Time Will Tell
12/03/23 07:02
My charge this week is simple. It's to do what I do every week. I just keep kicking the can down the road. How I do that and what that looks like changes from week to week, but I'm sitting here this morning to do just that. I remember thinking yesterday while on my bike ride that the sun was a little higher in the sky, and it was starting to look and feel like Spring had finally arrived. I had flashbacks to my youth when I looked forward to that last little bit of snow and ice receding from the school playground so I could finally play marbles with my mates during recess at St. Alphonsus Elementary School. Anyway, I think I'm in a good place now, both physically and mentally, to kick off a new bicycling season. That's always a good feeling.
I listened to Trump's speech at CPAC over the weekend. It was a pretty good speech. It was compelling in a lot of ways. He reminded me of what we must accomplish as conservatives get our country back. He wasn't too snarky, and some of the stories he used to repeat with some regularity were missing. So many of his good ideas can get lost in the shuffle when he starts repeating himself, and people tune out. It was a receptive crowd, and the applause was genuine and frequent. What I worry about is that the media and milqtoast republicans have so demonized this man that a lot of people who once promised to crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump will now either stay home, or they'll vote for Bumbles Biden again.
We have a tremendous opportunity to remove Biden from office in 2024. Many people think that Trump might be screwing the pooch by running since he's already lost once to Biden. The same republicans who decided they didn't like Trump's tweets back in 2020 and couldn't vote for him then might be similarly afflicted come 2024. You would think that the devastation Biden has wrought in just two years, much of it forewarned by Trump, would be enough to get people off their couches and to the polls in two years. Potential indictments in several states will keep Trump's name in the news, and not in a good way. The leftists who pine for a more socialist state will be taking no chances on a Trump comeback, and it will get ugly. They made one mistake by not pulling out all the stops for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and they paid a steep price when Trump won. Never again.
One thing is for sure. We Conservatives need a brawler in the White House in 2024. These lunatics on the left are out of control on so many issues. If nothing else, stopping the incessant beating of war drums by democrats and neocons would be reason enough to vote for any republican, including Trump. Trump told Kim from North Korea that he had a bigger button than Kim to get Kim to the negotiating table when Kim was launching ballistic missiles every other day across the Sea Of Japan. That's the kind of out-of-the-box thinking we need in our next president, and nobody does it better than Donald J. Trump. The one thing that I think I heard Trump regret in his speech is that he didn't dispatch armed forces to areas across our country to put down the Antifa riots that raged across our fruited plains during his first term. He had one job.
If the Ukraine thing is not resolved by then, will voters find Trump to be too incendiary a candidate to take over the reins of what will likely be a nation torn apart by virulent pro and anti-war forces? Will these so-called mythical eighty million voters who voted for Biden in 2020 return to vote for him again if we're in a full-fledged war against Russia? Is this what they signed up for? Where are all the lefties who staged the anti-war protests in the sixties? Where the hell is Jane Fonda? They all keep putting lipstick on this pig (Biden), and he looks no better now than when he first walked stiffly into the Oval Office in 2020. Russia may be the least of our problems if China keeps up with its heated rhetoric against our country. I've never seen such a thing. And now, North Korea is threatening to declare war against the United States if we persist with pushing back on their ballistic missile testing. If this is what passes for foreign policy in the Biden Administration, we're in some deep shit.
I've never put much stock in the January 6th Committee that held hearings for the better part of a year following the so-called insurrection. I've always seen it as a kangaroo court put together to amplify the ruse that Pelosi and her minions constructed to frame Donald J. Trump and prevent his return to the White House for a second term. It always seemed a bit curious to me that Biden's Department of Justice was sending all of these "insurrectionists" to jail one after another for what looked to me to be nothing more than a trespassing charge if that. They held as many of them as they could identify without bail pending their trials like they were an imminent danger to our very Republic. The DOJ even withheld what could have proven to be exculpatory video footage of the events that day to ensure no stone went unturned in putting these people behind bars. Every last liberal media outlet amplified the lies of the January 6th Committee and raised their champagne glasses in unison every time another sentence was handed down.
It was all a lie. A big lie, truth be told. We know that now because we saw the footage of that day on the telly last night. Let's give credit where credit is due. Tucker Carlson received the footage after Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Speaker of the House, released it. He and his production crew spent the better part of a week reviewing the 40,000 hours of footage and released the first video last night in what will be two nights of coverage ending with tonight's show. I'm surprised that this footage wasn't destroyed after the Committee had finished using it to frame Trump. They hired a television producer to finagle the video clips in a dishonest and damnable way to deceive the public in a prime-time airing of the footage. It was a charade, pure and simple. It was no coincidence that Nancy Pelosi's daughter was in the Capitol building that day with her production crew shooting the event footage. People were breaking windows and climbing walls, so that part was true. It was not true that police officers were murdered that day, yet this lie was repeated time and time again by the liberal media. It was one of many big lies.
