Monthly Archives: April 2024

Current Events

A Veteran Affair

6 Comments

Another good one from my good friend Greg, thanks Greg, this one is very fitting and timely BUT, I have one that will follow along on this one and be a barn burner for many, especially we Marines. Be sure to read when I post it tomorrow. Trust me, you will be sick Marines. .

By Greg Maresca

Not knowing why Veteran’s Day was on a Thursday and not part of a three-day weekend was somewhat perplexing to a recently minted government employee. There is a historic tradition why some holidays like Christmas, New Year’s Day and the 4th of July are standalone celebrations.

Veteran’s Day is one of them.

Given its history and place on the Gregorian calendar, why couldn’t the Great War have ended in June, July, or August? It just so happens that World War I, the war to end all wars, ceased on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month in 1918. For some it must be frustrating having a holiday in early November when the days are short, the skies overcast and the mercury doing a daily descent.

To take a society’s emotional temperature, listen to what folks complain about. As we approach this Veteran’s Day many who served in the nation’s armed forces are concerned about the trajectory of where our military, and thus the nation, is headed.

As the Chinese fly dozens of sorties into Taiwanese airspace probing their defenses, the Biden administration counters by naming Rachel Levine an honorary four-star admiral of the U.S. Public Health Services Commissioned Corps, the first “woman” to reach that rank. “Rachel” is Richard, a biological male and father, who never served in any branch of the military.

Where is that army of ardent feminists as a male living under the aberration of being a female is bestowed such a title?

Do you believe the Russians and Chinese play pretend like we do?

Hoist that rainbow flag to let the enemy know we mean business as soon as they pick the right dress for war.

Such a dubious sideshow draws attention away from the folly of the Biden administration that recognizes global warming and COVID as more tactical enemies than communism and the piecemeal dismantling of the Constitution by American Marxists.

Besides developing viruses, the Chinese are working diligently on weapons’ systems that include their recent launch of a hypersonic nuclear missile which flies below radar, expanding their navy from a green water fleet to a blue water one, while enlarging their nuclear arsenal and learning to fight the next generation of war: cyberspace.

Provided our armed forces continue to serve more as a social experiment than a fighting force, it is guaranteed we will pay an immense price in blood and treasure on a future battlefield.

Rather we counter with “Rachel” Levine, Critical Race Theory, a bungled Afghanistan defeat and forced vaccinations.

If Afghanistan was a “logistical success,” as Gen. Milley defined it, then what retreat wasn’t? The top brass are a bunch of trick or treaters with more ribbons than brains. What would have been the result had the U.S. squared off against the Axis powers in World War II with a woke president and military joint chiefs where social justice is priority one?

The only thing our military is working at hypersonic speed is the implementation of wokeism.

Recently, the navy failed to execute basic shipboard firefighting aboard USS Bonhomme Richard and lost a ship with 15 years of service left. However, they did plant some trees as carbon offsets, so award those humanitarian service medals.

Navy SEALs seeking a vaccine religious exemption are being coerced into compliance. Not only does such harassment intrude upon their First Amendment rights that they swore to uphold, but it is detrimental to our national security.

Global warming and social change are not the military’s mission.

Our military superiority will cease provided we continue to politicize the armed forces, while discharging those who do not adhere to the woke policies of the Biden administration.

There are about two billion people residing in freedom thanks to the sacrifice of the U.S. military over the last 241 years. That is as noble an achievement as any in history and November 11 has been set aside to honor those who have made and continue to make that sacrifice.

Those who have honorably served make up only seven percent of the population.

For them, take a few minutes to right our ship by contacting your Congressional representatives and urging them to act and what better time than Veteran’s Day.

 I fly out tomorrow to be the guest speaker for a group of Marines in Mesa, AZ for their Birthday Ball. I have been perplexed now for weeks trying to come up with something to talk about, and am stymied. Now today, I read an article that saddens me to no end about my beloved Corps. Now I am really baffled as to what to say to the Marines Saturday night. Lord, I need your help. I will post the article tomorrow a.m. before I depart for the airport. STANDBY MARINES!!!!

Originally posted 2021-11-04 17:03:38.

Current Events

Ms. Milley’s Worried?

