Vineyard Strong!
25/09/22 07:07
Here we go again, homies. We're going to do it all over again. Whatever the hell it is, they say that history repeats itself, so that's what we'll likely see this coming week. There will be twists and turns here and there, but that's to be expected. Did I mention that the missus and I agreed that we are going to grow pumpkins and watermelons next year? I'm tired of the groundhogs eating my tomatoes, so they'll be eating pumpkins and watermelons next year if they eat anything. Oh, and I should mention that our Hummingbirds have flown the coop. They've departed for points south as they do every September around this time. I'm not sure what to make of the fact that they seemed to have left a little early this year. Maybe it has something to do with Climate Change. Regardless, Godspeed.
You can't turn on the news these days without hearing and or seeing something about the Queen of England's funeral. Bury the bitch, already. It is just dragging on and on ad nauseum. I don't have anything against the Queen, personally, but putting on this ghastly procession for days and days seems unnatural. And, as a news junkie, I'm appalled that I can't pick up a newspaper these days without having to turn to page four or five before I get past news about the Queen's funeral. If I see one more picture of the Queen's spawn wiping tears from their eyes, I think I'm going to lose it. The old bag was 96 years old, for chrissakes. She's had a good life. She was a good Queen by all accounts. When you've done everything there is to do, which she did, it's time to go. Let Chuckles and his main squeeze do their thing now. Enough is enough.
I'm not sure what the Fed is going to do this week, so that'll be new. We're expecting they will announce a 75 basis point move in interest rates. If they go higher, maybe 100 basis points, the financial markets will likely hasten what already appears to be a downward trajectory in the stock market. It could be a veritable puke, as they say. If you have a mortgage that fluctuates with interest rate changes, hang on to your hat. If you have a hankering to buy a new home and you're hoping to secure a reasonable interest rate, that horse has left the fucking barn.
This is what happens when liquidity in the financial markets starts to dry up. All eyes are on the housing market now, and once that starts to come in, we could be in for even more rough sledding. We're close enough now to the mid-term elections, where I think we might hear the Fed start to talk about moderating their tightening (schedule for increasing interest rates). Not enough to usher back in the usual froth and speculation that got us to this point, mind you, but just enough to staunch the bleeding in the stock market.
The mid-term elections are just weeks away now. Funny thing is, I'm seeing a lot of signs hereabouts for the democrats, but I'm seeing very few for Republican candidates. My guess is that Republicans are keeping a very low profile this election season, and they are not wearing their political affiliation on their sleeves as Democrats do. It seems all very deliberate to me. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. Have we, as conservatives, been sufficiently cowed by the democrats that we don't even dare put our signs out anymore? I think that's one explanation. I also think that we have become something of a silent majority who, despite our not wanting to wear our political affiliation on our sleeves, will more than likely come out in vast numbers on election day to vote these clowns in Congress out of office. No one will see us coming.
I was telling the missus that I might like to go see one or more of the local pols running for Congress in our district. I was kind of throwing it out there to see if she might be interested. We don't have much time, so I'll have to see if one or more of them has a planned event that we might attend. I'm not sure the missus shares my passion when it comes to throwing the bums out, but she's also mindful that she probably doesn't want me single-handedly rubbing elbows with like-minded supporters at a rally, especially if she's nowhere to be seen. She and I went to see Ted Cruz back in 2016 before Trump came down the escalator with Melania, and that was fun. Seeing these politicians in person, who we've only ever seen on the telly up close and personal, can be interesting, to say the least. It also helps to be jazzed up as Election Day gets closer and closer. Who doesn't like a good horse race, right?
I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but just before elections, I seem to see a lot of out-of-state license plates around town. I get an up close and personal look at them because I'm usually on my bike when they pass me by on the roadway. I'm thinking to myself, why would somebody from Ohio be here in town just before we have an election? I'm using Ohio as an example, but that's just one of many out-of-state plates that I typically see. The bad boy in me says that I'm seeing these cars from out of state because the democrat party has sent them to our state to make sure that voters get to the polls on election day. More specifically, to make sure that they get their voters to the polls. Is there a chance that they are bringing in out of staters to vote in our elections? You bet your ass there is. Is there a chance that they are bringing illegal aliens to the polls to vote for their candidates? There is no doubt about it. If they can't steal elections, they can't win them.
This story about the illegal aliens being flown to Martha's Vineyard won't go away. As a reminder, the governor of the state of Massachusetts sent in the Army to relocate the migrants who had been on the island for a mere 24 hours. The elite living on the island who pray at the altar of the beleaguered illegal aliens across the globe and want each and every one of them to come to our country couldn't tolerate the mere presence of the brown-skinned Venezuelans for more than 24 hours despite having both the space and the resources to provide for them. They even set up a GoFundMe campaign after the migrants departed. Not for the migrants whom they never came to know, but for illegal aliens in general. I, for one, was delighted to see the hypocrisy of the islanders brought to the fore because it exposed them for the frauds that they are, and it highlighted the plight of the illegals and the policies of the Biden Administration that have brought this human catastrophe to our shores.
