Monday, June 5, 2023

Viet Nam Wall Structural Path.

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 VIET NAM WALL

This is really sobering. 
 
First, click on a state. When it opens, scroll down to the city where you went to high school and look at the names.
 
Click on the name and it will give details of the person's death, a picture, or at least their bio and medals.
 
This really is an amazing website. 
 
Someone spent a lot of time and effort to create it.
I hope that everyone who receives this appreciates what those who served in Vietnam sacrificed for our country.
 
Pass the link on to others, as many knew wonderful people whose names are listed.
 

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The GOA has issued a letter that

 by 2230 the Medicare fund will be non existent. 

America is structurally in need of radical structural change.  We cannot continue along this fiscal path and remain solvent.

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Sunday, June 4, 2023

Dagny And Cameron.

With our youngest greatgrandchild, Cameron.

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Saturday, June 3, 2023

Ross. Steady At The Helm. Compassionate Uncle Joe.

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The Ross Rant™ ©Joel Ross 2023

Now there finally is a probable debt deal after a lot of wasted time by the Dems. This all could have been avoided if the White House and Schumer had acted like responsible adults, and had sat down with Kevin 90 days ago. They completely misread his ability to get a bill passed, and they misread the voters desire to stop their responsible wild spending. The spike in inflation made a real difference for voters who get it that you can’t just keep spending with no consequences. Whatever you may think of the final bill, Kevin did a great job given he is working within the constraints of a bunch of idiots and crazies on both sides, and having to get a bill approved. He can’t dictate to the Dems. He can’t just declare victory. He can’t fire members.  He cannot just walk away from the table. There are at least 4 members who will vote no regardless of what Kevin does. That gives him a one vote margin of Republicans on any vote. On the other side there are 100 or so real crazy idiots in the Progressive caucus who are so stupid it defies imagination. They have zero understanding of economics, financial market forces, geopolitics and just about anything else, but the White House listens to them.  Then we have a president who is very weak and unaware of what day it is, who goes out of DC in the midst of this. In the end, the bill will pass both houses, but not without a lot of ridiculous theater on both sides, and a press that makes a lot more of the theater than there really is. Kevin accomplished a lot even if many think they wanted a lot more. 

We all wanted a lot more but time was up and a deal had to get done. Until the Republicans control everything in 2025, there are severe limits on what is achievable now as a first step, and can get the votes. Recall how it worked in 1994-95when Newt was able to incrementally get to a balanced budget and other key things like welfare for work, which seems to be against the perverted ideology of the left. It is an iterative process. Getting to what is really needed is a process over time. The market will react well, but that will change after the economy slows further as the year goes on. The chance of another 25 by the Fed in June is now 65% in my view, with another 25 in July a 40% possibility. There are not going to be any cuts this year. The ten year will reach, or go over 4%, and the 2 year will reach, or exceed 4.75%. 

If you buy short term Treasury bills, and just roll them over, you will get higher yields as the bills roll over.  At least for a while. Then it will be time to lock in the two year.  Treasury has a massive need to sell a lot more bonds to cover the deficit no matter what bill passes on the debt ceiling. Inflation is not yet dead. The Fed has enough cash coming in that it sends to the Treasury to pay the bills for a while longer than what you are hearing. Bottom line-Congress is made up of a lot of stupid, naïve, and uninformed members who really have no understanding of the real things happening in the economy and monetary system. The economy is in trouble regardless of what talking heads say on TV. Risk off now. Only 6 stocks are driving the market up. Most are down. Hunker down now. The world’s central banks are stocking up on gold to the highest level in history.

None of my very sophisticated friends who I talk to regularly understand what is really happening. Oil should be up, gold is up, most stocks are down, the Fed is still raising due to low unemployment. Job losses are the last step in a recession and now many CEOs are touting how they are cutting staff to save cost. Various indexes don’t make sense. Most of us are in cash, Treasuries, oil, gold and a few big tech stocks. Don’t get sucked into thinking we are in a bull market. The releases from SPR were partly designed to help keep inflation in the EU down until the energy shortages could be relieved.

The economy is in a decline now, and not going to head up anytime soon. There is a massive bubble around AI now. Any company that can claim any sort of relations to AI, claims they are an AI business. If you are invested in NVIDIA or Broadcom or one of the hot stocks, consider taking profits now before the bubble bursts, as it surely will soon. This is a classic bubble response we have seen before over decades. The indexes and other classic measures are all disrupted by the Covid shut down then flood of cash and zero rates into the system. Nothing is making a lot of sense right now.  The recession is here in some sectors and is going to get worse.  

Commercial real estate is not collapsing, other than office. Retail signed new leases at the just concluded ICSC which is the key annual shopping center conference. Retailers are looking forward to openings in 24 and 25 now, and are assuming the economy will be headed back up by the time they actually open new stores.  Industrial-meaning warehouse distribution, as well as factories development, is still positive.  Multi is still signing new leases at a reasonable rate and rents are not collapsing, although they are weaker in most markets. Other types of real estate are still holding up OK for the moment.  In summary, real estate is not yet creating a new crisis, but we need to see how this plays out over the next 6 months as rates continue to climb, and as office loans go into default. 

