I didn’t declare war on the establishment; it declared war on me.
It declared war on me when it supported energy policies that could enrich Saudi Arabia and Russia and would cost me more money at the gas pump or on my power bill.
It declared war on me when it told me my ideas weren’t worthy of debate and discussion or that they were even so dangerous they couldn’t be shared publicly.
It declared war on me when it used the police powers of the FBI and CIA to first spy on a presidential candidate and then worked to undermine the administration of that candidate after he was elected.
It declared war on me when it told me my religious beliefs did not deserve the protection of the First Amendment.
It declared war on me when it told me boys could compete against girls in high school sports and that they could shower together afterwards.
It declared war on me when it offered citizenship to illegal aliens and shipped American jobs to China.
It declared war on me when it mocked the usefulness of a wall on the Mexican border and simultaneously put up a razor-wire fence around the Capitol.
It declared war on me when it tried to defund the police so that millions of Americans would be left defenseless against mobs from antifa and Black Lives Matter.
It declared war on me when it said America was never great.
It declared war on me when it told my children they are not good enough because they are white.
It declared war on me when it said that defending the Constitution’s rules on federal elections is sedition.
It declared war on me when it told me that I was a domestic terrorist if I didn’t believe the government’s official pronouncements about elections, about free speech, and about right and wrong.
Let’s just say it plainly: The establishment declared war on me and on all conservative Americans when it decided that leftist orthodoxy was more important than the Constitution.
Don’t believe me? Fine, why should you believe a Trump supporter? You’ve been indoctrinated by the national media, Big Tech oligarchs, the Democratic Party, and academic elites to believe without questioning that people like me can’t be trusted. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Listen instead to John Brennan, the former CIA director under President Obama, who speaks authoritatively for the Deep State:
He said on MSNBC that “the members of the Biden team who have been nominated or have been appointed, are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”
This “guilt by labeling” is the antithesis of fair play or justice. It is a convenient mechanism for the ruling class to herd people into identity clusters so that individual rights can be supplanted by group responsibility. If this reminds you of China’s Cultural Revolution, you are not wrong. The ruling class wants you to conform, confirm and comply. If you step outside the lines, be prepared to be shamed, silenced and ostracized.
A shocking example was provided Wednesday when Douglass Mackey of Delray Beach, Fla., was arrested for creating memes that allegedly misled voters in 2016 to think they could vote by texting instead of by actually going to the polls. This is the equivalent of arresting Sacha Baron Cohen for exposing the gullibility of the rich and famous. The FBI offered no evidence that Mackey actually convinced anyone not to vote, but even if it did, so what? Would you rather live in a country where the FBI is hunting down pranksters — four years after the supposed transgression — or a country where voters are expected to be able to recognize a joke when they see one?
But nothing can be taken for granted any more. The people — and even their representatives and senators — are considered enemies of the state because they hold opinions that don’t meet the standards of Joe Biden or (this is even scarier!) Jake Tapper.
No wonder the people are starting to rise up and rebel against the plutocracy. It’s not “We the Oligarchs” who are the source of power in the Constitution, but “We the People,” yet the ruling establishment has forgotten that. If people like Donald Trump and Douglass Mackey are deemed to be “enemies of the state,” then those who would suppress them and their freedoms must be considered “enemies of the people.”
A house divided against itself cannot long stand, but if there is to be a truce it will not come from submission, but from a recognition that all people are created equal, that they all have certain inalienable rights, and that among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those words were worth fighting for once. Are they worth fighting for today?
I don’t know, but I do know this: If Americans can’t have liberty, we can’t have America either — at least not one that is distinguishable from China. The time has come to make a choice.
The Liberals have proven one thing over the decades….they know that the best way to infiltrate and systematically change a culture is by brainwashing elementary-aged children with their agendas.
And they’re rolling out the exact same game plan now with BLM.
It’s coming to YOUR kids’ elementary school, and much sooner than you think.
The CARTER Center for K12 Black history education’s Black History Month’s programming is 3 weeks away. Also, support our friends @ATN_1863 and @BLMAtSchool. So much learning! See flyers and coordinate those calendars. pic.twitter.com/9TgWRsMHB6
During the week of February 1-5, classrooms across the District will engage in the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, a 5-day guide to expand student understanding of the Black Lives Matter at School Principles.
Why is the Ames CSD participating in the Black Lives Matter at School national week of action?
The Black Lives Matter at School movement, which is not formally affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Global Network or any other organization in the Movement for Black Lives, is a push to improve schools for Black students, teachers, and families. The movement is a call to schools across the nation to say and show that Black lives matter within the school walls and in the policies and practices that impact the lives and futures of Black students. The Week of Action is a time set aside to affirm all Black identities by centering Black voices, empowering students, and teaching about Black experiences beyond slavery.