The left wants very badly to see the governors of the states responsible for ferrying these illegals out of their states brought to justice. They are reportedly on the phone non-stop with Biden's Attorney General insisting that governors like DeSantis be brought up on human trafficking charges. It's laughable. Since DeSantis is a potential presidential candidate in 2024 along with Trump, make no mistake about it, the leftists want him in jail along with Trump, so they have no competition when Biden runs again for a second term. And who is this clown of a democrat sheriff in Texas who is now investigating DeSantis's role in flying the illegal aliens into Martha's Vineyard? Stay in your own lane, stupido. This is bigger than you. DeSantis was quick to remind the sheriff that there was little made of the recent deaths of some 50 migrants in the back of a tractor-trailer in his jurisdiction. In other words, shut the fuck up.
As narratives go, I like our chances with the illegal alien narrative as we head into the election on November 8th. Believe me, this is not what the leftists want to be talking about. They want to be talking about abortion and how the republicans are taking away their rights to do what they wish with their bodies. The media, or the propaganda arm of the Democrat party, has taken the bait on this Martha's Vinyard thing with the illegals, and it's all they're talking about, much to the delight of the republicans. In fact, red-state governors have promised to send even more illegals to various sanctuary states and back to the Vineyard in the days and weeks to come. That should help to keep it on the front burner and in the consciousness of every American citizen going to the polls on November 8th. We just have to be a little bit careful not to turn them into victims. If Republicans are seen as opportunists and using the illegals as props or worse, that could turn the tables on us. So far, so good.
What the hell, Vlad. Putin, in a primetime speech to the Russian people, is now planning to bring more forces to the fight in Ukraine to protect the four provinces that they have effectively annexed since the beginning of their invasion of Ukraine. I think the bottom line is, if any one or more of the annexed provinces are threatened by the West, Russia will view that as an invasion of Russia itself. Russia will then take whatever action is necessary to protect the annexed sections of Ukraine, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the West.
The West continues to pour weapons into Ukraine to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and now Russia is taking a stand with the territories annexed. Make no mistake about it, this is a major escalation in the war. What worries me is that Bumbles Biden is going to fumble our country into nuclear war against a country that has just as many or more nukes as we have here in the US. Between you and me, I'm not sure that what we're seeing Biden and his globalist minions do when it comes to starting a nuclear war isn't intentional.
The last clown on the face of the earth that you want to trust with the nuclear codes is Bumbles Biden. He is so cognitively impaired that he can't be trusted to make decisions about a go-no-go situation when the time comes to launch the missiles. He'll be sitting pretty with his wife with her fishnet stockings and his son with the crack pipe hanging out of his mouth deep in the bunker below the White House and without a worry in the world when the Generals bring him the suitcase containing the nuclear codes.
He'll have the likes of Susan Rice and Barrack Obama urging him on to press the proper buttons that will deliver what they hope to be a more utopian and infinitely less racist world after half or more of the globe digs out of what can only be described as a nuclear holocaust. The destruction around the globe will be indescribable, but Bumbles and his leftist minions will live to fight another day. The good news for Bumbles is that there will be no more elections. He need no longer fear losing an election to the likes of Trump or DeSantis. I can hear the generals now. It's now or never, Mr. President. This is your time. We must stop Putin at all costs.
How this latest announcement from Putin changes the trajectory of the war, short of starting a nuclear war, is hard to know. I suppose NATO will fortify its positions in countries bordering Ukraine, and they will issue the usual cautionary press releases to push back against Putin's rhetoric, but nothing will likely change on the ground relative to the shipments of weapons and weapons systems now being delivered daily to Ukrainian forces on the ground in Ukraine. You would think that this latest missive from Putin might give the West reason to pause, see if there isn't a better way forward, and go from there.
I personally don't think that the US or our allies in Europe much care how much Ukrainian blood is spilled on Ukrainian soil. There is something much bigger at play here, although I'm not quite sure what that is. Maybe it's all about feeding that behemoth, the Military Industrial Complex, that President Eisenhower warned us about back in the 50's. Maybe it's about weakening Russia or forcing the ouster of Putin. What I think I can say with some confidence is that it's going to get worse before it gets better.
The missus asked me if I was interested in watching the new show on Netflix about Jeffrey Dahmer. I wasn't sure how to respond. I am a died-in-the-wool cold case guy so let me put that out there. That said, this is not a cold case story. I also have a passing interest in what passes for the pathology behind serial killers, so the Dahmer story certainly qualifies on that score. As interested in this subject matter as I am, and who doesn't have a morbid fascination of sorts when it comes to real sickos like Ted Bundy, I'm careful not to jump in with both feet when the missus asks me such questions.
