a campaign official briefed on the plans who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.”
Another anonymous Harris staffer told journalists that Harris no longer wants to ban fracking, impose single-payer health insurance, or a federal buyback of assault weapons. She now backs increased funding for border enforcement, and perhaps a border wall.
After nearly 40 days of refusing to participate in interviews or a press conference, Harris finally agreed to a pre-taped joint interview with Walz. Broadcast last night [8/29] by CNN, the 49-minute hagiography intermingled a less than 20 minute warm and supportive exchange with Dana Bash, with footage of the pair campaigning, their families, and the DNC. Despite the softest of probes, and two efforts by Bash, Harris was unable to name any action she would take on day one, and spoke only in generalities about her goals. She confirmed that she no longer seeks to ban fracking, but refused to acknowledge her 2019 declaration that “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.” Bash did not follow up.
In the interview, Harris said she would enforce immigration laws, but evaded Bash’s question about whether she still favored decriminalizing immigration. Harris did say, however, that “my values have not changed.” Finally, the truth.
Since being nominated for president, the one policy area in which Harris has been clear is the economy. And, unsurprisingly, she supports a radical Left agenda, which includes:
A $5 trillion tax increase over a decade, including a 40% increase in corporate tax rates from 21% to 28% and increases in other corporate taxes that will make the United States uncompetitive in world markets, as well as multiple increases in individual tax rates, including phasing out capital gains tax rates for Americans earning more than $1 million.
Price controls on U.S. businesses.
Capital gains taxes on accrued, but unrealized gains.
A federally funded $25,000 give away to first-time homebuyers.
To paraphrase liberal Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell’s view of Harris’s proposed price controls, if Harris wants to avoid being called a Communist, she might want to avoid far-left Marxist economic policies.
Showing her progressive bona fides, Harris passed over moderates to select a far-left running mate in Tim Walz. His first executive action as Minnesota governor was establishing a DEI council. He also worked to ensure that all state actions are viewed through a “lens of equity,” imposed a radical Critical Race Theory-based ethnic studies curriculum on Minnesota’s public schools, refused to use the National Guard to stop the riots after George Floyd’s death, and turnedMinnesota into a sanctuary state. Walz approved driver’s licenses, state funded health care, and college tuition for illegal immigrants; 20-week taxpayer-paid family leave; and automaticvoter registration without proof of citizenship or residency.
Walz supportsrestrictingpolitical speech that he deems inappropriate. He ordered 80% carbon-free electricity by 2030 and 100% by 2040. Under Walz, Minnesota has become a “trans refuge” and provides “gender-affirming care” for minors and mandatory tampons in boys’ bathrooms. His administration opened a hotline for residents to report neighbors who were noncompliant with the state’s stringent COVID-19 lockdowns.
The Harris-Walz campaign is working overtime to hide their candidates’ far-left views.
Except for her hallmark support of abortion rights, Harris’s acceptance speech at the DNC was almost devoid of policy. She never discussed immigration, inflation, DEI, transgenderism, women’s sports, fracking, fossil fuels, healthcare, law enforcement, international trade, the Big Green Deal, filibusters, the Supreme Court, Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran, and barely mentioned the Biden-Harris Administration. She never mentioned her proposed tax increases or price controls, her staff’s purported walk-backs, or any change in her long-held positions.
Harris reiterated her views on Israel’s conditional right of defense, and, despite the Biden-Harris Administration’s consistent cuts in defense spending, promised that America would have the “strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
She falsely accused Trump of seeking to cut Medicare and Social Security, ignored the middle-class beneficiaries of Trump’s tax cuts and other policies, and claimed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 speaks for Trump. (Trump was not involved in Project 2025 and disagrees with many of its conclusions.)
Harris accused Trump of intending to enact “what, in effect, is a national sales tax.” Though she presumably meant to disparage trade tariffs—many of which were retained or increased by the Biden-Harris Administration—the ambiguity becomes dishonest when talking to voters who are unaware of the legerdemain.
Harris oddly attacked Trump for requiring “states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.” (Current law requires states to report on medical treatments.) She attacked Trump for cutting off IVF treatments—something he has never advocated and is expressly repudiated by the Republican platform.