2 Comments

Sorry for the lack of posts gang. I wonder what keeps a so-called retired Marine of 80 so damn busy all the time? When I figure it out I’ll let you know. Anyway, sort of tiring writing about Joe the idiot and all his clowns, it actually gets boring after a while. I mean no one knows what they will do next. I’m done with him and his puppet handlers. This particular post intrigued me because it talks about Ms. Milley, who as we all know does not have a clue what he is supposed to be doing as CJCS. Now he is attempting to show concern for China, but can’t get his arms around it since he is to wrapped up in more important things like diversity, and ridding the military of extremists, which we all know I am one of them. What a flaming idiot this guy is.

And of course he is supposed to be the military advisor to the bigger idiot, Sleepy Joe, who also does not have a clue even where he is at anytime. Oh dear, I can just imagine how hard the world is laughing at us dumb ass Americans.

Pentagon Rattled by Chinese Military Push on Multiple Fronts

Air Force Gen. John Hyten, outgoing commander of US Strategic Command, speaks during a change of command ceremony at Offutt AFB in Nebraska, Monday, Nov. 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

1 Nov 2021

Associated Press | By Robert Burns

WASHINGTON — China’s growing military muscle and its drive to end America predominance in the Asia-Pacific is rattling the U.S. defense establishment. American officials see trouble quickly accumulating on multiple fronts — Beijing’s expanding nuclear arsenal, its advances in space, cyber and missile technologies, and threats to Taiwan.

“The pace at which China is moving is stunning,” says Gen. John Hyten, the No. 2-ranking U.S. military officer, who previously commanded U.S. nuclear forces and oversaw Air Force space operations.

At stake is a potential shift in the global balance of power that has favored the United States for decades. A realignment more favorable to China does not pose a direct threat to the United States but could complicate U.S. alliances in Asia. New signs of how the Pentagon intends to deal with the China challenge may emerge in coming weeks from Biden administration policy reviews on nuclear weapons, global troop basing and overall defense strategy.

For now, officials marvel at how Beijing is marshaling the resources, technology and political will to make rapid gains — so rapid that the Biden administration is attempting to reorient all aspects of U.S. foreign and defense policy.

The latest example of surprising speed was China’s test of a hypersonic weapon capable of partially orbiting Earth before reentering the atmosphere and gliding on a maneuverable path to its target. The weapon system’s design is meant to evade U.S. missile defenses, and although Beijing insisted it was testing a reusable space vehicle, not a missile, the test appeared to have startled U.S. officials.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the test was “very close” to being a Sputnik moment, akin to the 1957 launching by the Soviet Union of the world’s first space satellite, which caught the world by surprise and fed fears the United States had fallen behind technologically. What followed was a nuclear arms and space race that ultimately bankrupted the Soviet Union.

Milley and other U.S. officials have declined to discuss details of the Chinese test, saying they are secret. He called it “very concerning” for the United States but added that problems posed by China’s military modernization run far deeper.

“That’s just one weapon system,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “The Chinese military capabilities are much greater than that. They’re expanding rapidly in space, in cyber and then in the traditional domains of land, sea and air.” Meanwhile you have other more important eggs to fry dealing with diversity, transgenders, gays, and of course getting rid of all those mean, bad constitutionalists in the military.

On the nuclear front, private satellite imagery in recent months has revealed large additions of launch silos that suggest the possibility that China plans to increase its fleet of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists, says China appears to have about 250 ICBM silos under construction, which he says is more than 10 times the number in operation today. The U.S. military, by comparison, has 400 active ICBM silos and 50 in reserve.

Pentagon officials and defense hawks on Capitol Hill point to China’s modernization as a key justification for rebuilding the U.S. nuclear arsenal, a project expected to cost more than $1 billion over 30 years, including sustainment costs.

Fiona Cunningham, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist in Chinese military strategy, says a key driver of Beijing’s nuclear push is its concerns about U.S. intentions. Really? Oh Okay that suits Ms. Milley as she can go back to the really important stuff.

“I don’t think China’s nuclear modernization is giving it a capability to pre-emptively strike the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and that was a really important generator of competition during the Cold War,” Cunningham said in an online forum sponsored by Georgetown University. “But what it does do is to limit the effectiveness of U.S. attempts to pre-emptively strike the Chinese arsenal.”

Some analysts fear Washington will worry its way into an arms race with Beijing, frustrated at being unable to draw the Chinese into security talks. Congress also is increasingly focused on China and supports a spending boost for space and cyber operations and hypersonic technologies. There is a push, for example, to put money in the next defense budget to arm guided-missile submarines with hypersonic weapons, a plan initiated by the Trump administration.