I responded that there isn't much left to know about Jeffrey Dahmer, so I probably wouldn't want to watch the show on Netflix. It's common knowledge in the shadowy world of serial killers that Dahmer tortured and killed animals as a youngster, he lured teenagers to his apartment as an adult, where he drugged, abused, and consumed them, and was then killed in prison. As career paths go, this was never going to end well for Dahmer. The jury is still out as to whether or not I'll watch the show, but I'm a sucker for shows with good ratings so stay tuned.
These Fed meetings are something to behold. Imagine trying to roll the dice on whether or not the Fed's comments are going to spike, or, conversely, destroy, the indices. What happens when the Fed raises interest rates as anticipated? Do the markets go up, or do the markets go down? If they go up or down, how much will they go up or down? Sometimes, the actual announcement is just that, an announcement. It's the Fed's comments after the announcement that determine what happens in the market. Yesterday, for example, the Fed announced a 75 basis point increase which was on par with expectations.
It was only after the Fed signaled that they would likely continue these hikes into 2024 that the market decided they'd seen enough, and the indices started to sell off in earnest. The S&P, which had been up most of the day, sold off into the close and ended up down 1.7%. The NASDAQ and DJIA had similar trajectories into the close. This has been the story of the markets since the end of 2021. This is what happens when they take away the punch bowl of easy money (zero interest rates). You can't say that you didn't see this coming.
I just happened to notice yesterday that my beloved 2000-year Volvo was leaking some oil. I mean, really leaking some oil. It's almost as though it had sprung a leak. There was a damn puddle beneath my car the size of a small platter. Behind my car, and up the street for a bit, I followed a trail of oil that I'd left behind when I came home from the market. I thought to myself, this can't be good. I checked the dipstick, and it was about as low as I'd ever seen it. I added oil and took a look below the engine to see if it was just pouring out onto the ground. It was not. I wondered if the plug on the bottom of the oil pan had somehow come loose, but I couldn't see it well enough to make that case. I'll want to check the oil levels this morning to see if they've changed overnight after adding oil yesterday. This kind of stuff is not really in my wheelhouse, so I'll need to have my local mechanic check things out if I can get an appointment. I'm hoping this isn't the death knell of what has been a damn dependable car for me and the fam over the last 10 years. Baby Jesus, if you're listening.
We haven't seen one of the inflated bills from the company that provides us with our electricity here at the homestead, but I hear it's coming and soon. Maybe within the month is what I'm hearing. It sounds like the increase is going to be anywhere from 60 to 100% over what we're paying now. This is the price that the fool in the White House would have us pay so we as a country can continue to fund the war in Ukraine. Energy supplies across the board are at risk thanks to Bumbles Biden.
The impact of these increases will be felt not only in increased prices at the pump and in the prices of natural gas and home heating oil, but those costs have to be passed along to the consumer in nearly every other segment of the economy. Now you know why there is so much concern about the rate of inflation and what that means for the standard of living here in the United States. I'm reminded of what Volker (Fed Chairman) did back in the 1970s when Carter was president, and he was faced with bringing down inflation. He stepped up to the podium and announced a 500 basis point increase in interest rates. What we see Powell doing now with his incremental 75 basis point increases just isn't getting the job done.
These increases in our electricity bills coming down the pike won't be putting us out onto the street, but I really worry about the people out there who are already living on the margins. I'm talking about people on fixed incomes who will have to decide between heating their homes and putting food on their tables or maybe putting their prescriptions on hold because they simply don't have the means to pay for everything they need. Something has to give. Our state is providing something of a leg up for those in dire circumstances, and that's a good thing. We'll need to make more of an effort here at home to turn off lights here and there, keep our heat down to a simmer of sorts, so we're not blowing through our budget for home heating, and maybe give some thought to making a contribution or two to local charities that assist the less fortunate. I never did buy that cord of wood I talked about a month or so ago, so that's likely to come back and bite me at some point. There's a price to pay for dragging your feet, and I think my so-called bill is already in the mail.
I hope that the mother fuckers who would crawl over broken glass to vote for Joey Biden and his democrat party are happy with the way things are going. I mean, who would vote for Biden and his democrats if elections were held today after witnessing the carnage that they've caused in our country and with our culture since Joey was sworn in in 2021? I like the fact that the new and revised electric bills with the increase I spoke about are going out just before the Mid Term elections on November 8th, but early voting has been going on in several states, so that is going to mitigate any impact to the democrats that might come as a result of the shock they feel when they see their bills. I'm also hopeful that everyone and anyone who has been watching their savings accounts or 401k's over the last several months might wake the fuck up and think to themselves that having a different political party at the helm might be one way to turn this ship of ours around. Trump warned us about Joey, and, to no one's surprise, he was right.