This week of action not only benefits Black students but can also be transformative for non-Black students, particularly white students. Due in large part to school and residential segregation, white students often get a narrow view of blackness from their lived experiences. Recall that our secondary equity audits stated that “there were patterns of racial segregation within academic tracks. Specifically, Black, Latinx, and Native American students were less likely to be in class with White and Asian students.” Furthermore, in our 2020 spring Panorama Culture and Climate Survey, only 14% of our 6-12 grade students responded favorably to the question “How often do students at your school have important conversations about race, even when they might be uncomfortable?” In addition, only 24% of 6-12 grade students responded favorably to the question, “When there are major news events related to race, how often do adults at your school talk about them with students?” The Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action provides us with an opportunity to improve in these areas.
For years, our data has shown that there is a need to focus on our Black students. For years, community groups have requested we improve the educational experiences of our Black students. For years, Ames CSD staff have been working on deepening their critical consciousness. Now is the time for us to take action.
Ames CSD has taken some steps to begin addressing the disparities we see in our school data: committing to equity in the District’s purpose and priorities, working with experts Drs. Spikes and Swalwell to train staff in critical consciousness, and providing additional support for staff to further their knowledge through building-level professional development and district level opportunities. The next step toward change is using the knowledge we’ve attained to change the way we teach and interact with our students. We want our Black students to know they matter to the Ames Community School District.
Each day of the BLM at School week of action, two to three of the Black Lives Matter at School’s thirteen guiding principles will be discussed with students through age-appropriate lessons and activities. The thirteen principles and their descriptions can be found below. Early childhood and elementary descriptions can be found in the resources.
And here is the published Agenda of what will be taught (indoctrinated?) to those kids:
The Black Lives Matter Movement is guided by the following principles.
Restorative Justice – We are committed to collectively, lovingly, and courageously working vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people. As we forge our path, we intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting.
Empathy – We are committed to practicing empathy; we engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.
Loving Engagement – We are committed to embodying and practicing justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.
Diversity – We are committed to acknowledging, respecting, and celebrating difference(s) and commonalities.
Globalism – We see ourselves as part of the global Black family and we are aware of the different ways we are impacted or privileged as Black folk who exist in different parts of the world.
Queer Affirming – We are committed to fostering a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking or, rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual unless s/he or they disclose otherwise.
Trans Affirming – We are committed to embracing and making space for trans siblings to participate and lead. We are committed to being self-reflexive and doing the work required to dismantle cis-gender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.
Collective Value – We are guided by the fact all Black lives matter, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location.
Intergenerational – We are committed to fostering an intergenerational and communal network free from ageism. We believe that all people, regardless of age, show up with the capacity to lead and learn.
Black Families – We are committed to making our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We are committed to dismantling the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” that require them to mother in private even as they participate in justice work.
Black Villages – We are committed to disrupting the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, and especially “our” children to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
Unapologetically Black – We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a necessary prerequisite for wanting the same for others.
Black Women – We are committed to building a Black women affirming space free from sexism, misogyny, and male‐centeredness.
The Federalist had an excellent article on the topic as well:
Next week, the Ames, Iowa public school district is sponsoring a “Black Lives Matter week of action” that includes teaching transgenderism to children as young as four years old, Young America’s Foundation reports.
On the school district’s webpage about this “week of action” slated for Feb. 1-5, it reprints the “Black Lives Matter at School Guiding Principles,” which include the following:
“6. Queer Affirming – We are committed to fostering a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking or, rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual unless s/he or they disclose otherwise.”
“7. Trans Affirming – We are committed to embracing and making space for trans siblings to participate and lead. We are committed to being self-reflexive and doing the work required to dismantle cis-gender privilege…”
“11. Black Villages – We are committed to disrupting the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, and especially ‘our’ children to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”
Besides being anti-family and adamant about teaching sexual information to children as young as four, the curriculum is overtly racist. Here are just a few examples.
The school district’s recommended lessons for middle and high school students during this week include a “Justice for Trayvon Martin Tool Kit” that includes the following statement for class discussion:
“Discuss George Zimmerman and his Internalized Racism [sic] how even though he is Latino, why he is labeled as white. Ex. George Zimmerman is ethnically latino[sic]–however, [sic] he has the same racial privilege as white person, living in a gated community. He has a light skin color, and he holds [sic] no spanish [sic] name. So Zimmerman is so white-washed, and consumed by white supremacy that [sic] is why he is white.”
A Latino man is judged by the color of his skin and then dehumanized in racial terms because of where he lives. This is okay to teach children in America using public tax dollars and public institutions.