For decades, the United States tracked China’s increased defense investment and worried that Beijing was aiming to become a global power. But for at least the last 20 years, Washington was focused more on countering al-Qaida and other terrorist threats in Iraq and Afghanistan. That began to change during the Trump administration, which in 2018 formally elevated China to the top of the list of defense priorities, along with Russia, replacing terrorism as the No. 1 threat.

For now, Russia remains a bigger strategic threat to the United States because its nuclear arsenal far outnumbers China’s. But Milley and others say Beijing is a bigger long-term worry because its economic strength far exceeds that of Russia, and it is rapidly pouring resources into military modernization.

At the current pace of China’s military investment and achievement, Beijing “will surpass Russia and the United States” in overall military power in coming years “if we don’t do something to change it,” said Hyten, who is retiring in November after two years as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It will happen.” Yessiree!

The Biden administration says it is determined to compete effectively with China, banking on a network of allies in Asia and beyond that are a potential source of strength that Beijing cannot match. That was central to the reasoning behind a Biden decision to share highly sensitive nuclear propulsion technologies with Australia, enabling it to acquire a fleet of conventionally armed submarines to counter China. Although this was a boost for Australia, it was a devastating blow to Washington’s oldest ally, France, (What, our oldest ally? LOL, that’s a joke.) which saw its $66 billion submarine sale to Australia scuttled in the process.

Taiwan is another big worry. Senior U.S. military officers have been warning this year that China is probably accelerating its timetable for capturing control of Taiwan, the island democracy widely seen as the most likely trigger for a potentially catastrophic U.S.-China war.

The United States has long pledged to help Taiwan defend itself, but it has deliberately left unclear how far it would go in response to a Chinese attack. President Joe Biden appeared to abandon that ambiguity when he said Oct. 21 that America would come to Taiwan’s defense if it were attacked by China.

“We have a commitment to do that,” Biden said. The White House later said he was not changing U.S. policy, which does not support Taiwanese independence but is committed to providing defensive arms.

Okay, guys, there you have the rea; scoop straight from all the pseudo sophomoric idiots who have all the answers. But what about helping the  transgender’s, gays, diversity,  etc. in the military, better get them first.? And Lordy be, got to get rid of those extremists who keep touting the constitution!

Originally posted 2021-11-02 12:47:20.

Current Events, Recent Posts

Train Wreck in Slow Motion.

3 Comments

I know some of you are probably tired of my posting these sort of comments as they are somewhat hard to understand and follow without some education in that confusing world of Economics; however, I love it. Read carefully and try to get a grasp of what he is saying and showing you in the charts. Chart #7 is an eye opener of me. As he says, we are about to watch a train wreck in slow motion. I agree with his advice, keeping that money in your bank or under your mattress is not the way to get through this perfect storm we are about to experience. Hard assets will always win out.

Good luck Brothers and Sisters.

Calafia Beach Pundit
Monetary policy is a slow-motion train wreck

Posted: 13 Oct 2021 06:32 PM PDT

There is no shortage of things to worry about. 

That’s a phrase I have used several times over the past decade. I used it as a foil to argue that since the market was quite cautious (and nervous), then a surprise downturn or selloff wasn’t a serious risk. Recessions usually happen when nearly everyone is feeling optimistic. Today there again is no shortage of things to worry about, and the market is within inches of its all-time high. Most disturbing, however, is that neither the Fed nor the administration nor Congress nor the bond market are very worried about inflation. Inflation and all its nasty consequences are, arguably, big things to worry about today.

Fed policy, as laid out in today’s FOMC minutes, is amazingly blasé about the risks of higher inflation. The Fed currently plans to begin “tapering” its purchases of Treasuries and mortgages sometime next month, and to finish tapering by mid-2022. That’s not a tightening of monetary policy; it’s only making policy less accommodative over a prolonged period. Actual tightening—which would consist of draining reserves (i.e., selling bonds) and/or raising the interest rate it pays on reserves (i.e., higher short-term interest rates)—won’t begin until sometime late next year.

The market has apparently agreed that this is a sensible course of action. Inflation expectations embedded in bond prices are somewhat high, but still a relatively tame 2.75% per year (average) over the next 5 years. The bond market is currently pricing in one or two 25 bps “tightenings” by the end of next year (i.e., short-term interest rates of roughly 0.4% to 0.5%), and a 1.5% fed funds rate 3 years from now. By any standard, that would be a supremely gradual pace of monetary tightening. But at a time when inflation is at levels not seen in over 30 years?