It is amazing to me when I think about the fact that all of this energy stuff is just so unnecessary. We're sitting on an endless supply of oil and natural gas in our country, and the thought that one retard of a president can put a stop to pulling all of it out of the ground with a snap of his fingers is just nuts. We were net energy exporters before Biden stole the election, and now we're begging our enemies to increase production because deep in the bowels of our government, we have some climate change crazies who are making all the decisions when it comes to energy production.
This is what I'm talking about: Congresswoman Talib (MI-D) was questioning banker Jamie Dimon in a congressional hearing yesterday as to what he and his bank was planning to do to stop funding new oil and gas products in order to attain zero carbon status here in the United States. Dimon responded as follows: "Absolutely not, and that would be the road to Hell for America." She proceeded to berate him like the absolute nut job that she is. You really need to look this one up on YouTube. The sad part is, Talib was likely cheered on by her fellow climate change alarmists in Congress and elsewhere who would rather see our country reduced to rubble before they would agree to pump one more ounce of black gold out of the soil beneath our feet. This is what passes for your democrat party in the year of the Lord, 2021. God help us.
Just wow. This is the second week in a row where the S&P has lost 5 percent of its value. That's ten percent in two weeks! The Dow Jones dipped below the June low yesterday while the NASDAQ and S&P did not. It's probably an indicator of sorts that the markets are going lower. Mrs G said something about moving this and that account to the sidelines which shouldn't surprise anyone. I think the NASDAQ is down YTD roughly 30% as of yesterday. I told her that at least one bear market in recent memory saw the NASDAQ decline some 80%. I'm not sure that if that made her feel any better but it is what it is. She has this corny notion, and I think that she's not alone, that all of her money is going to go down the tubes and disappear forever if things continue to deteriorate. I assured her that financial markets go up and they go down. That's just what they do. I didn't tell her that we're in stage two of a four-stage inflationary bear market and we have a long way to go before we see any evidence of a capitulation. Loosely translated, it will get worse before it gets better.
There were a lot of rumors floating around on Twitter yesterday about Xi of China going down in coup. I know nothing about the power structure in China, and probably even less than the multitude of prognosticators on Twitter who jump to this and that conclusion without so much as a shred of evidence, but given all the chaos in the world these days it seems like it's nonetheless something to keep an eye on. Is it possible that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thought that maybe Xi was moving fast enough against Taiwan? Were they somehow unhappy with his alliances and affiliations with the Iranians and the Russians? There have been some tweets about XI ordering his people to prepare for war within the last month or so but no one is really sure what that means. War against whom exactly? And then we have some clown from the naval college here in the US warning that if China surrounded Taiwan with warships there is nothing that the US could do to stop any of it. Since when do our intelligence agencies rely on Twitter to get their propaganda out?
We're some six weeks out from the mid term elections here in the US and I'm starting to think that everything I hear and see has to be viewed through a political prism. In other words, stories and narratives are designed to sway this or that group one way or another in order to get them to the voting booth on November 8th. The democrats are flooding the airwaves with stories about abortion and the ten-year olds who have to bring their babies to term in certain states because the big bad republicans took away their rights to do with their bodies as they please. They've been using abortion as a wedge issue as long as I can remember so this is nothing new. The republicans are pushing cultural and economic narratives and themes that appeal to the suburban moms like transgenderism, inflation, and parents rights. I think the videos of prepubescent children attending drag shows and stuffing dollar bills into the garters of men dressed up as women are particulalrly heinous but wickedly effective in getting moms to take a stand against this latest bit of buffonery from the looney left. Not on my fucking watch, cupcake.
Even worse are the stories I'm seeing on the telly, mostly from Tucker on FOX, about the various hospitals across our country that are providing gender affirming care to children as young as three and as old as eighteen. They are carrying this gender dysphoria thing to an extreme when they give prepubescent girls hysterectomies and they lop off the genitals of young boys who think they're really girls because some social worker in their second grade classroom tells them its so. How barbaric are these practices and why all of a sudden does this seem to be emerging as a cottage industry for hosptials coast-to-coast when it was literally unheard of not that long ago? Are these fringe practices yet one more example of what the liberals see as an appropriate therapy for youngsters with this so-called affliction, or this just another way for hospitals to make a quick buck? It's telling that once Tucker revealed the very existence of the websites selling these services that the websites were taken down.
Italians go to the polls today to vote for a new Prime Minister. They are expected to elect their first female Prime Minister. I don't follow Italian politics one way or aother but, when I hear that a country's politics are shifting to the right, I think it's something to keep an eye on. It suggests to me that they tried socialism and it failed spectacularly. That's a good thing any way you measure it. I heard some clownish politician in the EU suggest that should Meloni win, and she's the babe I'm talking about here, that they have "tools" at their disposal to deal with such matters.
