Blowback In The African Coup Belt

Authored by Marcel Dumas Gautreau via The Mises Institute,

Starting in 2020, things started to get strange in Africa for those who knew what to look for.

Normally, coups in Africa are nothing to write about. But starting in 2020, we saw six countries flip into a pro-Russian direction in just three years. Individually, they were a curiosity. Taken together, that rate of turnover outpaced even the most optimistic neoconservative ambitions for pro–United States regime changes in the Middle East. As General Wesley Clark summarized, “We’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

That fourth country, Libya, is where our story starts.

Muammar Gaddafi and the Disposal Problem

In 2011, the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization destroyed the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. They had wanted to do it for a long time. A true cosmopolitan, Gaddafi had provided lawyers, guns, and money to black nationalists in South Africa, Palestinian Nationalists in Tunisia, Irish Nationalists in the British Isles, White Nationalists in Canada, and Armenian Nationalists in Turkey. The one ideology for which the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution had no patience or tolerance was radical Islamic Salafi jihadism. In March 1998, Libya was the first country to issue an Interpol arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden. The warrant received no attention or action. Five months later, Al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224.

In September 2001, President George W. Bush told Congress that “every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Gaddafi took the US up on the offer, dismantling its weapons of mass destruction program under the United Nations’ supervision. It paid over $1 billion in reparations to victims of terrorism to get removed from the State Sponsor of Terror list. In 2008, future US Ambassador to Libya (and Benghazi embassy casualty) J. Christopher Stephens reported that “Libya has been a strong partner in the war against terrorism and cooperation in liaison channels is excellent.”

Gaddafi had been highly suspicious of the citizens who chose to join the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan and surveilled them extensively, dutifully reporting them to other intelligence agencies whenever possible. In one particularly obscene case, a Guantanamo detainee named Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu was on the ground leading the Salafi jihadist group “Supporters of Sharia.” While hundreds are held in Guantanamo, being tortured without trial, the US knowingly released what it deemed a “probable member of al-Qaeda and a member of the African Extremist Network” to tear things up in Libya for them. A United Kingdom Parliamentary retrospective on the Libya overthrow later admitted, “The possibility that militant extremist groups would attempt to benefit from the rebellion should not have been the preserve of hindsight. Libyan connections with transnational militant extremist groups were known before 2011, because many Libyans had participated in the Iraq insurgency and in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda.”

Gaddafi made a series of dire warnings of what would happen if he died:

“Libya plays a vital role in regional peace and world peace,” he said in an interview with the France 24 television station. “We are an important partner in fighting al Qaeda.”

“There are millions of blacks who could come to the Mediterranean to cross to France and Italy, and Libya plays a role in security in the Mediterranean.”

Saif Gaddafi likewise warned, “Libya may become the Somalia of North Africa, of the Mediterranean. You will see the pirates in Sicily, in Crete, in Lampedusa. You will see millions of illegal immigrants. The terror will be next door.” While the Mediterranean didn’t see a resurgence of literal piracy, Gaddafi’s predictions were otherwise correct if not conservative.

Within five years, US military officials openly conceded that Libya was a failed state. In February 2015, the International Crisis Group warned, “On the current trajectory, the most likely medium-term prospect is not one side’s triumph, but that rival local warlords and radical groups will proliferate, what remains of state institutions will collapse, financial reserves . . . will be depleted, and hardship for ordinary Libyans will increase exponentially.”

As predicted, millions of blacks flocked to Libya’s Mediterranean coast to cross into France and Italy. Many were beaten, raped, and starved in what the United Nations Children’s Fund called “living hellholes” or even sold in open-air slave markets. On the Italian island of Lampedusa, it is not unheard of thirteen years later for hundreds or thousands of illegal African migrants to land in a single night. On May 22, 2017, in a manifestation of what former Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigative counsel Jack Blum called a “disposal problem,” a Manchester-born Libyan named Salman Abedi returned from his MI5-sponsored jihad in Libya and blew himself to pieces in the middle of an Ariana Grande concert. He killed himself and twenty-two others in an audience primarily composed of young girls.

As the second phase of Hillary Clinton’s “bank shot,” the overthrow of Libya’s government and the looting of its arsenals allowed the Central Intelligence Agency to direct those weapons to jihadis in Syria. The scourges of the Islamic world would also use this windfall of weapons to brutalize populations across Africa’s Sahel region, most notably in Mali. After 2011, countries in the Sahel experienced between a tenfold and twentyfold increase in deadly Islamic terror incidents from groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State following what Vision of Humanity calls a “Jihadization of Banditry.”

French Africa and the Series of Coups

After seizing power in 1969, Gaddafi moved in 1973 to seize land in the former French colony of Chad based on older colonial boundaries between Italy and France. In 1979, Libya intervened in the Chadian civil war on the side of Goukouni Oueddei. When Oueddei demanded the withdrawal of Libyan troops, Libya withdrew from the nondisputed territories. Goukouni implicitly affirmed the new border. France backed Hissène Habré to take over in 1982. General Idriss Déby played a pivotal role in dislodging Libyan troops from northern Chad, but France and President Habré feared his growing influence, exiling him to Sudan.

Gaddafi began supporting Déby’s efforts to raise an army and take over Chad in 1990. When Déby successfully took power, the former rivals became quick friends. Libya withdrew from the disputed strip in 1994, and the two countries locked in a series of security, trade, and refugee resettlement agreements. Most importantly, the two cooperated extensively as two points in a chain along with Nigeria against Islamic militants. In 2021, Déby was killed in battle against Saudi-funded rebels, backed by elements of one of Libya’s three competing revolutionary governments.

During his rapprochement with the West, Gaddafi and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi signed the 2008 Treaty of Benghazi. Italy apologized for colonialism and agreed to pay Libya $5 billion in reparations over twenty years. More importantly, Italy and the European Union would fully modernize Libya’s border patrol infrastructure, including satellite detection and a joint Italian-Libyan coastal patrol to stop the flow of illegal migrants into Europe. With Gaddafi’s death and the failure of any Libyan faction to consolidate control, this infrastructure fell to tatters.

In January 2019, Italy’s populist right began a diplomatic offensive against France, blaming the Republic’s policies in Africa for the migrant flood. At a rally, deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio posed the question, “If today people are leaving Africa is it because some European countries, with France taking the lead, have never stopped colonizing tens of African states?”

Matteo Salvini likewise said,

There are countries that steal wealth from Africa and France is definitely one of them. France has no interest in making Libya a better place. Paris is interested in taking control of the oil there. And their interests are opposed to the Italian ones. I’m proud to govern a generous country. We don’t take lessons on humanity from France, let alone from Macron. In recent years, France turned back thousands of migrants, including women and children. They took them back to Italy in the middle of the night, like animals. Again, I don’t take lesson from Macron.

Future prime minister Giorgia Meloni joined the attack, explaining to a television audience the CFA franc, “the colonial currency that France prints for 14 African nations to which it applies seigniorage and by virtue of which it exploits the resources of these nations.” Holding a picture of a child at the bottom of a Burkina Faso gold mine, she concluded that “the solution is not to take Africans and bring them to Europe, the solution is to free Africa from certain Europeans who exploit it.”

In its defense, the CFA franc has historically been less inflationary than currencies in adjacent African nations. Still, for once, it was not completely unfair and ahistorical to single out France as particularly incompetent. France’s former colonies have fared unusually poorly relative to those of other colonial powers. From de jure decolonization in 1960 until the end of the Cold War, France launched over a hundred military expeditions into its former African colonies. After the Cold War, more than three-quarters of the coups in sub-Saharan Africa were in former French colonies.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger were the worst hit by the Islamic terror wave. Straddling the border between the three countries is the “Islamic State of the Greater Sahara.” After repeated failures of the French-backed governments to dislodge the insurgents, the militaries seized power with popular support. Sudan, Guinea, and Gabon were likewise overthrown, creating a continuous “coup belt” running from Sudan on the Red Sea to Guinea on the Atlantic. On March 24, Senegal elected Bassirou Diomaye as president, who has vowed to take the country off the CFA franc.

Russia, Russia, Russia

The new military governments of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger formed the Alliance of Sahel States, all of them leaving the Nigeria-dominated and Western-backed Economic Community of West African States. They then announced that French troops were no longer welcome in the countries, and that they would instead be welcoming protection and training from Russia’s Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group was originally a mercenary company run by the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin. In July 2023, Russia hosted a summit in Saint Petersburg, at which Putin announced he would write off $23 billion in debt owed by various African countries. The conference was one of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s last appearances in public after his failed June 2023 coup and before his accidental August 2023 plane crash. Wagner in Africa has been renamed as the Africa Corps, rumored to be directly managed by Russian military intelligence. Russia began offering “regime survival packages” to countries in Africa, in exchange for access to mineral resources. Russia threatens to cut off privileged French access to Nigeran uranium reserves, which are responsible for the production of 12 percent of France’s electricity.