CRE is not going to take down the banking system as we saw in 2008, nor like the S&L crisis of 1989-91. It is very different this time. There will be loan losses, and some real problems, but other than office, they will be mostly manageable barring some major recession, which is less likely now. Don’t let the talking heads on TV and online create a big worry for you. Many of them just want attention

Here is what the market has really done- the S&P is up 9.5%, but if you take the equal weighted S&P, which is a better measure, it is down .1% for the year. The Russell is up only .7%. A lot of small company stocks are down a lot. It is all about tech and AI. Tech index is up 34% and they are a huge weight in the S&P index, which is why the equal weight index is a much better measure.  I have a few top tech stocks, but otherwise cash, T Bills, gold,  and oil.  It has been reported that APPL/NFLX/AMZN/META/MSFT/TSLA as a group have accounted for 120% of the SPX increase this year. That is called a tech bubble. That tells you the stock market is not really up -only a few top tech names are making the market. Don’t get all excited that the stock market is on a upward roll.  It is just a few stocks outweighing the rest.  

Here is what really went on in Bakhmut. The Russians took advantage of the Zelensky decision to fight for Bakhmut. They sent in the expendable Wagner prisoner troops to do the fighting and dying, and to kill or wound as many Ukrainians as possible, thereby wearing down their ability to carry out their spring offensive.  They succeeded, and at the same time saved their 300,000 regular troops from the fight. The Wagner forces were expendable cannon fodder. So now Ukraine has lost an unknown number of combat experienced fighters, and has a lot of green band (new recruits). The Russians have 300,000 fresh troops to counter the Ukrainian offensive.  Bakhmut was a horrible blood bath for both sides, but for the Russians to lose tens of thousands of former prisoners was not a problem for Putin. Meantime, the Russians have had time to build up massive defensive lines in other areas making an offensive by Ukraine much more problematic. Russia lost  a lot of men and equipment, but they have a lot more than Ukraine, so they can afford to lose fighters more than Ukraine can. This is a true war of attrition, and of Putin betting that the US and EU will grow tired of the cost of helping Ukraine. He does not care how many troops he loses.  There are always more cannon fodder in Russia when you have a dictator who does not care how many die.   

The next month will be very telling. Ukraine is in serious shape regardless of what you hear. The offensive may go badly. How this all ends is very uncertain. Victoria Nuland is the one really making policy for the White House on Ukraine. She has made a mess of it. We have another major Biden foreign policy disaster.

Erdogan winning is bad for everyone. The Turkish economy is now in serious trouble as the currency is tumbling. Inflation is out of control. It is hard to know whose side he really is on, and he just causes problems.  How he got elected is questionable. There was video on BBC on Sunday of him openly handing out cash to voters. The world is worse off today due to this election.

Toyota, which has been the only real innovator for autos, is in the lead again to possibly have the answer to ending EV’s It is a hydrogen powered engine that is efficient and totally clean. There is no big battery, no lithium or nickel, and so none of the mining issues. They are now close to perfecting the technology, and being able to produce hydrogen powered hybrid cars. If they succeed, as they are very likely to do, then GM and Ford and VW will have a real problem. The Toyota car is likely to be another hybrid, and so oil will not go away.

Fact that is buried by the media. The rush to build wind turbines has led to numerous failures, and now the turbines, which can be 750 feet in some places, are falling down, blades are falling off and the turbines are failing around the world due to manufacturing and engineering errors in the rush to build them. And they want us to depend on wind energy.

There seems no lack of woke insanity in women’s sports. Just because a male dresses like a girl does not make him female. Soon all of the first-place finishers in women’s sports will be men dressed like women. You would think all of the women’s rights groups would be screaming, but gay women seem to think they prefer to back gay men than back straight women. The sports ruling bodies seem to think they need top be woke instead of protecting the athletes they are representing. This shows how sick this whole trans thing has become. And now the teachers union thinks it has a right to control the decisions oof a young child instead of the parents. Who the hell do they think they are-God. And now Kohl’s joins the club of out of touch CEO’s with their version of gay stuff. It is amazing to see this from a retailer especially after Target got pounded for the same lack of understanding of who your customer really is.  