In other words, the globalists desire to move the countries en masse to the left is now being thwarted and a new and vibrant nationalism is being ushered in much to the consternation of the globalists. All that aside, Meloni seems like a very interesting character indeed. Here's hoping she prevails and that Italy is better off for having elected her. Just so you know, none of my interest in this matter has anything to do with her being a woman. All that matters now is that she can do the job that the citizens of Italy have hopefully elected her to do. Godspeed and best wishes, Ms. Meloni!
You can't turn on the news these days without hearing and or seeing something about the Queen of England's funeral. Bury the bitch, already. It is just dragging on and on ad nauseum. I don't have anything against the Queen, personally, but putting on this ghastly procession for days and days seems unnatural. And, as a news junkie, I'm appalled that I can't pick up a newspaper these days without having to turn to page four or five before I get past news about the Queen's funeral. If I see one more picture of the Queen's spawn wiping tears from their eyes, I think I'm going to lose it. The old bag was 96 years old, for chrissakes. She's had a good life. She was a good Queen by all accounts. When you've done everything there is to do, which she did, it's time to go. Let Chuckles and his main squeeze do their thing now. Enough is enough.
I'm not sure what the Fed is going to do this week, so that'll be new. We're expecting they will announce a 75 basis point move in interest rates. If they go higher, maybe 100 basis points, the financial markets will likely hasten what already appears to be a downward trajectory in the stock market. It could be a veritable puke, as they say. If you have a mortgage that fluctuates with interest rate changes, hang on to your hat. If you have a hankering to buy a new home and you're hoping to secure a reasonable interest rate, that horse has left the fucking barn.
This is what happens when liquidity in the financial markets starts to dry up. All eyes are on the housing market now, and once that starts to come in, we could be in for even more rough sledding. We're close enough now to the mid-term elections, where I think we might hear the Fed start to talk about moderating their tightening (schedule for increasing interest rates). Not enough to usher back in the usual froth and speculation that got us to this point, mind you, but just enough to staunch the bleeding in the stock market.
The mid-term elections are just weeks away now. Funny thing is, I'm seeing a lot of signs hereabouts for the democrats, but I'm seeing very few for Republican candidates. My guess is that Republicans are keeping a very low profile this election season, and they are not wearing their political affiliation on their sleeves as Democrats do. It seems all very deliberate to me. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. Have we, as conservatives, been sufficiently cowed by the democrats that we don't even dare put our signs out anymore? I think that's one explanation. I also think that we have become something of a silent majority who, despite our not wanting to wear our political affiliation on our sleeves, will more than likely come out in vast numbers on election day to vote these clowns in Congress out of office. No one will see us coming.
I was telling the missus that I might like to go see one or more of the local pols running for Congress in our district. I was kind of throwing it out there to see if she might be interested. We don't have much time, so I'll have to see if one or more of them has a planned event that we might attend. I'm not sure the missus shares my passion when it comes to throwing the bums out, but she's also mindful that she probably doesn't want me single-handedly rubbing elbows with like-minded supporters at a rally, especially if she's nowhere to be seen. She and I went to see Ted Cruz back in 2016 before Trump came down the escalator with Melania, and that was fun. Seeing these politicians in person, who we've only ever seen on the telly up close and personal, can be interesting, to say the least. It also helps to be jazzed up as Election Day gets closer and closer. Who doesn't like a good horse race, right?
I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but just before elections, I seem to see a lot of out-of-state license plates around town. I get an up close and personal look at them because I'm usually on my bike when they pass me by on the roadway. I'm thinking to myself, why would somebody from Ohio be here in town just before we have an election? I'm using Ohio as an example, but that's just one of many out-of-state plates that I typically see. The bad boy in me says that I'm seeing these cars from out of state because the democrat party has sent them to our state to make sure that voters get to the polls on election day. More specifically, to make sure that they get their voters to the polls. Is there a chance that they are bringing in out of staters to vote in our elections? You bet your ass there is. Is there a chance that they are bringing illegal aliens to the polls to vote for their candidates? There is no doubt about it. If they can't steal elections, they can't win them.
This story about the illegal aliens being flown to Martha's Vineyard won't go away. As a reminder, the governor of the state of Massachusetts sent in the Army to relocate the migrants who had been on the island for a mere 24 hours. The elite living on the island who pray at the altar of the beleaguered illegal aliens across the globe and want each and every one of them to come to our country couldn't tolerate the mere presence of the brown-skinned Venezuelans for more than 24 hours despite having both the space and the resources to provide for them. They even set up a GoFundMe campaign after the migrants departed. Not for the migrants whom they never came to know, but for illegal aliens in general. I, for one, was delighted to see the hypocrisy of the islanders brought to the fore because it exposed them for the frauds that they are, and it highlighted the plight of the illegals and the policies of the Biden Administration that have brought this human catastrophe to our shores.
