Libertarian Leanings

The New Paternalism

When will white people stop treating people of color like little children who have to be protected and saved? This is the new white paternalism, couched in the language of racial justice. But it's nothing of the sort. It's amazing people can still get away with this.

— Shadi Hamid (@shadihamid) October 20, 2021

Indeed She Does

Jen Psaki Hates You

The White House press secretary is a perfect representative of our spiteful ruling class.

Who can forget the treacly grin with which Psaki invited us to “stay tuned” for Biden’s forthcoming vaccine decree? She delights in her role, which is to act out the revenge fantasies of all who felt wounded in 2016 by the mere suggestion that their virtue is less than immaculate. We have to reckon with the fact that Psaki, loathsome though she may be, is doing her job exactly as intended. Her affronts are outrageous only to the people who already hate her: from her target audience they elicit shouts of “YAS Kween” and “drag him!” She is not slipping up when she insults your intelligence and riles up your countrymen against you, when she lies unblinkingly out in the open and defies you to do anything about it. That is her job, and she is good at it. She is doing exactly what she was put there to do.

Read the rest here.

Let's Go Brandon!

Gotta love Grandma 💕😂 #FJB pic.twitter.com/TrBPwD56sF

— Heather 🇺🇸𝓣𝓻𝓾𝓶𝓹 𝔀𝓸𝓷🇺🇸 (@HeatherG_1776) October 21, 2021

As Prices at the Pump and Costs of Winter Heating Climb...

...Keep this in mind:

The Biden administration abandoned an oil and gas drilling project in Alaska approved by former President Donald Trump, which it had previously defended.

The Department of the Interior failed to file an appeal to a federal judge’s August decision blocking the multi-billion dollar Willow Project being developed by the Texas-based oil and gas firm ConocoPhillips. Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court of the District of Alaska ruled that the federal government hadn’t adequately reviewed the emissions profile of the project, which she said would ultimately harm the environment and wildlife.

“Today’s affirmation of our legal victory against the Willow project is a win for the climate and for an irreplaceable Alaska landscape,” Jeremy Lieb, an attorney for the group Earthjustice, said in a statement Wednesday. “We are glad to see that President Biden is taking positive steps in his commitment toward a cleaner energy future.”

Did the Department of the Interior deliberately fail to appeal?  Probably.  It's as if there is a plan to encourage U.S. dependency on Middle East oil, and my cynical side says yes since Democrats are all about helping our enemies.  Iran comes to mind.  But then my even more negative side can believe that the Biden administration, at all levels, could truly be that incompetent.  "You mean we were supposed to file that thing yesterday?"

Read the rest here.

Nebraska AG Legal Opinion: Off-Label Use of Ivermectin, HCQ for COVID-19 is OK

The Nebraska Attorney General recently issued a legal opinion on the prescription of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for off-label treatment against COVID-19.  In the words of Jarrad Winter at American Thinker, the opinion is a "devastating critique of the suppression of effective COVID therapies."

It's a rather lengthy and full spectrum opinion issued by Doug Peterson, Nebraska's Attorney General, in response to a query from the state's Department of Health and Human Services as to whether physicians can be persecuted and tormented for prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to patients sick with the China Flu. What the AG's response amounts to is a full and complete takedown of the conspiracy to suppress cheap and effective early Covid-19 treatments.

The Nebraska legal opinion came in response to Dannette R. Smith, CEO of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, who asked the Nebraska Office of the Attorney General,  

[W]hether it would be "deemed unlawful or otherwise subject to discipline under [Neb. Rev. Stat. § 38-186] for an appropriately licensed health care provider, once informed patient consent has been appropriately obtained, to prescribe" ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, or other "off-label use" medications "for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19."

Attorney General Douglas J. Peterson, Solicitor General James A. Campbell, and Assistant Attorney General Mindy L. Lester outlined the relevant scientific literature and other information that supports their legal conclusion:

Based on the available data we do not find clear and convincing evidence that a physician who first obtains informed consent and then utilizes ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 violates the UCA [Uniform Credentialing Act].