A little review of Dem promises that never get fulfilled or go sideways: defund the police-now that crime has skyrocketed in these cities, they are refunding the police, reparations-sounds like a winner for Dems until blacks in CA now demand payment as they are also doing across the country and in Congress-77% of blacks now believe they are entitled to get reparations, and now demand to know where is my check--Oh, but you mean you think we need to come up with the cash we do not have and cannot get-didn’t you understand this was just an election ploy, -sanctuary cities- come and we will welcome you and care for you- no, we meant only a few of you, not the thousands now showing up -you all need to go elsewhere, we have no room for you and never really wanted you here, -boycott the All-Star game-the black bar and retailers lost a lot of potential income in Atlanta, -San Francisco boycotted 22 states that did not share their trans policies-that cost the city so much it rescinded it, -you do not need to work to get your entitlements-uh there seems to be a little problem of we don’t have the money for this, -forgive student debt- seems the court thinks this is illegal, and besides we can’t afford it, -if you are homeless you are welcome here to live on the street, and we will even give you a tent and allow open air drug markets-but please stop using the sidewalk as your toilet, - it is OK to steal up to $950 from a store with no consequences -you must have needed that stuff, but please stop stealing so much that the stores are all closing down and so now we have nowhere to shop for necessities and the taxpaying citizens are leaving,-what do you mean that you think just because you are a parent you think you have some right to know what your kid is doing about gender-only the school can know because we are the ones in charge of your child now-yeah some kids are now screwed up and committing suicide as a result, but that is your fault, -the border is closed-what is your problem just because your kid died of fentanyl, -so we have a massive deficit-the answer is to spend more so we can buy more votes,-we need to stop climate change so we are prohibiting gas stoves and driers- oh except for some famous chefs who need gas to cook properly, and no more gas for utilities-so what if the cost of electricity is much higher and there are a few blackouts.  You people are  just too dumb and MAGA to understand what great things we Dems are doing for our constituents and the nation. Oh, and buying votes also.

Watch Tim Scott. He is the candidate who has adopted 15 weeks limit on abortion. Polls show it has become a key issue for moderates and independents.

Fauci is lawyered up now. The lawsuits are coming over the vaccines and lockdowns etc.

Now a school district in CO had decreed students are to be taught capitalism is bad, and needs to be eliminated. This is official policy. If you think this is absurd stupidity, you have it right.  The main student speaker at CUNY law school in NYC said we need to get rid of the police, military, and prisons among a bunch of other garbage she demanded. She then launched into a raging anti-Semitic diatribe. She is from Yemen and is lucky to be here, and likely has her tuition paid for, but then she tears down everything American and Jewish.  The law school posted the hate filled speech online. This is a direct result of the far left ideology being taught in universities.  The students graduate, some become teachers and this is what they have been indoctrinated to believe. It is why I keep pushing my political friends to hold hearings on academic freedom, and lack of free speech on campus. The students graduate with the left wing mantra that whites are all racists and capitalism is bad, and anyone who disagrees needs to be shut down and attacked as a racist. You need to stop donating to these universities and start demanding they get back to being free thinking academic institutions. The term racist has now replaced Communist of the Joe McCarthy era. It is the exact same false labeling to try to destroy people. Then there is the case of the pregnant nurse in NYC at Bellevue who paid for her rental bike to go home. A group of black teen thugs tried to claim it was their bike rental and tried to take it from her.  They filmed it to look like she was taking their bike, and so the hospital fired her immediately for acting racist before they knew anything about what actually happened. Then her lawyer produced her receipt for the bike rental and suddenly the story disappeared, but she had to pay a lawyer, and is now tarred with this false claim. It is unclear if the hospital apologized and rehired her. This, on top of the false charge against the subway Marine, is what things have come to in NYC, and other cities and institutions. There was just a case in NYC where a jury awarded a black woman who was fired for being late 47 times in 10 months  $11 million because she claimed they just used her constant lateness as an excuse to fire a black woman.  Now we have a Supreme Court justice who claims she cannot define woman. We are reliving the Scopes trial of 1925, when the teacher was arrested for espousing Darwin’s theory of evolution. Woke is the  exact same sort of false religious type ideology as William Jennings Bryan espoused. Where is Clarence Darrow now? Or maybe the Salem witch trials are a similar analogy. This has to stop. It makes Joe McCarthy looks like an amateur at destroying people.

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Another Update on the 2020 Georgia Election Probe...And It's Not Good

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/06/02/how-the-georgias-2020-election-interference-probe-is-expanding-n2624020

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Steady at the helm!

 

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 Uncle Biden and his compassionate Administration.
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Thursday, June 1, 2023

Racial Preference. Job Report Positive But Could Lead To Mild Recession. Much To Be Resolved. Debt Among Our Most Critical Issues



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 Racial Preferences Won’t Go Easily
Colleges will seek sneaky ways of filling quotas. But they’ll have trouble defending them in court.
By Brian T. Fitzpatrick



The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon that Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and associated federal statutes by considering race in admissions. I expect most universities will try to evade the ruling by using proxies for race to select students.

For a glimpse of that future, look to Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Va., a highly rated public magnet school where the student body was until recently more than 70% Asian-American. In 2020 administrators decided they wanted a greater percentage of black and Latino students but didn’t want to use race directly in admissions—that would have been too controversial. So they reverse-engineered the outcome they sought. Middle schools in Northern Virginia are a good proxy for race. By limiting how many students could attend Thomas Jefferson from each middle school, administrators increased black and Latino enrollment and decreased Asian-American enrollment.

Universities will engage in similar shenanigans if the Supreme Court rules against Harvard and UNC. They’ve done it before. When a voter referendum forbade Michigan schools to use racial preferences in admissions, they turned to preferences for applicants who live on Indian reservations or inside the Detroit city limits. Bilingual applicants also got a leg up. None of these preferences were for race, but rather for things highly correlated with applications from Native American, black and Latino students, respectively.