The left wants very badly to see the governors of the states responsible for ferrying these illegals out of their states brought to justice. They are reportedly on the phone non-stop with Biden's Attorney General insisting that governors like DeSantis be brought up on human trafficking charges. It's laughable. Since DeSantis is a potential presidential candidate in 2024 along with Trump, make no mistake about it, the leftists want him in jail along with Trump, so they have no competition when Biden runs again for a second term. And who is this clown of a democrat sheriff in Texas who is now investigating DeSantis's role in flying the illegal aliens into Martha's Vineyard? Stay in your own lane, stupido. This is bigger than you. DeSantis was quick to remind the sheriff that there was little made of the recent deaths of some 50 migrants in the back of a tractor-trailer in his jurisdiction. In other words, shut the fuck up.
As narratives go, I like our chances with the illegal alien narrative as we head into the election on November 8th. Believe me, this is not what the leftists want to be talking about. They want to be talking about abortion and how the republicans are taking away their rights to do what they wish with their bodies. The media, or the propaganda arm of the Democrat party, has taken the bait on this Martha's Vinyard thing with the illegals, and it's all they're talking about, much to the delight of the republicans. In fact, red-state governors have promised to send even more illegals to various sanctuary states and back to the Vineyard in the days and weeks to come. That should help to keep it on the front burner and in the consciousness of every American citizen going to the polls on November 8th. We just have to be a little bit careful not to turn them into victims. If Republicans are seen as opportunists and using the illegals as props or worse, that could turn the tables on us. So far, so good.
What the hell, Vlad. Putin, in a primetime speech to the Russian people, is now planning to bring more forces to the fight in Ukraine to protect the four provinces that they have effectively annexed since the beginning of their invasion of Ukraine. I think the bottom line is, if any one or more of the annexed provinces are threatened by the West, Russia will view that as an invasion of Russia itself. Russia will then take whatever action is necessary to protect the annexed sections of Ukraine, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the West.
The West continues to pour weapons into Ukraine to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and now Russia is taking a stand with the territories annexed. Make no mistake about it, this is a major escalation in the war. What worries me is that Bumbles Biden is going to fumble our country into nuclear war against a country that has just as many or more nukes as we have here in the US. Between you and me, I'm not sure that what we're seeing Biden and his globalist minions do when it comes to starting a nuclear war isn't intentional.
The last clown on the face of the earth that you want to trust with the nuclear codes is Bumbles Biden. He is so cognitively impaired that he can't be trusted to make decisions about a go-no-go situation when the time comes to launch the missiles. He'll be sitting pretty with his wife with her fishnet stockings and his son with the crack pipe hanging out of his mouth deep in the bunker below the White House and without a worry in the world when the Generals bring him the suitcase containing the nuclear codes.
He'll have the likes of Susan Rice and Barrack Obama urging him on to press the proper buttons that will deliver what they hope to be a more utopian and infinitely less racist world after half or more of the globe digs out of what can only be described as a nuclear holocaust. The destruction around the globe will be indescribable, but Bumbles and his leftist minions will live to fight another day. The good news for Bumbles is that there will be no more elections. He need no longer fear losing an election to the likes of Trump or DeSantis. I can hear the generals now. It's now or never, Mr. President. This is your time. We must stop Putin at all costs.
How this latest announcement from Putin changes the trajectory of the war, short of starting a nuclear war, is hard to know. I suppose NATO will fortify its positions in countries bordering Ukraine, and they will issue the usual cautionary press releases to push back against Putin's rhetoric, but nothing will likely change on the ground relative to the shipments of weapons and weapons systems now being delivered daily to Ukrainian forces on the ground in Ukraine. You would think that this latest missive from Putin might give the West reason to pause, see if there isn't a better way forward, and go from there.
I personally don't think that the US or our allies in Europe much care how much Ukrainian blood is spilled on Ukrainian soil. There is something much bigger at play here, although I'm not quite sure what that is. Maybe it's all about feeding that behemoth, the Military Industrial Complex, that President Eisenhower warned us about back in the 50's. Maybe it's about weakening Russia or forcing the ouster of Putin. What I think I can say with some confidence is that it's going to get worse before it gets better.
The missus asked me if I was interested in watching the new show on Netflix about Jeffrey Dahmer. I wasn't sure how to respond. I am a died-in-the-wool cold case guy so let me put that out there. That said, this is not a cold case story. I also have a passing interest in what passes for the pathology behind serial killers, so the Dahmer story certainly qualifies on that score. As interested in this subject matter as I am, and who doesn't have a morbid fascination of sorts when it comes to real sickos like Ted Bundy, I'm careful not to jump in with both feet when the missus asks me such questions.
I responded that there isn't much left to know about Jeffrey Dahmer, so I probably wouldn't want to watch the show on Netflix. It's common knowledge in the shadowy world of serial killers that Dahmer tortured and killed animals as a youngster, he lured teenagers to his apartment as an adult, where he drugged, abused, and consumed them, and was then killed in prison. As career paths go, this was never going to end well for Dahmer. The jury is still out as to whether or not I'll watch the show, but I'm a sucker for shows with good ratings so stay tuned.