The Nebraska AG takes no position on the various treatments for COVID-19.  Instead, the 48-page legal opinion examines available literature and information, concluding that no evidence exists that warrants disciplinary or legal action.  But there are caveats.  Providers must obtain appropriate informed consent.  They must not deceive their patient, prescribe excessively high dosages, or fail to check for contraindications.  But all these things are grounds for disciplinary action, regardless of whether or not ivermectin or HCQ is part of any prescribed treatment.

It's worth reading the entire opinion, but here are a couple of highlights.  First, this on the effectiveness of ivermectin:

[W]e note that epidemiological evidence—derived by analyzing COVID-related data from various states, countries, or regions—is also instructive in the context of a global pandemic.  We highlight just a few examples.

One set of scholars analyzed data comparing the COVID-19 rates of countries that routinely administer ivermectin as a prophylaxis and countries that do not.¹¹²  The research revealed that "countries with routine mass drug administration of prophylactic...ivermectin have a significantly lower incidense incidence of COVID-19."¹¹³  This "highly significant" correlation manifests itself not only "ub a worldwide context" but also when comparing African countries that regularly administer prophylactice "ivermectin against parasitic infections" and African countries that do not.¹¹⁴  Based on these results, the researchers surmised that these results "may be connected to ivermectin's ability to inhibit SARS-Cov-2 replication, which likely leads to lower infection rates.¹¹⁵

More specifically, Peru's COVID-19 statistics, which have been analyzed in pre-print studies and discussed in published ivermectin reviews, are also informative.¹¹⁶  Peru deployed mass ivermectin-based COVID-19 treatments from April 2020 through November 2020 throughout its 25 states.¹¹⁷  In ten of those states, a maximal amount of "mass [ivermetin] treatments of COVID-19 were conducted through a broadside, army-led effort, Mega-Operación Tayta (MOT),"¹¹⁸  Fourteen other states had a medium distribution of ivermectin administered at the local level.¹¹⁹  And one state, LIma, distributed a minimal amount of ivermectin due to restrictive government policies.¹²⁰  "The mean reduction in excess deaths 30 days after peak deaths was 74% for the maximal [ivermectin] distribution group, 53% for the medium group[,] and 25% for Lima."¹²¹  Furthermore, thoughout the country of Peru "excess deaths decreased 14-fold ouvre four months" leading up to December 1, 2020, "after which deaths then increased 13-fold when [ivermectin] use was restricted under a new president."¹²²

Then this on Fauci's unwillingness to acknowledge successful treatments using ivermectin:

On August 29, 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) within the NIH, went on CNN and announced that "there is no clinical evidence" that ivermectin works for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19.¹³⁴  Expanding on that point, he reiterated that "there is no evidence whatsoever" that it works.¹³⁵  Yet this definitive claim directly contradicts the NIH,s recognition that "several randomized trials...published in peer-reviewed journals" have reported data indicating that ivermectin is effective as a COVID-19 treatment.¹³⁶

And this on possible incentives for disputing the safety of ivermectin:

Why would ivermectin's original patentholder go out of its way to question this medicine by creating the impression that it might not be safe?  There are at least two plausible reasons.  First, ivermectin is no longer under patent, so Merck does not profit from it anymore.  That likely explains why Merck declined to "conduct[] clinical trials" on ivermectin and COVID-19 when given the chance.¹⁷⁸  Second, Merck has a significant financial interest in the medical profession rejecting ivermectin as an early treatment for COVID-19.  "[T]he U.S, government has agreed to pay [Merck] about $1.2 billion for 1.7 million courses of its experimental COVID treatment, if it is proven to work in an ongoing large trial and authorized by U.S. regulators."¹⁷⁹  That treatment, known as "molnupiravir, aims to stop COVID-19 from progressing and can be given early in the course of the disease."¹⁸⁰  On October 1, 2021, Merck announced that preliminary studies indicate that molnupiravir "reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half,"¹⁸¹ and that same day its stock price "jumped as much as 12.3%."¹⁸²  Thus, if low-cost ivermectin works better than—or even the same as—molnupiravir, that could cost Merck billions of dollars.

In April of 2021, Forbes published an article entitled, Meet The 40 New Billionaires Who Got Rich Fighting Covid-19. 

Shortly after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, markets collapsed and economies around the world plunged into recession. At the same time, hundreds of billionaires fell from the ranks of Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list, capturing a snapshot of the pandemic’s impact on the fortunes of the world’s wealthiest people.

