Libertarian Leanings

Clapton — Caught In The Crossfire

 

Putin's Puppet Was Who?

A 1.715 million barrel per day drop in U.S. oil production, the direct result of Biden’s policies, has been filled by oil imports from Russia.

Within months of President Joe Biden halting the Keystone Pipeline, pausing new oil and gas leases on federal lands, and imposing further restrictions on U.S. oil companies, U.S. oil imports from Russia set a new record in March.

[...]

“Last month we saw a record 5.75 million barrels of Russian crude discharged in the US, and we’re projecting a further record this month of 7.5mn bbls,” ClipperData, a commodity intelligence company that monitors cargo shipments worldwide, reported this month.

Biden’s agenda is harming the American producer while “buttressing the Iranian and Russian industries,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said in a statement. He has “tipped us into oil dependence on Russia just a year after complete independence,” providing “a geopolitical gift” to the Kremlin.

Read the rest here.

Critics of the Move Are Calling This a Voter Purge

Critics of the move are really trying to retain a source of potential fraudulent Democrat votes.  The headline: Georgia Secretary of State to remove 100K names from state voter rolls. 

According to Channel 2 in Atlanta, most of the more than 100,000 poised to being removed from the list have submitted change of address forms to the post office or mail sent to their listed residences were returned. More than 18,000 were removed because they are deceased. 

"These people don't live in Georgia anymore," Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told the news outlet. "Then you have 18,000 people who passed. So they are not going to be voting anymore. You need to have accurate voter rolls and proper list maintenance. It also helps your county election directors." 

Gerald Griggs with the Atlanta NAACP said, "We already have lawyers on standby, I am on standby, just in case we have to file litigation. So we are going to be watching this, and we will respond if we believe voters have been disenfranchised."

Georgia has recently joined with 30 other states to be part of the nonpartisan Electronic Registration Information Center, according to the outlet, which, according to Raffensperger, "will allow them to update the registration status of people who move out of state on a monthly basis, instead of every two years."

I wonder which cadavers the Atlanta NAACP will represent should they choose to litigate.

Massive Election Integrity Problems in Atlanta

Back in January Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger went on "60 Minutes" to assure the nation and the world that Georgia's November 2020 election was safe, secure, and honest, and that the vote counts were accurate. 

Meanwhile back in reality,

A contractor handpicked to monitor election counting in Fulton County wrote a 29-page memo back in November outlining the "massive" election integrity failures and mismanagement that he witnessed in the Atlanta-area's election centers.

The bombshell report, constructed like a minute-by-minute diary, cited a litany of high-risk problems such as the double-counting of votes, insecure storage of ballots, possible violations of voter privacy, the mysterious removal of election materials at a vote collection warehouse, and the suspicious movement of "too many" ballots on Election Day.

"This seems like a massive chain of custody problem," the contractor Carter Jones warned in the memo delivered by his firm Seven Hill Strategies to Raffensperger's office shortly after the election.

That glaring notation was written around 4:00 p.m. on Election Day, when Jones observed absentee ballots arriving at the county's central absentee scanning center at Atlanta's State Farm Arena "in rolling bins 2k at a time."

"It is my understanding is that the ballots are supposed to be moved in numbered, sealed boxes to protect them," he wrote, noting these ballots weren't.

He also feared the flow of absentee ballots seemed too voluminous. "Too many ballots coming in for secure black ballot boxes," he observed.

Read the rest here.

Scientific Principles And Unprincipled Scientists

Nothing has demonstrated the political hijacking of "science" like the Wuhan virus pandemic.  Take the recent letter from a group of scientists urging that investigations into the origins of the virus also consider that it could have originated in the laboratory.

Although there were no findings in clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident, the team assessed a zoonotic spillover from an intermediate host as “likely to very likely,” and a laboratory incident as “extremely unlikely” [(4), p. 9]. Furthermore, the two theories were not given balanced consideration. Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the possibility of a laboratory accident (4). Notably, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report's consideration of evidence supporting a laboratory accident was insufficient and offered to provide additional resources to fully evaluate the possibility (5).

As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with the WHO director-general (5), the United States and 13 other countries (6), and the European Union (7) that greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve. We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data. A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest. Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public. Investigators should document the veracity and provenance of data from which analyses are conducted and conclusions drawn, so that analyses are reproducible by independent experts.

Now it turns out, the scientists had been keeping mum since 2020.