Tucker admitted that he and his people did not have access to facial recognition software, so they couldn't do more to identify people that should have been outed as rabble-rousers, conspirators, or worse yet, federal agents. Yes, Federal agents. Why was the fed involved in anything that fateful day? Fateful in the sense that Ashley Abbot lost her life when she was shot in cold blood by a Capitol policeman. Did our Federal Government have a hand in Pelosi's farce to try and frame and send to jail one of the most successful presidents in our lifetime? We know how slimy those fucks are because of their involvement in the Russia hoax, where they effectively colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign to bring down a duly elected president of the United States. Thanks to Tucker, we learned last night that this Epps guy lied to the Committee about his role in the January 6th event. If I recall correctly, Epps sent a text to his nephew admitting to orchestrating the break-in of the Capitol that day.
I don't mean to beat this thing to death, but I want to say that I feel very bad for the people who have gone to jail for what looks to be a simple case of trespassing. How do they now get their lives back? Who will step in and make this right? The Shaman guy is sitting in jail for a four-year prison term for doing what? Tucker's footage shows him being walked through the capitol building with capitol police at his side. At no point do they try to detain him or eject him from the premises. I'm sorry, but you might expect to see all of this in a banana republic, not the United States of America. George Washington must be rolling over in his grave. It's more than shameful. Our Judicial system should be ashamed. Our politicians should be ashamed. The media should be ashamed of their role in this shitshow. The people in jail have mostly been vindicated by the footage Tucker and his team released last night. Sadly, no one is likely to be held accountable.
The missus and I settled in last night and waited for the second of two installments of the January 6th "insurrection" to air on the Tucker Carlson Show. We waited, and we waited, and we waited. That gasbag Chuckles Schumer went on the floor of the United States Senate yesterday and publicly pleaded with the head of FOX, Rupert Murdoch, to stop Tucker from following through with his promise to share more footage of that fateful day. I didn't think for a minute that anything, much less a request by a whiny little bitch like Chuckles Schumer, would stop Tucker from doing what he does best: Exposing the political and cultural injustices in our country. I'm even more surprised that Tucker made no reference to the fact that he had no intention of following through with another night of footage from January 6th. He was told to stand down, yet he said nothing about it. I thought Tucker had a backbone, but I'm starting to wonder. Is somebody going to memory-hole the footage now? Is that it? We've seen everything we're going to see? Do we have a goddamn free press or not?
It's a sad day indeed when you can't tell who to believe on any given day. Take this Senator Diane Feinstein story, for example. They reported that she went to the hospital with a case of shingles. You're kidding. Right? What's next? Gout? She's ninety years old, and the light at the top of her staircase, dim as it is these days, went out long ago. She's a reliable vote for the democrats in the US Senate and has been for several decades, so they keep wheeling her out to pull the lever whenever a vote arises where they need her participation. Why don't they just tell us that the old bag has outlived her usefulness? Why don't they tell us that she can't remember her name anymore, much less which political party she represents? Like Bumbles Biden and that goofball stroked-out senator from Pennsylvania, Johnny Fetterman, both of whom can't complete a sentence without cue cards, they keep wheeling these damn fools out onto the stage so they can fulfill their duties like the leftist props that they are. Who cares what their constituents think? Thanks for voting me into office. Now fuck off.
Jay Powell, top dog at the Fed, went before Congress yesterday to give his bi-annual assessment of where we are and where we're going regarding interest rates, etc. The financial markets took exception to his far-too-hawkish comments, and the major indices quickly and decisively slipped into the red. The markets have seemed particularly resilient lately despite a world of tumult and negative stories in the press about world wars, the possibilities of a nuclear holocaust, new and troubling variants of bird flu and Covid, out-of-control spending by our politicians, and rising rates of bankruptcies and credit card debt. How markets have been going up is anyone's guess. I mean, who invests monies in a stock market facing this many headwinds? Money market funds are fetching close to five percent interest, so why risk investing in the stock market when you can get 5% without taking any risk? Not to worry. Another fed head will come out today or tomorrow and comment on easing rate hikes or whatever, and we'll be off to the races again. More froth, more speculation. More problems for Mr. Powell.
My Twitter feed was blazing last night just before bedtime with activity about this and that missile launch staged by the Ruskies. I asked ALEXA what time it was in Kyiv to understand better the dread people in Ukraine felt as missiles flew into neighborhoods across their country. Were people going about their business in the early morning hours, getting ready for work, putting on coffee, and dressing their children for school? Were they in bed for the night, praying as they might that they would wake up to fight another day? In reading the online version of the Daily Mail this morning, I'm getting up to speed on where the missiles hit, how many reached their targets, and the damage that ensued. The article clarified that the strikes were in retaliation for missiles launched into Russia by the Ukrainians a day or two prior. I know this is an undeclared war, but when does Russia need to explain to anyone why they're doing what they're doing? Isn't that the very essence of war?