The US also has a direct stake in the form of two Africa Command bases in Niger, one of which completed construction in 2019 as an intelligence center and a launchpad for Reaper drones. The Agadez and Niamey bases are critical to surveillance across Central Africa. Besides an unknown number of intelligence agents, there are one thousand US troops in the country, and the new Niger government has insisted that they are not welcome. US Undersecretary of State for Africa Molly Phee visited Niger twice in March, but so far, the Nigerien government has shown no sign of budging.

After September 11, 2001, the neoconservatives schemed to dominate the entire Middle East and North Africa. Instead, imperial arrogance and outright perfidy may well have put the country on the path to losing it all.

Tyler Durden Wed, 05/22/2024 - 02:00

Election 2024: A Political Renaissance For America Or The Path To Totalitarianism

Authored by James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer via American Greatness,

It has been decades in the making, but the country is now on the precipice between its traditional ideology of political liberalism and a path that will lead, far sooner than Americans might think, to totalitarianism. The historical bulwarks of Americanism and the American political system—government of the people, freedom, and liberty—have been deliberately eroded. A citizenry steeped in republican virtue, cognizant of the political ideas and principles that made America a lasting and strong constitutional republic, and knowledgeable about the duties and obligations of American citizenship have been under daily assault for years from the foreign ideology of communism. That odious ideology has operated under synonyms such as “progressivism,” “multiculturalism,” or DEI to make its poison more palatable to American audiences.

The media—the so-called “Fourth Estate”—has been another layer of protection that has been peeled away. Today, they are activists advancing the left’s agenda in all but name. Great newspapers that were lively to read and informative are no longer. One reads them now the same way Soviet citizens used to read Pravda—only by knowing the lies that are printed and surmising what is left out of the story can one come close to knowing the truth. Compare the front page of the New York Times from fifty, forty, or thirty years ago to one today, and the change is telling and sad to see. Rather than a robust culture of free speech, censorship is pervasive by the legacy and social media, Big Tech, and by a ubiquitous and devilish culture of self-censorship.

American universities were once the envy of the world, as lively academies of intellectual debate and devoted to the pursuit of knowledge are now factories of indoctrination. Their law, medical, engineering, and business schools have also been transformed into political instruments that advance the “Party Line.” Unbelievably, thought control in K-12 is even worse. Popular culture fell a long time ago, and most of it is simply a contemporary version of Soviet entertainment where the heroic worker and peasant defeat the evil capitalist and priest. Worse still is the promotion of degeneracy and decadence with gender reassignment led by a teacher’s union that more resembles a Clockwork Orange ensemble than as the protectors of the most vulnerable in our society—our children.

As alarming as these developments are, what is worse is the permanent weaponization of government against political opponents. The raids, indictments, trials, and gag orders for a former president and leading 2024 candidate demonstrate that the Constitutional rights of the most prominent political figure in American politics in this century can have his rights violated, so too can all Americans. The lawfare employed against President Trump has been specifically designed by the left to consume his time and other resources away from his campaign for President in this critically important election year.

Of course, it is not only Trump. The imprisonment of former Trump official Peter Navarro and perhaps of Trump advisor Steve Bannon is an attempt to decapitate the Make America Great Again Movement through their imprisonment and to send a message to others about what will happen to anyone who opposes the state. The persecution of Trump’s legal advisor, John Eastman, is a similar tactic. The result is that law firms will be reluctant to accept the movement’s legal challenges. These actions are the first strike in the left’s campaign of “lawfare” to disarm Trump and to deter any Republican challenge to the parameters of the election and its aftermath. It is also political muscle flexing in an attempt to intimidate anyone who would assist Trump’s campaign and an effort to demoralize his base. After the British executed Admiral John Byng in 1757, Voltaire wrote it was “to encourage the others,” and so it is today.

The irony of the many steps taken by the left to advance a totalitarian agenda is that it is they who falsely proclaim that it is Trump and the MAGA movement that are the fascists. It is the left that is actually implementing such vile and anti-American practices against their political enemies and the American people. Recently, former 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton was once again on the Sunday news shows talking about how Donald Trump would arrest his political enemies, while in reality it is only the Democratic Party and the Biden administration that have put Peter Navarro in prison, may imprison Bannon, and indicted the former President 92 times.

This cannot stand if America is to survive as a constitutional republic. If it does, then the country is on the path to totalitarianism. Totalitarianism does not just show up one day, springing forth fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. But it does come quickly, more so than most Americans realize, as the ideology, laws, norms, and culture are eroded by the new revolutionary regime. When they seized power in 1917, the Bolsheviks did not know how far they could push the Russian people, but that was not for lack of intent or for a lack trying. Their ambition was to remake everything—culture, politics, economics, the arts, science, diplomacy, education, values, and thought. Every year, they tightened their grip until they crushed the people in the horrors of Stalinism. It took only twenty years from the time the Bolsheviks came to power to the show trials of mature Stalinism.

Nothing is decided and there will be many ups and downs, twists and turns, and surprises between now and Election Day. The election of 2024 is critical and as important as any in its history. Assuming the election’s fidelity—that this assumption must be made is an indication of how close the country is flirting with totalitarianism—it will provide Americans with the clearest choice in our history since the Civil War. When that choice is understood to be one between the continuation of the American Republic or to enter the hell of totalitarianism, the election will spark a renaissance of America’s traditional political ideology, institutions, values and culture. This election provides the opportunity to drive a stake through the heart of totalitarianism “with an American face,” as Americans, having seen into the abyss, will reject the totalitarian path. A re-birth of the understanding of the value of American citizenship—that spirit of 1776—and of our inalienable and universal freedoms can come from the 2024 election.

To ensure that positive outcome will require not only support for President Trump but also extraordinary vigilance by the American people through the election and its aftermath.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 23:40

Where It's Most & Least Common To Be LGBT+

Around seven percent of adults identify as LGBT+, according to a survey conducted online in 43 countries between April 2023 and March 2024 by Statista Consumer Insights.

But, as Statista's Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, there’s notable variation between countries.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The Philippines, the United States and Israel had the highest share of people identifying as LGBT+, at 11 percent each, while Thailand and Canada came in a close joint second place with 10 percent of adults, followed by Sweden, Brazil and Australia, each with 9 percent. When looking at sexual orientation in the U.S., 3 percent of respondents identified as gay, 6 percent as bisexual and one percent pansexual.

At the lower end of the spectrum comes South Korea and Romania with 3 percent of adults identifying as LGBT+ in each. There was also considerable variation across age groups. In the U.S. for example, 20 percent of Gen Zers self-identified as a part of the LGBT+ community versus 11 percent of Millennials, 6 percent of Gen Xers and only 5 percent among Baby Boomers.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 23:20

The Audacity Of Merrick Garland: Julie Kelly

Authored by Julie Kelly via The Florida Capital Star (emphasis ours),

FBI agents last week arrested a man from Maine for his involvement in the events of January 6. According to a Department of Justice press release, Lincoln Deming spent about 30 minutes inside the building after entering through an open door with Capitol Police standing by. Deming faces numerous charges including civil disorder and the dreaded “parading” in the Capitol misdemeanor.

The DOJ bragged in the press release about the government’s scalp count for its unprecedented prosecution of Jan 6 protesters. “More than 1,424 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol,” Matthew Graves, the Joe Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, boasted. The investigation into the four-hour disturbance, Graves warned, is “ongoing.”

Indeed. The DOJ, astonishingly, is on pace to arrest one J6 protester a day this year; Graves has stated his intention to bring the total caseload to at least 2,000 defendants before the statute of limitations expires.

If DOJ Didn’t Have Double Standards, It Would Have No Standards at All…Oh Wait

At the same time, the DOJ refuses to bring federal charges against pro-Palestinian demonstrators who in many instances engaged in similar if not worse conduct inside Congressional buildings over the past six months.

Graves’ spokeswoman recently confirmed to me via email that all cases stemming from arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters are being handled by the local D.C. prosecutor.

In other words, no federal obstruction of an official proceeding indictments against those who repeatedly interrupted Senate and House hearings to protest against the Israel-Gaza war. No federal “parading” charges for demonstrators who unlawfully occupied government buildings in Washington on multiple occasions. Even demonstrators who assaulted Capitol police outside the DNC headquarters last November do not face federal charges — a shocking double-standard since hundreds of J6ers have been federally charged with assault on police, even for minor confrontations, often resulting in lengthy prison sentences and pretrial detention in several cases.

Which makes recent comments by Attorney General Merrick Garland all the more outrageous — and demonstrably false. Before two House committees voted Thursday to advance contempt of Congress against Garland for defying a congressional subpoena demanding the audio recording of Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur last year, Garland mustered his most sanctimonious self to explain how House Republicans, not him, threaten the legitimacy of the DOJ — a “fundamental institution of our democracy,” Garland claimed. (Garland advised Biden to invoke executive privilege to prevent producing the tapes to Congress; Biden only too happily accepted his counsel.)

Garland audaciously claimed politics plays no role in determining what investigations his department pursues.

Without political influence?

If the country had a real news media instead of boot-lickers who ask Garland about his hurt feelings when people criticize the DOJ, at least one reporter would have confronted Garland about the ongoing prosecution of J6ers while letting Hamasurrectionists off the hook.

A reporter would have asked Garland how many times the DOJ seeks pretrial detention for political protesters accused of assaulting police, as the DOJ has done in dozens of J6 cases.