Universities have already begun laying the groundwork for the transition to race-neutral affirmative action. It’s one reason many have turned away from standardized tests such as the SAT. Schools will need flexibility to get their racial numbers right because no proxy perfectly correlates with race. Standardized tests get in the way.

The question the magnet-school litigation previewed is whether it will be legal to use proxies for race if the Supreme Court holds it is illegal to use race directly. I don’t think it will be, and I’m not alone. Although the panel of judges from the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Thomas Jefferson High School admissions scheme by a 2-1 vote, my money is on the dissent if and when it gets to the Supreme Court.

Laws against discrimination aren’t so toothless that they can be easily evaded. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled against racial discrimination by proxy. If the purpose of an apparently race-neutral decision is to cause racial effects, and the decision in fact causes racial effects, then the decision is as illegal as using race itself would be. This test should doom the racial proxies to which universities are expected to turn after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

There is no legal distinction between using racial proxies to help blacks and Latinos and using them to hurt blacks and Latinos. There is no way to increase the percentage of black and Latino students without decreasing the percentage of Asian-American and white students. Racial classification is a zero-sum game.

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When states purposefully draw electoral districts to include predominately black neighborhoods, it is technically race-neutral—people are classified based on geography. But the Supreme Court has repeatedly found these districts to be illegal because they failed the purpose-and-effects test. If the Equal Protection Clause prohibits racial gerrymandering of electoral districts, it also prohibits racial gerrymandering of college admissions. The two judges in the majority in the Thomas Jefferson case didn’t even address this.

Some contend that race-neutral affirmative action can’t be illegal because the Supreme Court has encouraged it as an alternative to race-explicit affirmative action. One of the judges in the Thomas Jefferson case made this argument. But the Supreme Court has encouraged race-neutral affirmative action only when race-explicit affirmative action is otherwise legally justified. Call it the lesser of two evils. If the Supreme Court rules against Harvard and UNC, race-explicit affirmative action will no longer be legally justified in college admissions. There will therefore be no reason to choose between two evils.

Achieving racial diversity means achieving a minimum percentage of each race. But minimum percentages of each race mean maximum percentages of each race, too. The Supreme Court didn’t allow racial maximums for blacks in the past, and I don’t think it will allow racial maximums for Asian-Americans or whites today. The justices have already said the Equal Protection Clause protects all races equally, and that the nation should strive to be colorblind, not color-conscious. In other words, we should be willing to accept institutions made up of our best and brightest, no matter the racial compositions.

This will be a hard adjustment for many because it’s something that we have never really done before in America. But who knows? It might be worth a try.

Mr. Fitzpatrick is a professor at Vanderbilt Law School. He was a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia.
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Is the Sleeping Conservative Dragon Finally Waking Up

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Increased work force is good news but it also means The Fed might feel pressed to raise rates. 

The earnings period has begun and should be favorable.  Should The Fed raise rates once or twice more that would increase the prospects of an early and mild recession .  We also have a myriad of social and political issues that remain and must be resolved, Woke stupidity ,ie. open borders while closing police departments, attacks on children, flooding of narcotics, and I have listed them all ad nauseum in the past.

Most important of all, we have a president who hides from the public, falls, is impaired mentally and physically and, above all, has a son who has broken many laws, laundered money and the entire family appears corrupt.

America has not projected this current image in my lifetime. We were reluctant to enter the 2d WW but once we did we never looked back and after Pearl Harbor we became a winning force both in terms of military might as well military production.

Since Obama America has changed dramatically and has allowed China to ascend.  Where this all ends is anyone's guess but the trends are very concerning and downright frightening.

Our debt is one of the most disturbing problems facing us and could restrain our ability to exercise our flexibility to meet and overcome our many adversarial challenges.
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BLM Democrat Fascist Rioting Much Worse? Waffle House Smothered And Covered.

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Compare this with Dec 6, 2022. 
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On May 29th, 2020, the nationwide insurrection by the racist hate group BLM and its leftist allies arrived in the nation’s capital in a very big way.

On Friday night, a violent racist leftist mob, falsely described as “peaceful” by its media allies, converged on the White House. The insurrectionists assaulted Secret Service and Park Police officers. They shouted obscenities and threatened President Trump even as they fought their way past law enforcement personnel to reach the White House.

“It looks like a war zone outside the White House,”  Adam Parkhomenko, the former co-founder of Ready for Hillary, commented on a retweeted video of a burning building.

The Democrat insurrectionists hurled Molotov cocktails and rushed out for brief tactical forays even as a more telegenic crowd that was proportionately more female held their hands up for the cameras and chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot”: a BLM hoax popularized during the Michael Brown riots. While these human shields faced off with law enforcement, the real attack was underway with insurrectionists targeting security barriers and Secret Service personnel.

Secret Service personnel faced everything from bricks to incendiary devices and held the line. The insurrectionist assault was aimed at breaking the line, forcing the Secret Service to retreat allowing for a siege of the White House, followed by a full assault and penetration of the grounds. But despite the violence, the Secret Service did not retreat and none of the Democrat insurrectionists were able to make it over the White House fence.