I'm just trying to imagine what it must be like to have another country flying sorties and dropping bombs in our backyards. To say that we Americans are unprepared for such a thing is an understatement. Would the eighty million people who allegedly voted Biden into office be singing his praises with missiles whistling over their homes and daycare centers where their children huddled up in terror beneath their desks? Would anyone have second thoughts about the ability of our woke military to respond to such a threat on our homeland? Dropping bombs is one thing. Having occupying forces walking through our backyards would be quite another. How would we protect ourselves and our families? Would things have turned out differently had we voted for the man with the mean tweets instead of the man with an advanced case of dementia? How stupid will those of us (not me) who fought tooth and nail for green energy and the rights of men to compete with women in women's sports look now? How will equity, diversity, and inclusion feed and clothe our children when our enemies are at the gate? Just thinking out loud here.
It sounds like these Congressional hearings on Covid have now pretty much proven that Fauci was a liar. Senator Rand Paul had him dead to rights months ago when he accused him of covering up the fact that the virus came out of the lab in Wuhan. Now that we know Fauci lied, where is the accountability? The damage has been done. Millions of people across the globe died during the pandemic. China will never allow a more thorough investigation into the lab, so this investigation dies on the vine. I guess it's good to get the people involved in the horror show from day one on the record but, quite honestly, that's not going to bring anyone's loved ones back from the dead. I'd rather they spend their time finding out why so many governors early on in the pandemic sent so many of their elderly afflicted with the disease into nursing homes when they knew just how virulent and deadly the virus was. Was it an all-out effort to cull their Medicare and Medicaid rolls of the elderly who were draining state budgets and resources? These were all democratic governors in blue states. We're talking about the likes of Cuomo and Grethen Whitmer in New York and Michigan, respectively. When and where will their families find justice?
I know that watching Congressional hearings isn't everyone's cup of tea, but yesterday's oversight hearings with Jim Jordan as chairman was something else. I don't recall the name of the hearing (Sub Committee on the Weaponization of Government?), but it was some watchdog thing. The two guests before the Committee were Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. Elon Musk hired Taibbi and Shellenberger directly or indirectly to review and release Twitter files about how the Social Media giant conspired with our Intelligence agencies to suppress free speech. Our government was essentially hiring someone to do what they were otherwise not allowed to do by law (our Constitution).
The most amazing thing about the hearings was how the democrats on the Committee conducted themselves. They weren't interested in the truth, as Jim Jordan said aloud many times throughout the hearings. Someone else said it best: The Democrats were issuing in every question posed to the two guests, in a roundabout way, a warning to anyone else who might want to step forward to work with Republicans in exposing the democrats that they too would be excoriated and blackballed. The expression that comes to mind is, when someone tells you who they are, you best pay attention. It was just shameful, but this is who they are. Kudos to Taibbi and Shellenburger for not backing down. The democrats exposed themselves for the sleazy operatives that they are. Their sheer unadulterated leftist lunacy was laid bare for everyone to see.
Dr. Naomi Wolf has been a guest on Steve Bannon's Warroon show many times, talking about Covid and the dangers of same. My one sentence about her doesn't give her nearly the recognition that she deserves for everything that she's done to expose the perils of Pfizer and their dreadful vaccines, the role of the government and the media in perpetuating Pfizer's fraud on the American public, and basically not buying into the Covid-related bullshit being pushed by her political party, the Democrats. Dr. Wolf posted a lengthy and heartfelt letter of apology to conservatives on Twitter yesterday for having bought into her party's left-wing nonsense relating largely to the January 6th hoax that the democrats unleashed on America. She saw the January 6th footage released by Tucker Carlson earlier in the week. She came to the very uncomfortable conclusion that her party had sold her a bill of goods in order to demonize a former president, to mislead half of the voting public, and to create a false narrative with which to satisfy their own delusional goals. I've never seen such a thing from a died-in-the-wool member of the Democrat party. Good for her!
And now we have the first forced bank closure in the United States since 2008. Wait a minute. Hasn't Bumbles been running around the country lately pumping his fists and beating his chest about how great his policies have been for our economy? What a fucking loser. When asked about the SVB bank closure, he and his people referred any and all questions to the Treasury. SVB was the sixteenth largest bank in the country, in case you're curious. How it all came to pass is a bit of a mystery. There was a run of sorts on the bank. That is to say, people were running, not walking, to get their money out of the bank. Who precisely was urging people to take their money out? What did they know about the bank's internal issues that would prompt anyone to urge the public to make their withdrawals? Some say it was a scheme to get Jay Powell, the head of the Fed, to stop raising interest rates. Seeing as this happened on a Friday, we're now on hold to see what happens to any number of other regional banks when they open their doors on Monday.