Fears of being “associated with Trump” kept scientists from speaking out about a possible lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2020, according to at least one researcher now calling for a probe into the possibility.

Alina Chan, a postdoctoral associate at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, admitted to staying mum this week while speaking to NBC News about COVID-19’s origins.

“At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn’t want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins,” she said Wednesday.

No public health considerations, not until Trump was safely out of office, and sufficient time had past.  What if Trump had won re-election?  Would our profiles in scientific courage have ever said what they actually thought, or would they have just gone along forever, covering for China?  And doing that on the pretext of opposing racism.  Are there such things as "scientific principles" when scientists seem to have no principles of their own, or refuse to stand for the ones they have?  The stories keep changing — masks, hydroxychloroquine, vaccines, lockdowns — all driven by politics.  Anti Trump politics.

Update:  A story about a possible high level Chinese defection raises the issue of biological warfare research in Wuhan.

Wuhan Again

Without naming Dong, the pro-Trump web site Red State reported June 4 on a high-level defection from China, saying the Defense Intelligence Agency had received information from him that Beijing is covering up biological warfare research at the Wuhan lab, and advanced its story to question the integrity of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Sources say the level of confidence in the defector’s information is what has led to a sudden crisis of confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci, adding that U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) personnel detailed to DIA have corroborated very technical details of information provided by the defector,” it said.

Is the coronavirus a result of that research?

Producer Prices Surge

In the largest rise in its history, the producer price index (PPI) surged by 6.6 percent over the 12-month period ending in May.  The PPI was created in 2010, so we're not talking about a long history, nor are we able to use it to compare the current economic picture to earlier times, like the stagflation of the seventies.

Producer prices excluding food, energy, and trade services—a gauge often preferred by economists because it excludes the most volatile components—rose 5.3 percent in May from a year earlier. This, too, was the biggest increase since the Labor Department started tracking that number in 2014.

Energy prices surged by a seasonally unadjusted 46.6 percent over the year in May, goods advanced 11.1 percent, and food 4.4 percent, the data showed.

Producer prices are considered a leading indicator of consumer price inflation, which accounts for the bulk of overall inflation. While the elevated manufacturing price data suggest consumers are more likely to see prices rise in the future, Federal Reserve officials have repeatedly said they believe consumer price increases are “transitory,” with the expectation that inflation will eventually moderate back to the central bank’s two percent average target.

What does that mean, "inflation will eventually moderate?"  After "consumer price inflation" hits, when can we expect "eventually" to arrive? 

One indicator of the serious inflation that threatens, is the increasing number of officials who define inflation as higher prices.  Inflation refers to an inflated supply of money.  Higher prices are the typical result, due to a reduced value of the dollar.  But higher prices can be masked or mitigated by other factors like increased productivity, or reduced labor costs associated with outsourcing.  Just know that the Modern Monetary Theorists in power at the moment have no plans to stop inflating the supply of money.

Arizona Audit

Bernard Kerik, 40th New York City Police Commissioner and New York Times bestselling author, on the subject of the Arizona forensic audit:

Democrats and the mainstream media have been aggressively denouncing the Maricopa County, Arizona election audit from the beginning.

At, first I didn’t understand why.

I thought that it was because they were afraid of what the results would be, but I now believe it’s something far worse.

The Democrats aren’t “just” afraid of the outcome – but they’re afraid that the audit results will be irrefutable and unimpeachable.

[...]

On the coliseum floor, the audit is conducted in several stages, each of which takes place in a designated area. The tables in each section are color-coded, and workers wear shirts with corresponding colors, making it easy for anyone to spot if someone strays from their assigned area.

At every table, there is accountability and supervision, all of it live streamed and viewable by the general public.

Just like in a casino, where “pit bosses” keep a close eye on a relatively small section of tables, there is an audit supervisor responsible for groups of two to three tables. If any problems arise or anything appears to be even slightly amiss, the supervisor immediately steps in to address it.

And just as casinos use high-resolution cameras in the ceiling to monitor every single table, the auditors in Arizona labor under the scrutiny of state-of-the-art cameras positioned directly above each table.

Every ballot reviewed by the auditors goes through distinct stages, starting with a simple count. One by one, ballots are placed on rotating stands in the middle of each table, and each one is viewed and counted by three separate people, whose independent tallies must line up. Each batch has 50 ballots, and once all of them are counted they’re boxed, sealed, and marked with the name of each counter, much like an evidence label.

The box is then taken to a locked cage until it is ready for review at the next station.

[...]