The insurrectionist tactics on display were similar to those that had terrorized cities around the country, but what especially alarmed federal personnel was that the insurrectionists were not just aiming at the White House, but also at the nearby Treasury Department building.

The Treasury Building is connected to the East Wing of the White House by a secret tunnel built after Pearl Harbor to allow the president to evacuate in case of an attack.

When the insurrectionists penetrated barricades set up at the Treasury Building, there was fear that the attackers were preparing to foil a presidential evacuation by hitting both the White House and the Treasury Building, cutting off any possible escape route for President Trump.

With the Treasury evacuation route in danger, the Secret Service brought President Trump, along with Melania and Barron, down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Another relic of the FDR administration, the PEOC is a secretive bunker over 1,000 feet underground with its own air supply that is nearly impossible to penetrate by missile strikes or even by an armed force that has taken control of the White House grounds.

Taking presidential family members to the PEOC is usually a response to an aerial threat like rockets or aircraft on 9/11, when there isn’t enough time to evacuate in a conventional fashion. The use of the PEOC during the BLM insurrection however was triggered by the attack on the Treasury Department. With D.C. streets overrun by rioters and no cooperation from Mayor Bowser, the Secret Service may have believed that a street evacuation was too risky. And an aerial evacuation would have been ruled out until the grounds were fully secured.

On Saturday, May 30th, the insurrectionist occupation of D.C. continued. The Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial were vandalized and 11 police officers were injured. An attempt was made to burn the historic Chamber of Commerce Building. And even with Trump out of town, the insurrectionist mob continued to try to reach the White House.

The D.C. National Guard was activated in the largest deployment since the black nationalist riots after Martin Luther King’s murder. Democrat governors in charge of nearby forces however remained sympathetic to the insurrectionists and refused to deploy to protect the capital.

Virginia’s Gov. Northam, New York’s Gov. Cuomo and Pennsylvania’s Gov. Wolf, among other pro-insurrectionist governors, made it clear that a new civil war was underway.

President Trump flew out to Florida to watch Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch at the Kennedy SpaceCenter. He had originally planned to be there for much of the week, but had cut short his visit earlier that week and returned to Washington D.C. just in time for the insurrection.

Instead of celebrating another great national accomplishment, President Trump was forced to begin his remarks at the launch by paying tribute to George Floyd, whose misreported drug overdose earlier that week had been used as a pretext for the nationwide insurrection.

“The death of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis was a grave tragedy.  It should never have happened. It has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger, and grief,” Trump said at the Kennedy Space Center. “I stand before you in firm opposition to anyone exploiting this tragedy to loot, rob, attack, and menace.”

But these remarks did nothing to damp down the violence of the leftist insurrection.

Despite the wounds suffered by her own cops, Mayor Bowser, who had refused to allow the police to help stop the violence, made a public statement of support for the insurrectionists.

“While [Trump] hides behind his fence afraid/alone, I stand w/ people peacefully exercising their First Amendment Right after the murder of #GeorgeFloyd & hundreds of years of institutional racism,” the Democrat politician sneered. “There are no vicious dogs & ominous weapons. There is just a scared man. Afraid/alone…”

On Sunday, May 31st, with President Trump back, the violence intensified. Efforts were made to set the Church of the Presidents on fire. The White House guard house used by the Secret Service was reportedly torched. The BLM insurrectionists also pulled down and burned American flags where they could find them. Six members of the National Guard were wounded by Democrat insurrectionists throwing bricks. One of the Guardsmen was struck in the head.

The Inspector General’s report for the Department of the Interior documented “bricks, rocks, caustic liquids, frozen water bottles, glass bottles, lit flares, rental scooters, and fireworks” thrown at Park Police officers resulting in 49 injuries. 16 of those occurred on May 31st.

Fearing that they might be overwhelmed by the insurrectionists, DEA and ICE agents were brought in to help the National Guard. So was the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. Non-essential White House personnel were told to stay home because it was not safe for them to come to work.

By June 1st or J1, 60 Secret Service personnel had “sustained multiple injuries from projectiles such as bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks” and were “punched, kicked, punched, and exposed to bodily fluids.” That number would later be updated to 67 injured.

With the weekend over, White House employees returning to work were told to hide their IDs because with the insurrectionists in control of the streets, their safety could not be assured.

President Trump was urged to invoke the Insurrection Act by Attorney General Barr, who was trying to mobilize every federal law enforcement agency in D.C., but still knew that there was not enough manpower, and by Stephen Miller, but was dissuaded from doing so by Gen. Milley.

“The riots over the summer, you know, I could make a case that those riots were riots organic to an aggrieved community that perceived that they had various injustices throughout their life,” Milley would later tell the J6 Committee, expressing his sympathy for the J1 insurrectionists.

President Trump was determined to reject the siege and challenged the insurrectionists on J1 with a walk to the Church of the Presidents accompanied by Barr, Milley, and other government officials. The plan was that Trump would enter the church and pray inside, but it was boarded up due to the rioting. Instead he held up a bible in what would become a powerful symbol.