One year later, things couldn’t be more different: a record 493 new billionaires joined the list this year, propelled by a red-hot stock market and unprecedented economic stimulus. Among those newcomers are at least 40 new entrants who draw their fortunes from companies involved in fighting Covid-19. Some, such as Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel and BioNTech cofounder Uğur Şahin, have become household names thanks to the vaccines they helped develop. Others got rich making everything from personal protective equipment and diagnostic tests to antibody treatments and software that helps authorities schedule vaccination campaigns, which will be essential in reopening economies and returning to normal life.

In my opinion, the broader use of Ivermectin and HCQ might have stopped the pandemic in its tracks.  In that case, the need for vaccines would not have been so urgent, and those new COVID-19 billionaires might still only be multi-millionaires.

And a lot more people would be alive today.

Bo Snerdley Has His Own Show

James Golden, AKA Bo Snerdley, was Rush Limbaugh's sidekick for 30 years.  He has his own show now on WABC Radio and a new book, Rush on the Radio.

Colin Powell Dead at 84

Colin Powell has passed away at the age of 84.  A retired four-star general, he served as the 65th United States Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration.  Although Powell had been fully vaccinated, according to his family, he died of complications from COVID-19.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the first Black American to serve in the post, died on Monday at the age of 84 due to complications from COVID-19, his family announced in a statement.

The family said the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been fully vaccinated and was receiving treatment at Walter Reed National Medical Center.

Read the rest here.

Well Before Global Warming Was Rebranded Climate Change Due to Lack of Rising Temperatures...

There were record heatwaves and droughts across America.

On October 18, 1953, the Evansville, Indiana Sunday Courier and Press carried the story below, which was transcribed here from an image Tweeted by @Tony_Heller:

 

Drought Loss Runs to Millions

As Searing Sun Parches Nation

 

Water Famine Strikes
In Rural Areas, Towns
By The Associated Press

The dry blanket of drought now covers most of the nation.

It seared many large cattle and crop areas earlier in the year. A long spell of warm, sunny weather has caused it to spread to other sections like wind-borne dust.

An Associated Press survey Saturday showed that lack of normal rainfall has affected most to the states from New York to California.

Wells Drying Up

Wells have dried up, and new ones are being sunk in hope and haste.

Parched pastures and shriveled vegetable crops have resulted in losses calculated in millions of dollars.

There have been scores of forest and grass fires – none, so far, of disastrous scope.

Many farmers are hauling water and some towns have restricted its use to stretch out dwindling supplies.

Missouri Hard Hit

Missouri is experiencing the worst drought in its history. It is one of the worst ever suffered by West Virginia. The district around New York City is in the midst of the most severe fall drought since 1948.

Farmers in virtually all parts of Missouri are hauling water. Lamar, Mo., is importing it to keep enough in the water system for critical use.

The water supply at El Dorado, Kan., is so low that a dozen business houses are drilling their own wells – but not all of them are finding water.

Damage to vegetables, pastures, shrubbery, and lawns in downstate New York is reported running into the millions.

Water Delivered to Farms

Westchester township of Cortland, N.Y., has been delivering 7,000 gallons of water each day to rural homes where wells are exhausted. It is being stored in barrels and bathtubs.

Forest fires have seared more than 1,800 acres in Rockland County, above New York City on the Hudson. Ranger Fred Jillson said deer are dying because of lack of food and water and some are invading farms to nibble withered crops.

The Rock River below Rock Island, Ill., has eased down in a comparative trickle. Fishermen in
(Continued on Page 14, Column 2)

Unfortunately, the continuation page is not readily available. 

What a difference between the 1950s and now.  Imagine an agency of government delivering water to farms during a drought.  Today, our Environmental Protection Agency is more likely to divert water away from farmers, ostensibly for the benefit of some fish that it purports to be endangered.

Facebook, WhatsApp, Social Media Assist Illegal Immigration and Human Smuggling

Facebook admits it does not censor information that helps illegal immigrants enter the U.S. to seek asylum.

The company made the admission in a private letter to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Mr. Brnovich was stunned by the revelation and wrote a letter late last week to the Justice Department. He asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation into the social media giant and find a way to “stop its active encouragement and facilitation of illegal entry.”