This is almost certainly an unsustainable situation. The Fed and the bond market are almost certainly underestimating the risks of higher-than-expected inflation.

How do I know this? It’s all about incentives. Today, the incentives to borrow are huge. Short-term interest rates are below the current level of inflation and will likely remain so for at least the next year. (Even 30-yr fixed rate mortgages are lower than the rate of inflation.) Smart investors and consumers won’t find it hard to arbitrage these variables. In fact, the process is already underway. You simply borrow money and buy anything that is a productive asset and which also has roots in the nominal economy (e.g., commodities, equities, farms, factories, cars). Leverage is your friend and ally in a high-inflation, low-interest-rate world.

How does one place a bet on an asset (in this case the dollar) that is expected to decline in value (because of inflation eroding its purchasing power)? You sell it if you own it, or you sell it short (you borrow it and then sell it). You buy it back when inflation settles back down and/or interest rates rise to a level that is greater than inflation. One way to “short” the dollar is to simply borrow dollars. And a common way to do that is to get a loan from a bank. And when the bank lends you money, the bank can actually create the money it lends you, which in turn expands the money supply. Banks are uniquely able to create money, provided they have sufficient reserves on hand to collateralize their deposits. Since the banking system currently has upwards of $3 trillion in “excess” reserves, thanks to the Fed’s gargantuan purchases of notes and bonds, banks have an almost unlimited ability to increase their lending.

So it’s not surprising that the M2 money supply has expanded at an unprecedented rate over the past 18 months, a time in which the Fed has bought almost $3 trillion of notes and bonds and bank deposits have swelled by some $5 trillion. And it’s also not surprising that in the past six months consumer price inflation has posted a 6-7% annualized rate of growth—a rate last seen in late 1990.

As for Biden, his approval rating is now down to an abysmal 38%. His administration has committed a series of blunders, most notably with the Afghanistan withdrawal. His top priority now is to pass two bills chock full of new social spending and new taxes which he preposterously claims will cost the economy “zero.” Meanwhile, inflation has risen to multi-decade highs, yet both the administration and the Fed keep insisting it’s just transitory. Things will almost certainly get worse if trillions of new taxes and spending, additional layers of bureaucracy, and hundreds of billions of dollars of new handouts and subsidies get lavished on the middle class. My good friend and talented artist Nuni Cademartori sums it up in this cartoon:

As the battle in Congress over Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda rages, I would urge everyone who thinks this agenda will actually help the economy grow and prosper to read the recently released study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation in collaboration with my good friend, Steve Moore of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

The key findings:

• The cost of the Biden Build Back Better plan spread across two bills will reach $6.2 trillion over the next decade.

• The higher tax rates on corporate income, small business income, capital gains, and so on will raise the cost of capital and reduce national investment and the capital stock.

• Compared to baseline growth, the negative impact of these taxes over the next decade will result in 5.3 million fewer jobs, $3.7 trillion less in GDP, $1.2 trillion less in income, and $4.5 trillion in new debt.

While I’m on the subject of Steve Moore, whom I’ve known since the mid-1980s, I will once again recommend you read and subscribe to the Committee to Unleash Prosperity’s free daily newsletter. I read it every day, as do more than 100,000 citizens and Washington policymakers. (One of his recent issues featured Nuni’s cartoon, and another featured some of my recent charts.)

In the study mentioned above you will find details on a plethora of Biden’s tax proposals (e.g., a 12.5% payroll tax on all income over $400K, a reduction in the estate tax exemption of $8 million, and an increase in the top marginal tax rate to 65%) and their likely negative impact on the economy and employment. It’s frightening to think that the people who came up with these proposals apparently believe that the overall impact of BBB will be stimulative. Have they no common sense? Here’s a fundamental supply-side truth: when you tax productive activity and success more, you will get less of it. And when the government borrows trillions only to redistribute the money to favored groups and industries, you get a weaker, less efficient economy. And you also risk boosting already-high inflation.

I’ll wrap things up with some updated charts and commentary:

Chart #1

Nothing illustrates better the supply-chain bottlenecks that currently plague the global economy than Chart #1. Used car prices have literally skyrocketed; in inflation-adjusted terms, used car prices are higher than they have ever been. In nominal terms they are up over 50% since March ’20.