The 2024 GOP platform states, “President Trump has made absolutely clear that he will not cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security.” It further promises, “We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”
In her speech, Harris also said that Trump’s “explicit intent [is] to jail journalists, political opponents, and anyone he sees as the enemy.” That is pure invention. By contrast, the Biden-Harris Administration has weaponized the Justice Department to attack conservative parents on school boards, Catholics, and pro-life advocates. Its Justice Department is abusing a seldom-used 1870 statute to enhance the sentences of peaceful abortion protesters, and filed at least 50 cases under the FACE Act against pro-life activists, but only five against abortion activists. It sent federal agents armed with long guns to arrest Mark Houck in front of his children for shoving someone who threatened his child during a demonstration at an abortion clinic (Houck was later acquitted).
The Biden-Harris Administration unconstitutionally appointed special prosecutor Jack Smith to indict Trump, the first administration to seek to imprison a former president. They sent Trump advisors Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro to jail—the first time since 1948 anyone has been jailed for congressional testimony. And they unleashed an unprecedented campaign to censor, suppress, and demonetize conservative voices on social media.
In his acceptance speech, Walz claimed that Trump opposes IVF and fertility treatments and that Trump and Vance own Project 2025. He said, “If these guys get back in the White House, they’ll start jacking up the costs on the middle class, they’ll repeal the Affordable Care Act, they’ll gut Social Security and Medicare, and they will ban abortion across this country, with or without Congress.” These allegations are contrary to Trump’s long-held views and the GOP platform.
There are many policies about which the Democratic and Republican candidates disagree. These are policies about which Harris and Walz could appeal to voters to see things their way. But telling voters the truth about their views on policy is the last thing Harris and Walz want to do.
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-09-10 02:30:002024-09-10 02:30:00Harris and Walz Don’t Think Much of Voters
One problem with writing an economic and market commentary is that it is a lot like writing a movie review after seeing only the first few scenes. There is more of the story to come, with complex twists and turns in the plot, but the reviewer must say something even though the ending is unknown. As a result, most reviews are wrong.
A dramatic example can be seen in recent headlines from the Wall Street Journal print edition. On September 3rd, the upper right front page article read: Investors’ Attitude On Stocks Get Ultra Bullish. The very next day, September 4th, in the same prominent spot, the headline ran: Stocks Sell Off On Fears Economy Is Cooling.
Wow! How things can change in a day! It is enough to give your entire portfolio whiplash.
ADVERTISEMENT
But we don’t mean to be critical – we just acknowledged that none of us knows the end of the movie with any certainty.
Nevertheless, we all try to see the future because we have to revise our portfolios from time to time, and that is the very nature of economic commentary. However, just because we do not know everything does not mean we know nothing. Those of us who don’t want to be unburdened by what has been have economic reasoning, experience, and history to draw on. Being burdened by data and history is not a bad thing.
To pick up the thread of our last commentary, we suggested the bulk of the data was showing that the economy was cooling off, that stocks were vulnerable because of extremely high sentiment and over-valuation, and that September, in terms of seasonal performance, is the worst month of the year. If we can be permitted to quote ourselves from Let’s Revise Those Revisions:
“To follow up on that seasonal metaphor, we now think we have had enough cool nights the leaves are starting to turn. But like everyone else, we are looking at a lot of data, and trying to sense a trend. Are there more indicators going up than down? Are all data points equal, or are some more important than others? How do you weigh the data, knowing some is more important than others?
These questions are hard to answer, but we think things have tilted toward the idea that the economy is cooling off. However, much of this data is subject to revisions. This has particularly been the case with government-produced data lately.”
How the rest of the month will go is unknown, but as this is being written, we have not had a single upside day for the month, and we have declined 3.4% in the S&P 500. It has been the worst week of the year. It would seem that September is earning its reputation once again.
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The continual deterioration in the employment data and subsequent revisions of past months are of greater concern. Both June and July jobs numbers were revised lower once again. Remarkable even for government numbers, 6 of the 7 last monthly jobs reports have been revised lower. Indeed, let’s revise the revisions.
According to the Kobeissi Letter, full-time employment dropped by one million in August, the 7th month in a row. Part-time employment rose for the 16th month in a row, and the number of people working at more than one job is growing. According to the latest Challenger Report, job cuts at US companies were up 193% in August. None of these trends are healthy.
