Elections And Consequences. Newt"s Chilling Warning. Israeli Billboard Warning. Your Friendly Misogynist.

If you missed the webinar, please visit our YouTube channel to view the recording, here.

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All elections have consequences. Two more years of Biden and the results could be momentous. We could even lose the Republic. That is how consequential the mid-term and '24 elections could be.

I know I sound like a partisan and I am. However, I also care about what is best for my country and Biden and his "giggling" side kick are unmitigated  disasters.

I know politicians love wining but if Democrats win there will not be much left to gloat over and if Republicans win there is an increasing chance they will not be able to accomplish much because Biden is president and they will not have the votes to override his veto's

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 Newt Gingrich Has A Chilling Warning For The Country

Democrats have taken this nation to the brink of destruction by treating police like the enemy while coddling criminals. Across America, leftists in power also defunded local police departments and opened up jails.

Removing cash bail is another bad decision made by the Democrat Party in the name of criminal justice reform. Now, Americans are paying the price as crime rates skyrocket.

The nation’s crime crisis is so out of control that some businesses are closing their doors and refusing to subject their employees to working in certain communities. Now, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is weighing in on just how dangerous America’s current crime crisis could become.

The End of America as We Know It?

During a radio show interview, Gingrich stated the crime rates in major cities like Atlanta, New York, and Chicago demand very real changes. He then warned without a robust police force and district attorneys who are willing to uphold the law, the collapse of civilization will occur.

Gingrich said this fact is beginning to dawn on people. Within the past several months, Americans have seen left-wing district attorneys in Democratic strongholds like Manhattan and Philadelphia come under fire for high crime rates.

Later during the interview, the former House Speaker said district attorneys who won’t uphold the law have criminals as their biggest fans.

After noting criminals are motivated to vote for district attorneys who take a permissive stance towards lawlessness, he said the nation must be vigilant about the rise of organized crime often happening via “gray economies.”

A Long Way to Go

Many people across the country are waking up to the danger of being soft on crime. Though the country isn’t out of the woods just yet.

There are sitting congressmembers and congressional candidates who see no issues with defunding the police and even letting murderers out of prison. Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman has expressly endorsed the latter.

Meanwhile, elected officeholders who support defunding the police, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D), aren’t rushing to defund their own private security details.

In fact, as everyday Americans struggle to make it to work safely, Democratic elites are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year just to have armed protection at their beck and call.

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A play on the Colonel's comments in "The Teahouse of the August Moon;"  .'Israel needs to teach Palestinians they cannot win even if they all die."

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A billboard depicting Israeli Arab MK Ahmad Tibi and the words "This is what an image of victory looks like" was erected in Jerusalem on September 19, 2022.

PHILADELPHIA – September 19, 2022 – Victory occurs when one's enemy is forced to concede defeat. In this spirit, the Middle East Forum has placed billboards in Israel featuring Ahmad Tibi and Ayman Odeh – the two most anti-Zionist Arab leaders in Israel – draped in Israeli flags with the caption: "This is what Victory looks like."

The billboard campaign, beginning in Tel Aviv's famous Rabin Square and the entrance to Jerusalem, promotes the reality that the Arab-Israeli conflict will end only when the Palestinians are forced to accept that they cannot destroy and replace Israel, and instead recognize it as the Jewish state.

The campaign is an initiative of the Forum's Israel Victory Project, a non-partisan movement of senior reserve officers, researchers, social organizations, thought leaders, and media figures, urging Israeli society to move from policies of appeasement and "mowing the lawn" to the use of military, economic and political pressure toward total Victory.

Forum president Daniel Pipes formulated the concept of Israel Victory in the late 1990s. Today it is within reach, aided by a more realistic Israeli body politic and Arab states tired of the Palestinian cause and instead joining the Abraham Accords.

"The Palestinian conflict has been seeping into Israeli-Arab society, culminating in the 2020-2021 Arab riots within Israel," said Forum director Gregg Roman. "The promoters of violent Palestinian struggle are increasingly Arab citizens of Israel. Enough. All Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike, must recognize that the conflict and violence will end only when Palestinians are forced to accept the futility of their cause."

"Israel must get tough to force this capitulation," Roman added, "even in the face of international pressure."