The grammatically embarrassing “tool kit” also says: “THIS CAMPAIGN DIRECTLY TARGETS A PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX THAT SUPPORTS DRACONIAN DRUG POLICIES, IMMIGRANT DETENTION, AND THE SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE.” It also encourages students to “organize in their schools and communities” with activities such as “hosting a school assembly about police violence, starting a student organization dedicated to discussing and working on issues around police violence and racial profiling…”
A coloring page for young children linked in the school district’s curriculum folder for this week includes the following super-awkward, stereotyped image:
We want children to be encouraged to think of black people as drummers wearing ragged jungle clothes and bare feet? It’s probably way too uncomfortable for me to make any commentary about the physical features of this cartoon man, but suffice it to say that in other contexts they would also be seen as evidence of racist stereotyping. If The New York Times published this picture as an editorial cartoon or article illustration, street agitators would lose their minds.
This same district plan for “early childhood” instruction links to a lesson from the blog “Raising Race-Conscious Children.” That site states: “A key premise of this blog is that naming race (and other social realities) can support people to be race conscious (as opposed to ‘color blind’).” Ladies and gentlemen, we are no longer in Martin Luther King Jr.’s vicinity with race issues. We are in a much, much darker place.
Oh and by the way, it wasn’t even a split decision.
According to TheIowaStandard, the Ames School Board voted unanimously to being indoctrinating the children with the platform:
Every member of the Ames Community Schoolboard expressed support for the Black Lives Matter Week of Action on Monday night. The district held a regularly scheduled board meeting that lasted well into the 11 o’clock hour.
Monic Behnken asked Anthony Jones, the director of equity of the district, what the days would look like during the Black Lives Matter Week of Action.
He told her it depends on the building. Some buildings and classrooms will incorporate it into everything they do each day during the week while others will limit it.
Jamet Colton said she “fully supports” the effort. She called it “necessary, crucial work.”
“I like how expansive the curriculum is,” she said. “I just want to say that trans-affirming and queer-affirming work is life-saving work.”
Gina Perez noted that she really appreciates the work Jones has done.
“Your presentation was just wonderful,” she said. “I would say it was moving. I do think this is vital for our school district to go through this and I’d love to see it every year. It would be wonderful.”
Sabrina Shields-Cook sand it is important the students have a sense of belonging. Citing suicide rates among transgender people and black students, she said the work is important and necessary.
Michelle Lenkaitis said she’s “very proud and happy” the district is undertaking the Black Lives Matter Week of Action.
“Any time you’re introducing things that make people uncomfortable in order to move us forward, I think it’s great,” she said. “Clearly based on comments on Facebook and letters we’ve gotten, people are uncomfortable. That’s not a bad thing.”
Alisa Frandsen said she really appreciates the “affirming work” in letting all the kids know they are valued and cared for in the district. She said it is important everyone read the 13 guiding principles – both documents that include the principles for the older kids and the younger students.
The violent protest at the US Capitol on January 6 has long been over, but the upcoming Biden administration’s response to it is likely to do greater violence to the US Constitution and the rule of law than anything the worst of the protesters could have accomplished. Thanks to the response of the George W. Bush administration and Congress to the 9/11 attacks almost two decades ago, Joe Biden’s prosecutors will have plenty of legal ammunition to go after their political enemies. It won’t stop with prosecuting people who broke into the Capitol.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, horrified Americans were ready to embrace virtually any proposal that promised to keep them safe. Government officials, for their part, were eager to curry favor with the fearful public and saw an opportunity to promote legislation and policies that had failed to win support in the past. The result was a surge of authoritarianism from which the U.S. has yet to recover. Now—with the public understandably concerned after the January 6 storming of the Capitol—we should brace ourselves for another wave of political responses that would, again, erode our liberty.
We are in very uncertain and certainly perilous waters. In the post-Trump era, Democrats want revenge and they want it now. I fear for my friends that worked in the Trump government, with Democrats calling for them to be blacklisted, harassed, and ultimately “canceled.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who continues to shed any perception that she wants anything less than a soft totalitarian country, has publicly called for a “media literacy” initiative that reminds one of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.
In an interview with MSNBC (surprised?), former CIA head John Brennan declared that the Biden administration agencies
“are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about” the pro-Trump “insurgency” that harbors “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”
Not surprisingly, there was zero pushback on his statement from the mainstream media, and one suspects that probably most mainstream journalists today would not mind seeing large numbers of people they dislike being hauled off to prison or just plain disappearing at the hands of the authorities.
For that matter, the Trump presidency was hardly the Libertarian Moment, and Trump gave one the sense that if he could control the flow of news, he would gladly do so. Whether or not one believes he was cheated out of office in the last election, for him to claim he “won in a landslide” and to call for official election results to be overturned can hardly leave one surprised that the DC “rally” turned into an out-and-out donnybrook.
Unfortunately, the violence that followed has given the Biden people the fig leaf they need to move against the Constitution and rule of law on many fronts—all the while claiming they are “restoring democracy.” The United States could well be at a tipping point at which whatever pretenses we had toward constitutional government are cast aside for a “pragmatic” state that addresses the so-called needs at hand and is not bound by legal niceties. For now, my guess is that Biden will unleash federal prosecutors who will face no constraints whatsoever, and that means a lot of innocent people are going to have their lives ruined.