Chart #2

Chart #2 shows how almost half of small businesses in the US report paying higher prices. The last time this occurred was in the 1970s. It’s hard to escape a higher inflation Deja vu conclusion.

Chart #3

 

As Chart #3 shows, bank reserves are very near their all-time high. The vast majority of these reserves are “excess” reserves, meaning they are not required to collateralize bank deposits. Banks thus have enough reserves on hand to collateralize an ungodly increase in deposits via new lending (i.e, money creation). If the Fed doesn’t increase the interest rate it pays on these reserves by enough to make them more attractive, on a risk-adjusted basis, than the interest rate banks can expect to earn on new lending, bank lending will surely continue to expand, and that will fuel a prolonged expansion of the money supply and ever-higher inflation.

Chart #4

 

Chart #4 shows the 6-mo. annualized rate of growth of the CPI (including the ex-energy version). I think this is a fair way to measure what’s happening now, since we are well past all the distortions of last year and the turmoil earlier this year. Inflation by this measure hasn’t been this high since late 1990.

Chart #5

Chart #5 compares the year over year growth in the CPI (I’m being conservative with this) to the level of 5-yr Treasury yields. Yields haven’t been this low relative to inflation since the 1970s. Recall what happened back then: millions of households made a fortune borrowing money at fixed rates and buying houses. Negative real interest rates cannot be sustained for long, mainly because of the incentives they create to borrow and buy.

Chart #6

Chart #6 is an updated version of the one featured in Steve Moore’s newsletter. It’s important to note that the multi-decade trend rate of M2 growth is 6-7% per year. This has been blown away in the past 18 months. If the public tires of holding $3.8 trillion more in bank deposits than they normally would at this time, that’s a tsunami of money that could float higher prices for nearly everything in the next year or so. It’s also worth noting that M2 has been growing at a 10-11% annualized rate so far this year.

What worries me the most right now is how this all sorts out. The Fed seems determined to avoid even the semblance of tightening for the next 12 months. Yet if inflation turns out to not be transitory as they currently expect, how long will it be before policy becomes tight enough to threaten the economy’s health?

Chart #7 

Chart #7 provides some historical context which may help answer that question. Note that every recession on this chart (shaded bars), with the exception of the last, was preceded by 1) a flat or negatively-sloped Treasury yield curve, and 2) a very high real Fed funds rate. Both of those conditions confirm the existence of very tight monetary policy that was intended to keep inflation pressures at bay. Neither condition is in place today, however, which strongly suggests that monetary policy poses no threat to the economy at this time.

Past Fed tightenings, however, were different from what a tightening would look like today. To really tighten policy, the Fed would have to 1) start raising the interest rate it pays on reserves, and 2) start draining reserves by selling bonds. It might take years to get rid of all the excess reserves, however, and no one knows for sure how the economy will respond to higher short-term rates in the presence of abundant reserves—that’s never happened before. In the past, the Fed simply drained reserves until they were in such short supply that the banks were willing to pay ever-higher interest rates in order to acquire enough of them to collateralize their deposits. A scarcity of reserves led to a liquidity shortage, and high real borrowing costs led to bankruptcies and weak investment. Eventually, economic growth ceased, and the inflation cycle was broken.

The dilemma for investors: we might be years away from a return to these conditions, so selling risky assets right now might be premature. And, by the way, holding cash is a guaranteed way to lose money. But how long can you wait, knowing that another economic collapse looms on the horizon?

In the meantime, the prospects for Biden’s Build Back Better lollapaloosa are declining by the day, thankfully, and the spreading disarray in Washington only makes that more likely. I’m willing to bet that if any of his bills survive, it will be in greatly reduced form, and thus much less damaging to the economy. Just letting the economy sort things out on its own would be a great relief to everyone, in my view.

Nobody said investing was easy. There are a lot of things to worry about these days. But I wouldn’t panic just yet. The next year or so might be likened to watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Rik is a great friend and brother Marine with whom I served several times. Thanks Rik, I love this stuff. Give him a call .


 

 

Originally posted 2021-10-17 16:27:42.

Recent Posts

Parents Beware!

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From one of the few newspapers that tell it like it is — the Wall Street Journal. Make no mistake about it parents and grandparents, your children are at risk

Merrick Garland Has a List, and You’re Probably on It

By Gerard Baker

Merrick Garland’s got a little list.