A reporter would have asked Garland how often the FBI conducts armed raids of Americans accused of nonviolent offenses, as the FBI has done in hundreds of J6 cases and continues to do.

A reporter would have asked Garland about the possibility the Supreme Court will reverse how his DOJ has applied a post-Enron statute against 350 or so J6ers, turning many otherwise nonviolent protesters into convicted felons.

A reporter also would have asked Garland about two recent D.C. appellate court decisions that overturned excessive sentencing requests made by the DOJ.

A reporter would have asked Garland why he authorized an armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago to search for classified documents but didn’t do the same for Joe Biden or Mike Pence.

A reporter would have asked Garland why he should not be held in contempt of Congress for defying a House subpoena while his prosecutors indicted both Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro — who is currently doing time in a Miami prison — for contempt after they defied subpoenas by the January 6 Select Committee.

A reporter would have asked Garland why his office just boasted about imprisoning several individuals including two women in their 70s for protesting outside a D.C. abortion clinic in 2020 while nearly all federal charges against 2020 BLM rioters have been dropped.

You get the drift.

The fascinating backdrop here is that the Biden regime and news media warn a second Trump presidency will result in a crusade of retribution and retaliation against his sworn enemies — including DOJ and FBI officials.

Given Garland’s performance as attorney general, one can only hope that’s true.

Part of Garland’s letter to Biden

Julie Kelly is an independent journalist covering the weaponization of the U.S. Government against her citizens, Follow Kelly on Twitter / X.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 23:00

San Francisco Remains The Top Startup City On The World

A richly connected network of founders, venture capital firms, and tech talent are some of the key ingredients driving a startup ecosystem.

As engines of growth, these tech clusters are evolving on a global scale. While the world’s leading startup cities are concentrated in America, several ecosystems, such as Beijing and Seoul, are growing in prominence as countries focus on technological advancement to spur innovation.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dororthy Neufeld, shows the best startup cities worldwide, based on data from Pitchbook.

The Global Startup Ecosystem Rankings

To determine the rankings, each city was analyzed based on the scale and maturity of their startup ecosystem over a six-year period ending in the second quarter of 2023.

Among the inputs analyzed and used to calculate the overall development score were fundraising activity, venture capital deals, and exit value:

San Francisco dominates the pack, with $427.6 billion in capital raised over the six-year period.

Despite a challenging funding environment, nearly 20,000 deals closed, highlighting its outsized role in launching tech startups. Both OpenAI and rival Anthropic are headquartered in the city, thanks to its broad pool of tech talent and venture capital firms. Overall, 11,812 startups were based in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2023, equal to about 20% of startups in America.

Falling next in line is New York City, which raised $179.9 billion over the same time period. Crypto firm Gemini and machine learning company, Hugging Face, are two examples of startups based in the city.

As the top-ranking hub outside of America, Beijing is home to TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, which is one of the most valuable private companies in the world.

In recent years, much of the startup funding in China is being driven by government-backed funds. In particular, these funds are focusing heavily on “hard tech” such as semiconductor-makers and electric vehicle companies that align with the government’s strategic long-term goals.

Another leading tech hub, Singapore, has the highest venture capital funding per capita worldwide. In 2023, this was equal to an impressive $1,060 in venture funding per person. By comparison, venture funding was $345 per person in the U.S., the second-highest globally.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 22:40

Joe Biden's Problem Is In the Pews

Authored by Salena Zito & Brad Todd via RealClearPolitics,

To locate Joe Biden’s electoral problem, you need only to look on Sunday morning. Polling shows the mass-attending Catholic president trails Donald Trump by 10 points among those who attend religious services a few times a year or more. The score is reversed with voters who report they seldom or never attend church, with Biden leading by 10.

It’s the starkest divide in the electorate – and one that political journalists rarely mention, perhaps because, as a profession, journalists are more removed from religion than the average American.

Trump’s advantage with white evangelical Protestants is widely understood, but he also leads Biden by healthy margins among less politically conservative Christians. These findings in the recent Marquette Law School’s national poll of registered voters showed Biden trailing Trump by 18 percentage points with other members of his own Catholic faith, and behind Trump by 16 among adherents of mainline protestant denominations, which would include groups like Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians.

Those numbers are in the same range as the 24-point lead Trump posts among self-described “born-again” evangelicals. The same poll shows the race is reversed with non-Christian voters, with whom Biden holds a commanding 33-point advantage.

The irony of this schism proves a dynamic that is larger than these two men. Biden would tell you his Catholicism is integral to his own self-identity. Trump, meanwhile, was a high-living playboy who said he’d never asked God for forgiveness for anything, situating himself well outside the theology and lifestyle of most Christians.

In 2018, we wrote a book examining the realignment that brought Trump to power and identified what we called “King Cyrus Christians” as an important archetype in Trump’s coalition. These voters, mostly Catholic or evangelical Protestants, adopted Trump’s candidacy pragmatically, seeing in him a warrior who would battle their common political enemies. And with control of the Supreme Court in the balance in that 2016 election, they forged an alliance of necessity.

Survey research conducted for our book found these King Cyrus Christians (so named in a nod to the pagan Persian king who had delivered ancient Jews back to Israel and rebuilt their temple in Jerusalem) were not initially Trump’s most enthusiastic backers. Instead, the shock troops of first-wave Trumpism were the most secular and least traditional Republicans – and many were not Republican at all.

But over time, religious Republicans have gotten more comfortable with Trump, owing to his kept promise to deliver a conservative Supreme Court that not only reversed decades of erosion in religious liberty but also overturned the Roe v. Wade abortion precedent. Politics is about coalitions, and the arrangement between Trump and conservative Christians indisputably has delivered benefits for both sides.

Trump’s 2016 nomination was powered by secular Republicans, but his 2024 re-nomination showed no such schism. If anything, it was the reverse. Polling in the two GOP contests most dominated by religious voters, the Iowa Caucus and the South Carolina primary, showed him doing modestly better among evangelical than non-evangelical Republicans.

The religious divide that matters going forward in American politics is not about Trump, and it’s not about white evangelical Protestants. The question is whether Democrats can keep a place in their party for other religiously devout voters.

Democrats’ best electoral group – the so-called “nones,” those with no religious affiliation – is growing, particularly among younger generations. But as the party becomes dominated by those who actively reject religion, its platform becomes less appealing to those who don’t, as many Jewish Democrats are discovering as left-wing radicals show an ugly antisemitic side and opposition to America’s alliance with the Jewish state of Israel.

While “nones” are rising overall, they aren’t distributed proportionately around the country, clustering disproportionately on the coasts. If Democrats drive out the religious voters in their ranks, they will struggle to compete in a geographic footprint large enough to enable them to control Congress or win in the electoral college.

Hispanic voters, another growing slice of the electorate, are moving quickly away from Democrats. Florida offers the perfect case study for that drift, as voters of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Columbian descent have helped transform what was recently America’s quintessential swing state into a Republican fortress. Nervous Democratic strategists are on guard for the same dynamic playing out next in Nevada and Arizona.

Pew Research data shows Hispanics are about half as likely as whites to say they do not believe in God, while African Americans, long the bulwark of the Democratic Party, are five times less likely than whites to express disbelief. Blacks also attend church more than whites do, report reading the Bible more than whites, and say they pray more than whites, according to respected church researchers at Barna Group.

While Democrats can still count on topping 90% with blacks in most elections, the three trends driving realignment – religiosity, education density, and the blue-collar/white-collar divide – will put that loyalty to the test in coming years, and maybe sooner than pundits expect.

A Democratic Party platform that is growing ever more hostile to traditional religious mores on social policy, on Israel, and on issues surrounding religious liberty may find it difficult to keep enough blacks, Hispanics, and Jews on board to win enough states to govern.

Political realignment works like the tectonic plates in the earth’s crust. The masses of land, or of voters, tend to keep moving, even if that movement is only noticed when it results in an earthquake. Smart political geologists will be watching how believers vote in this election.

Salena Zito is a reporter for the Washington Examiner, Wall Street Journal contributor, and co-author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 22:20

The Great 'McFlation': Bidenomics' Failure Revealed In One Chart

The primary appeal of fast-food burgers (even though the food is horrible for your health) is cheap and fast. In recent weeks, McDonald's indirectly admitted that three years of 'McFlation' was crushing burger demand among working-poor consumers, and there was an urgent need within the burger chain to reintroduce the $5 meal deal. 

X users have been disgusted with $18 Big Mac meals at some of the burger chain's restaurants nationwide.

This was at a rest stop, but these McDonald's prices are nuts right??? pic.twitter.com/0qq8Ima3ZA

— Sam Learner (@sam_learner) July 18, 2023

Some were even reminded of the good old days when the same meal cost $5—right before the GFC and right before the Federal Reserve embarked on a decade of zero-bound interest rates and trillions of dollars in money printing that fueled financial asset bubbles. 

These prices at McDonald’s sure looks like the dollar is in crash mode $18 for a Big Mac meal this use to be $5 in 2008 pic.twitter.com/5rpcrNtaul

— Golden Coast (Cassandra) (@GregCrennan) February 20, 2024

Fast forward to today, the persistent inflation storm is being driven by the US Treasury spending like it's in a depression (or spending an absurd $1 trillion every 100 days).