In the Rose Garden, Trump had pledged to be a “president of law and order” and “an ally of all peaceful protesters”, but pro-insurrectionist Democrats denounced his defense of law and order and falsely claimed that “non-violent” insurrectionists “peacefully protesting” had been cleared out of Lafayette Square by law enforcement to make way for Trump’s visit to the church.

The clearance operation was part of a pre-existing plan to secure the area with more fences and the peaceful insurrectionists were, according to the Chief of the Park Police, armed with “bricks, rocks, caustic liquids, water bottles, lit flares, fireworks and 2×4 sections of wood.”

Senator Ron Wyden accused Trump of giving a “fascist speech” that “verged on a declaration of war against American citizens.”

“These are not the words of a president, they are the words of a dictator,” Kamala Harris tweeted.

While the threat had been more severe on previous days, on J1, national Democrats openly began expressing their support for the insurrectionist attacks on the nation’s capital.

Sen. Tom Udall and Rep. Jim McGovern teamed up to write an op-ed falsely claiming that the National Guard had been mobilized “against American citizens peacefully protesting”. They did not explain what role bricks and rocks play in peaceful protests. Or how over 100 law enforcement personnel came to be injured by insurrectionists “peacefully protesting”.

Under the mounting pressure of pro-insurrection propaganda by Democrats and their media, military leaders quickly retreated. Unlike previous deployments to riot zones, like the L.A. riots, the Guardsmen had been deployed without being able to defend themselves. And by the end of the week they had been officially disarmed. Even helicopter pilots who had “disturbed” the insurrectionists by flying too low were investigated and later wrongly disciplined.

Some of the insurrectionists would later sue for “emotional damage”.

On Tuesday, June 6th, the arrival of more troops from conservative states, that, unlike the D.C. National Guard, were reliable, helped turn the tide. But the political battle had been lost.

D.C. government elites, from Senator Elizabeth Warren to Senator Mitt Romney, appeared at protests to express support for the insurrectionists. By Wednesday, the National Guard began to withdraw. The most overt violence had ended, but its leftist political goals had been achieved.

And yet federal law enforcement and the troops had succeeded in holding the line.

The insurrection continued across the nation, but it never hit the same level of violence in Washington D.C. J1 countered and broke the insurrection around the White House. More importantly it showed what was possible with a little courage and resolution. Had J1 become a national model, much of the destruction of the BLM insurrection could have been prevented.

Unfortunately, pro-insurrection Democrats and their media intimidated federal law enforcement and the military leadership. Congressional investigations were launched and scapegoats were punished. Gen. Milley’s racist endorsement for studying “white rage” was typical of the frantic response of careerists who cared nothing for the nation, but were worried about their jobs.

What the insurrection had failed to achieve through a tactical assault, it won politically.

While military wokeness was already a problem, Gen. Milley and other military brass accelerated it radically. Top military leaders were soon ordering racist political indoctrination sessions in support of the insurrectionists. This led to severe drops in morale and shortfalls in recruitment that continue to this day. The White House held, but the military was lost.

During the J1 insurrection, Democrats and their media denounced the use of troops in D.C. After J6, there was a massive extended deployment of the National Guard along with a nearly unprecedented militarization of the area. When Biden rode to his inauguration, instead of cheering crowds, there were troops. And the same Democrats and media who had denounced the deployment of troops on J1 as “fascist” supported it in the Biden era making it clear that they had not opposed the deployment of the military, they had supported the J1 insurrectionists.

J1 has largely been buried and forgotten. The attacks on the White House and other government buildings have been whitewashed. A partial list of the injuries includes 67 Secret Service personnel, 49 Park Police officers, 11 Metro police officers, 6 Guardsmen, and unknown numbers of federal personnel from agencies who operated without making public statements.

Those over 120 injuries along with the arson and vandalism disprove the lie that the J1 insurrection was peaceful and non-violent. But the larger unanswered question is what might have happened if federal law enforcement personnel, ranging from the Bureau of Prisons to ICE to the FBI, the Marshalls and the Secret Service had failed to hold the line in D.C.

June 1 marks the second anniversary of one of the worst attacks on our center of government.

Democrat governors had rejected aid to the White House and military leaders like Gen. Milley would prove themselves to be fundamentally untrustworthy. Had the insurrectionists entered the White House, we might have witnessed the fall of the center of the government and the murder of a president. That nothing like this happened is a debt we owe to the mostly unknown men who stood up to the insurrectionists and their supporters in Congress and the media, who held the line against bricks and incendiary devices, and all through the long nights, saved our nation.

Was BLM Democrat Fascist Rioting  Much Worse Than D 6, 2020?  We now know BLM was always a fraudulent black shake down enterprise, whereas D 6, was a small rag tag group of yahoos that were probably concocted by Pelosi in cahoots with the FBI to make Trump look bad.  Durham's report reveals the FBI were in bed with the FBI and remain so to this day shielded by the mass media. Today's mass media reminds me of The Waffle House French Fries That Are smothered And covered.