The Middle East Forum promotes American interests in the region and protects Western civilization from Islamism. It does so through a combination of original ideas, focused activism, and the funding of allies.

For more information, contact:

Gregg Roman

roman@meforum.org

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"Soccer Mom's" were offended by Trump's personality and behaviour and either did not vote or voted for Biden.  Now their primary issue seems to be abortion when it should be fentanyl or human tracking if they care so much about their "little darlings" and the kind of nation in which they are going to live. Women  have every right to vote as they choose but, perhaps, there is an emotional content that drives them to vote as they do which they need to think about.  Just a thought from your friendly "misogynist."

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Just a few videos in the life of our lump of a president.

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Ross Rant:
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The Ross Rant™ ©Joel Ross 2022

Inflation is not going to drop a lot very quickly. Oil will stay at, or around $90 Brent, until it goes higher due to OPEC back in control instead of the US. People can’t afford to buy a house now, so rents will stay high. The drought was widespread and inhibited new winter wheat planting on top of problems from the war, the Mississippi is too low so barges are grounded, so food will remain higher than it otherwise would be. Since inflation remains high, wages will remain high, and we have a wage price spiral. Oil is priced in US dollars so as it goes up in value oil becomes too expensive. Once the world economy starts to recover, China reopens, and the dollar returns to a more normal level, oil demand will skyrocket and supply will not be there due to the Biden push to stop production. That is when the price of oil could go to levels that now seem unimaginable. Even if the Republicans mange to push more production once they have control, it will not be enough to keep a lid on prices for several years. The Dem passed entitlement programs allow millions to earn as much after tax not working, as the hard working middle class worker, so they have no reason to rejoin the labor force, thus 62% participation and continued labor shortages and higher wages. So for basics there is not the big relief coming that we would normally expect. The Fed is now likely to go 75 in Dec.

Don’t get sucked into this rally. It may last after the Republicans win both houses, but then it will fade next year and return back to 3300 or 3100 as the economy gets worse.

The world will need fossil fuel for at least another 25-30 years to provide at least 50% of its energy needs. It is also required for many other products like chemicals, plastics, fertilizer, and numerous other things. It is simply impossible to mine all the minerals that would be needed by 2035 to produce all the EVs and other products that are supposed to be non-carbon. You can’t produce many products without using petroleum as one input. Oil and gas are what drive the modern world economy. Without them the planet would cease to have production or agriculture. The left and the climate crazies like Larry Fink, and others, seem to have no understanding of reality. It apparently is more important to be left wing, than deal in the real facts. By drawing down the SPR, and doing their best to shut off production in the US, the left has created the world’s inflation and energy shortages that will create serious problems for many this winter. It is not just in Europe. and it is not due to Putin. If we had the same, produce all you can, policy as we had under Trump, and if we had the same foreign policy in the Mideast where we were making peace deals between the Arabs and Israel-the Abraham Accords- then we and the OPEC nations would be pumping enough fossil to easily supply the EU and keep world oil prices back around $65-$70. Instead they will stay around $85-$95 until they move a lot higher next year. Inflation would be far less. Europe would not be having protests. If Cuomo had not stopped the pipeline from PA to New England there would not be shortages this winter, and we would not be importing gas from the Mideast. It is so ignorant that I can’t wrap my brain around how the grown-ups on the left do not understand any of this.

The shortages of minerals for batteries and EVs is not a secret. How the price of oil is devised is not a secret- supply and demand on the world free market. Diesel is the key to almost all truck transport and farm equipment. Farm equipment harvests food, trucks deliver it. Diesel goes high, food goes high. Without adequate supply of diesel, everything else costs more. It is simple. National security depends on the US being in control of the oil market and energy independent. Putin would have known he could not play games with Europe if the US had remained an energy exporter. The Saudis could not play games with us. Now we have a depleting reserve that makes us vulnerable in a war or major hurricane in the gulf. Yet Biden says he is making it easy for oil companies to produce, but they “are asleep”. It is stunning how stupid the White House staff is, but Ganholm was chosen because she is a woman. The fact that she has never seen an oil well was of no concern.