The attorney general is compiling a steadily lengthening register of “society offenders who might well be underground and who never would be missed,” as Ko-Ko, the hypervigilant lord high executioner, sings in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado.”

Mr. Garland’s list of society offenders is compendious. At the top are right-wing extremists who’ve been officially designated the greatest domestic threat to U.S. security, but whose ranks seem, in the eyes of the nation’s top lawyer, to include some less obviously malevolent characters, including perhaps anyone who protested the results of the 2020 election. Then there are police departments not compliant with Biden administration law-enforcement dicta, Republican-run states seeking to regularize their voting laws after last year’s pandemic-palooza of an electoral process, and state legislatures that pass strict pro-life legislation.

They’d none of them be missed.

Oddly, the list doesn’t seem to extend to the hundreds of thousands of people who have crossed the southern border so far this year and are now presumably at large somewhere in the U.S. without a legal right to be in the country. Nor to those benevolent folk who have reduced several of the nation’s urban centers to crime-infested wastelands.

Which is presumably why the latest names on his roll are those parents who have had the temerity to challenge local school boards about the mandates they are imposing on their pandemic-ready classes and what the children are learning.

That wasn’t how the attorney general presented it when he announced the news. Citing a “disturbing trend” in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school-board members, teachers and other school employees, he declared that he was directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to work with local and state law enforcement to develop “strategies” for dealing with the problem.

The announcement looked as though it had been carefully coordinated with the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which had asked the Biden administration to do exactly this.

Decent people everywhere acknowledge that violence is intolerable—whether perpetrated by Black Lives Matter agitators torching buildings, Trump supporters smashing federal property, or parents who throw projectiles at school board members.

But the letter from the NSBA contained barely any evidence of actual violence. It cited mostly antisocial behavior and threats, and some of the offenses referenced—such as a parent making a mock Nazi salute to a school board—are, however offensive, constitutionally protected speech.

And, as has been widely noted, when acts of violence occur, they can and have been dealt with by local or state law enforcement. There is no federal interest in any of these infractions.

All this merely underscores what the real objective of the attorney general’s action was—and we don’t need to engage in speculation because it was recently spelled out to us by another leading member of President Biden’s party, Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia.

In a rare moment of honesty from a politician, Mr. McAuliffe made clear, in a television debate with Republican Glenn Youngkin, the Democrats’ conception of the role that parents should have in their children’s education: none whatever.

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Aside from the jaw-dropping disdain for families, Mr. McAuliffe’s prescription is at odds with Article 26.3 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the sort of grand multilateral pronouncement the Democrats usually fetishize, which states: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”

This flagrant attempt to intimidate parents into handing their children over to the mercies of the state is as sinister as anything the modern progressives who now control the Democratic Party have done.

The message is clear, and it has been the character of education in totalitarianism systems through history: These are not your children; they are wards of the state, and the state (in this case through the teachers unions that fund the Democratic Party) will determine what they learn and how.

Democrats like Mr. McAuliffe insist that pernicious racial doctrines teaching the ubiquity of white supremacism and the inherent racism of American society and encourage racial segregation aren’t actually taught in schools. But this is laughable. The same Democrats have spent the last year insisting on racial “equity” as the defining objective of their social program. Why would they leave it out of the schools they mostly control?

Mr. Garland’s brazen attempt to intimidate will likely backfire as more parents—including many who aren’t especially conservative—become alarmed by what they see and hear in their children’s schools. By placing them on his little list, he may have done us all a favor.

Originally posted 2021-10-12 15:01:23.

Current Events, Recent Posts

Rac-nophobia —

Image 12 Comments

— six boats, thirteen Marines, and an attitude

Returned last night from the only Marine reunion I attend — the RACPAC. If you know not of whom I speak, shame on you as you’ve not read “The Book.” If you have but don’t remember, go to chapter 46 and refresh. This one was special as Lt Tim Armstrong USMC was there for the first time, but he is now Col, USMC (Ret). What a joy it was to see Tim again. Anyway, it was, as always, a grand time to see these Marines again; it’s always great joy to see how every one of them turned out, not a dammed liberal among them!!! All very successful in their afterlife, especially the young enlisted  Marines who were not careerists, but chose to take their hard learned knowledge to the civilian world and succeed!