I'm not sure that what we're seeing isn't a replay of what transpired when banks went under back in 2008. Then again, this may be just the Black Friday moment that our government needed and wanted in order to transform our currency into a digital currency making big government both bigger and more intrusive. Did they want it bad enough to orchestrate it? Is that what we're seeing? That might explain how they somehow corraled just the right number of companies and individuals with assets in SVB to go and demand payment within twenty-four hours, thereby rendering the bank insolvent. They contacted Jamie Dimon, he contacted his contacts in the business, and the rest is history. I took the Jamie Dimon reference from reading about this SVB thing on Zerohedge. SVB was also apparently a large depository for crypto funds, so that's another shitshow of altogether different proportions. Think FTX. If you had less than $250k in SVB, the FDIC has your back. Anything more, you might be fucked.
You have to admit, it's weird seeing people lining up outside banks to withdraw their money in the year 2023. I can't remember the last time I walked into a bank. Can't they just go online to do their banking? Did someone hire actors to stand outside a bank they knew was closed as insolvent to inflame passions? If that's the case, here's my advice: Hire more actors the next time. You want to see lines around the block and not just what appeared to be a smattering of people milling about with smiles on their faces. You want to see abject fear. Sorry, didn't mean to go sideways with my nonsense. I guess it makes sense that the bank's website was probably overwhelmed, and if you lived within spitting distance of the bank, it made perfect sense to go there in person. If there is a contagion component to this bank failure, it could spread to other areas of the economy. Do you have enough food on hand if we see a run on the grocery markets? Do you have a stash of cash you can use to get by if we see a complete collapse of our banking system?
None of this helped the stock market this week. We're now pretty much flat for the year on the S&P, down on the DJIA, and up maybe 3% in the NASDAQ. The regional bank stocks got absolutely smoked over the last few days. The SVB bank stock was down 60% on Thursday before dropping another 40% on Friday. The prevailing thinking on the street after the SVB bank collapse is that Jay Powell will likely not proceed with another round of interest rate hikes in the quarter to half percent range at the Fed's next monthly meeting. I think I already referred to this fact. Will an admission by the Fed that they've hiked rates too fast too soon bring on just more froth and speculation the likes of which the Fed has been trying to quash with the rate hikes? All of this is above my pay grade when it comes to sorting it out, but it's fun to fiddle with nonetheless. Maybe Powell will adopt a wait-and-see attitude before raising rates further to let the existing rate hikes do their thing, whatever that may be.
I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning, just an hour away or so from sending this week's blog out. I think everyone is walking on eggshells at the moment, wondering what will happen when the financial markets open tomorrow. Will someone in the federal government step up to the plate to allay people's fear about their monies in various institutions across our fruited plains? Will Bumbles step up to the podium at the White House and blame the whole kit and kaboodle on Trump? Will they just let bygones be bygones and let the markets do what markets do after years of zero interest rates? Is it the hard landing everyone was talking about? How long will Jay Powell keep his job if the contagion gets out of hand? Isn't this what he was hired to do? Oh, that's right. He was on board when interest rates were at zero. It is a reminder to us all about how tenuous our grasp is when it comes to what we all think we "own." If you're looking at your balances on a computer screen day after day, then that is precisely what it is. It's a number on a computer screen. Try buying a cup of coffee and a doughnut with that in hand. Good fucking luck.
Those cauliflower crusts from Trader Joe's are the bee's knees. I made a couple of plate-sized pizzas for the missus and me yesterday, which were just outstanding. I added some broccoli, mushrooms, onions, and calamari olives to the pizzas to give them a bit more color and body. Oh, and I crumbled some feta cheese on top before putting them in the oven at 450 degrees for about 7 minutes. I even warmed up the plates I planned to put the pizza on. My only complaint is that cauliflower crusts don't crisp up like regular crusts. They tend to get soggier rather than crisper the longer they stay in the oven. That said, who doesn't enjoy putting a smile on the face of their honey? I have a couple more crusts left, so I'm thinking of making a couple of broccoli and cheese enchilada-like sandwiches in our George Foreman grill for dinner. We want to throw together a lentil soup dish today, too, so it looks like a busy day in the kitchen. None of this happens unless and until I clean the kitchen first. I'm a little behind the eight ball, so my work has been cut out for me. Everything in good time, boys and girls.
I sent my brother from another mother an article about the SVB bank collapse. He responded in an e-mail saying something about having his stuff with JP Morgan. I suppose the people who had their "stuff" with Lehman Brothers back in 2008 felt equally protected from the vicissitudes of the financial markets when things went to hell in a handbasket literally overnight. I didn't want to say that to him, though. I don't know enough about how these things work, so I'll keep my concerns to myself. You would think that you might be able to grasp the more technical aspects of how banks go down the shitter when interest rates go up, but I've listened to a lot of explanations, and I'm no closer to understanding it all than I was when I heard my first explanation. It's like listening to someone speaking a foreign language. I'm not sure it's all that complex a subject, but it's one that I can't get my head around. There are a lot of things I don't understand and will probably never understand, so I'll leave it there. Maybe the only thing that matters now is how the financial markets interpret the news when the futures markets open tonight. Will we be back in Bear Market Rally town by morning, or will we have a veritable clusterfuck of a stock market selloff on our hands? Only time will tell.