We also suggested that at some point, the market would quit interpreting that “bad news is good news” and likely begin to regard bad news as…bad. That now seems to be the case because even though the weak numbers now justify a FED cut in interest rates, the reason rates may fall is not so much inflation is declining but that the economy is weakening. That is not a good story for forward earnings.
Further, the skew in the employment data is important. Donald Trump has been pilloried in the press because he suggested that most of the new jobs were going to illegal aliens. But, once again, he was correct. According to E.J. Antoni of the Heritage Foundation:
You have to give credit to Biden-Harris immigration policies. They allow foreigners not only to cancel out your votes, but they want them to take your jobs as well. Pass this data to a Democrat if you have the chance.
Also of concern is the number of job openings. A business must have a job opening before a job can be filled, and the trends don’t look promising.
Both the revised employment data and job openings support the FED in its change of direction regarding lowering interest rates. However, we do have some concerns that they might be behind the curve. That is to say, the economy was far weaker than they thought, and now they will move after employment is already imploding. It could be that bad data has not only misled the public but also the policymakers.
Now, we have the real risk of policy error once again. The Fed, already having blown multiple financial bubbles and causing the worst inflation in two generations, may have decided to cut too late. A recession will cause revenue to fall, endangering the ability to service bloated debt in almost all areas of society. This will put pressure on the Fed to once again crank up money creation to support government rescue efforts. We will start another round of intervention if the Treasury Bond market can take it.
Going into September, the public displays record bullishness with these impending rate cuts. Historically, once everyone gets on one side of the boat, the market becomes unbalanced and can capsize.
Judging public sentiment is difficult because of the problem of “what do you think versus what are you doing.” When both survey data (polls asking what do you think), and measures of investor action (what are you doing with your money), indicate the same condition, the market can have problems of vulnerability to bad news.
The American Association of Individual Investors constantly surveys the public, and until mid-September, its polling had been close to the highest bullish readings in the past two years.
However, as they say, the public can say they feel one way, but act in another. But, in this case, both survey and action data were together, a cautionary development.
This chart indicates the public is “all in” concerning the stock market. Not only do polls indicate excessive bullishness, but the public has also taken action and put a record portion of their household assets in equities.
Meanwhile, hedge funds have been huge sellers, and Warren Buffet has the largest cash hoard in Berkshire Hathaway’s history. Why is Buffet so cautious while the public is so bullish? Who do you think is correct?
This, in turn, raises several interesting questions: If everyone is already bullish and has placed their bets, where does the new money come from to drive stocks higher? Secondly, if stocks were to decline sharply, how would that make the public feel, and what influence would it have on consumer spending?
Our guess is it would be negative on both counts.
The public also holds an even more significant portion of household wealth in real estate, especially residential real estate.
Commercial real estate is already in serious trouble, but residential is in a kind of twilight hour. Prices remain very high and have given little ground to the downside. On the other hand, affordability is terrible, so the demand for homes is off sharply. Then why do not supply and demand get in gear, and prices decline to reflect the lack of demand?
It largely seems to be because the market is “frozen.” Millions of home buyers are financed with 3% mortgages, and they are disinclined to sell because they cannot afford to get into a new house at current higher real estate prices and interest rates. Hence, secondary supply is constrained, even though demand is soft.However, where people are not in those 3% mortgages (newly constructed homes), we are seeing discounts on newly constructed homes relative to existing homes.
Overall, however, the housing market is structurally out of balance, much like the stock market. Inflated like other assets by easy money policies and almost 20 years of ultra-low interest rates, housing prices are running way ahead of the wages needed to purchase a home. That divergence can’t last forever.
If stocks were to decline, as well as residential real estate, we think this would not only make consumers feel poorer, but they would also be poorer, and that could weaken one of the strongest pillars of the economy: consumer spending.
Consumer borrowing has already been at a record, and as we indicated before, rising default rates on credit cards and car loans hint that the consumer might be getting tapped out in terms of the ability to borrow to keep spending at a high rate.
There has already been a palpable shift within consumer spending towards necessities and away from discretionary purchases, another hint that the consumer, while still running hard, is beginning to get winded.
Insofar as stocks are concerned, the weakness so far has been minimal, and no real break in longer-term price trends has occurred. The system still seems awash in liquidity, with neither the Chicago Federal Reserve nor the Goldman Sachs Financial Conditions Index declining. Even the money supply seems to be starting to reverse once again to the upside.