I’ve often asked myself over the years since retirement, especially every September as I fly to Virginia Beach, what did I do to deserve to serve alongside such giants of our Corps. As my coxswain and I were cruising down the Appomattox  River one sunny afternoon, he asked, “Popeye, can you believe the Marine Corps is actually paying us to do this ?” Of course, my reply was, “No Crazy I can’t, but they sure are!”  Having said that, do not dismay as this was a grueling and very demanding eighteen months with no guidance from MCDEC or HQMC, often working under arduous weather conditions and usually six and sometimes seven days a week. And here they are in all their glory.                     Lord, what memories!!

 

 

 

 

 

Now to the sad state of affairs of our once great nation. Another good one from my friend Greg; thanks Greg, I love your missives, and so do my followers.

By: G. Maresca

Hooking off the jab

In the sweet science, a skilled pugilist will be able to hook off their jab. The same holds for COVID era politicians and their obsession with vaccine mandates and boosters.

President Biden leads the mandate vaccine charge yet allows tens of thousands to pass through the southern border daily who have not been tested let alone vaccinated.

Initially, “if vaccinated, you are not going to get COVID,” has devolved to “people who got vaccinated remain at risk.” Infections are increasing among the vaccinated as a plethora of evidence highlights how the vaccine’s efficacy is waning.

For those who were vaccinated but plan to refuse the booster shot will find themselves back at square one because COVID is here to stay, just like any other influenza virus.

Quite the bioweapon China unleashed.

Democrats politicized COVID by refusing to acknowledge that China covered up and lied about the virus. They then used the pandemic as an excuse to lockdown the country and change election rules.

A study from the University of California San Diego highlighted how the vaccine’s effectiveness dropped from 94% in June to 65% in July with a 19-fold increase of those already vaccinated. Israeli data said Pfizer’s vaccine went from a 95% effectiveness to 39% by July. Apparently, Delta is more contagious but less lethal, according to English data and runs at 0.2% ⸻ the same as the seasonal flu. The CDC said those vaccinated who contract COVID have as high a viral load in their nasal passages as those who are unvaccinated.

It is not the unvaccinated that are driving COVID’s mutations.

In February even NPR reported, “vaccines can contribute to virus mutations.”

National Institutes of Health chief Francis Collins’s blog ridiculed a study his agency financed that said by December 2020, at least 100 million Americans were infected – five times the official count.

The pro-vaccine army that permeates government, the pharmaceutical industry and the mainstream media have cross-pollinated into a universal censorship android that prevents any information that conflicts with their narrative and balance sheets. They conveniently ignore the adverse health conditions and deaths resulting from the jab.

Texas is being sued by the Biden administration to protect a woman’s right of choice to an abortion. Yet, when it comes to a woman’s right to choose to vaccinate – forget it. It is only a choice when it can stop a baby’s beating heart.

Cells from an aborted fetus were used to test and produce the vaccine. Biden’s support of abortion only manifests itself in his vaccine mandate.

If this is about saving lives, access to every resource should be a given. The leftist media ignores or simply denies that Hydroxychloroquine has any efficacy in treating COVID when it has. Moreover, natural antibodies are a nonfactor even though studies say they provide greater immunity, both in breadth and duration. For those with immunity, vaccination is unnecessary and potentially grievous. However, there is no money or control in natural immunity underscoring how this is not about health care.

COVID conveniently removes the spotlight from the Afghanistan debacle, while Democrats would love to extend COVID through an unverifiable 2022 midterm mail-in ballot election. Initially, boosters were needed after eight months, then five, and arguably now for just susceptible groups like the elderly. With so many different versions and timelines, it is no wonder what the government and politicians say has no meaning.

Just months ago, Biden said he “would not demand that it be mandatory.” However, in Biden’s recent COVID vaccine mandate address, he flipped-flopped declaring: “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.”

Since Biden is so impatient, perhaps he should resign.

Patience with Biden’s poor decisions from Afghanistan to the southern border is what is truly “wearing thin.” Apparently, unable to help himself or the nation, Biden compounded the issue by rejecting the Constitution he swore to uphold saying, “This is not about freedom or personal choice.”

Mandates are not only unconstitutional but polarizing and inherently un-American.

Mandates underscore how the left’s default position is always force.

What happened to unifying the country? Biden would rather lay blame while mandating vaccine compliance or lose your livelihood.

If it is your prerogative to jab your way into oblivion, knock yourself out.

Originally posted 2021-10-05 16:02:26.