I listened to Trump's speech at CPAC over the weekend. It was a pretty good speech. It was compelling in a lot of ways. He reminded me of what we must accomplish as conservatives get our country back. He wasn't too snarky, and some of the stories he used to repeat with some regularity were missing. So many of his good ideas can get lost in the shuffle when he starts repeating himself, and people tune out. It was a receptive crowd, and the applause was genuine and frequent. What I worry about is that the media and milqtoast republicans have so demonized this man that a lot of people who once promised to crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump will now either stay home, or they'll vote for Bumbles Biden again.
We have a tremendous opportunity to remove Biden from office in 2024. Many people think that Trump might be screwing the pooch by running since he's already lost once to Biden. The same republicans who decided they didn't like Trump's tweets back in 2020 and couldn't vote for him then might be similarly afflicted come 2024. You would think that the devastation Biden has wrought in just two years, much of it forewarned by Trump, would be enough to get people off their couches and to the polls in two years. Potential indictments in several states will keep Trump's name in the news, and not in a good way. The leftists who pine for a more socialist state will be taking no chances on a Trump comeback, and it will get ugly. They made one mistake by not pulling out all the stops for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and they paid a steep price when Trump won. Never again.
One thing is for sure. We Conservatives need a brawler in the White House in 2024. These lunatics on the left are out of control on so many issues. If nothing else, stopping the incessant beating of war drums by democrats and neocons would be reason enough to vote for any republican, including Trump. Trump told Kim from North Korea that he had a bigger button than Kim to get Kim to the negotiating table when Kim was launching ballistic missiles every other day across the Sea Of Japan. That's the kind of out-of-the-box thinking we need in our next president, and nobody does it better than Donald J. Trump. The one thing that I think I heard Trump regret in his speech is that he didn't dispatch armed forces to areas across our country to put down the Antifa riots that raged across our fruited plains during his first term. He had one job.
If the Ukraine thing is not resolved by then, will voters find Trump to be too incendiary a candidate to take over the reins of what will likely be a nation torn apart by virulent pro and anti-war forces? Will these so-called mythical eighty million voters who voted for Biden in 2020 return to vote for him again if we're in a full-fledged war against Russia? Is this what they signed up for? Where are all the lefties who staged the anti-war protests in the sixties? Where the hell is Jane Fonda? They all keep putting lipstick on this pig (Biden), and he looks no better now than when he first walked stiffly into the Oval Office in 2020. Russia may be the least of our problems if China keeps up with its heated rhetoric against our country. I've never seen such a thing. And now, North Korea is threatening to declare war against the United States if we persist with pushing back on their ballistic missile testing. If this is what passes for foreign policy in the Biden Administration, we're in some deep shit.
I've never put much stock in the January 6th Committee that held hearings for the better part of a year following the so-called insurrection. I've always seen it as a kangaroo court put together to amplify the ruse that Pelosi and her minions constructed to frame Donald J. Trump and prevent his return to the White House for a second term. It always seemed a bit curious to me that Biden's Department of Justice was sending all of these "insurrectionists" to jail one after another for what looked to me to be nothing more than a trespassing charge if that. They held as many of them as they could identify without bail pending their trials like they were an imminent danger to our very Republic. The DOJ even withheld what could have proven to be exculpatory video footage of the events that day to ensure no stone went unturned in putting these people behind bars. Every last liberal media outlet amplified the lies of the January 6th Committee and raised their champagne glasses in unison every time another sentence was handed down.
It was all a lie. A big lie, truth be told. We know that now because we saw the footage of that day on the telly last night. Let's give credit where credit is due. Tucker Carlson received the footage after Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Speaker of the House, released it. He and his production crew spent the better part of a week reviewing the 40,000 hours of footage and released the first video last night in what will be two nights of coverage ending with tonight's show. I'm surprised that this footage wasn't destroyed after the Committee had finished using it to frame Trump. They hired a television producer to finagle the video clips in a dishonest and damnable way to deceive the public in a prime-time airing of the footage. It was a charade, pure and simple. It was no coincidence that Nancy Pelosi's daughter was in the Capitol building that day with her production crew shooting the event footage. People were breaking windows and climbing walls, so that part was true. It was not true that police officers were murdered that day, yet this lie was repeated time and time again by the liberal media. It was one of many big lies.