The stock market seems to be in better shape than the underlying economy. Our best guess is that the economy is headed for autumn, and the leaves are now yellow. The big question remains: Will stocks hold up if the leaves turn red?
While the market is still having quite a good year, if you look at sector performance, you can see some shifts indicating economic softness and consumer exhaustion.
This analysis from Yahoo Finance shows better performance from defensive sectors (except big tech) such as utilities, communication services, and consumer defensive, as opposed to industrial, materials, and energy, which are sensitive to cyclical economic trends.
Would we be remiss if we did not note that while stocks are up 14% overall for the year as we write, gold prices are up 20% year to date?
We are not sure what that tells us, but interestingly, an inert metal is performing better than the market of the largest capitalistic country in the world. Perhaps gold is smelling that neither political party will cut spending, and if we nose into recession, excess spending will be piled upon excess as neither party will want to be blamed for suffering a recession and “doing nothing.”
Meanwhile, the movie will continue.
*****
Image credit: Pixabay
TAKE ACTION
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-09-10 02:29:002024-09-10 02:29:00There Is More Than A Hint Of Yellow In The Leaves
One problem with writing an economic and market commentary is that it is a lot like writing a movie review after seeing only the first few scenes. There is more of the story to come, with complex twists and turns in the plot, but the reviewer must say something even though the ending is unknown. As a result, most reviews are wrong.
A dramatic example can be seen in recent headlines from the Wall Street Journal print edition. On September 3rd, the upper right front page article read: Investors’ Attitude On Stocks Get Ultra Bullish. The very next day, September 4th, in the same prominent spot, the headline ran: Stocks Sell Off On Fears Economy Is Cooling.
Wow! How things can change in a day! It is enough to give your entire portfolio whiplash.
ADVERTISEMENT
But we don’t mean to be critical – we just acknowledged that none of us knows the end of the movie with any certainty.
Nevertheless, we all try to see the future because we have to revise our portfolios from time to time, and that is the very nature of economic commentary. However, just because we do not know everything does not mean we know nothing. Those of us who don’t want to be unburdened by what has been have economic reasoning, experience, and history to draw on. Being burdened by data and history is not a bad thing.
To pick up the thread of our last commentary, we suggested the bulk of the data was showing that the economy was cooling off, that stocks were vulnerable because of extremely high sentiment and over-valuation, and that September, in terms of seasonal performance, is the worst month of the year. If we can be permitted to quote ourselves from Let’s Revise Those Revisions:
“To follow up on that seasonal metaphor, we now think we have had enough cool nights the leaves are starting to turn. But like everyone else, we are looking at a lot of data, and trying to sense a trend. Are there more indicators going up than down? Are all data points equal, or are some more important than others? How do you weigh the data, knowing some is more important than others?
These questions are hard to answer, but we think things have tilted toward the idea that the economy is cooling off. However, much of this data is subject to revisions. This has particularly been the case with government-produced data lately.”
How the rest of the month will go is unknown, but as this is being written, we have not had a single upside day for the month, and we have declined 3.4% in the S&P 500. It has been the worst week of the year. It would seem that September is earning its reputation once again.
ADVERTISEMENT
The continual deterioration in the employment data and subsequent revisions of past months are of greater concern. Both June and July jobs numbers were revised lower once again. Remarkable even for government numbers, 6 of the 7 last monthly jobs reports have been revised lower. Indeed, let’s revise the revisions.
According to the Kobeissi Letter, full-time employment dropped by one million in August, the 7th month in a row. Part-time employment rose for the 16th month in a row, and the number of people working at more than one job is growing. According to the latest Challenger Report, job cuts at US companies were up 193% in August. None of these trends are healthy.
We also suggested that at some point, the market would quit interpreting that “bad news is good news” and likely begin to regard bad news as…bad. That now seems to be the case because even though the weak numbers now justify a FED cut in interest rates, the reason rates may fall is not so much inflation is declining but that the economy is weakening. That is not a good story for forward earnings.
Further, the skew in the employment data is important. Donald Trump has been pilloried in the press because he suggested that most of the new jobs were going to illegal aliens. But, once again, he was correct. According to E.J. Antoni of the Heritage Foundation:
You have to give credit to Biden-Harris immigration policies. They allow foreigners not only to cancel out your votes, but they want them to take your jobs as well. Pass this data to a Democrat if you have the chance.