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Semper Defried. It Has Happened. Look In The Mirror. Guns ,Vigilantism. Revolution.




 If it ain't broke why fix it?  Tinkering with the Marine Corps is probably a dangerous and dumb idea! Semper Fi.
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Congress Must Save the Marine Corps

Shifting resources away from a combined arms Marine Corps to a technologically advanced but combat weak force is the wrong move. Congress should demand in depth hearings and a thorough review of this strategy, which will almost certainly fail its stated intent of offsetting Communist China at sea. 
by Newt Gingrich

I was completely unaware of the crisis building in the United States Marine Corps until I received an article from Bing West “Marine Corps No More?”

West is a distinguished military historian who served in the Marines and wrote an extraordinary book, “The Village,” about a year spent reclaiming a Vietnamese village from the communists.

West has written a dozen books about modern war and is an astute and often critical observer of the modern military. He also served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.

Bing wrote:

“[T]he current Commandant, General David H. Berger, has radically transformed the image and the mission of the Marine Corps.” He went on to assert “The primary focus now is upon developing missile units intended to sink Chinese warships. To fund those units, General Berger did away with 21% of the personnel in infantry battalions, 100% of the tanks, 67% of the cannon artillery batteries, 33% of the assault amphibious companies, nearly 30% of Marine aviation, and almost all assault breaching equipment. The desired number of large amphibious ships was reduced from 38 to 31. Due to these cuts, Marines are less capable to fight as a combined arms force. The Marine Corps cannot seize a city from an entrenched enemy, as it did Fallujah in 2004.”

West condemned the current commandant:

“General Berger concocted his concept in secret, not consulting the retired four-star community that, appalled by his extensive cuts, has united in opposition.” He went on to assert that “Marine resources and organizational cohesion have been severely damaged. General Berger’s injudicious change of direction will adversely affect Marine war-fighting capabilities, internal morale, and recruiting for years to come.”

All of this has been done for a stunningly stupid investment in a land based anti-ship mission against China that will not work. It is competitive rather than complementary with the Navy and Air Force, and it is a scandalous misallocation of Marine resources. Inserting by sea three or four small Marine units, with no support, on atolls in the South China Sea invites capture and defeat.

The Marine Corps has a long and proud history of being America’s immediate response force in a crisis. The Marine Hymn captures this sense of universal duty to protect America.

“From the Halls of Montezuma
“To the shores of Tripoli;
“We fight our country’s battles
“In the air, on land, and sea;
“First to fight for right and freedom”

When the Marines were sent to France in World War I and fought ferociously in the battle for Belleair Woods, they so impressed their German opponents they were called “devil dogs.”

When the Marine First Division found itself surrounded by at least four times as many Chinese Communist troops at the frozen Chosin Reservoir in North Korea, it reversed from attacking north toward the Yalu to attacking south to reach allied forces on the coast. In one of the most heroic battles of modern times (Nov. 27-Dec. 13) the First Marines maintained their unit cohesion and fought aggressively inflicting huge and unsustainable casualties on the Chinese.

Again and again, the Marines have done the job when called.

In this process, they have developed a combined arms battle doctrine and an intense commitment to unit cohesion and effectiveness in battle that are extraordinary achievements.

It is astonishing that a Marine Corps Commandant would abandon this history and its capacity for a China-centered anti-ship strategy. That plan may be useful in the Navy or the Air Force, but it is indefensible as a reason for destroying the Marine Corps’ combined arms capabilities.

It is little wonder that  Politico reported on April 1, 2022, that two dozen retired generals were trying to stop this incredibly stupid overhaul.

Congress should demand in depth hearings and a thorough review of this strategy, which is almost certainly going to fail its stated intent of offsetting Communist China at sea. Shifting resources away from a combined arms Marine Corps to a technologically advanced but combat weak force is the wrong move.

For those who believe somehow drones and computers have replaced ground combat and heavy equipment, it is worth looking at the volume of equipment and ammunition being sent to Ukraine. Ukraine is begging for tanks as the Marine Corps is mothballing them.

This is a dangerous development for American security and safety.
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First, the progressives (Demorcrats/Andy Stern) destroyed the middle class, then they allowed the unions to grow like Topsy so they could re-launder ill gotten gains back to the Democrats.  

Now they have destroyed  what was left of the middle class through inflation and the California Technology Billionaires have achieved their objective of controlling government through their social media entities.  

Their socialist concepts have crushed the freedoms of the deplorables and whatever vestige of our founding father's was left lays massacred and/or severely wounded on the kitchen floor.

 Wokeness has virtually destroyed and/or attacked every remnant of out social fabric and the America we all once knew no longer exists. 

We have the radicalized Democrat Party and the go along Republican Party to thank for these events. We have no one to blame but the faces in the mirror.


I take no Pleasure in asserting I have been warning this would come to pass in these memo and crushing spending would be the cause and root of these above evils.

When one spends that which they do not have to have what they cannot afford it is only a matter of time when one's wants crushes them.  