Tucker admitted that he and his people did not have access to facial recognition software, so they couldn't do more to identify people that should have been outed as rabble-rousers, conspirators, or worse yet, federal agents. Yes, Federal agents. Why was the fed involved in anything that fateful day? Fateful in the sense that Ashley Abbot lost her life when she was shot in cold blood by a Capitol policeman. Did our Federal Government have a hand in Pelosi's farce to try and frame and send to jail one of the most successful presidents in our lifetime? We know how slimy those fucks are because of their involvement in the Russia hoax, where they effectively colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign to bring down a duly elected president of the United States. Thanks to Tucker, we learned last night that this Epps guy lied to the Committee about his role in the January 6th event. If I recall correctly, Epps sent a text to his nephew admitting to orchestrating the break-in of the Capitol that day.
I don't mean to beat this thing to death, but I want to say that I feel very bad for the people who have gone to jail for what looks to be a simple case of trespassing. How do they now get their lives back? Who will step in and make this right? The Shaman guy is sitting in jail for a four-year prison term for doing what? Tucker's footage shows him being walked through the capitol building with capitol police at his side. At no point do they try to detain him or eject him from the premises. I'm sorry, but you might expect to see all of this in a banana republic, not the United States of America. George Washington must be rolling over in his grave. It's more than shameful. Our Judicial system should be ashamed. Our politicians should be ashamed. The media should be ashamed of their role in this shitshow. The people in jail have mostly been vindicated by the footage Tucker and his team released last night. Sadly, no one is likely to be held accountable.
The missus and I settled in last night and waited for the second of two installments of the January 6th "insurrection" to air on the Tucker Carlson Show. We waited, and we waited, and we waited. That gasbag Chuckles Schumer went on the floor of the United States Senate yesterday and publicly pleaded with the head of FOX, Rupert Murdoch, to stop Tucker from following through with his promise to share more footage of that fateful day. I didn't think for a minute that anything, much less a request by a whiny little bitch like Chuckles Schumer, would stop Tucker from doing what he does best: Exposing the political and cultural injustices in our country. I'm even more surprised that Tucker made no reference to the fact that he had no intention of following through with another night of footage from January 6th. He was told to stand down, yet he said nothing about it. I thought Tucker had a backbone, but I'm starting to wonder. Is somebody going to memory-hole the footage now? Is that it? We've seen everything we're going to see? Do we have a goddamn free press or not?
It's a sad day indeed when you can't tell who to believe on any given day. Take this Senator Diane Feinstein story, for example. They reported that she went to the hospital with a case of shingles. You're kidding. Right? What's next? Gout? She's ninety years old, and the light at the top of her staircase, dim as it is these days, went out long ago. She's a reliable vote for the democrats in the US Senate and has been for several decades, so they keep wheeling her out to pull the lever whenever a vote arises where they need her participation. Why don't they just tell us that the old bag has outlived her usefulness? Why don't they tell us that she can't remember her name anymore, much less which political party she represents? Like Bumbles Biden and that goofball stroked-out senator from Pennsylvania, Johnny Fetterman, both of whom can't complete a sentence without cue cards, they keep wheeling these damn fools out onto the stage so they can fulfill their duties like the leftist props that they are. Who cares what their constituents think? Thanks for voting me into office. Now fuck off.
Jay Powell, top dog at the Fed, went before Congress yesterday to give his bi-annual assessment of where we are and where we're going regarding interest rates, etc. The financial markets took exception to his far-too-hawkish comments, and the major indices quickly and decisively slipped into the red. The markets have seemed particularly resilient lately despite a world of tumult and negative stories in the press about world wars, the possibilities of a nuclear holocaust, new and troubling variants of bird flu and Covid, out-of-control spending by our politicians, and rising rates of bankruptcies and credit card debt. How markets have been going up is anyone's guess. I mean, who invests monies in a stock market facing this many headwinds? Money market funds are fetching close to five percent interest, so why risk investing in the stock market when you can get 5% without taking any risk? Not to worry. Another fed head will come out today or tomorrow and comment on easing rate hikes or whatever, and we'll be off to the races again. More froth, more speculation. More problems for Mr. Powell.
My Twitter feed was blazing last night just before bedtime with activity about this and that missile launch staged by the Ruskies. I asked ALEXA what time it was in Kyiv to understand better the dread people in Ukraine felt as missiles flew into neighborhoods across their country. Were people going about their business in the early morning hours, getting ready for work, putting on coffee, and dressing their children for school? Were they in bed for the night, praying as they might that they would wake up to fight another day? In reading the online version of the Daily Mail this morning, I'm getting up to speed on where the missiles hit, how many reached their targets, and the damage that ensued. The article clarified that the strikes were in retaliation for missiles launched into Russia by the Ukrainians a day or two prior. I know this is an undeclared war, but when does Russia need to explain to anyone why they're doing what they're doing? Isn't that the very essence of war?