“Facebook’s policy of allowing posts promoting human smuggling and illegal entry into the United States to regularly reach its billions of users seriously undermines the rule of law,” Mr. Brnovich wrote. “The company is a direct facilitator, and thus exacerbates, the catastrophe occurring at Arizona’s southern border.”

He sent a letter this summer raising concerns with Facebook about its use by smugglers during the Biden border surge.

In a lengthy reply, the technology company said it does try to remove drug trafficking content or posts “promoting human smuggling services,” but added that people are free to post information about sneaking across borders illegally.

“We do allow people to share information about how to enter a country illegally or request information about how to be smuggled,” wrote William Castleberry, Facebook’s vice president for state public policy.

Read the rest here.

There Is No Federal Vaccine Mandate for Private Workers

So say several Republican attorneys general.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican, noted that the White House only last week submitted the text of its emergency rule regarding vaccinations to the Office of Management and Budget, meaning it hasn’t gone into effect.

But, Knudsen noted that “no such rule or regulation is currently in effect,” adding (pdf) that there has been a “great deal of confusion” over Biden’s announcement last month.

“Further, my office is preparing to immediately challenge and enjoin this federal overreach on a variety of grounds when the Biden administration issues its announced rule,” he said.

Read the rest here.

Somehow, I Can't Help But Think of John Lennon

Some Good Ones From TWIP

See the rest of them at PowerLine.

Let's Go Brandon!

Joe Biden — The Hollowed Out Shell of a Once Mediocre Man

Someone needs to make a video like this classic, replacing “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” with “Let’s Go, Brandon!”

Bitter laughter we’ve had aplenty, every time Joe “President” Biden forgets his lines, or where he is, or with whom he is talking. Then we cackle with a deep, vindictive glee. You wanted the toughest job on earth, now gag on it, Grandpa Simpson, we say to ourselves. No ice cream for you today. 

The Hollowed Out Shell of a Once Mediocre Man

Now, that vents some resentment about this imposter squatting in the White House—this hollowed-out shell of a once mediocre hireling, washed up there by a tsunami of illegal, unchecked ballots, at our oligarchy’s behest. Now they’re stuck with him, and all the crazy promises they made, and the virus panic they unleashed.

When their plans blow up in his face, we snicker. Every time the Bidenist Occupational Government blunders, and another “domestic terrorist” gets exposed as a Fed infiltrator, we flash a smile of steel. We see on Brian Stelter’s colicky baby face the frustrated tantrums that must afflict The Secret Committee Formerly Known As Joe Biden (TSCFAJB, Tuss-KUFF-ka-jab). All those deep state  hacks who think they’re a “brain trust,” bungling this goat rodeo, month after month after month. And they know we are laughing at them. 

Read the rest here.

Prices of Nearly Everything Now Surging

The following article was provided by Mike Gleason, a Director with Money Metals Exchange.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A big week for precious metals markets as inflation pressures push consumer prices to painful new heights.

On Thursday, the U.S. Labor Department reported that inflation at the wholesale level is up 8.6% from a year ago. That’s the steepest annual advance since the data started being reported.

Of course, Americans who have shopped at a grocery store recently or tried to rent or buy a car don’t need to read a government report to discover that prices are surging. In many respects, inflation is even worse than reported officially.

The economy was supposed to get back to normal this year. But instead, supply disruptions are spreading and driving shortages of various consumer products from office furniture to computer chips.

News Report #1: Massive supply chain disruptions, empty shelves in stores all across the country and rising prices for what's in stock.

News Report #2: The supply shortages and the consequent shortage of goods delivered everywhere has caused prices to spike up.

News Report #3: Annual inflation now at a 13-year high. Prices for beef and bacon, used cars, gas, even furniture, all up double digits.

News Report #4: This year has seen record-breaking price jumps for children's shoes, up nearly 12% furniture, up more than 11%.

News Report #5: All these things are going up too: car rentals, they're up already almost 43%, if you can even find one. Gas, that's true. Gas up 42%. Steak is up 22%. Lodging is up almost 20%.

