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In 2011, Bhutan sponsored a UN resolution that invited governments to prioritize happiness and well-being as a way to measure social and economic development.

And thus, the World Happiness Report was born.

In 2012, the first report released, examining Gallup poll data from 2006–2010 that asked respondents in nearly every country to evaluate their life on a 0–10 scale. From this they extrapolated a single “happiness score” out of 10 to compare how happy countries are.

More than a decade later, the 2024 World Happiness Report continues the mission to quantify, measure, and compare well-being. Its latest findings also include how countries have become happier in the intervening years.

Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao visualizes these findings in the chart below, which shows the 20 countries that have seen their happiness scores grow the most since 2010.

Which Countries Have Become Happier Since 2010?

Serbia leads a list of 12 Eastern European nations whose average happiness score has improved more than 20% in the last decade.

In the same time period, the Serbian economy has doubled to $80 billion, and its per capita GDP has nearly doubled to $9,538 in current dollar terms.

Since the first report, Western Europe has on average been happier than Eastern Europe. But as seen with these happiness gains, Eastern Europe is now seeing their happiness levels converge closer to their Western counterparts. In fact, when looking at those under the age of 30, the most recent happiness scores are nearly the same across the continent.

All in all, 20 countries have increased their happiness score by a full point or more since 2010, on the 0–10 scale.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

In October of 2023 in my article ‘It’s A Trap! The Wave Of Repercussions As The Middle East Fights “The Last War”’ I predicted that a multi-front war was about to develop between Israel and various Muslim nations including Lebanon and Iran. I noted:

“Israel is going to pound Gaza into gravel, there’s no doubt about that. A ground invasion will meet far more resistance than the Israelis seem to expect, but Israel controls the air and Gaza is a fixed target with limited territory. The problem for them is not the Palestinians, but the multiple war fronts that will open up if they do what I think they are about to do (attempted sanitization). Lebanon, Iran and Syria will immediately engage and Israel will not be able to fight them all…”

So far, both Lebanon and Iran have directly engaged Israeli military forces and civilian targets. Syrian militias are also declaring they will once again start attacking US military bases in the region. In my article ‘World War III Is Now Inevitable – Here’s Why It Can’t Be Avoided’ published on April 5th I noted that:

“I warned months ago…that the war in Gaza would expand into a multi-front conflict that would probably include Iran. I also warned that it would be to Israel’s benefit if Iran entered the war because this would eventually force the US to become directly involved. To be sure, Iran has already been engaging in proxy attacks on Israel through Lebanon, but Israel’s attack on the Iranian “embassy” or diplomatic station in Syria basically ensures that Iran will now directly commit to strikes on Israeli targets.”

Iran did indeed commit to a large scale missile and drone based attack on Israel, a situation which has had some curious consequences. Of course, US naval forces aided Israel’s Iron Dome in shooting down the majority of drones and missiles sent by Iran. However, even though there are several videos showing that some cruise missiles hit their targets, the Israelis have been reticent to admit that any damage was done.

I suspect it’s because the cruise missiles struck military targets instead of civilian targets and Israel doesn’t want to release any information on what was hit. Iran’s drones were likely meant to act as decoys for anti-air defenses. They are much cheaper than the missiles used by Israel and the US to shoot them down.

Whether or not these strikes had any real affect on Israeli offensive capabilities we’ll probably never know. What we do know is that Israel’s counter-strike was much smaller than most analysts expected. Does this mean that the tit-for-tat is over and both sides are going hands-off? That would probably be the smart decision, but no, that’s not what’s happening here.

Israel’s limited response was likely due to a lack of clarity on how much the US government under Biden is willing to participate in the war during an election year. What we will see in the next six months is a steady escalation towards winter, followed by new bombardments with far more extensive destruction than we recently witnessed.

In other words, spring is just the dress rehearsal for what will happen in winter.

Here are the most probable scenarios as 2024 rolls forward…

Air Strikes On Iran

I have little doubt that Israel will commit to extensive aerial strikes on Iran this year or very early in 2025, and we’ll see very quickly if Russian air defense technology sold to the Iranians is effective or ineffective. Iran’s drone program may be useful in helping to even the playing field against Israeli fighter jets, but then again, the technology gap could be extensive.