These Fed meetings are something to behold. Imagine trying to roll the dice on whether or not the Fed's comments are going to spike, or, conversely, destroy, the indices. What happens when the Fed raises interest rates as anticipated? Do the markets go up, or do the markets go down? If they go up or down, how much will they go up or down? Sometimes, the actual announcement is just that, an announcement. It's the Fed's comments after the announcement that determine what happens in the market. Yesterday, for example, the Fed announced a 75 basis point increase which was on par with expectations.
It was only after the Fed signaled that they would likely continue these hikes into 2024 that the market decided they'd seen enough, and the indices started to sell off in earnest. The S&P, which had been up most of the day, sold off into the close and ended up down 1.7%. The NASDAQ and DJIA had similar trajectories into the close. This has been the story of the markets since the end of 2021. This is what happens when they take away the punch bowl of easy money (zero interest rates). You can't say that you didn't see this coming.
I just happened to notice yesterday that my beloved 2000-year Volvo was leaking some oil. I mean, really leaking some oil. It's almost as though it had sprung a leak. There was a damn puddle beneath my car the size of a small platter. Behind my car, and up the street for a bit, I followed a trail of oil that I'd left behind when I came home from the market. I thought to myself, this can't be good. I checked the dipstick, and it was about as low as I'd ever seen it. I added oil and took a look below the engine to see if it was just pouring out onto the ground. It was not. I wondered if the plug on the bottom of the oil pan had somehow come loose, but I couldn't see it well enough to make that case. I'll want to check the oil levels this morning to see if they've changed overnight after adding oil yesterday. This kind of stuff is not really in my wheelhouse, so I'll need to have my local mechanic check things out if I can get an appointment. I'm hoping this isn't the death knell of what has been a damn dependable car for me and the fam over the last 10 years. Baby Jesus, if you're listening.
We haven't seen one of the inflated bills from the company that provides us with our electricity here at the homestead, but I hear it's coming and soon. Maybe within the month is what I'm hearing. It sounds like the increase is going to be anywhere from 60 to 100% over what we're paying now. This is the price that the fool in the White House would have us pay so we as a country can continue to fund the war in Ukraine. Energy supplies across the board are at risk thanks to Bumbles Biden.
The impact of these increases will be felt not only in increased prices at the pump and in the prices of natural gas and home heating oil, but those costs have to be passed along to the consumer in nearly every other segment of the economy. Now you know why there is so much concern about the rate of inflation and what that means for the standard of living here in the United States. I'm reminded of what Volker (Fed Chairman) did back in the 1970s when Carter was president, and he was faced with bringing down inflation. He stepped up to the podium and announced a 500 basis point increase in interest rates. What we see Powell doing now with his incremental 75 basis point increases just isn't getting the job done.
These increases in our electricity bills coming down the pike won't be putting us out onto the street, but I really worry about the people out there who are already living on the margins. I'm talking about people on fixed incomes who will have to decide between heating their homes and putting food on their tables or maybe putting their prescriptions on hold because they simply don't have the means to pay for everything they need. Something has to give. Our state is providing something of a leg up for those in dire circumstances, and that's a good thing. We'll need to make more of an effort here at home to turn off lights here and there, keep our heat down to a simmer of sorts, so we're not blowing through our budget for home heating, and maybe give some thought to making a contribution or two to local charities that assist the less fortunate. I never did buy that cord of wood I talked about a month or so ago, so that's likely to come back and bite me at some point. There's a price to pay for dragging your feet, and I think my so-called bill is already in the mail.
I hope that the mother fuckers who would crawl over broken glass to vote for Joey Biden and his democrat party are happy with the way things are going. I mean, who would vote for Biden and his democrats if elections were held today after witnessing the carnage that they've caused in our country and with our culture since Joey was sworn in in 2021? I like the fact that the new and revised electric bills with the increase I spoke about are going out just before the Mid Term elections on November 8th, but early voting has been going on in several states, so that is going to mitigate any impact to the democrats that might come as a result of the shock they feel when they see their bills. I'm also hopeful that everyone and anyone who has been watching their savings accounts or 401k's over the last several months might wake the fuck up and think to themselves that having a different political party at the helm might be one way to turn this ship of ours around. Trump warned us about Joey, and, to no one's surprise, he was right.
It is amazing to me when I think about the fact that all of this energy stuff is just so unnecessary. We're sitting on an endless supply of oil and natural gas in our country, and the thought that one retard of a president can put a stop to pulling all of it out of the ground with a snap of his fingers is just nuts. We were net energy exporters before Biden stole the election, and now we're begging our enemies to increase production because deep in the bowels of our government, we have some climate change crazies who are making all the decisions when it comes to energy production.