Bloomberg Commentor: Unless you embrace the analytically meaningless phase of persistently transitory, which I've heard, persistently transitory, this inflation round is not transitory.

Things will likely get even worse for Americans struggling with costs of living heading into the winter. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects households will see a jump of over 50% on their heating bills compared to last winter.

Those who use propane, heating oil, or natural gas to keep their homes warm will likely see the sharpest increases. Prices for energy commodities have been rising relentlessly over the past few months.

Precious metals markets may now be ready to play catch-up, although they are taking a breather here on Friday.

This week gold is up 1.0% to bring spot prices to $1,780 per ounce, despite it pulling back a good bit here today. Silver shows a weekly gain of 3.1% trade at $23.46 an ounce. Platinum prices are pushing higher by 2.9% to check in at $1,069. And finally, palladium is essentially unchanged now since last Friday’s close to command $2,113 an ounce.

Metals markets reacted positively to minutes released Wednesday from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting. Officials signaled they may begin tapering back their $120 billion in monthly bond purchases as soon as November.

They will have to start making at least some gestures toward reducing monetary stimulus if they want to retain whatever credibility they have left when it comes to inflation.

Although some investors fear Fed tapering will crash the markets, the early stages of a Fed tightening campaign tend to be favorable. Metals markets in particular often rally as the Fed begins hiking rates – contrary to what many expect to be the case.

Of course, right now central bankers are merely contemplating pulling back on bond purchases. Rate hikes aren’t even on the table yet.

The time for metals investors to be fearful of the Fed is when it may be getting ready to push interest rates above the inflation rate. If that ever occurred, rates would turn positive in real terms.

Dollar-denominated debt instruments would be viable, at least theoretically, as a place to preserve wealth. Hard assets as alternative stores of value would be vulnerable to being dumped by investors who could get compensated for holding paper instead.

But at the moment low-yielding debt instruments are more like certificates of confiscation. They are virtually guaranteed to take away purchasing power from holders when measured against current inflation realities.

Inflation risks and other risks face holders of deposit accounts at banks. For one. the IRS is pushing a sweeping plan to track all funds over $600 flowing into and out of bank accounts.

The agency’s supposed objective is to identify wealthy tax cheats. But IRS snooping at this level could lead to harassment of millions of Americans who have committed no tax fraud.

That’s just the beginning of the Biden administration’s plans for a “Great Reset” of the banking system. President Joe Biden’s nomination to the head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, wants to “end banking as we know it.”

She advocates a form of socialized banking in which private bank deposits would be brought under the direct control of the central bank.

She calls her radical new banking regime “the People’s Ledger.”

Also dubbed “FedAccounts,” they would presumably be denominated in "FedCoin" – the central bank digital currency being developed behind the scenes at the Federal Reserve to enable greater tracking of and control over citizens’ financial transactions.

Although socialized banking may seem like a remote possibility in the United States of America, a financial crisis could quickly turn a central planner’s pipe dream into reality.

For example, a cascading series of bank failures that threatens to bankrupt the FDIC and wipe out millions of depositors could give the Fed all the impetus it needs to take over the entire banking system.

Holding hard assets outside the banking system may be the best form of insurance against risks within the banking system. And precious metals, being tangible forms of money, are at the foundation of any strategy to protect against risks inherent in the fiat currency regime.

Long before the Federal Reserve System came into being in 1913, gold and silver backed the U.S. dollar. And if at some point the Fed and its unlimited supplies of unbacked dollars lose all credibility with the public, precious metals will again provide people with ledgers of real value.

Well, that will do it for this week. Be sure to check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. Until then this has been Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange, thanks for listening and have a weekend everybody.

 

Mike Gleason is a Director with Money Metals Exchange, a precious metals dealer recently named "Best in the USA" by an independent global ratings group. Gleason is a hard money advocate and a strong proponent of personal liberty, limited government and the Austrian School of Economics. A graduate of the University of Florida, Gleason has extensive experience in management, sales and logistics as well as precious metals investing. He also puts his longtime broadcasting background to good use, hosting a weekly precious metals podcast since 2011, a program listened to by tens of thousands each week.

An Emboldened, Super-Funded IRS to Target Bank Depositors

The following article was provided by Stefan Gleason, President of Money Metals Exchange.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Insidious plans are afoot in Washington to give IRS officials another $80 billion for auditors and then unleash them on bank account holders.