Also of concern is the number of job openings. A business must have a job opening before a job can be filled, and the trends don’t look promising.
Both the revised employment data and job openings support the FED in its change of direction regarding lowering interest rates. However, we do have some concerns that they might be behind the curve. That is to say, the economy was far weaker than they thought, and now they will move after employment is already imploding. It could be that bad data has not only misled the public but also the policymakers.
Now, we have the real risk of policy error once again. The Fed, already having blown multiple financial bubbles and causing the worst inflation in two generations, may have decided to cut too late. A recession will cause revenue to fall, endangering the ability to service bloated debt in almost all areas of society. This will put pressure on the Fed to once again crank up money creation to support government rescue efforts. We will start another round of intervention if the Treasury Bond market can take it.
Going into September, the public displays record bullishness with these impending rate cuts. Historically, once everyone gets on one side of the boat, the market becomes unbalanced and can capsize.
Judging public sentiment is difficult because of the problem of “what do you think versus what are you doing.” When both survey data (polls asking what do you think), and measures of investor action (what are you doing with your money), indicate the same condition, the market can have problems of vulnerability to bad news.
The American Association of Individual Investors constantly surveys the public, and until mid-September, its polling had been close to the highest bullish readings in the past two years.
However, as they say, the public can say they feel one way, but act in another. But, in this case, both survey and action data were together, a cautionary development.
This chart indicates the public is “all in” concerning the stock market. Not only do polls indicate excessive bullishness, but the public has also taken action and put a record portion of their household assets in equities.
Meanwhile, hedge funds have been huge sellers, and Warren Buffet has the largest cash hoard in Berkshire Hathaway’s history. Why is Buffet so cautious while the public is so bullish? Who do you think is correct?
This, in turn, raises several interesting questions: If everyone is already bullish and has placed their bets, where does the new money come from to drive stocks higher? Secondly, if stocks were to decline sharply, how would that make the public feel, and what influence would it have on consumer spending?
Our guess is it would be negative on both counts.
The public also holds an even more significant portion of household wealth in real estate, especially residential real estate.
Commercial real estate is already in serious trouble, but residential is in a kind of twilight hour. Prices remain very high and have given little ground to the downside. On the other hand, affordability is terrible, so the demand for homes is off sharply. Then why do not supply and demand get in gear, and prices decline to reflect the lack of demand?
It largely seems to be because the market is “frozen.” Millions of home buyers are financed with 3% mortgages, and they are disinclined to sell because they cannot afford to get into a new house at current higher real estate prices and interest rates. Hence, secondary supply is constrained, even though demand is soft.However, where people are not in those 3% mortgages (newly constructed homes), we are seeing discounts on newly constructed homes relative to existing homes.
Overall, however, the housing market is structurally out of balance, much like the stock market. Inflated like other assets by easy money policies and almost 20 years of ultra-low interest rates, housing prices are running way ahead of the wages needed to purchase a home. That divergence can’t last forever.
If stocks were to decline, as well as residential real estate, we think this would not only make consumers feel poorer, but they would also be poorer, and that could weaken one of the strongest pillars of the economy: consumer spending.
Consumer borrowing has already been at a record, and as we indicated before, rising default rates on credit cards and car loans hint that the consumer might be getting tapped out in terms of the ability to borrow to keep spending at a high rate.
There has already been a palpable shift within consumer spending towards necessities and away from discretionary purchases, another hint that the consumer, while still running hard, is beginning to get winded.
Insofar as stocks are concerned, the weakness so far has been minimal, and no real break in longer-term price trends has occurred. The system still seems awash in liquidity, with neither the Chicago Federal Reserve nor the Goldman Sachs Financial Conditions Index declining. Even the money supply seems to be starting to reverse once again to the upside.
The stock market seems to be in better shape than the underlying economy. Our best guess is that the economy is headed for autumn, and the leaves are now yellow. The big question remains: Will stocks hold up if the leaves turn red?
While the market is still having quite a good year, if you look at sector performance, you can see some shifts indicating economic softness and consumer exhaustion.
This analysis from Yahoo Finance shows better performance from defensive sectors (except big tech) such as utilities, communication services, and consumer defensive, as opposed to industrial, materials, and energy, which are sensitive to cyclical economic trends.
Would we be remiss if we did not note that while stocks are up 14% overall for the year as we write, gold prices are up 20% year to date?