I'm just trying to imagine what it must be like to have another country flying sorties and dropping bombs in our backyards. To say that we Americans are unprepared for such a thing is an understatement. Would the eighty million people who allegedly voted Biden into office be singing his praises with missiles whistling over their homes and daycare centers where their children huddled up in terror beneath their desks? Would anyone have second thoughts about the ability of our woke military to respond to such a threat on our homeland? Dropping bombs is one thing. Having occupying forces walking through our backyards would be quite another. How would we protect ourselves and our families? Would things have turned out differently had we voted for the man with the mean tweets instead of the man with an advanced case of dementia? How stupid will those of us (not me) who fought tooth and nail for green energy and the rights of men to compete with women in women's sports look now? How will equity, diversity, and inclusion feed and clothe our children when our enemies are at the gate? Just thinking out loud here.
It sounds like these Congressional hearings on Covid have now pretty much proven that Fauci was a liar. Senator Rand Paul had him dead to rights months ago when he accused him of covering up the fact that the virus came out of the lab in Wuhan. Now that we know Fauci lied, where is the accountability? The damage has been done. Millions of people across the globe died during the pandemic. China will never allow a more thorough investigation into the lab, so this investigation dies on the vine. I guess it's good to get the people involved in the horror show from day one on the record but, quite honestly, that's not going to bring anyone's loved ones back from the dead. I'd rather they spend their time finding out why so many governors early on in the pandemic sent so many of their elderly afflicted with the disease into nursing homes when they knew just how virulent and deadly the virus was. Was it an all-out effort to cull their Medicare and Medicaid rolls of the elderly who were draining state budgets and resources? These were all democratic governors in blue states. We're talking about the likes of Cuomo and Grethen Whitmer in New York and Michigan, respectively. When and where will their families find justice?
I know that watching Congressional hearings isn't everyone's cup of tea, but yesterday's oversight hearings with Jim Jordan as chairman was something else. I don't recall the name of the hearing (Sub Committee on the Weaponization of Government?), but it was some watchdog thing. The two guests before the Committee were Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. Elon Musk hired Taibbi and Shellenberger directly or indirectly to review and release Twitter files about how the Social Media giant conspired with our Intelligence agencies to suppress free speech. Our government was essentially hiring someone to do what they were otherwise not allowed to do by law (our Constitution).
The most amazing thing about the hearings was how the democrats on the Committee conducted themselves. They weren't interested in the truth, as Jim Jordan said aloud many times throughout the hearings. Someone else said it best: The Democrats were issuing in every question posed to the two guests, in a roundabout way, a warning to anyone else who might want to step forward to work with Republicans in exposing the democrats that they too would be excoriated and blackballed. The expression that comes to mind is, when someone tells you who they are, you best pay attention. It was just shameful, but this is who they are. Kudos to Taibbi and Shellenburger for not backing down. The democrats exposed themselves for the sleazy operatives that they are. Their sheer unadulterated leftist lunacy was laid bare for everyone to see.
Dr. Naomi Wolf has been a guest on Steve Bannon's Warroon show many times, talking about Covid and the dangers of same. My one sentence about her doesn't give her nearly the recognition that she deserves for everything that she's done to expose the perils of Pfizer and their dreadful vaccines, the role of the government and the media in perpetuating Pfizer's fraud on the American public, and basically not buying into the Covid-related bullshit being pushed by her political party, the Democrats. Dr. Wolf posted a lengthy and heartfelt letter of apology to conservatives on Twitter yesterday for having bought into her party's left-wing nonsense relating largely to the January 6th hoax that the democrats unleashed on America. She saw the January 6th footage released by Tucker Carlson earlier in the week. She came to the very uncomfortable conclusion that her party had sold her a bill of goods in order to demonize a former president, to mislead half of the voting public, and to create a false narrative with which to satisfy their own delusional goals. I've never seen such a thing from a died-in-the-wool member of the Democrat party. Good for her!
And now we have the first forced bank closure in the United States since 2008. Wait a minute. Hasn't Bumbles been running around the country lately pumping his fists and beating his chest about how great his policies have been for our economy? What a fucking loser. When asked about the SVB bank closure, he and his people referred any and all questions to the Treasury. SVB was the sixteenth largest bank in the country, in case you're curious. How it all came to pass is a bit of a mystery. There was a run of sorts on the bank. That is to say, people were running, not walking, to get their money out of the bank. Who precisely was urging people to take their money out? What did they know about the bank's internal issues that would prompt anyone to urge the public to make their withdrawals? Some say it was a scheme to get Jay Powell, the head of the Fed, to stop raising interest rates. Seeing as this happened on a Friday, we're now on hold to see what happens to any number of other regional banks when they open their doors on Monday.
I'm not sure that what we're seeing isn't a replay of what transpired when banks went under back in 2008. Then again, this may be just the Black Friday moment that our government needed and wanted in order to transform our currency into a digital currency making big government both bigger and more intrusive. Did they want it bad enough to orchestrate it? Is that what we're seeing? That might explain how they somehow corraled just the right number of companies and individuals with assets in SVB to go and demand payment within twenty-four hours, thereby rendering the bank insolvent. They contacted Jamie Dimon, he contacted his contacts in the business, and the rest is history. I took the Jamie Dimon reference from reading about this SVB thing on Zerohedge. SVB was also apparently a large depository for crypto funds, so that's another shitshow of altogether different proportions. Think FTX. If you had less than $250k in SVB, the FDIC has your back. Anything more, you might be fucked.