Here is where I see the world going, and you are going to find this very upsetting. After 2008, the central banks around the world followed Bernanke into QE. The Fed became the Treasury market and the securitized debt market. Had the Fed not been such a major buyer, the government may not have been able to sell its bonds for a price that was acceptable. There were simply not enough buyers. That would have caused a major reversal in government spending . QE was repeated across the world. As a result, interest rates were kept at unrealistically low levels, and even negative in the EU. The rest of us could borrow at an after tax rate that was essentially nil. As a result, asset values increased at an unsustainable rate. Just look at stocks and houses. More dangerously, it made it seem that Congress could adopt the make believe Modern Monetary Theory which says: because rates are zero, the government can keep borrowing as much as it wants. The UK and EU did the same. There is no such theory. It is simply a false concept meant to justify unlimited spending by governments. It assumes rates are always zero. It assumes the Fed can just keep buying bonds to maintain a totally false debt market. Everything is based off the ‘risk free rate’ which is Treasuries, so if you manufacture a market for the ten year, then everything else is priced off that. It is a giant Ponzi scheme doomed to fail, and in a major way. Now combine that with major cutbacks in oil and gas creating runaway inflation, and you have inflation that then forces rates to go much higher to stop the inflation and burst the asset bubble. Result, the whole scheme explodes. That is where we now are. It was then compounded by the White House telling Powell no renomination if you raise rates, so the Fed was unable to act when it needed to early on.

Here is what has now happened. The dollar is much too high because now the Fed has to catch up to stop inflation, so rates are going up to 5% on FF. That means all Treasury and mortgage rates are going higher than they already are. And now Biden refuses to allow any material new oil production, further compounding world inflation. The Fed is forced to chase its tail. Government debt is at an unsustainable level at current rates. Debt service will be hard to meet in a few years without higher taxes which lead to lower revenue as growth is stifled. Right now there is barely a bid for long term Treasuries because nobody knows what inflation is going to look like long term. The US is struggling to sell its long bond. Foreign governments, like Japan, are selling their US long bonds to buy their own currency to try to support their currency value vs the dollar. Investor money is going into the 2year. Because the US dollar is still the reserve currency, all things are priced off the 10 year benchmark. That forces other nations currencies to be too low, and a flight from those nations of the capital needed for their own economy to grow. The buying power of locals declines, and inflation spikes. All while the Biden administration restricts energy production and attacks the Prince and oil execs who could help alleviate the inflation problem. Eventually that leads to defaults of many US denominated debts. Derivatives blow up as currencies fall and rates rise, causing bond prices to plummet. Thus the crisis in the UK.

Jamie Dimon may be the best informed person anywhere on the financial markets and the world economy. He says there is a financial hurricane coming. Do you prefer to believe his warning, or some analyst or broker who knows nothing who says some chart or index shows the stock market is now rebounding and inflation is going down. Analysts use a risk free rate when calculating price targets. They just raised that rate to 4.25% from 3.75%, which means deeper discounting and lower price targets.

Yellen has just warned what I have been mentioning for a while- the lack of liquidity in the Treasury market. It is getting worse now. There is a real risk of rates going much higher as the inability to sell long Treasuries at low prices goes away. The fiscal irresponsibility of the Dems in passing the big spending packages over the past 2 years is now coming home to roost. There will have to be budget reductions, and with Biden having a veto, it is going to be a huge problem. He will demand to cut defense just as we need to spend more to deal with a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan for which were are not prepared. Larry Summers has also warned of this risk, as have others. Major risk time.

A long article in the WSJ on Saturday based on interviews with Yellen show she now admits she did not understand what was really happening in 2007-8 with the mortgage market. Neither did Greenspan by his own admission. Yellen also admitted she did not fully understand other major things before they became a crisis. She is Treasury Sec’y. No wonder we are in such financial trouble. She believes that because the economy was slow to recover under Obama, that the lesson was pump it up so unemployment drops is the main policy goal. That is exactly what Zandi said in early 2021 to me, and to the White House. Neither of them understands to this day that it was the other policies of attacking the banks, heavy new regs on everyone, higher taxes, and saying “you did not build that” philosophy of Obama which we see come back under Biden. It was not due to lack of spending enough. The Dems still don’t get it. In 2007 several of us in the capital markets knew the crash was coming and talked about it, but nobody in DC wanted to hear. They were in their ivory tower and only talked to themselves. They are still talking to themselves and sticking to the belief that not spending enough under Obama was the problem. Yellen still thinks that. They still do not get it. This is what happens when DC becomes its own insulated elitist world where the rest of us have no place. Centcom has a new commander who has initiated a program where the top generals run a series of contests for the best ideas from the lowest ranks, and the best ones get to present their ideas in person to the top generals. It works great. The guys in the trenches know what is really happening, and how to fix it. The rest of the Pentagon and DC need to do the same. I always found in companies I ran that sometimes the guy on the line has a better way to do a function if you just let him tell you.