Before going into more detail, I explain why the Bush administration nearly twenty years ago made Biden’s job much easier for him than it ever should be under the rule of law. In the early 2000s, I began to write about the abuses that accompanied the expansion of federal criminal law and published (often with Candice E. Jackson) in a number of outlets including Regulation,Reason, the Independent Review,and the Mises page. Because of what Jackson and I called the “highly derivative” nature of federal criminal law (the actual charges are compiled from actions that usually are only prosecuted under state law), it is easy for federal prosecutors to draw up a list of charges that are hard to fight, have draconian penalties, but often involve criminalizing actions that harmed no one, and certainly did not do harm that is up to standards of criminal conduct.
In the hysterical aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Congress rushed through the PATRIOT Act (which Joe Biden claimed to have written almost single-handedly—probably an exaggeration), a law that even at the time legal experts doubted would be effective in preventing acts of political terrorism but that allowed federal prosecutors to throw other “crimes” under the umbrella of “terrorism,” thus permitting them to box in defendants and force them to plead out to lesser charges and receive substantial prison time.
At the time, civil liberties groups like the American Civil Liberties Union along with media entities such as the New York Times served at least a semieffective role in blunting the more outrageous attempts by prosecutors to expand their powers. (The NYT had not shown the same restraint during the 1980s when Rudy Giuliani abused his powers in the infamous Wall Street prosecutions, instead allowing Giuliani to break numerous federal statutes in the paper’s crusade to “fight capitalism.”)
This time, however, it is highly doubtful that either the ACLU or the media will do anything but be cheerleaders for the Biden DOJ, given that the government says it will specifically target what it sees as threats from the right, something the NYT recently praised. A couple of recent incidents regarding the media and the so-called conservative threat are instructive.
Shortly after the January 6 Capitol riots, a number of mainstream news outlets breathlessly reported that the leaders of the protests actually were planning on kidnapping and assassinating a number of political figures. Not one mainstream news outlet questioned the feds’ claims. Shortly thereafter, however, CNN (which gave the original charges massive coverage) reported that the Department of Justice was walking back its original statements.
The FBI is warning of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington, D.C., in the days leading up to President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, stoking fears of more bloodshed after last week’s deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol.
The dispatch continues:
An internal FBI bulletin warned, as of Sunday, that the nationwide protests may start later this week and extend through Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, according to two law enforcement officials who read details of the memo to The Associated Press. Investigators believe some of the people are members of extremist groups, the officials said.
As we know, there were no armed uprisings, no right-wing armed mobs storming capitols and no massive protests. Now, on Inauguration Day, there was mob political violence and lots of it, but the mobs were leftist and the cities were Portland and Seattle and the national media saw little reason to publicize the protests, as they did not fit The Narrative.
Even the January 6 riots, as bad as they were, did not fall into the category of a coup, no matter what journalists and other political pundits were claiming. David French went even so far as to claim it was a “Christian insurrection” because some of the protesters said they were Christians and someone played Christian music on a loudspeaker. While it was an ugly scene nonetheless, does anyone (at least besides David French) really believe that the vast government regime known as The United States of America was in danger of being overthrown by a mob led by someone in a buffalo costume?
Yet, the same journalistic and political elites who excoriated Donald Trump for sending some agents to protect the federal courthouses in Seattle and Portland from Antifa mobs apparently had no problem with Biden dispatching thousands of federal troops to turn Washington, DC, into an armed camp. It is the same kind of overreaction that leads the media and political elites to demand that the government engage in massive surveillance of half the country.
Not all who are considered to be on the left are good with Biden’s internal spying plan, including Tulsi Gabbard, the former member of Congress who angered fellow Democrats with her appeals to civil liberties during her appearance in the presidential primary last year. National Review reports:
“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this?” Gabbard said.
She said the proposed legislation could create “a very dangerous undermining of our civil liberties, our freedoms in our Constitution, and a targeting of almost half of the country.”
“You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally,” Gabbard said.
Even more eye-opening is the missive that the hard-left publication Jacobin has launched against this round of surveillance. Now, the publication that is openly nostalgic about the former East Germany hardly is going to champion civil liberties or even basic freedoms, but the people there are politically astute enough to know that a government with vast surveillance powers isn’t going to stop at going after political conservatives:
However such legislation may be justified with liberal-sounding language, there’s absolutely no reason to believe authorities wouldn’t use new powers to target groups that have nothing to do with Donald Trump or Trumpism. Police almost certainly infiltrated Black Lives Matter protests last summer, and American law enforcement has a long and ignominious history of targeting progressive groups—not to mention socialists, trade unions, and civil rights activists. As this history suggests, the premise behind any new anti-terrorism law will also be wrong on its face: the American state hardly faces excessive restrictions on its capacity to surveil, discipline, and punish. (The FBI, to take an obvious example, already possesses considerable power to investigate groups suspected of extremist activity.)