Bidenomics' stealth stimulus has resulted in massive economic miscalculation by the federal government and the Federal Reserve. It's not just ZeroHedge saying this, but Duquesne Family Office Chairman & CEO Stan Druckenmiller recently gave Bidenomics an "F." 

Real wages for most consumers have been terrible under Biden's first term. But not under Trump's... 

As the election cycle heats up, X user End Wokeness has reminded everyone about elevated food inflation impacting menu prices at McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Chick-fil-A. The data compared year-end 2019 menu prices at the three restaurants with current prices. The results are startling: Some menu items are up triple digits in several or so years. 

Food inflation has been problematic for Biden's campaign team to navigate. They've already given up on 'Bidenomics.' 

More recently, Biden's team has used popular buzzwords 'greedflation' and 'shrinkflation' to convince voters why Big Macs in certain states and towns now cost $18. This is a significant pivot from blaming 'Putin Price Hikes' for every economic mishap. 

It's difficult to believe Biden's greedflation story because government data shows that retail prices for ground beef and chicken have surged and remained elevated. Also, major commodity indexes tracked by Bloomberg and the United Nations have yet to come back down to Earth. All of this indicates companies had to push up prices to protect margins. 

The current issue is that inflation is being driven by reaccelerating commodity prices, while the US government is spending as if it's in a depression.

Meanwhile, clueless Democrats who ignore out-of-control government spending as the root cause of inflation are demanding price controls on food, similar to what communists or socialists do in third-world countries. The only problem with that is that price controls can trigger shortages or surpluses, longer lines, lower quality products, and, of course, misallocation of products.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 22:00

Aluminum Jumps To 23-Month High Amid Ongoing Aussie Production Issues

From coffee to cocoa, orange juice to gold, and silver to copper, commodity prices are spiking across the board (we outlined this on Monday). The latest surge occurred Tuesday when aluminum tagged 23-month highs due to ongoing production issues emerging from Australia. The broad-based commodity rally signals the inflation storm central bankers are battling is not over. 

Rio Tinto, one of the largest aluminum producers, declared force majeure on third-party contracts for exporting alumina from its refineries in Queensland, Australia. This is due to a broken natural gas pipeline operated by Queensland Gas Pipeline. 

A spokesperson for the company told Dow Jones that NatGas supplies will return to capacity at a much later date than previously anticipated: 

"The pipeline operator's current estimate [is] for a return to normal levels in the second half of 2024. 

"Until then, Yarwun and QAL [Queensland Alumina Limited] will continue to operate at lower capacities."

On the London Metal Exchange, aluminum contracts settled up 3.6% at $2,725.50 a metric ton, the highest level since early summer 2022. 

Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research at BMO Capital Markets, told Bloomberg that today's price action in aluminum markets suggests mounting fears about "dwindling aluminum output" — a situation he views as "unlikely."

Hamilton noted that industrial metal could be "part of the digital and electrical revolution we know is coming ... is going to benefit." We call this "The Next AI Trade."

One base metal that has been on everyone's radars is copper. Comex prices have squeezed to record highs and continue on Tuesday. 

Since February, industrial metals tracked by Bloomberg have soared 30%. 

Precious metals tracked by Bloomberg have also broken out. 

Commodities as a whole, tracked by Bloomberg, have soared. 

Bloomberg's Cameron Crise pointed out that the number of commodities in the Bloomberg Commodity Index that are up by at least 25% over the three month period have risen to seven. 

Crise continues:

Currently, there are seven: cocoa, copper, nickel, orange juice, silver, tin, and zinc. Clearly industrial metals are a theme in that list, which itself raises the question of how valid some of the global growth concerns might be. Anyhow, the current total of seven is the highest since the middle of 2022; coincidentally (or not), the industrial metals subindex total return is also the highest since the same point in time.

He added:

Obviously, over long periods of time the link between the series above and inflation isn't necessarily that great; the highest-ever reading came in 2009 with the correction of the GFC downside overshoot in commodity prices. Still, the relatively broad-based rise in industrial metals is noteworthy and raises another question about just how benign the inflation outlook might be moving forwards.

The hot commodity market is posing new challenges for Fed chair Jerome Powell and his friends in the White House... 

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 20:40

Republican Iran Hawks Celebrate Raisi's Death

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Some Republicans in Congress are celebrating the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash along with Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and seven others in Iran’s mountainous East Azerbaijan province.

When the news first broke that Raisi was missing, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) wrote on X: "If Raisi is dead, the world is now a safer & better place. That evil man was a tyrant & terrorist. He was not loved or respected & he will be missed by no one. If he’s gone, I truly hope the Iranian people have the chance to take their country back from murderous dictators."

After Raisi’s death was confirmed, the State Department offered condolences to Iran, which outraged Scott. "What a disgrace. Since when does the United States issue a statement of condolence for a terrorist?! It should read: The world is a better place with Raisi dead," he said.

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) made similar comments in response to the news about Raisi. "Good riddance. Raisi was a murderous human rights abuser before and during his Presidency," he wrote on X. "But look for the Iranian regime to blame Israel and the US for an assassination as another excuse to support terrorism."

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) released a statement where he called Raisi one of Iran’s "bloodiest hard-liners."

So far, Iranian authorities have not offered much detail about the crash, but said it was caused by a "technical failure." Raisi was traveling in a US-made Bell 212 helicopter.

According to The Washington Post, the average age of Iran’s Bell 212 helicopters is 35 years old, and they are difficult for the Islamic Republic to maintain due to US sanctions.

State Department spokesman Matt Miller said that the US would not apologize to Iran for imposing aircraft-related sanctions.

"We are not gonna apologize for our sanctions regime at all. The Iranian government has used its aircraft to transport equipment to support terrorism. So we will continue to fully enforce our sanctions regime, including our sanctions regime on aircraft for use by the Iranian government," he told Rudaw.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) calls for direct strikes on Iran, because "the only thing Iranians understand is strength." Which is exactly the same tired folk logic that anti-Russia hawks always use -- the only language that meddlesome subspecies understands is cruise missiles pic.twitter.com/hla1NIuX4Y

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 29, 2024

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has confirmed that Vice President Mohammad Mokhber is now Iran’s acting president and said, per the Iranian constitution, he has 50 days to arrange for new elections.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 20:20

Microplastics Found In Human Testicles

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Microplastics have been identified in human and canine testicles, lengthening the list of where the insidious particles have been found.

Not testicles. (iStock/Getty Images Plus)

A new study published in Toxicological Sciences revealed the incredible prevalence of microplastics worldwide and their ability to penetrate nearly every part of the body.

Microplastics form when plastic is exposed to sunlight or other ultraviolet radiation and slowly degrades in landfills, the ocean, or other places. They are so small (measured in micro- or nanometers, or a billionth of a meter) that they can also be blown around by the wind and carried into waterways.

Human Samples Had Triple the Microplastics

A team of researchers at the University of New Mexico (UNM) examined testicular tissue samples from humans and dogs and found these microscopic pieces of plastic were present in every sample. The human samples were supplied by the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, which collects tissues during autopsies, and the canine samples came from the City of Albuquerque animal shelters and private veterinary clinics that spay and neuter animals.

The researchers didn’t expect to find microplastics in the reproductive system—at least, not to this degree.

“When I first received the results for dogs I was surprised,” Dr. Xiaozhong “John” Yu, a professor at the UNM College of Nursing and lead researcher, said in a press release. “I was even more surprised when I received the results for humans.”

The research team found nearly three times the amount of microplastics in the human samples compared to the canine samples. There were 122.63 micrograms of microplastics per gram of tissue in the canine samples and 329.44 micrograms per gram in the human.

The team found 12 types of microplastics in 47 canine samples and 23 human samples. The most prevalent polymer, or plastic, in both types of tissue was polyethylene (PE), which is used to make plastic bags and bottles. The next most common polymer in dogs was PVC, which is often used in different kinds of plumbing.

Dr. Yu and his team believe that the level of microplastics could correlate with reproductive issues. The team determined the sperm count in the canine samples and found that the higher the level of PVC in the tissue, the lower the sperm count was. However, the correlation was not found with the concentration of PE in tissue.

“The plastic makes a difference—what type of plastic might be correlated with potential function,” Dr. Yu said. “PVC can release a lot of chemicals that interfere with spermatogenesis and it contains chemicals that cause endocrine disruption.”

Why Dogs?

The study compared dogs and humans because the two often share an environment, as well as some biological characteristics.

“Compared to rats and other animals, dogs are closer to humans,” Dr. Yu said.

He noted that dogs and humans produce sperm in very similar ways and that the sperm concentration is also comparable between the two species.

“We believe dogs and humans share common environmental factors that contribute to their decline,” he said.

One of those environmental factors is microplastics, which are found worldwide, including on the top of Mt. Everest.

“The impact on the younger generation might be more concerning,” Dr. Yu said, pointing to men 35 years old and younger. “We have a lot of unknowns. We need to really look at what the potential long-term effect [sic]. Are microplastics one of the factors contributing to this decline?”