The EU now cannot sustain the recession, and high energy costs, high interest rates, high debt, and weak currency. Higher energy costs, means higher subsidies, means more inflation creating more government spending. A death spiral. The EU is now trying to cap gas prices which they admit will lead to lower supply. There is now a very real question if the Euro can survive as a currency. The 27 nations of the EU have differing national agendas and cultures, and under this sort of stress, they might be under pressure to start to go their own way with their own currencies again. If that happens, the Euro ceases to exist. I am not suggesting this is going to happen, but only that there is a risk that it could happen. I strongly doubt it will happen. However, we could again see the Franc, Mark, and Lira as each nation seeks to protect itself from the spread of a major recession and collapse of the Euro vs the dollar. Oil is priced in US dollars, as are most commodities. Politicians don’t want to be the next Liz Truss. This financial situation today is the most risky that it has been in Europe since WWII. Worse than 2008 GFC. It largely comes back to oil and ESG/ climate insanity destroying the world economy.

It is not just about oil, If Biden would reverse course and start to make real nice to the Prince, and restart the Abraham Accords and weapons delivery, then the Saudis could be of major help in overthrowing the Iran regime. They can help by smuggling in weapons and money and intel for the protestors, and along with the Mossad agents and CIA , they can help overthrow the regime. Biden is doing everything wrong, and Blinken and Sullivan seem to have no geopolitical understanding.

Why is labor participation so low. Middle income families earn 10x as much as the bottom 20% from working. However, due to the vast array of entitlement programs, now the bottom 60% of all people have similar incomes with a large portion doing it by not working, but instead by collecting government subsidies, and other non-cash payments like food stamps and free medical care. Middle income people who work, put in twice as many work hours as the non-workers. However at the end of the year, the after tax income of the working people is no greater than the after tax income of the non-worker. Only 36% of the bottom quintile actually work, but receive 90% of the after tax income of those who do work and pay taxes. 92% of true working age middle income families work at real jobs, so they are now very upset that 64% of the bottom quintile does not work, but earns almost as much after tax as they do. Thus the red wave is coming. This is especially true of legal Hispanics who are generally hard working and culturally conservative. That is what the Dems never understand-it is culture at the end of the day. Most cultures are not looking for handouts-they want a good job and opportunity for their kids to go to college and get even better jobs and move on up. In the end, culture matters. Policy matters. Give aways only serve to lock in a culture of not working, but getting paid.

The Fifth Circuit just issued a key ruling that the CFPB cannot be funded as Warren set it up to be funded by the Fed with no ability of Congress to intervene, and it is unconstitutional. This is a very important decision and will very likely be upheld by SCOTUS. With the Republicans taking control of Congress there is a high probability CFPB will cease to exist in its current form, if at all.

The real way to get equity and equal opportunity for all kids is to devote time to leaning English, reading, math and science, not woke ideology . Spend the money on tutors and other help after school for the black kids to learn, and not to be told to feel they are oppressed and inferior by some left wing equity consultant. By ending SAT, implementing grade inflation, lower standards to get passing grades, etc, the teachers are just indoctrinating poor black kids to expect lesser outcomes, a government check, and not to have to work hard to get an income. The social/cultural destruction is terrible/ and the effect is to keep poor blacks as dependents instead of incentivized hard workers seeking to get ahead on merit. Instead of creating equality, they are actually setting blacks back by creating a more dependent culture, and then making excuses of racism as to why the outcome is not good. The Dems want people dependent on their give always so they vote Dem. It is all about retaining power.

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