The problem is that the traditional gatekeepers of civil liberties that we once had in the media and in political and academic circles has disappeared into the maw of political tribalism. Matt Taibbi, a former writer for Rolling Stone and now an independent journalist, sees mainstream journalism as little more than an echo chamber for progressive politicians in which journalists seem to pretend they are players in a version of The West Wing:
West Wing was General Hospital for rich white liberals, a seven-season love letter to the enlightened attitudes of the Bobo-in-Paradise demographic. If that’s the self-image of the national press, it’s no wonder they make people want to vomit. The coverage of Biden’s inauguration, another celebration of those attitudes, was an almost perfect mathematical inverse of late-stage Trump reporting, a monument to groveling sycophancy.
John Heileman at MSNBC compared Biden’s speech to Abe Lincoln’s second inaugural, and suggested that the sight of “the Clintons, the Bushes, and the Obamas” gathered for the event was like “the Marvel superheroes all back in one place” (this was not the first post-election Avengers comparison to be heard on cable). Rachel Maddow talked about going through “half a box of Kleenex” as she watched the proceedings. Chris Wallace on Fox said Biden’s lumbering speech was “the best inaugural address I ever heard,” John Kennedy’s “Ask Not” speech included. The joyful tone was set the night before by CNN’s David Challen, who said lights along the Washington Mall were like “extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America.”
Journalists who are going to claim that a bunch of lights in paper bags symbolize a Joe Biden group hug are not going to be intellectually or professionally capable of taking a hard look at the government’s attempt to arrest and imprison political and religious conservatives and libertarians, since they already have convinced themselves that these people constitute a dire threat to what is left of the republic. They more likely will serve as the publicity arm for the DOJ—as long as prosecutors stick to going after men in buffalo suits waving Trump flags.
To be depressingly honest, the only barrier to the Biden administration’s launching of an American version of the Stasi against dissenters on the right would be the individual consciences of those in charge of the spying and making arrests. Much of the Democratic Party and most of mainstream journalists seem to have no problem with criminalizing speech and launching a regime of mass arrest and imprisonment.
As I see it, we no longer are looking at threats to our liberty in the abstract. For years, I have launched missive after missive at federal (and sometimes state) prosecutors and not feared for my own safety and liberty, save a few death threats I received when I aggressively wrote against Michael Nifong, the dishonest prosecutor in the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case, and I didn’t take those seriously.
This situation is different because those who were the gatekeepers of liberty now have decided that liberty itself is a threat to our well-being. When the New York Times comes out against free speech and when journalists call for the power of the state to be used against other journalists they don’t like, we have turned the corner and are headed for the abyss.
No, I don’t expect to be hauled off to a concentration camp because I have written articles critical of federal prosecutors, but this country now is building a critical mass of journalists, college professors and administrators, and political figures that well might see concentration camps and other “reeducation” devices as being legitimate political tools. We are not as far away from such a dystopian future as one might think.
Federal criminal law provides these antiliberty groups the kinds of devices that can be used to criminalize speech and turn garden-variety dissenters into criminals. We should not be surprised if ambitious US attorneys in the Biden administration, cheered on by the likes of the New York Times and MSNBC, decide it is time to do just that.Author:
So says an anonymous Redditor on r/wallstreetbets, kicking off what they call “The Great Silver Squeeze.”
As you may know, this is yet another outgrowth of the Gamestop saga, and it’s moving faster than the babysitter’s boyfriend when a car pulls up.
(Some are even calling it a “Civil War in the stock market.”)
Personally, as a longstanding silver bug — attracted to the metal because of strong long-term fundamentals — I thought I’d never see the day.
Millions of “meme investors” on Reddit are now digging as deep as possible on the moon metal’s fundamentals. (Though they are self-described “degenerate gamblers,” some of them at least know how to do their due diligence.)
In short, the Redditors believe they can squeeze banks out of their shorts in the same way they did to Melvin with Gamestop.
Many silver bugs have long suspected that the banks have been suppressing the precious metals markets.
Though many have doubts, it isn’t a baseless conspiracy theory. We know it has been happening. Only the extent is unknown.
You only need to Google (or DuckDuckGo) something like “silver price manipulation fines.” There, you’ll see how many banks have paid fines for manipulating the metals markets.
From 2020 alone, you’ll find these two explosive stories…
Now, before you rush onto Reddit and get caught into the hype…
Simmer.
As you’ll see, some Redditors are setting themselves up to get wrecked. (In the paper market, the house almost always wins.)
More on that in a moment.
First, here’s where we’re at in the physical markets.
“Unprecedented in Our History”
This morning, I received an email from the guys at SDBullion, a well-known silver dealer.
They’ve been getting slammed with orders — up to 20X regular demand.