Dr. Yu added that, while he doesn’t want to scare anyone, he thinks it is important to make people aware that their choices have consequences.

“We want to scientifically provide the data and make people aware there are a lot of microplastics. We can make our own choices to better avoid exposures, change our lifestyle and change our behavior,” he said.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 19:40

ELFs Are The Single Greatest Threat To Our Enduring Liberties

Authored by Jack Cashill via AmericanThinker.com,

Jan 6 / COVID Stir The Fascist Soul of The Educated Liberal Female

In researching my new book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, I discovered something unexpected: an alarming confirmation of my September 2022 article in which I argued that Educated Liberal Females (ELFs) are the single greatest threat to our enduring liberties.

My new book deals specifically with the ELF’s natural foes, the women of January 6.

Among the ten women I profile is Dr. Simone Gold. Even before getting caught up in the events of that memorable day, Dr. Gold had set the ELFs on edge through her work with America’s Frontline Doctors, a group she founded.

An M.D. as well as a lawyer, Dr. Gold, 55 at the time, went to Washington not to protest the election but to address the issue of medical freedom. She had secured a permit to speak at a venue on the east side of the Capitol, but when organizers cancelled the event, Gold decided to give the speech on the Capitol steps. The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, she did not readily surrender her right to speak freely.

Standing at the top of the steps on the Capitol’s east side, Gold got swept into the building when the doors opened from the inside, and the crowd surged forward. Finding her way to the rotunda, Dr. Gold stood on the base of a statue to speak. Someone passed her a bullhorn, and several people came over to listen. Following her five-minute speech, she took questions. After twenty or so uneventful minutes in the Capitol, Gold exited the building, having seen no violence or vandalism.

Along with 1200 or so other citizens, Dr. Gold was hunted down by the FBI in the most sweeping series of arrests on American soil since the notorious Palmer raids of a century ago.

Twelve days after January 6, roughly 20 agents came knocking at her Los Angeles door with a battering ram.

“They arrested me,” she told Tucker Carlson. 

“They [yell], ‘put your hands up, put your hands up, face the wall, face the wall,’ they’re screaming, ‘face the wall’ -- handcuffed, shackled, take me downtown, orange suit, strip search, holding cell, fluorescent lights, -- it was terrible -- no phone call, no Miranda rights.”

Threatened with a 20-year sentence if she took her case to trial before a rubber-stamp D.C. jury, Gold reluctantly accepted a plea deal. For a single misdemeanor charge, she was sentenced to 60 days at the Miami Federal Detention Center, a maximum-security prison. This was an unusually severe punishment for a single misdemeanor, even by January 6 standards.  

On March 9, 2022 the New York Times celebrated Gold’s impending imprisonment in an article headlined, “A doctor prominent in fomenting opposition to Covid vaccines pleads guilty to riot charges.” The article’s subhead described America’s Front Line Doctors as “a group that spreads pandemic misinformation.” That same subhead claimed Gold “stood by as a Capitol Police officer was assaulted.” Video released after the fact would show that the officer fainted and was helped back up to his feet by the protestors. The prosecution knew this at the time of Gold’s plea deal -- the officer had admitted as much to the FBI -- but she did not.

When the Times posted the plea deal story on its Facebook page, America’s frontline Karens queued up to take a whack at the Gold piñata. For the researcher, Facebook is a useful and easily mined resource. All those who comment have a Facebook page in their own name, and on that page is enough personal information to assess, in general terms, the person’s background. The article elicited more than a thousand comments.

The first 19 people to post an original comment were female, all of them hostile. A supportive male broke the streak. Of the first 50 people, 42 were female. Of that 42, two more or less defended Gold, but the other 40 met the general definition of an ELF. These are New York Times readers after all. The comments of the 40 were uniformly negative. Of note, some expressed as much anger at Dr. Gold’s Covid skepticism as they did her designation as insurrectionist. Some samples:

Take her medical license... she should be held to a higher standard.... throw the book at her... she is a danger to others and the public health.

Apparently that "first do no harm" thing didn't take. #quack

Glad to see she is no longer practicing, can't imagine her taking care of people when she doesn't trust science.

Honestly she should lose her medical license for intentionally spreading so much misinformation. In this kind of scenario she very likely could have caused lives to be lost.

Suspend her license -- She is a threat to her patients. 

Given the number of people who have died from her COVID lies, she should be facing more serious charges.

She should be charged for the deaths of anyone who believed her. And she should lose her license for spreading lies about medical information. She totally violated her oath to do NO harm.

NYTIMES Stop referring to her as a doctor. She is not one of us.

Too bad she doesn’t live in Russia where she could get 15 years in jail for misinformation.

Thinking the Russia comment might have been made in jest, I reviewed the commenter’s home page. She wasn’t joking. Her past comments showed symptoms of an irony deficiency epidemic in the ELF community. Other ELFs saw Dr. Gold not only as a quack, but also as a traitor. They proved equally as ignorant about January 6 as they did about Covid and just as vengeful.

She should serve at lest 25 years for this insurrection and trying to destroy democracy! Why are we so lenient with this terrorists!!??

Go get them all !!!!!! Enough is enough and this has gone on too long. Just like the horrendous amount of time it is taking to make #45 pay for his crimes. #45, his family and his cult MUST be brought to justice for the damage they did to American democracy, citizens and place in the world.

Hope she sees time behind bars.

Sick & tired of misdemeanor charges for these people who tried to overthrow our government.

She should lose her medical license, not only for the misinformation she was spreading but especially for not attending to the fallen & injured officers of that despicable riot! 

I hope in future someone researching our odd and precarious times will be able to assess the harm that has been done to American citizens and others by conspiracy theory promoters.

The ELFs, it should be noted, left these unforgiving comments two years after the onset of the pandemic. By this time, they should have known they had been deceived about Covid’s origins, the efficacy of masks, the value of the vaccines, the effectiveness of lockdowns, the lasting harm to schoolchildren, and the dangers of the disease itself.

If proof were needed of this deception, a survey done by Franklin Templeton-Gallup in late 2020 provided it. In the survey of 35,000 Americans, the most revealing indicator came in response to the question: “What percentage of people who have been infected by the coronavirus needed to be hospitalized?”

The responding Democrats proved scarily clueless.

Some 41 percent believed that 50 percent or more of those who contracted Covid would end up in the hospital.

Another 28 percent said that 20-50 percent of Covid sufferers would be hospitalized.

The correct answer was 1-5 percent, an answer Republicans were nearly three times as likely to get right.

In sum, 69 percent of Democrats were deeply misinformed and 41 percent were grossly misinformed.

The ignorance infected even the most powerful ELFs.

At a January 2022 hearing on vaccine mandates, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed, “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators.” As the CNN fact checker had to admit, the self-described “wise Latina” overstated the numbers by a factor of at least twenty.

“It was as if these communities were in the grip of a collective hallucination,” erstwhile feminist icon Naomi Wolf writes of her former allies in her book The Bodies of Others, “like the witch crazes of the sixteen and seventeenth century. Whole understandings and belief systems were abandoned overnight. Intelligent, informed people suddenly saw things that were not there and unable to see things that were incontrovertibly before their faces.”

Dr. Gold was punished for being right. To this day, she defies her critics to find anything that she said about COVID that has proved to be untrue. “The anger against me is so aggressive,” she believes, “because they think I betrayed my social class.” Like other religious zealots, ELFs have no tolerance for apostates.

*  *  *

Jack Cashill’s newest book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, is now available for purchase. Ebook and audiobook versions to follow shortly.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 19:00

GOP Bill Would Give Israeli Soldiers US Job And Financial Protections

Leaping headlong into 2024's frenzy of Israel-catering legislative activity, two House Republicans have introduced a bill that would extend credit and employment privileges enjoyed by US military service members to American citizens serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). 

This latest affront to American patriotism is brought to you by Pennsylvania congressman and Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler, along with Ohio Rep. Max Miller.

“Over 20,000 American citizens are currently defending Israel from Hamas terrorists, risking their lives for the betterment of our ally,” said Reschenthaler. “This legislation will ensure we do everything possible to support these heroes who are standing with Israel, fighting for freedom, and combating terrorism in the Middle East.”

Palestinians race to find survivors of a massive IDF airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza; at least 106 civilians were reportedly killed -- including 54 children (Doaa AlBaz/AP via Seattle Times)

HR 8445 would give American IDF soldiers (is that an oxymoron?) protections under two major programs for active duty US military service members: 

• The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA): Among many other features, SCRA caps credit card and mortgage interest on debts taken out before starting active service, protects against foreclosures, allows penalty-free termination of residential and auto leases, and allows cancellation of consumer contracts such as cell phone service and gym memberships. 
• Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA): As the Department of Labor describes it, "USERRA mandates that returning service members must be promptly re-employed in the same position that they would have attained had they not been absent for military service, with the same seniority, status and pay." 

Thus, if HR 8445 becomes law, a US bank may have to cap the interest rate it's charging for an American citizen who spontaneously decides to go join the IDF rampage in Gaza. The same person could bail on their apartment lease. After they leave their employer in the lurch to fight for a foreign army, the employer would have to give them their job back -- even if they hired someone else to fill the void. 