New, heavy-handed IRS and Federal Reserve controls along with other threats to financial privacy highlight the importance of holding wealth outside the banking system.

This week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appeared on CBS Evening News to defend the IRS’s sweeping plan to track all funds flowing into and out of bank accounts, except for those holding less than $600. Yellen claimed the aim is to combat “tax fraud and cheating” by “high-income individuals.”

As to how a $600 threshold will target the super-wealthy more so than the middle class, Yellen failed to articulate. But IRS snooping at this level could lead to harassment of millions of Americans while ensnaring people who are doing hourly side gigs to feed their families rather than people who are hiding millions of taxable dollars from the government.

Banks are opposing the proposed bank account reporting requirement.

Perhaps the focus will be narrowed somewhat before IRS account monitoring is fully implemented.

But it won’t be the end of the Biden administration’s plans for a “Great Reset” of the banking system. It will be just the beginning.

President Joe Biden’s nomination to the head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, wants to “end banking as we know it.”

In her academic work, Omarova has expressed admiration for Karl Marx and sympathy for the Soviet Union. She has also advocated a form of socialized banking in which private bank deposits would be brought under the direct control of the central bank.

She calls her radical new banking regime “the People’s Ledger.”

Also dubbed “FedAccounts,” they would presumably be denominated in "FedCoin" – the central bank digital currency being developed behind the scenes at the Federal Reserve to enable greater tracking of and control over citizens’ financial transactions.

The Fed has already strayed far afield from its dual mandate of price stability and full employment. It now sees fit to bail out politically connected companies, monetize government debt, promote critical race theory, and reverse "global warming."

As for price stability, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has made a mockery out of that part of the dual mandate by deliberately engineering a surge in inflation which he calls (without evidence) “transitory.”

Powell insists the Fed “has the tools” to fight inflation. But it apparently doesn’t have the will to pull them out right now.

Instead, Fed bureaucrats are fighting culture wars against their critics in what Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) calls "woke mission creep."

According to FoxBusiness, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve is promoting critical race theory through its “Reinventing Our Communities” program and disparaging people who argue for race-neutral policies. The Philly Fed specifically links to materials that attack Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Christopher Rufo, a leading opponent of Marxist-inspired critical race theory.

Rufo responded wryly via Tweet: “Still laughing that the Federal Reserve is promoting ‘decolonizing the atmosphere’ and targeting me for ‘shutting down critical racial equity work.’ Focus on inflation, you idiots.”

Unfortunately, there is no political mechanism for the public to hold the Fed accountable when fails to adhere to its statutory mandate.

Fed officials claim they must maintain their “independence.” Toward that end, they employ professional lobbyists to ensure that any legislative efforts to audit or bring greater transparency to the central bank’s activities fail.

The most powerful mechanism available to citizens who are “Fed up” with inflation and the ever-expanding functions of the central bank is to de-dollarize their personal finances.

Holding large amounts of cash in bank deposits is becoming increasingly risky. Not only to customers risk significant erosions of their purchasing power due to inflation; they also risk being singled out by the IRS or becoming unwitting holders of a “FedAccount.”

Although socialized banking may seem like a remote possibility in the United States of America, a financial crisis could quickly turn a central planner’s pipe dream into reality.

For example, a cascading series of bank failures that threatens to bankrupt the FDIC and wipe out millions of depositors could give the Fed all the impetus it needs to take over the entire banking system.

Holding hard assets outside the banking system may be the best form of insurance against risks within the banking system. And precious metals, being tangible forms of money, are at the foundation of any strategy to protect against risks inherent in the fiat currency regime.

Long before the Federal Reserve System came into being in 1913, gold and silver backed the U.S. dollar. And if at some point the Fed and its unlimited supplies of unbacked dollars lose all credibility with the public, precious metals will again provide people with ledgers of real value.

 

Stefan Gleason is President of Money Metals Exchange, the company recently named "Best Overall Online Precious Metals Dealer" by Investopedia. A graduate of the University of Florida, Gleason is a seasoned business leader, investor, political strategist, and grassroots activist. Gleason has frequently appeared on national television networks such as CNN, FoxNews, and CNBC and in hundreds of publications such as the Wall Street Journal, TheStreet, and Seeking Alpha.