We are not sure what that tells us, but interestingly, an inert metal is performing better than the market of the largest capitalistic country in the world. Perhaps gold is smelling that neither political party will cut spending, and if we nose into recession, excess spending will be piled upon excess as neither party will want to be blamed for suffering a recession and “doing nothing.”
Meanwhile, the movie will continue.
*****
Image credit: Pixabay
TAKE ACTION
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-09-10 02:29:002024-09-10 02:29:00The Economy: There Is More Than A Hint Of Yellow In The Leaves
Recently I read how the current campaign between Trump and Harris is divided between the team who is bringing joy to the campaign trail and the one that brings rage. That is a fascinating way to characterize the two campaigns. Let’s take a closer look.
We begin with the fact that we have a campaign between the incumbents and the challengers. No matter what Ms. Harris says, she is the incumbent. By definition, the incumbents are going to tell America that things are wonderful, and we need to continue on the path to greatness with just a few tweaks here and there. The challengers must say negative things because they are forced to say what they are getting isn’t good enough and they can do better. Since historically any campaign could be characterized as Joy vs. Rage, we need to dig a bit deeper.
Theoretically, most if not all journalists should find the sudden change of candidates interesting. There is a significant interest regarding what Harris and Walz knew about President Biden’s inability to continue on as a candidate. It didn’t just happen the night of June 27th when he showed up for the debate. Ms. Harris tells us she worked intimately with Mr. Biden which is why she is prepared to take over his job. Mr. Walz emerged from a Governors’ meeting with President Biden after the debate and vouched for his competence. The American public was purposely deceived, and we deserve to know what they knew and when they knew it. That would be a misdirection from the Joy Campaign though.
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Niall Ferguson wrote “when the Democrats could no longer keep the Biden fiction alive it turned to another one, pretending Kamala Harris was in fact the perfect candidate, who would sweep to victory on November the fifth.” That is where the Joy campaign began.
Apparently, empirical evidence of policy failures in their respective states (California and Minnesota) has caused people to flood out to Nevada, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, etc. Certainly, crime and homelessness in California to accompany high taxes and excessive poverty is not all caused by Harris, but she certainly contributed to it. The people fleeing Minnesota are obviously related to the policies enacted by “Coach Walz” as the exodus has occurred since he became Governor. Hush – keep that to yourself because it is the Joy Campaign.
As Victor Davis Hanson stated, “No one voted for the Biden-Harris ticket to borrow trillions sparking hyperinflation, to wage war on fossil fuels, to go woke, to welcome in 10 million illegal aliens, to abandon $50 billion in weapons to the terrorist Taliban, and to find America facing existential wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and soon perhaps over Taiwan.” That is because we were not allowed to discuss policy in 2020 as Uncle Joe huddled in his beach home with his wife and juvenile delinquent child while hiding from the public. This is not because we had the Joy Campaign then, but the seeds were certainly planted.
On August 8th, Harris was stopped on a tarmac and answered questions for an entire minute. The press, so rabid for the truth, gave her a complete pass when she said she would look at having an interview by the end of the month (23 days later). She did comply with that 21 days later, but with her new soulmate at her side. Who wants to subvert the Joy Campaign?
The Joy Campaign would be unique if it were not modeled after, you guessed it, The Trump campaign. It is as if the fawning press had skipped over the events where often tens of thousands of people line up for days to participate in a Trump rally. It is almost as if the members of Pravda had never read the multiple stories of formerly anti-Trump people attending a Trump rally, feeling the love, and telling the world the people– you know, the ones they were told to either hate or that they were just rubes, were actually genuinely nice, warm, kind people. What used to be considered “Minnesota nice” really could be found in Pennsylvania or Georgia or Nevada at a Trump Rally.
Sure, the rallies for the Joy Campaign are drawing lots of people, but the question is are they there because they are just delighted with their former candidate — the old, weird man who leaned into the mic and whispered at us while stating something unintelligible — is gone? Don’t you think at some point they want to hear whether the person who was ridiculed by the same press just three months ago as a bumbling, inept second banana all of a sudden is now St. Kammy?
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How long can the charade of the Joy Campaign continue? Will the truth be told about this pitiful candidate so that she can be sent off to become the newest member of The View, where Harris really belongs?
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-09-10 02:28:002024-09-10 02:28:00The Joy Campaign