An excerpt from HR 8445 that almost has to be seen to be believed

In classic Washington DC fashion, these laws impose costs on private actors -- landlords, vehicle dealerships, mortgage lenders, cell phone companies, gyms, employers -- without compensation. Those costs go beyond foregone revenue: Implementing these benefits for IDF soldiers would require businesses to train staff members how to sort out the eligibility of an American serving in the Israeli military.  

It's one thing to do impose these costs for the benefit of American soldiers -- it's another altogether to use government coercion for the benefit of citizens who opt to take up arms for another country.  

US Rep Brian Mast (R-FL) reported to duty at the US Capitol wearing his Israeli Defense Forces uniform (Politico)

Speaking of costs and benefits, over their short careers, the two cosponsors of this bill have raked in huge contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). According to Track AIPAC, third-termer Reschenthaler has received $170,147 while first-termer Miller has already piled up $193,808.   

"No one should be entitled to any U.S. military service benefits unless they are fighting under U.S. command and control," said non-interventionist former congressmen Dennis Kucinich, who is now running as an independent against Miller. "Mr. Miller has lost sight of who he was elected to Congress to represent." 

US representatives and senators have been tripping over each other to signal their loyalty to Israel. Other measures that thankfully aren't law...yet: 

• The House-passed Antisemitism Awareness Act would expose colleges to federal civil rights punishment if a student or professor argues that "the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor" or makes comparisions between the Israeli government and that of Nazi Germany, among other forbidden ideas
• Another bill would bar college debt forgiveness for anyone convicted of a federal or state offense -- but only those related to a campus protest 
• Yet another one would defund the State Department, DOD and National Security Council until Biden delivers more bombs to Israel 

While all this is going on, the national debt is now growing by a trillion dollars every 100 days. Talk about misplaced priorities. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 18:40

"The End Of Everything": Victor Davis Hanson On The Gravest Threats To America

Via The Epoch Times,

In a recent episode of American Thought Leaders, host Jan Jekielek sat down with classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson. In his new book “The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation,” Mr. Hanson looks at four civilizations that were utterly destroyed by their enemies, then draws comparisons between the United States and its enemies, both domestic and foreign.

Jan Jekielek: Victor, I’m going to start with something you wrote, “We see a recurring universally human theme across time and space. The doomed at the brink of civilizational destruction have an attitude partly born of hubris and partly born of naivete, perhaps best summed up as, ‘It cannot happen to us.’”

Victor Davis Hanson: When one side loses a war, the typical follow-up is that they surrender. They’re not annihilated. But every once in a while, that doesn’t happen.

I was curious to see why it didn’t happen in these few instances. I selected four of the maybe 20 that are known: classical Thebes that had been around for 1100 years, Carthage for 800-plus years, Constantinople for almost 1200 years, and Tenochtitlan we don’t quite know about.

They felt they were invulnerable. When these occasions arose, they felt they could finesse it, negotiate it, or win it.

Mr. Jekielek: It comes back to, “This can’t happen to us, these walls have never been penetrated.” In our society today, we forget about the lessons of history. What is the biggest lesson from Carthage?

Mr. Hanson: One is understanding the invader. They had no idea that the Romans had global aspirations and wanted to control the entire Mediterranean. They didn’t realize that they were the only obstacle, and no matter what they did, they would be interpreted as an obstacle. They thought they could reason with the Romans.

But the Romans were tired of them. Their attitude was, “They ran wild in Italy for 19 years and we’re sick of them. We’re going to land this huge force and we’ll give them an ultimatum.” Once they disarmed, the Romans thought, “Now what? As soon as we leave, they’ll rearm again.”

The Romans had a renewed demand, “You have to destroy your city so you won’t be able to have a Navy. You won’t be able to go into the Mediterranean if you’re way inland.” They couldn’t do that. At that point there was a riot, and they killed some of the leaders who had acquiesced to the initial Roman demand. They felt they had a good chance to survive. They had 500,000 people. They were larger than Rome at the time. They were probably as wealthy as Rome. They felt they were better at sea than Rome. They could rebuild their fleet. But they had no idea of what Rome’s intentions were. All of the power of the Roman Republic would be directed at Carthage.

Mr. Jekielek: You’re facing difficult odds, but you still think, “Nothing bad can happen to us.”

Mr. Hanson: Yes. Look at the United States as a declining power and China as an ascending power. We think, “We won two world wars, we created the post-war order, we spend the most money on defense of any country. When we want to win, we can, and therefore we should downplay China.”

If you were Carthage, you would think that way. If you were analytical today, you would say, “Wait a minute. We’re $36 trillion in debt. We’re borrowing $1 trillion every 100 days. We’re 45,000 people short in the military. Our cities are full of crime. China has an agenda to emasculate the United States. They’re building nuclear weapons and ships faster than we are. They have nearly five times the population of the United States.”

That would be a realistic assessment, but we don’t hear that.

We just hear, “We’re the United States, the cultural capital of the world and the wealthiest of anybody.”

This decline is self-inflicted.

Mr. Jekielek: We have Xi Jinping saying, “We are waging a people’s war against America.” It can’t be any clearer than that. But somehow we’re not aware.

Mr. Hanson: That’s exactly the same with the Aztecs. When Cortes set foot in that city, Montezuma’s brother said, “He’s not a god. He’s a killer. He bleeds, he eats, he defecates. These people will destroy us.” But he was not listened to.

We’re like these ancient societies who were paralyzed by fear and inaction.

Mr. Jekielek: Our producers have collected questions from the audience during this live Q&A. The next question is, “Who is the greatest threat to the Republic, foreign enemies or domestic enemies?

Mr. Hanson: Domestic. The greatest threat is somebody with an advanced graduate degree in the media, high tech, or government who has utopian impulses and feels morally or intellectually superior to the rest of us. Therefore, they think any methods are permissible in order to reach their dream. All of our institutions are under assault by messianic people who believe they have better education, and are wealthier and more virtuous.

Mr. Jekielek: Here’s another question, “What does Victor Davis Hanson tell his family to do? What practical solutions does he have?”

Mr. Hanson: I tell them to be proactive first, because I believe you have to work within the system. I tell them, “You have to vote. You have to speak up among your friends. You’ve got to be an active citizen in order to stop the madness.” I tell my children, “Monitor what they’re teaching your children.”

We’re in new territory, and our agencies and institutions have become so warped they’re plotting for short-term political gain. The irony is that the people who are doing this say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Everybody’s got to get active. Vote, help people get to the polls, speak up, write to your local paper, volunteer to observe the election. Do whatever you can to be engaged.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Watch the full interview below:

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 18:20

Neocon Queen Of Darkness Calls For US To Bomb Russian Targets Within Russia

Former top State Department official Victoria Nuland is back, and she's joining the stepped-up Ukrainian government efforts to convince Western allies, including the United States, to deepen their involvement in the war with Russia.

Nuland said a recent appearance on ABC News that the Biden administration should allow Ukraine forces to mount attacks directly on Russian territory with US-supplied missiles and weapons systems. "They need to be able to stop these Russian attacks that are coming from bases inside Russia," she said in the Sunday interview. "The United States and our allies ought to give them more help in hitting Russian bases, which heretofore we have not been willing to do."

Victoria Nuland calls for U.S. to bomb Russian targets within Russia:

“I think that if the attacks are coming from directly over the line in Russia then those targets ought to be fair game.” pic.twitter.com/94rkVzn3at

— Truth In Media (@Truth_InMedia) May 21, 2024

"Those bases ought to be fair game, whether they are where missiles are being launched from or where they are where troops are being supplied from," Nuland continued. 

The Zelensky government has gotten more desperate of late as Ukrainian front lines are being quickly decimated in the Kharkiv region. Moscow's new offensive there has an aim to push Ukraine's border significantly back, in order to create a buffer zone to prevent cross-border shelling on Russian towns and cities, particularly in Belgorod.

Nuland claimed that Russia's goal in Kharkiv is to "decimate [the city] without ever having to put a boot on the ground" and further that Russian forces "have flattened a third of Kharkov" already.

She then argued in the interview that under such dire conditions, direct attacks on Russian bases with Western weapons systems should not ultimately be seen as an escalation.

But Russia starting weeks ago announced that it would hold nuclear drills involving strategic forces. This week these drills appear to be kicking off, clearly as a loud and clear warning directly signaled to NATO.

Via CNN

As for Nuland's fresh remarks, independent journalist Michael Tracey has best summarized her stance in saying...

"Queen of Darkness Victoria Nuland is back, demanding that the US openly facilitate strikes by Ukraine on targets inside Russia -- something the Biden Administration had previously insisted would never happen. A once-unfathomable escalation, which now barely raises an eyebrow."

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 18:00

Salman Rushdie Says Free Palestinian State Would Be 'Taliban-Like'

Via Middle East Eye

Salman Rushdie has said that a free Palestinian state would be "Taliban-like" and a "client" of Iran.