We no longer even work for what we want.  We would rather steal it and society now allows, nay, even encourages, this.  

The break down of law and order leads to a semblance of un-oderliness which results in an ungovernable society and havoc.

Defunding the police simply accelerates the pace.  Having guns does not alter matters unless one is willing to use them to try and restore order, ie. vigilantism which leads to revolution.
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My Doctor. Market Thoughts Near Term. Laryy Fink Dangerous As Is ESG. Taliban Threatens Iran?

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I just went for my final annual physical because my superb personal physician is retiring.  He is the dean of Savannah doctors but when he came in I said J-- I first came in over 20 years ago, could hear, could play tennis, walk without out a cane and 20 years later I wear hearing aids, can't play tennis, have Bronchiectasis and A Fib and am a physical mess..  He laughed.   

His patient's are going to miss him as we will  because he is one of the best and dedicated. We wish him well and hope his retirement years are the very best.

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In a recent memo, I commented I was not enthusiastic near term regarding the market and enumerated my reasons .

The upcoming reporting period should reveal a decent number of stocks performing well because the economy and employment  remains stronger than had been expected so this could turn out to be a decent period for stocks reflecting good earnings and decent forecasts but The Fed may, consequently, feel compelled to raise rates another 1/4% and that could throw cold water on an otherwise decent outlook to combat higher inflation than The Fed wishes to tolerate.

It seems a mild recession is inevitable and should that be the case the start of a new up market might be starting.  The market's overall level is somewhat stretched but there are pockets of values that are historically cheap. Oil stocks are flush with cash so I would anticipate consolidations to occur. 

America has some serious social and political issues and the election news will cause ripples as will China and the Ukraine War but  eventually those factors will be discounted so I would not get too bearish.

Should Biden win that would be a downer. Should any one of the Republicans running win that would prove a more positive backdrop against which a new bullish market could begin.

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REPUBLICANS

Republicans Say DOJ Has Gone ‘Totally Rogue’ After Lawsuit Against 2024 Senate Contender

   READ MORE

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 Taliban claims: 'We will conquer Iran soon' amid water dispute

Tensions have risen recently between the Taliban and Iran over the shared Helmand River.
 An IRGC Ground Forces commando. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The Taliban threatened on Sunday that it could conquer Iran as tensions increase over water disputes between Afghanistan and Iran, leaving at least three people dead.

Senior Taliban commander Abdulhamid Khorasani, aka Nasser Badri, has in a video message warned that the group will fight against Iranians "with more passion" than they did against the US forces."We will conquer Iran soon if Taliban's leaders give the green light for jihad." pic.twitter.com/dodCIyUXp3

— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) May 27, 2023

In a video released by the Taliban, a senior commander in the terrorist organization running Afghanistan warned that the Taliban would fight the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard "with more passion" than they fought the US forces. He added that the Taliban "will conquer Iran soon if the Taliban's leaders give the green light.

As well as the Taliban commander's video, another video released by the terrorist organization taunting Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi went viral on social media. In the video a Taliban member fills a single yellow jerrycan with water, sarcastically telling Raisi "Mr. Raisi, take this water barrel and don't attack, we're terrified."

Clarifying the reason behind the clashes
Iranian media has not explained what the clashes are about, claiming only in one report that they were to do with drug trafficking. Iran also claims that the Taliban shot at IRGC officers on the border first. The Taliban, however, claim the opposite.

Other media sources including the Associated Press (AP) and Iran International report that the clashes happened over a water dispute, a report that would explain the Taliban's video.

Earlier in May, Raisi warned the Taliban not to violate Iran's rights to the Helmand River which is shared between the two countries. 

“I warn the rulers of Afghanistan to immediately give the people their water rights," he said. "Take my words seriously now or don't complain later.”

Tensions surrounding the river have risen steadily over the last two years since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US forces.

A treaty was signed between the two countries in 1973 involving an agreement that Afghanistan had to give Iran a certain amount of water from the river which flows from Afghanistan.

Reports claim, however, that Afghanistan has been violating the treaty with The National reporting that Iran has only been receiving four percent of the water owed. The lack of water is particularly significant to Iran as it faces a long drought - an issue that Afghanistan faces too
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Larry Fink and Blackrock are synonymous..  He will be retiring soon and , perhaps, fearing his control of Blackrock's  future he has begun publishing a series of ads.  
Larry is a dangerous man because he has control over Trillions of Dollars of corporate votes,  and thus, has tremendous autocratic power.
If corporate America does not vote in accord with the way Fink believes it should, he can bring this power to brow beat management.  Fink and his supporters are basically anti-capitalist dictators.  They control Davos, are totally green and their intimidating manner of gettitting their way is thuggish at best.

[What is environmental, social and governance (ESG)?

TechTarget
( https://www.techtarget.com › what is definition  of ESG.
Environmental, social and governance is a framework used to assess an organization's business practices and performance on various sustainability ]

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More stupidity by anti-capitalists is wrecking stock values through wokeism .Various directors have been allowed to introduce their stupid, dangerous and offensive concepts which are totally disruptive of our nation's social values. 
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