This is what I'm talking about: Congresswoman Talib (MI-D) was questioning banker Jamie Dimon in a congressional hearing yesterday as to what he and his bank was planning to do to stop funding new oil and gas products in order to attain zero carbon status here in the United States. Dimon responded as follows: "Absolutely not, and that would be the road to Hell for America." She proceeded to berate him like the absolute nut job that she is. You really need to look this one up on YouTube. The sad part is, Talib was likely cheered on by her fellow climate change alarmists in Congress and elsewhere who would rather see our country reduced to rubble before they would agree to pump one more ounce of black gold out of the soil beneath our feet. This is what passes for your democrat party in the year of the Lord, 2021. God help us.
Just wow. This is the second week in a row where the S&P has lost 5 percent of its value. That's ten percent in two weeks! The Dow Jones dipped below the June low yesterday while the NASDAQ and S&P did not. It's probably an indicator of sorts that the markets are going lower. Mrs G said something about moving this and that account to the sidelines which shouldn't surprise anyone. I think the NASDAQ is down YTD roughly 30% as of yesterday. I told her that at least one bear market in recent memory saw the NASDAQ decline some 80%. I'm not sure that if that made her feel any better but it is what it is. She has this corny notion, and I think that she's not alone, that all of her money is going to go down the tubes and disappear forever if things continue to deteriorate. I assured her that financial markets go up and they go down. That's just what they do. I didn't tell her that we're in stage two of a four-stage inflationary bear market and we have a long way to go before we see any evidence of a capitulation. Loosely translated, it will get worse before it gets better.
There were a lot of rumors floating around on Twitter yesterday about Xi of China going down in coup. I know nothing about the power structure in China, and probably even less than the multitude of prognosticators on Twitter who jump to this and that conclusion without so much as a shred of evidence, but given all the chaos in the world these days it seems like it's nonetheless something to keep an eye on. Is it possible that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thought that maybe Xi was moving fast enough against Taiwan? Were they somehow unhappy with his alliances and affiliations with the Iranians and the Russians? There have been some tweets about XI ordering his people to prepare for war within the last month or so but no one is really sure what that means. War against whom exactly? And then we have some clown from the naval college here in the US warning that if China surrounded Taiwan with warships there is nothing that the US could do to stop any of it. Since when do our intelligence agencies rely on Twitter to get their propaganda out?
We're some six weeks out from the mid term elections here in the US and I'm starting to think that everything I hear and see has to be viewed through a political prism. In other words, stories and narratives are designed to sway this or that group one way or another in order to get them to the voting booth on November 8th. The democrats are flooding the airwaves with stories about abortion and the ten-year olds who have to bring their babies to term in certain states because the big bad republicans took away their rights to do with their bodies as they please. They've been using abortion as a wedge issue as long as I can remember so this is nothing new. The republicans are pushing cultural and economic narratives and themes that appeal to the suburban moms like transgenderism, inflation, and parents rights. I think the videos of prepubescent children attending drag shows and stuffing dollar bills into the garters of men dressed up as women are particulalrly heinous but wickedly effective in getting moms to take a stand against this latest bit of buffonery from the looney left. Not on my fucking watch, cupcake.
Even worse are the stories I'm seeing on the telly, mostly from Tucker on FOX, about the various hospitals across our country that are providing gender affirming care to children as young as three and as old as eighteen. They are carrying this gender dysphoria thing to an extreme when they give prepubescent girls hysterectomies and they lop off the genitals of young boys who think they're really girls because some social worker in their second grade classroom tells them its so. How barbaric are these practices and why all of a sudden does this seem to be emerging as a cottage industry for hosptials coast-to-coast when it was literally unheard of not that long ago? Are these fringe practices yet one more example of what the liberals see as an appropriate therapy for youngsters with this so-called affliction, or this just another way for hospitals to make a quick buck? It's telling that once Tucker revealed the very existence of the websites selling these services that the websites were taken down.
Italians go to the polls today to vote for a new Prime Minister. They are expected to elect their first female Prime Minister. I don't follow Italian politics one way or aother but, when I hear that a country's politics are shifting to the right, I think it's something to keep an eye on. It suggests to me that they tried socialism and it failed spectacularly. That's a good thing any way you measure it. I heard some clownish politician in the EU suggest that should Meloni win, and she's the babe I'm talking about here, that they have "tools" at their disposal to deal with such matters.
In other words, the globalists desire to move the countries en masse to the left is now being thwarted and a new and vibrant nationalism is being ushered in much to the consternation of the globalists. All that aside, Meloni seems like a very interesting character indeed. Here's hoping she prevails and that Italy is better off for having elected her. Just so you know, none of my interest in this matter has anything to do with her being a woman. All that matters now is that she can do the job that the citizens of Italy have hopefully elected her to do. Godspeed and best wishes, Ms. Meloni!