Speaking to German broadcaster RBB, the author said that "any human right now" had to be "distressed by what is happening in Gaza because of the quantity of human death." But, he continued: "I would just like some of the protesters to mention Hamas because that’s where this started. And Hamas is a terrorist organisation. It’s very strange for young, progressive student politics to kind of support a fascist, terrorist group."

Author Salman Rushdie in Berlin, May 16, 2024, via Reuters

“They’re talking about free Palestine. I am somebody who has argued for a Palestinian state for most of my life, since the 1980s probably,” Rushdie, who had a fatwa calling for his death placed on him by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 after perceived blasphemy contained in his book The Satanic Verses, said. 

“Right now, if there was a Palestinian state, it would be run by Hamas and that would make it a Taliban-like state. It would be a client state of Iran,” said Rushdie. 

“Is that what the progressive movements of the western left wish to create? To have another Taliban? Another Ayatollah-like state in the Middle East, right next to Israel?”

“There’s an emotional reaction to the death in Gaza and that’s absolutely right but when it slides over towards antisemitism and sometimes to actual support of Hamas, then it’s very problematic,” Rushdie said. 

The British-Indian author has been in Germany promoting his new book Knife, which tackles his stabbing in 2022 at a lecture in New York. The attack left Rushdie in a critical condition and resulted in the loss of his right eye.

The Taliban praised the attack on Twitter, and Tehran, which had long since distanced itself from the 1989 fatwa, blamed the writer and his supporters for the multiple stabbing.

In Germany, which has cracked down heavily on pro-Palestinian protests and targeted pro-Palestinian activists, including a number of high-profile Jewish intellectuals, Rushdie met Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. 

Salman Rushdie telling @BILD:

“If there was a Palestinian state, it would be run by Hamas, and that would make it a Taliban like state. And it would be a client state of Iran. Is that what the progressive movement of the western left wants to create?” pic.twitter.com/3JvIlt1yEz

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) May 21, 2024

A clip of Rushdie’s interview and his comments about a free Palestine were shared by Israel’s official X account and by Israeli diplomat David Saranga.

Richard Hanania, a right-wing American commentator, and pro-Israel advocate, posted: “Salman Rushdie, who has been chased to the ends of the earth by Islamists, sees things clearly. A Palestinian state would reflect Palestinian culture, and therefore be a menace to the world. People who think all you need is the right peace deal are crazy.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 17:40

These Cars Have The Highest And Lowest Depreciation One Year Off The Lot

With the budget of the American consumer stretched thinner and thinner each day under Bidenomics, extra care and consideration for large purchases is being exercised and the experts at MarketWatch Guides have tried to lend a helping hand when it comes to auto purchases. 

Last week MarketWatch Guides laid out a list of both gas-powered and electric vehicles and examined the cars from the same brands to uncover which brands exhibited the highest and lowest deprecation after a year.

The Toyota RAV4 LE and the Toyota RAV4 Prime are at the forefront in terms of depreciation, with the Prime outperforming the LE by $2,509 after one year. The RAV4 Prime, a plug-in hybrid, preserves 96.05% of its initial value, while the RAV4 LE retains only 86.88%, which translates to a depreciation of approximately $3,761.

The Hyundai Sonata experiences a greater depreciation of $1,417 compared to its electric counterpart, the Hyundai Ioniq 6, which depreciates by $721, marking a $696 lesser depreciation. The Hyundai Ioniq 5, similar to the Ioniq 6, maintains the highest value retention at 98.30% after a year, surpassing the Sonata’s 94.85%.

The Chevrolet Malibu depreciates by $2,629, which is $463 more than the Chevrolet Bolt EV’s depreciation of $2,166 over the same period. Despite being initially less expensive, the Malibu suffers from higher depreciation and a lower residual value of 91.22%, whereas the Bolt EV retains 93.27% of its resale value.

Additional insights reveal that Mini, Chevrolet, and Fiat are the brands with the smallest price differences between their gas-powered and electric models, with the Mini Cooper Countryman and Mini Cooper Electric Hardtop having just a $1,750 gap.

The Porsche Cayenne incurs the highest operational costs among gasoline vehicles over five years, totaling $56,010. Conversely, the Nissan Leaf is the most economical electric vehicle, costing an average of $18,509 over five years.

The Audi A3 and the Audi e-tron GT show the largest price discrepancy between traditional and electric models. The A3 starts at approximately $35,800, whereas the e-tron GT begins at $106,500, a stark difference of $70,700.

You can read more at MarketWatch Guides.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 17:20

'Deadly Force' An Option: New Docs Show FBI Agents Were Prepared For Secret Service Resistance At Mar-a-Lago

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

FBI agents executing a search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s home in 2022 prepared for the possibility U.S. Secret Service agents resisted the agents, according to newly unsealed court documents.

An operations plan for the raid of Mar-a-Lago in southern Florida stated that should President Trump arrive at Mar-a-Lago during the period when agents were there, FBI agents would be prepared to “engage with” him and U.S. Secret Service (USSS) agents who protect him.

If the Secret Service agents “provide resistance or interfere with FBI timeline or accesses,” then FBI officials would contact certain individuals—their names and positions were redacted—the documents stated.

The documents also stated that if Mar-a-Lago employees refused to provide a list of occupied guest rooms, FBI agents would “knock on each guest room door to determine occupation status.” Agents would request a map, list of rooms, and a skeleton key for all rooms, and were preparing to bring lock-picking equipment with them.

The documents, produced to President Trump through discovery in the criminal case against him, were placed on the docket on May 21.

President Trump’s lawyers attached the documents as exhibits to a motion asking to suppress evidence seized by agents, arguing the raid was unconstitutional.

The warrant was cleared by a U.S. magistrate judge after agents said there was probable cause to believe sensitive materials were being kept at unauthorized places at the resort. Officials said the raid would likely uncover evidence of obstruction of justice.

Agents arrived at Mar-a-Lago at 8:59 a.m. on Aug. 8, 2022, and initiated the search at 10:33 a.m.. A summary of what transpired stated that FBI leaders coordinated with local Secret Service leaders and that Secret Service agents “facilitated entry onto the premises, provided escort and access to various locations within, and posted USSS personnel in locations where the FBI team conducted searches.”

In addition to 25 FBI employees from the bureau’s Miami office, the group of DOJ personnel included five officials from Washington and two DOJ lawyers.

The group took numerous photographs, including pictures in the bedroom of former First Lady Melania Trump and a “child’s bedroom suite,” according to picture logs that were released on Tuesday.

President Trump’s lawyers said in the motion that the search was “roving and highly inappropriate,” citing how it covered a gym, a kitchen, and the bedrooms where the pictures were taken. They said the warrant was too broad and authorized agents to seize virtually any document from Mar-a-Lago.

Government officials have acknowledged they improperly seized passports and some other materials.

Agents remained on the scene until 6:39 p.m. They flew the seized evidence to Washington the following day.

President Trump after the execution of the warrant was charged with mishandling of national defense information, concealing documents, and making false statements.

Deadly Force an Option

The documents included a statement on the use of deadly force, which quoted government policy in stating that “law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice (DOJ) may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”

Biden ordered the hit on Trump at Mar-a-Lago. pic.twitter.com/amyUysoNKU

— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) May 21, 2024

The FBI also brought a medic and paramedic along on the raid, according to the documents, and listed the nearest trauma center in case anyone was injured during the execution of the warrant.

Agents were equipped with standard issue weapons, ammunition, handcuffs, and badges, and brought medium and large bolt cutters.

There was no basis for the FBI to bring guns into Mar-a-Lago, according to President Trump’s lawyers.

“There were no threats and no risk to agents’ safety arising from their allegations relating to possession of documents at a premises already guarded by the Secret Service,” the lawyers said.

The lawyers also argued that an FBI agent omitted relevant information from the affidavit submitted to the judge as part of the request to authorize the warrant.

The agent, for instance, “failed to disclose that presidents are not required to obtain clearances and that sensitive briefings including classified information had been provided to President Trump at Mar-a-Lago and other residences before and during his presidency,” the lawyers said.

In a DOJ filing in response to the motion, government attorneys countered the arguments.

“Regardless of Trump’s authority during his presidency, he lacked authority to possess classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after it ended and he became a private citizen. Trump’s authority to access or possess classified documents during his presidency was both obvious and immaterial to the probable cause determination regarding the retention of the documents after his presidency,” they wrote in part.

The attorneys also said that while some FBI officials did suggest seeking the consent of former President Trump to search Mar-a-Lago before seeking a warrant, his “prior obfuscation and deception up to that point” meant there was “ample reason to avoid seeking Trump’s consent, which would simply invite more deception.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 17:00

WTI Extends Losses After API Reports Unexpected Crude Build

Oil (and gasoline) prices were lower today (WTI sliding back near two-month lows) as the Biden administration said Tuesday it is releasing 1 million barrels of gasoline from a Northeast reserve established after Superstorm Sandy in a bid to lower prices at the pump this summer.

However, the main driver for oil prices right now is "worry about the economy, and the potential that [interest] rates will remain elevated," Michael Lynch, president at Strategic Energy & Economic Research (SEER), told MarketWatch.