“As you are likely aware,” the email reads, “the precious metal market has received unprecedented demand. In the last week, we’ve seen a massive increase in demand for physical bullion, especially silver. The demand lift is somewhere around 20 times our normal order demand. Of course, the entire industry has felt this demand as well. In fact, Bloomberg TV invited me on last night for a live interview to discuss what is going on in physical bullion right now.”
That’s not all.
At 9:48 PM last night, I received an email from APMEX, one of the world’s largest bullion dealers.
Ken Lewis, the CEO, wrote:
“Once markets closed on Friday, we saw demand hit as much as six times a typical business day and more than 12 times a normal weekend day. Combined with the extremely high demand levels, we are also seeing a surge in new customers. On Saturday alone, we added as many new customers as we usually add in a week.”
“Once we exceeded our comfort levels, we had little choice but to stop the sale of Silver on our website. This was a difficult decision to make and unprecedented in our history.”
And Tyler Winklevoss, adding gas to the flames, tweeted this out:
Paper is the Money of Peasants
Long-term, this could be a good thing. Real money is infallibly superior to funny munny. And the cat is escaping the bag.
As the old saying goes, “Gold is the money of kings. Silver is the money of gentlemen. Paper is the money of peasants. And debt is the money of slaves.”
Our financial system has gone from the gold standard to the debt standard in a little over a generation.
It’s no coincidence we have also seen societal breakdown, gruesome inequality, a collapse in trust in once-trusted institutions (media, universities, and government), blatant destruction of the middle class and small businesses, and a ballooning dependency on powerful, centralized entities.
Buying up silver isn’t going to change any of this overnight. But it can, I propose, push public consciousness in the right direction.
And it could also create a unique opportunity for our fellow silver bugs.
But… as mentioned, many of the silver squeezers are in danger of getting played and wholly wrecked.
I’ll outline why tomorrow.
Be careful out there.
As always, the safe option is to stick to the tried-and-true: cold, hard physical.
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Until tomorrow,
Chris Campbell Managing editor, Laissez Faire Today
New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to be caught up in controversy over his failed leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, and now, left-wing media publications are finally starting to take notice.
What are the details?
The New York Times, though usually congratulatory toward Cuomo, published a blistering report Monday suggesting the governor had “all but declared war” on public health experts in his state, leading nine of them to quit their posts since the start of the pandemic.
According to the Times, the “drumbeat of high-level departures” — which includes the deputy commissioner for public health at the New York State Health Department, the director of its bureau of communicable disease control, the medical director for epidemiology, and the state epidemiologist — has caused morale in the state’s health department to plunge and came as a result of experts being “sidelined and treated disrespectfully.”
“Their concern had an almost singular focus: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo,” the Times noted, based on the testimony of five anonymous sources inside the department.
The tipping point for many experts appears to have been the governor’s autocratic takeover of the vaccine rollout, though it’s hard to imagine that his obfuscating over a deadly nursing home policy that sowed public distrust in the health department hasn’t also played a part. The report goes as follows:
Even as the pandemic continues to rage and New York struggles to vaccinate a large and anxious population, Mr. Cuomo has all but declared war on his own public health bureaucracy. The departures have underscored the extent to which pandemic policy has been set by the governor, who with his aides crafted a vaccination program beset by early delays.
The troubled rollout came after Mr. Cuomo declined to use the longstanding vaccination plans that the State Department of Health had developed in recent years in coordination with local health departments. Mr. Cuomo instead adopted an approach that relied on large hospital systems to coordinate vaccinations not only of their own staffs, but also of much of the population.
In recent weeks, the governor has repeatedly made it clear that he believed he had no choice but to seize more control over pandemic policy from state and local public health officials, who he said had no understanding of how to conduct a real-world, large-scale operation like vaccinations. After early problems, in which relatively few doses were being administered, the pace of vaccinations has picked up and New York is now roughly 20th in the nation in percentage of residents who have received at least one vaccine dose.
“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Friday, referring to scientific expertise at all levels of government during the pandemic. “Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”
Making matters worse, the governor may have opted to designate major roles for the vaccine rollout to organizations that contributed to his causes in the past, rather than relying on distribution plans painstakingly crafted by state health officials.
The report found that in his planning, Cuomo often held closed-door meetings with hospital executives and lobbyists before scrapping health department distribution plans in favor of his own, which relied on large hospital systems as distribution “hubs.”
Then, in December, Cuomo sidestepped the city’s 6,000-person health department, instead selecting as a regional hub the Greater New York Hospital Association, “a trade group with a multimillion-dollar lobbying arm that had been a major donor to the governor’s causes.”
What else?
The Times report comes on the heels of another scathing report from a left-leaning publication that raised alarms over Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic.
Last week, CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza admitted that the governor’s leadership “may have been less stellar than it seemed” after learning from a report released by New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James that the Cuomo administration had undercounted COVID-19 nursing home deaths by 50%.