Bought Not Stolen

So says the New York Post, but I'll stick with stolen.  Mark Zuckerberg spent $419 million to get Biden elected.

The 2020 election wasn’t stolen — it was likely bought by one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men pouring his money through legal loopholes.

Read the rest here.

A TDS* Defense for Treason?

A liberal/progressive Annapolis couple has been charged with attempting to sell secret information about U.S. nuclear submarines to a foreign power.

The couple was busted by federal agents after delivering a memory card to a dead drop location in south-central Pennsylvania. They had allegedly proposed a payment of $100,000 in cryptocurrency in exchange for providing information to the foreign country, which has yet to be revealed.

The Times report described Ms. Toebbe as a "strong feminist and very liberal" academic who was "taken aback" by former president Donald Trump's election in 2016, and "mentioned several times that she was considering moving to Australia."

Toebbe's radicalization as a member of the anti-Trump #Resistance appears to have been a significant factor in compelling her to betray the United States. "She said she couldn't stand the current state of politics," one of her former students told the Times, which found no evidence that the couple was in financial distress, suggesting an alternative motive for their actions.

Read the rest here.

*TDS — Trump Derangement Syndrome

A Solar Panel Shortage Because... What??

"Wait. What? There’s a silicon shortage, because of a coal shortage, which is resulting in a solar panel shortage, because it all relies on the burning of coal to make “clean energy” equipment."https://t.co/AkCJoq6Mva

— Arthur Kimes (@ComradeArthur) October 12, 2021

The Rigged Game

During the first decade of this century, the internet was a welcome, long awaited bypass around the corporate media news filter.  By the end of the next decade, internet tech giants had become the news filter.

From the New York Post, an excerpt from Mollie Hemingway's book, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections:

Donald Trump’s 2016 victory was a shock to much of the country, but Silicon Valley took it especially hard. The progressive bastion of San Francisco had turned tech companies from libertarian idealists into liberal crusaders. The industry as a whole felt complicit in Donald Trump’s rise and was intent on doing everything in its power to suppress his voice and those of his supporters.

From the beginning, the tech overlords were plotting how to strike back.

In one meeting, Google founder Sergey Brin suggested that “Jigsaw,” a project Google had developed to combat Islamic terror propaganda, could be used to shape the opinions of Trump voters. By the time Trump was inaugurated, a former Google engineer had told Breitbart reporter Allum Bokhari that activists within the company had formed a working group to brainstorm ways to use Google’s resources to undermine the Trump administration.

Another Google engineer wanted to sabotage Trump’s phone, which ran on Google’s Android operating system, as well as ban the Gmail accounts of senior Trump administration officials. An employee in Google’s advertising department personally referred purchasers of Google ads to the Web site of Sleeping Giants, an activist group that encourages boycotts of conservative news outlets.

It wasn’t any better over at Facebook, where some employees literally took a week off to grieve.

Soon after the election, BuzzFeed was reporting, “Facebook employees have formed an unofficial task force to question the role their company played in promoting fake news in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s victory in the US election last week.”

The group was operating in open defiance of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said the idea that Facebook had unfairly tilted the election in Trump’s favor was “crazy.”

By December 2016, Zuckerberg had caved. Facebook adopted a new policy of trying to combat the alleged “fake news” that troubled Facebook’s left-wing employees. The tech giant would start paying media outlets to “fact-check” news on the site. With media revenue steadily declining — in no small part because Facebook had radically disrupted the traditional journalistic business models — once reputable news organizations signed up to participate in the fact-checking program.

Media outlets that were supposed to be objectively covering Facebook were now on Facebook’s payroll, given the power to determine all the news that was fit to print.

Whether or not the tech companies wanted to admit it, much of Silicon Valley’s anger over Trump’s victory was about their inability to control American opinion.

Read the rest here.

Trump's CIA Director Mike Pompeo Was Obsessed With Julian Assange — Why?

From Sundance at The Last Refuge: 

As a person who has researched this three year fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.

It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange because the Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes, and that narrative is contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.

Read the rest here.  Lot's of links to follow.