Now that I’ve seen the process for myself, I finally understand why it has the Democrats so hot and bothered.

They know that if anything improper happened in the 2020 election, this audit will catch it – and they also know that they have no hope of refuting any improprieties this audit reveals.

Read the rest here.

Hat tip Melinda.

AG Garland Presses DOJ Civil Rights Division Into Service for Democrats

Shipwreckedcrew says AG Merrick Garland's speech to members of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is cause for serious alarm.  The title of his RedState article:  Attorney General Merrick Garland Announces That DOJ's Civil Rights Division Will Be a Democrat Party Operative.

Last week, the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, made a speech before personnel of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, and in it, he announced himself and the Justice Department as Democrat Party operatives.  I caution you before you start the video that watching it in its entirety will likely result in tremendous health benefits if you happen to suffer from insomnia.

His speech focused on the work of the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division, and the steps he was taking to enhance the resources and activities of the Voting Rights Section. But in doing so, he made it clear that the work of DOJ would be to advance the causes and interests of the Democrat Party for the purpose of improving its chances at the ballot box.

The speech was, in reality, a concession by the Biden Administration that HR1/S1 — the “Elect Only Democrats in Perpetuity Act” — was dead in the Senate. Garland’s speech announced that DOJ would take up a “rear guard” action to protect Democrat-supported election rigging schemes from being rolled back by state legislatures.

Read the rest here.

A Look at Antifa's Field Organization

American Partisan:

The Antifa command and control structure, as so far observed, does not expose any levels higher than Colonel to visibility. All the ‘General’ level field officers have so far only been observed in vehicles being used as coordination centers. These have been noted to be extensively modified with electronic support systems.

The structure of Antifa in the field most closely resembles the ‘color’ revolutions created by the CIA. The tactics employed so far in these Antifa field actions have very simiular targets & tactics as was observed as far back in time as the Viet Nam conflict, and in other arenas in which the CIA created wars and destabilized regimes.

Antifa is just an idea, though. 

Read the rest here.

Theorists Signal a Return to Stagflation

Modern Monetary Theorists:  Government can spend all it wants.

“I’m not sure any White House economists would describe themselves as MMT adherents, but the policies they are pursuing sure do look a lot like MMT or MMT-lite,” said Tyler Goodspeed, a Stanford University economist and former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

The core principle of Modern Monetary Theory is that a government that controls its money, and thus has what is known as a “sovereign currency,” will never default because it can print as much money as necessary to cover its debt. Should the money supply trigger inflationary pressure, the government can mop up the excess dollars through higher taxation.

What a great idea!  As inflation drives prices higher, government taxation leaves us with less money to pay them.

It's not as if this is a new concept.  Theorists simply dress up the old idea of taxation through inflation and call it "Modern Monetary Theory."  Inflation strikes when productivity gains and growth in the economy fail to match the growth of the supply of money.  It's is not an instantaneous phenomenon.  When the government goes on its MMT financed spending binges inflation won't suddenly show up in the next week or two.  It can take years for economic players to react to and absorb the excess money out there by raising prices.  At the moment investors seem to have all the new money, which is reflected in the phenomenal stock market performance over the course of the pandemic. 

But the same people who advocate MMT, like AOC and Bernie Sanders, are also advocates of a controlled economy, and with them, productivity gains and economic growth take a back seat to economic redistribution.  If their wishes come true, we can expect they will counter resulting lag in growth and productivity with Keynesian demand bursts administered through ever larger doses of new money and new spending.  Hyper-inflation then becomes a real threat.

In San Francisco Theft of Under $950 Is Not a Crime

This is a daily occurrence in San Francisco. Overt theft of under under $950 has been decriminalized. If store security people retain a thief, they can be sued. #DemocratCities pic.twitter.com/yQA6pbmBb3

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) June 15, 2021

This just happened at the @Walgreens on Gough & Fell Streets in San Francisco. #NoConsequences @chesaboudin pic.twitter.com/uSbnTQQk4J

— Lyanne Melendez (@LyanneMelendez) June 14, 2021

Congressman Presses Secretary Yellen for Disclosure of U.S. Gold Activities

The following article was provided by Stefan Gleason, of MoneyMetals.com

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

Washington, DC (June 10, 2021) – As foreign governments reportedly accumulate gold and de-dollarize their sovereign wealth funds, a Republican congressman is asking tough questions of the U.S. Treasury about its secretive gold activities.

Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) – sponsor of the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2021 (H.R. 3526) to require the first true audit of America’s gold in decades – wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week requesting detailed information about the U.S. gold holdings delegated to the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund and posed other questions.

From Rep. Mooney’s letter:

1. According to testimony in 2011 by Mr. Gary Engel, the Director of Financial Management and Assurance at the Government Accountability Office, about 5 percent of the U.S. gold holdings were stored at the time at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also stated that this gold is not considered “audited” and that no assaying or inventorying of that gold had occurred since at least 1986.

   At the current time, what amount of U.S. gold holdings is vaulted at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (or by the Federal Reserve using other depositories)? Also, has this gold been recently audited, assayed, and/or inventoried? If so, please provide me with a copy of any relevant reports.

2. For what purpose(s) is United States gold bullion stored at the Federal Reserve?

3. According to testimony by Mr. Engel, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds gold for other nations as well. Is the U.S.-owned gold stored at the Federal Reserve held in a physically segregated manner from the holdings of other nations?

4. During the 2011 hearing, Rep. Luetkemeyer referenced a report that 261 million ounces in U.S.-owned gold is part of the IMF’s reserves. At present, how many ounces of U.S.-owned gold are in the possession of the IMF or pledged to the IMF – and where is that gold kept? Also, please describe the purpose and nature of this arrangement as well as what oversight procedures are in place.

5. How much U.S.-owned gold is in the possession of and/or used by the Exchange Stabilization Fund as part of its activities? What is the purpose and nature of the ESF’s gold activities?

6. Please provide details as to what U.S.-owned gold is currently pledged, swapped, leased, or otherwise encumbered – and for what purposes – including, but not limited to, arrangements involving the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), World Bank, IMF, and other financial institutions, foreign or domestic.

Mooney’s inquiry comes shortly after he introduced H.R. 3526 to require the Comptroller General to immediately conduct a full assay, inventory, and audit of the United States’ gold reserves and repeat the process every five years.

There is evidence the U.S. Treasury may have sold, swapped, leased, or otherwise placed encumbrances upon some of America’s gold over time.

U.S. Congressman Alex Mooney (R-WV)

However, federal government officials have strongly resisted disclosure of these activities for decades.

To address these concerns, H.R. 3526 also requires a full accounting of any and all sales, purchases, disbursements, or receipts, a full accounting of any and all encumbrances, including due to lease, swap, or similar transactions presently in existence or entered into in the past 15 years, and an analysis of the sufficiency of the measures taken to ensure the physical security of such reserves.

To fulfill its obligations under the Gold Reserve Transparency Act, Government Accountability Office auditors would gain access to any depository or other public or private depositories where reserves are kept as well as related records.

“People are rightly concerned about the state of America’s gold holdings,” said Jp Cortez, policy director at the Sound Money Defense League. “The lack of full transparency by the Federal Government has hobbled public confidence. The Gold Reserve Transparency Act will ensure our gold reserves are accounted for.”

The full text of the bill, which has been referred to the House Financial Services Committee, can be found here.

72% In Favor Of Photo ID To Vote

Every time https://t.co/ns4x7IbZXn

— AntifaBook.com (@JackPosobiec) June 15, 2021

Biden On Putin

Is there anybody who still thinks Biden is in charge of anything?

There’s a lot going on here pic.twitter.com/edKfMiKyLj

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 14, 2021

Another Clinton Suicide Victim?

Alabama police are investigating an apparent “suicide” of the reporter who broke the 2016 story of former President Bill Clinton secretly meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Phoenix's Sky Harbor tarmac.

“At 8:13 a.m. Saturday, the Hoover 911 center received a call of a person down at a residence on Scout Trace. Hoover police and fire personnel arrived to find the 45-year-old [Christopher] Sign dead,” AL.com reported. “Hoover police Lt. Keith Czeskleba said the death is being investigated as a suicide.”

[...]

Sign told Fox News last year that he “knew something had occurred that was a bit unusual” on the tarmac.

“It was a planned meeting,” Sign said. “It was not a coincidence.”

“[The book] details everything that they don’t want you to know and everything they think you forgot, but Bill Clinton was on that plane for 20 minutes and it wasn’t just about golf, grandkids, and Brexit. There’s so much that doesn’t add up,” he said. “He then sat and waited in his car with the motorcade, her airstairs come down, most of her staff gets off, he then gets on as the Secret Service and FBI are figuring out ‘How in the world are we supposed to handle this? What are we supposed to do?’”