It must be said that these critical reports are far too late in coming, though. For months, liberal media outlets fawned over the governor’s “New York Tough” public persona and celebrated as he sent in tapes of his daily briefings to be recognized by the Emmys. All the while, thousands were dying in nursing homes due to Cuomo’s deadly policy, and businesses were closing en masse due to his lockdown orders, many never to reopen.
That said, the reports, however late, may still be useful and could well lead to a reckoning for the governor and perhaps for many government leaders who abused their authority during the once-in-a-lifetime COVID-19 pandemic.
IN OTHER WORDS, THEY WILL BE ‘PRIMARIED’ OUT. PERIOD!
In this file photo from 2009, then-Vice President-elect, Sen. joe biden, D-Del., left, stands with his son hunter during a re-enactment of the Senate oath ceremony, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009, in the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington. … more >
A president takes office amidst charges of family corruption and shady business dealings with a country connected to interfering in the very election that put him in the White House. Sound familiar?
The false narrative that Democrats concocted to hobble the Trump administration four years ago is now the real deal with joe biden and his family. And unlike President Trump, who faced unprecedented institutional resistance and Deep State resistance, President biden can likely count on the Justice Department and the media to allow him to escape meaningful scrutiny.
Judicial Watch recently started a petition at Change.org asking the Department of Justice immediately to appoint a special counsel to investigate biden family dealings in china, Ukraine and other countries. There is substantial evidence, from documents and witness statements, that the biden family, including President joe biden, may have been involved in criminal activity with foreign entities tied to Ukraine and china. In just a few days the petition has garnered nearly 200,000 signatures.
Judicial Watch uncovered documents that show even as far back as the Obama administration Russia-linked media in Ukraine were “trolling” joe biden over “his son’s business.” biden’s son hunter has acknowledged that he is the target of an FBI criminal investigation. Any investigation should involve alleged money laundering, influence peddling and tax violations among other shady activities.
A special counsel is required because the Justice Department and its FBI are conflicted in investigating any matters that could implicate the president and/or his immediate family in criminal activity. As Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said recently, “if there were ever circumstances that create a conflict of interest and call for a special counsel, that’s here.” Justice Department regulations that were abused to appoint a special counsel to harass then-President Trump actually do fairly apply to the biden situation. A special counsel is required by Justice regulations when:
(a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and
(b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.
The matter is urgent. Americans just learned that communist china was actively involved in the 2020 presidential election. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, in a letter transmitted to Congress, concluded that “based on all available sources of intelligence, with definitions consistently applied, and reached independent of political considerations or undue pressure — that the people’s republic of china sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections.”
chinese efforts to interfere in the 2020 election might have been better known before election days but for Deep State resistance. Intelligence Community Ombudsman Barry Zulauf found that CIA analysts were reluctant to reveal china’s malign actions because they were opposed to the Trump administration, and were “saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.” In fact, “strong efforts” were made last summer to suppress analysts who wanted to expose the full range of chinese efforts to swing the election to biden.
We are already seeing china indirectly benefitting from biden policies. Cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline will divert Canadian oil west to the petroleum-hungry People’s Republic. Re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement gives political cover to china’s excessively polluting dirty coal industry, in which hunter biden is heavily invested. biden’s State Department on Day One removed a page on its web site that contained a comprehensive assessment of the threats china poses to the U.S. and its allies, and an emboldened Beijing slapped outrageous sanctions on outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and 27 other former Trump officials. Does china have corrupt leverage over biden?
Given the years of investigations costing millions of dollars to delve into fake Russia collusion accusations against Trump world, the American people deserve to know what china was up to with joe biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous hunter biden laptop? The conflicted biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel NOW!
Billionaire George Soros’s radical leftism is spreading through America’s most populous county. Days after a Soros-backed prosecutor who vows to lock up fewer criminals became Los Angeles District Attorney, the city’s mayor is forcing all employees to undergo “implicit bias” training to be conducted by a group that receives funding from Soros and his Open Society Foundations (OSF). That makes L.A. County and its biggest city, the nation’s second-most populous, a stronghold of the powerful Soros machine that aims to promote the left’s agenda.
It started with Soros’s financial support for a controversial Black Lives Matter-endorsed District Attorney candidate, George Gascon, who has alienated career prosecutors throughout California with his renegade criminal justice reform initiatives. A former San Francisco District Attorney, Gascon announced upon being sworn in as L.A. County’s top prosecutor that his office will no longer pursue the death penalty, try juveniles as adults, add gangs and other enhancements to criminal complaints or seek cash bail for non-violent felonies or misdemeanors. It is worth noting that the L.A. County D.A. is the largest local prosecutorial office in the United States. The District Attorney in Sacramento recently blasted Gascon in a letter published by various media outlets in the state. “Your Special Directives are not just extreme but will undoubtedly wreak havoc on crime victims and their Constitutional rights,” the letter states. “Your lack of concern for their rights and safety concerns me greatly. Additionally, because crime has no boundaries, these Special Directives will have far greater impact than on Los Angeles County alone. Rather, victims across California will be negatively impacted and the safety of all Californians will be jeopardized.”