Additionally, the market appears to have quickly shrugged off the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Will a third weekly crude draw in a row be enough to re-energize prices ahead of OPEC+'s meetings, where members will "almost certainly roll over" its current quotas when it meets on June 1, "keeping a floor on prices for now," according to SEER's Lynch.

API

• Crude +2.49mm (-3.1mm exp)

• Cushing +1.77mm

• Gasoline +2.09mm

• Distillates -320k

Crude and Gasoline stock piles grew last week (more than expected) along with inventories at the Cushing hub while Distillates saw a small draw...

Source: Bloomberg

WTI was trading around $78.60 ahead of the API print and slipped lower after...

Finally, we note that pump prices are at their second most expensive in a decade ahead of the Memorial Day holiday...

Source: Bloomberg

“As an analyst, this reserve never really made a whole lot of sense to have,'' De Haan said in an Associated Press interview. The reserve is very small and must be frequently rotated, “because gasoline has a shelf life,'' De Haan said.

“That's why there’s really no nation that has an emergency stockpile of gasoline'' other than the U.S.

Patrick De Haan, an analyst for GasBuddy, said sale of the Northeast reserve would have little impact on gasoline prices nationally, although there “may be a slight downward pressure on prices” in the Northeast.

The million-barrel reserve only amounts to about 2.7 hours of total U.S. gasoline consumption, he said.

Finally, Bloomberg notes that for several weeks, oil traders have been confident that OPEC+ will choose to extend supply curbs when the group gathers next month. The latest trend in crude time-spreads probably removes any trace of a doubt.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 16:40

Jack Smith's Appointment Violated The Constitution, Some Legal Experts Argue

Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Days before Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate former President Donald Trump, experts who had been following the Justice Department investigations questioned its necessity. Mr. Smith was appointed on Nov. 18, 2022.

(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock, Getty Images)

Would the appointment of an “independent” lead prosecutor undermine the Justice Department’s own appearance of independence from politics? Would the newly appointed prosecutor slow the case down?

Those concerns have now materialized, though not for the predicted reasons.

On June 22, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon will hear arguments on a motion to dismiss the classified documents case against President Trump based on the unlawful appointment of the special counsel. Experts who advanced this legal theory have told The Epoch Times they plan to participate as amici curiae, or friends of the court.

What Are Special Counsels For?

Attorneys general have been hiring special counsels since before the Justice Department was established in 1870, via a statute that specifically set guardrails on the hiring and payment of outside attorneys as special counsel.

A century later, Congress decided, with the Watergate scandal, there was a need for a truly independent prosecutor to investigate senior executive branch personnel, including the president. In 1978 Congress passed an ethics bill that created the Office of Independent Counsel.

While controversial, the law was reformed and reauthorized more than once before Congress let it expire in 1999.

Just before it expired, the Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno created its own set of regulations for appointing a special counsel.

The department determined that attorneys general may appoint a special counsel if a case “would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances,” instructing the attorney general to then select someone from “outside the United States Government.”

These past few years, the Justice Department has found plenty of “extraordinary circumstances.”

In 2017, acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In 2020, Attorney General William Barr appointed special counsel John Durham to investigate whether federal personnel violated the law in investigating the 2016 presidential.

In 2022, Mr. Smith was appointed to investigate matters related to President Trump.

In 2023, special counsel Robert Hur was appointed to investigate the possible unauthorized removal of classified records at properties of President Joe Biden, and special counsel David Weiss was appointed to take on the ongoing investigation into first son Hunter Biden.

Media tents and television satellite trucks are set up outside the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. District Courthouse in Washington on July 27, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Experts Weigh In

When President Trump appealed his presidential immunity defense to the Supreme Court, former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III was quick to submit an amicus brief arguing that before the case could proceed, the high court should settle the matter of whether a private citizen can lawfully be given the authority to impanel a grand jury, investigate, and prosecute a former president.

Mr. Meese, arguing together with constitutional law scholars and professors Steven Calabresi and Gary Lawson, holds the position that Mr. Garland had no authority to grant Mr. Smith such “extraordinary criminal law enforcement power,” as attorneys general lost that power in 1999.

Mr. Meese, incidentally, was himself investigated by an independent counsel when the law was still in effect. The professors are experts in this niche matter, and in 2019 authored a paper arguing that the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller was unlawful for the same reasons.

The Appointments Clause of the Constitution states that the president has the authority to appoint a number of officers that courts have come to deem “principal” or “superior” officers, whose appointments have to be established by Congress through law, and have their appointments confirmed by the Senate. It also states that Congress can, through law, allow department heads to appoint “inferior” officers.

The amici argue Mr. Smith wields the power of a “principal or superior officer” without being appointed through the lawful process as required under the Appointments Clause.

The correct avenue would have been to appoint a currently serving U.S. Attorney as special counsel, or to appoint an outside special counsel that serves under a U.S. Attorney, Mr. Meese, Mr. Calabresi, and Mr. Lawson argue.

“Smith is the classic ‘emperor with no clothes,’” their Supreme Court brief reads.

Attorneys for President Trump in a second case picked up on this argument, filing a motion in the Southern District of Florida. They argued that Mr. Smith’s appointment violated the Appointments Clause, and there is no permanent funding allocated to a special counsel office, therefore the indictment should be dismissed.

Mr. Meese, Mr. Calabresi, and Mr. Lawson filed another amicus brief in support of the motion in this case, as did other experts.

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese (R) delivers remarks after being awarded the National Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump during a ceremony with his's wife Ursula Herrick and other family members in the Oval Office at the White House on Oct. 8, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In a separate amicus brief, professor Seth Barrett Tillman argued that not only is Mr. Smith not a principal or inferior officer, but he is right now really an “employee” of the Justice Department.

Mr. Tillman has written extensively on related issues, and argued that Supreme Court precedent shows that to be an officer of the United States requires that the position has permanency.

In a 1867 case, United States v. Hartwell, the Supreme Court defined the difference between a contract employee and officer. Justice Noah Swayne wrote that an office “embraces the ideas of tenure, duration, emolument, and duties.”

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 16:20

Stocks Inch Higher As Fearless Vol-Sellers Continue To Push Ahead Of NVDA/FOMC Mins

It's quiet... too quiet...

Small Caps lagged on the day but the rest of the majors struggled to gain any momentum as long gamma and low vol compressed the ranges. Some early hawkish (though nothing new) remarks from Fed's Waller ("...in the absence of a significant weakening in the labor market, I need to see several more months of good inflation data before I would be comfortable supporting an easing in the stance of monetary policy...") sparked a little risk-off but as soon as cash markets opened, BTFDers resumed their game - but could not push ahead of unch.

A late lift flattered an otherwise 'meh' day...

As Goldman's Chris Hussey notes, a peak under the surface of the S&P 500 reveals a somewhat defensive tilt with Pharma, Staples and Utilities outperforming, and Consumer Discretionary, Semis, Transport and Builders lagging the index. Consumer discretionary is particularly underperforming, being dragged down by negative reactions to earnings from AZO and LOW.

Source: Bloomberg

Anemic implied vols persist - despite the event risk catalysts this week - with VIX pushing a 11 handle...

Source: Bloomberg

...and bond vol also compressed...

Source: Bloomberg

We note there is some anxiety on the very short-end... but still a 13 handle is not exactly 'risk averse'...

Source: Bloomberg

The risk, as SpotGamma explained earlier, in these very low IV's, are the very low IV's themselves.

If traders are pricing in 30bps of movement for a given trading day, any move that pushes the market past 30bps (up or down) could lead to a short vol cover and a jumpy stock move. This suggests to us that while you maybe can't find a reason to buy short dated SPX options, shorting them at these IV levels seems like a poor risk-reward (we're looking at you 0DTE traders!).

On that note we think that a cleaner way here for basic "short vol" trades may be owning puts/short call spreads in VXX/UVXY or long SVXY calls/short put spreads. This is because you catch some of the roll decay, and you don't have the strike-risk in 0DTE.

0DTE vols are extremely low but we would expect a jump (as we saw around last week's CPI)...

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields slipped lower today, erasing most of yesterday's spike higher with the short-end lagging (2Y -2bps, 30Y -4bps)...

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar pushed higher again, erasing Friday's losses...

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin slipped back from its overnight surge back up near $72,000 to end basically flat on the day...

Source: Bloomberg

...which follows the sixth day on net inflows to BTC ETFs (and fourth day of inflows in a row to GBTC)...

Source: Bloomberg

Ethereum outperformed once again as ETH ETF hopes continued to build amid an apparent about-face from the Biden admin's anti-crypto army...

Source: Bloomberg

For context, ETH is now at its strongest relative to BTC since mid-March..

Source: Bloomberg

Gold chopped around and ended flat today...

Source: Bloomberg

Silver continues to outperform gold, now at its strongest relative to the yellow metal since Dec 2022...

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, wholesale gasoline prices fell today after the Biden admin announced a release of its strategic gas reserve (not for political reasons of course)...

Source: Bloomberg

Which is noteworthy because gas prices going into Memorial Day are at their second most expensive in a decade...

Source: Bloomberg

...and as we noted earlier, Biden is behind Trump bigly...

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/21/2024 - 16:00