You have to admit, it's weird seeing people lining up outside banks to withdraw their money in the year 2023. I can't remember the last time I walked into a bank. Can't they just go online to do their banking? Did someone hire actors to stand outside a bank they knew was closed as insolvent to inflame passions? If that's the case, here's my advice: Hire more actors the next time. You want to see lines around the block and not just what appeared to be a smattering of people milling about with smiles on their faces. You want to see abject fear. Sorry, didn't mean to go sideways with my nonsense. I guess it makes sense that the bank's website was probably overwhelmed, and if you lived within spitting distance of the bank, it made perfect sense to go there in person. If there is a contagion component to this bank failure, it could spread to other areas of the economy. Do you have enough food on hand if we see a run on the grocery markets? Do you have a stash of cash you can use to get by if we see a complete collapse of our banking system?
None of this helped the stock market this week. We're now pretty much flat for the year on the S&P, down on the DJIA, and up maybe 3% in the NASDAQ. The regional bank stocks got absolutely smoked over the last few days. The SVB bank stock was down 60% on Thursday before dropping another 40% on Friday. The prevailing thinking on the street after the SVB bank collapse is that Jay Powell will likely not proceed with another round of interest rate hikes in the quarter to half percent range at the Fed's next monthly meeting. I think I already referred to this fact. Will an admission by the Fed that they've hiked rates too fast too soon bring on just more froth and speculation the likes of which the Fed has been trying to quash with the rate hikes? All of this is above my pay grade when it comes to sorting it out, but it's fun to fiddle with nonetheless. Maybe Powell will adopt a wait-and-see attitude before raising rates further to let the existing rate hikes do their thing, whatever that may be.
I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning, just an hour away or so from sending this week's blog out. I think everyone is walking on eggshells at the moment, wondering what will happen when the financial markets open tomorrow. Will someone in the federal government step up to the plate to allay people's fear about their monies in various institutions across our fruited plains? Will Bumbles step up to the podium at the White House and blame the whole kit and kaboodle on Trump? Will they just let bygones be bygones and let the markets do what markets do after years of zero interest rates? Is it the hard landing everyone was talking about? How long will Jay Powell keep his job if the contagion gets out of hand? Isn't this what he was hired to do? Oh, that's right. He was on board when interest rates were at zero. It is a reminder to us all about how tenuous our grasp is when it comes to what we all think we "own." If you're looking at your balances on a computer screen day after day, then that is precisely what it is. It's a number on a computer screen. Try buying a cup of coffee and a doughnut with that in hand. Good fucking luck.
Those cauliflower crusts from Trader Joe's are the bee's knees. I made a couple of plate-sized pizzas for the missus and me yesterday, which were just outstanding. I added some broccoli, mushrooms, onions, and calamari olives to the pizzas to give them a bit more color and body. Oh, and I crumbled some feta cheese on top before putting them in the oven at 450 degrees for about 7 minutes. I even warmed up the plates I planned to put the pizza on. My only complaint is that cauliflower crusts don't crisp up like regular crusts. They tend to get soggier rather than crisper the longer they stay in the oven. That said, who doesn't enjoy putting a smile on the face of their honey? I have a couple more crusts left, so I'm thinking of making a couple of broccoli and cheese enchilada-like sandwiches in our George Foreman grill for dinner. We want to throw together a lentil soup dish today, too, so it looks like a busy day in the kitchen. None of this happens unless and until I clean the kitchen first. I'm a little behind the eight ball, so my work has been cut out for me. Everything in good time, boys and girls.
I sent my brother from another mother an article about the SVB bank collapse. He responded in an e-mail saying something about having his stuff with JP Morgan. I suppose the people who had their "stuff" with Lehman Brothers back in 2008 felt equally protected from the vicissitudes of the financial markets when things went to hell in a handbasket literally overnight. I didn't want to say that to him, though. I don't know enough about how these things work, so I'll keep my concerns to myself. You would think that you might be able to grasp the more technical aspects of how banks go down the shitter when interest rates go up, but I've listened to a lot of explanations, and I'm no closer to understanding it all than I was when I heard my first explanation. It's like listening to someone speaking a foreign language. I'm not sure it's all that complex a subject, but it's one that I can't get my head around. There are a lot of things I don't understand and will probably never understand, so I'll leave it there. Maybe the only thing that matters now is how the financial markets interpret the news when the futures markets open tonight. Will we be back in Bear Market Rally town by morning, or will we have a veritable clusterfuck of a stock market selloff on our hands? Only time will tell.