Now all the city’s 50,000 employees must participate in racial bias training conducted by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University (OSU). Judicial Watch dug up information on the group and uncovered deep ties to Soros and other notorious leftists. The center is named after a former OSU president appointed by California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi to a prestigious Department of Education post. In addition to its “implicit bias” trainings, the institute’s research areas include racial wealth inequality, opportunity mapping, and health equity and disparities. As you would expect, its agenda is radically progressive. Policy proposals from Kirwan Institute products include, “significantly raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy,” a Congressional committee on reparations, guaranteed employment, and “Medicare for All.”
Until this month, the institute’s executive director was Darrick Hamilton, who left to head the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification and Political Economy at the New School in New York. He is best known for being one of the developers of the “baby bonds” proposal in which the government provides a trust fund for every newborn based on parents’ wealth. Hamilton was an advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign and a member of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force. OSU paid him $259,334.40 annually to run the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Other individuals associated with the institute include Kyle Strickland, who serves as senior legal analyst and Hasan Jeffries, an OSU professor who achieved notoriety for posting on social media that the Fraternal Order of Police has killed more black people than the white supremacist hate group Ku Klux Klan. Strickland is a Black Lives Matter supporter who is also deputy director of race and democracy at the Roosevelt Institute, which received more than $1 million from OSF in 2019 and lists Jonathan Soros as a senior fellow.
The Kirwan Institute has received an undisclosed amount of funding from OSF and the Soros conglomerate is listed as a financial supporter in its 2015-2016 Biennial Report. OSF is not specifically mentioned in the 2020 annual report however, it notes that the institute partners with Demos, the Roosevelt Institute, the Center for Community Change, and the Economic Security Project, all of which receive extensive funding from OSF. One of the institute’s partners, PolicyLink, is a liberal research and advocacy nonprofit in Oakland that received $500,000 from OSF in 2019.
The mayor of L.A., Eric Garcetti, claims the goal of enlisting this group is to “advance racial equity across city government.” Garcetti recently issued a directive that creates a racial equity task force and appoints racial equity officers throughout city government. “Our city is in pain, and we are hungry for change,” the mayor writes in the order “The demonstrations for racial justice in recent weeks have not exposed something new — they’ve laid bare the urgent and overdue demand to end structural racism. America’s tragic history of violent and persistent discrimination casts a long shadow over the challenges Blacks and other people of color confront today in housing, employment, and the criminal justice system.” The social, economic, and political inequities have created a “shamefully disparate and stratified society,” Garcetti asserts.
‘I’m terribly concerned that the biden administration … is going to use the leverage of power, as the obama administration did, to target the political opposition,’ Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch said on Friday.
America has a new administration, and Judicial Watch is working hard to defend the Left’s ongoing attacks on election integrity, the Constitution, and our nation’s laws. Whether it’s undermining your constitutional rights, promoting unrestricted illegal immigration, or silencing concerns about corruption, the biden presidency is likely to be worse than the obama Administration, Fitton explained. “You’re a terrorist if you object.…that’s their thinking.” Fitton remarked that Biden’s inauguration speech was “a dogwhistle to the Left and to Big Tech … keep on taking steps to effectively outlaw dissent here in the United States.”
Fitton believes that the Left’s rushed impeachment proceedings in Congress are an assault on the First Amendment. In his latest Weekly Update, Fitton argued that “If they found him [Trump] guilty, that would be devastating to the First Amendment because it would be a green light to attack and remove others that engage in core political speech that all of a sudden would be criminalized if the Left doesn’t like it.” The impeachment vote rolled over the civil rights of the president. “They wouldn’t let him make a presentation, or call witnesses, there were no hearings, no defense… And so are they going to do that with the trial?” he continued.
As with President Trump, Fitton is also regularly the target of Big Tech censorship. Having been “locked out” of Twitter, Fitton reminded viewers this week, “we’ve got to be prepared to push back, and we do it through the law.”
From a policy standpoint, the biden administration is introducing equally alarming precedents, Fitton argued.
The administration “issued a notice through his acting secretary that effectively will shut down all immigration enforcement in the United States.”
Remarking on the absurdity of these policy changes, Fitton reminded viewers that “We’ve got a number of Freedom of Information Act requests about these policies … we have dozens of lawsuits against the biden administration.”
Judicial Watch is also still investigating allegations of corruption in the Biden family, specifically as it relates to then-Vice President biden’s connections to China, and his son Hunter’s dealings with Burisma. “We’re still going to be pushing for justice. Someone’s got to do it.”
As Fitton concluded, “we’re ready to go to court to hold them accountable.… It’s going to be a busy year for us, and don’t despair because you have wonderful tools under law.” If you’re concerned about corruption in the biden administration sign their petition, and support Judicial Watch.
fox files 
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