Sign, who said that he received death threats over his reporting, said that the story “isn’t about Right or Left, Republican or Democrat, it’s about right and wrong and journalism.”

Unindicted Co-Conspirators

Prior to the January 6th, did the FBI infiltrate Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters — those “militias” supposedly responsible for planning and executing the Capitol Siege?  Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat from Minnesota, asked of the question of Christopher Wray — sort of.

Christopher Wray is able to uncomfortably weasel his way out of answering the question directly, partially because Klobuchar does him the courtesy of not asking him the question directly. Klobuchar instead asks the FBI director if he wishes he had infiltrated the militia organizations allegedly involved in 1/6 — assuming from the outset that there was in fact no infiltration, thereby providing the FBI director an easy way to avoid addressing the question one way or another.

Revolver News is willing to address the matter directly in the following three questions:

• In the year leading up to 1/6 and during 1/6 itself, to what extent were the three primary militia groups (the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters) that the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and network news have labeled most responsible for planning and executing a Capitol attack on 1/6 infiltrated by agencies of the federal government, or informants of said agencies?
• Exactly how many federal undercover agents or confidential informants were present at the Capitol or in the Capitol during the infamous “siege” and what roles did they play (merely passive informants or active instigators)?
• Finally, of all of the unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the charging documents of those indicted for crimes on 1/6, how many worked as a confidential informant or as an undercover operative for the federal government (FBI, Army Counterintelligence, etc.)?

[...]

One of the key consensus points among the FBI-DOJ and the regime media is the idea that, while 1/6 is primarily the fault of Trump-supporting QAnon-infused “domestic terrorists,” it is secondarily the fault of so-called “intelligence failures.”

[...]

If it turns out that the federal government (FBI, Army Counterintelligence, or a similar agency) had undercover agents or confidential informants embedded in any of the groups involved in 1/6, the “federal intelligence agencies failing to warn of a potential for violence” looks less like an innocent mistake and more like something sinister.

Could the murderer of Ashli Babbitt be an unindicted co-conspirator?

Purloined From PowerLine

Legacy Media Explained

Back in November 2020 the ratings for Fox News took a serious plunge.  It was the result of their "coverage" of the 2020 election in which Fox seemed miraculously to know which states to call early for Biden where he happened to be in the lead, and which states not to call, for days even, where Trump had the lead.  For a while it had seemed quite evident that media outlets were no longer dependent upon circulation or advertising for revenue.  Nor did they need to make a profit.  I said as much in a comment on JustOneMinute,

I wonder if the Murdochs are feeling better about themselves as they take a 30% revenue hit?

Posted by: matt - deplore me if you must | November 18, 2020 at 02:25 PM

Bears out my new theory, Matt. The new media business model is that they are the advertising arm of the globalist billionaire set. Media outlets are cost centers not profit centers.

Pardon the late interruption. Back to lurking.

Posted by: Tom Bowler | November 18, 2020 at 03:57 PM

Now, as reported on Breitbart there's a new book about it.

Thomas noted how many news media outlets are subsidiaries of broader international conglomerates with deep financial ties to the Chinese market and, by extension, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Such news media companies’ integration into multilayered businesses allows them to lose money while remaining part of a broader profitable whole.

He remarked:

[Mainstream media] seem to be digging their own grave because what they’re pushing, ultimately, is this socialist/communist sort of dictatorial style government. That means no ad revenue if there aren’t free enterprise and free businesses and dollars to purchase advertising. 

I can see people turning their backs on this and going elsewhere where they’re advertising. That means they’re not going to be a going concern. But what you’re saying is they’re making so much money off the Chinese that they don’t need the ad revenue.

Marlow replied, “The newsrooms don’t need to make money. The newsrooms are there to protect corporate interests.” On Sunday, he elaborated on the news media conflicts of interest related to China and the CCP in an article titled, “How Pro-China Corporate Media and Left-Wing Activists Gutted Reporting on the Wuhan Coronavirus.”

At the time I commented on that JOM post I hadn't considered the potential for CCP involvement, but I suppose I should have.

The book, Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media's Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption, is available at Barnes and Noble and other outlets. 

Reality Setting In?

It got worse for CIA Ken as he has to relay the Interior Department IG report's findings that the BLM mob was violent: "There was some violence on the part of protesters in the days leading up to this. There was property destruction. 49 Park Police officers were injured." (2/2) pic.twitter.com/55AQpN0OtV

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 9, 2021

A Tucker TakeDown