The Israeli public position will be that their strikes are focused on taking down any existing Iranian nuclear labs. There is no solid evidence that Iran has made much headway in developing nukes (they might have dirty bombs), but the notion of nukes is more than enough in terms of public relations and justification for the war.

Iran Blocks The Strait Of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz would be at the top of the list of primary targets for Iran. It is the narrowest point of access to the Persian Gulf and oversees the passage of around 25%-30% of the world’s total oil exports. Blocking it is relatively easy – All Iran has to do is sink a few tankers into the shallow waters or destroy enemy ships passing through, creating a barrier that will make transport of oil impossible.

This would also make naval operations for Israel or the US difficult. Clearing obstructions would take time and expose forces to Iranian artillery which can be fired from up to 450 miles away. Once artillery is locked in on a narrow point or pasage, nothing is going to get through. As we’ve seen in Ukraine, a blanket of artillery fire is essentially unstoppable.

Anti-ship missiles wouldn’t even be necessary and would probably prove less effective, unless they are hypersonic. Iran can also utilize its small fleet of diesel submarines to deploy naval mines in the strait.

Once the Hormuz is disrupted and global oil shipments slow down the US military will join the war if they haven’t done so already.

Israeli Attack Leads To Ground War With Iran/Lebanon

A ground war between Iran and Israel is inevitable if the tit-for-tat continues, and much of it will be fought (at least in the beginning) in Lebanon and perhaps Syria. Iran has a mutual defense pact with both countries and Lebanon is generally a proxy for Iranian defense policy.

Iran will have active troops or proxy forces in all of these regions, not to mention the Houthis in Yemen striking ships in the Red Sea. There are questions in terms of how Iraq will respond to this situation, but there’s not a lot of love between the current government and Israel or the US.

The Iraq government did not initially condemn the attack by Hamas against Israel on October 7th and has voiced support for the Palestinians in Gaza. It’s unlikely that they would willingly allow the use of their territory for projecting an offensive against Iran. The use of Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti territory is possible for invasion IF the US gets involved, and the Persian Gulf would be a primary point of attack. But, both the US and Israel lack enough regional bases needed to project large scale ground forces into Iran (keep in mind that bases in Afghanistan are now gone).

Turkey is another staging ground for US forces but they certainly don’t like Israel, meaningTurkey is going to be off limits. Like Iraq, I think it will be difficult to convince Turkey, a vocal defender of Gaza, to support an invasion force or exploit their border for operations.

What about Pakistan? No, not a chance. It’s important to remember that many of these nations have worked with the US in the past, but they have angry populations to deal with. Support for an attack on Iran could lead to civil unrest at home.

The war would mostly be fought by air and by sea with US and Israel seeking to dominate the Persian Gulf. A lot of the ground fighting will be done in neighboring countries. A direct invasion of Iran would be an exhaustive affair with mountain terrain that must be reached by going through allied territories.

Can it be done? Yes. Could the US and Israel/allies win? Yes, as long as the goal is destruction and not occupation. Would it be costly? Absolutely. Far too costly to be acceptable to the western public these days, and a war that would require extensive military recruitment or a draft which Americans in particular will not tolerate.

Gas Prices Skyrocket

Think gas prices are high now? Just wait until 25% of the world oil exports are locked out of the market for months at a time. We might see double the prices at the pump; perhaps even triple, and that’s not counting the inflationary conditions already ongoing in the west.

This would be a disaster for the economy as energy prices affect EVERYTHING else. Costs on the shelf will climb right along with oil.

Military Draft And Attacks On Liberty Activists

Below the surface, there are many benefits to expanding the war in the Middle East for the globalists. War can be blamed for the inflationary collapse they created. War can be used as an excuse to implement even more aggressive censorship standards in Europe and the US. War can be used to create a military draft which will trigger great unrest in the US and some parts of the EU. War could invariably be used to rationalize martial law. And, it could even be used to stall or disrupt elections.

At bottom, the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East and the many other regional wars that will probably erupt in the next few years have a cumulative effect that causes confusion and chaos. All that is needed is a short period of disarray and a lot of economic panic and the public may even forget who created the mess in the first place Liberty activists caught in the middle of these events will take action to defend their freedoms, and I have no doubt we will be accused of “aiding foreign enemies” or working as “agents of the Russians, Iranians, etc.”

Russian Involvement And World War

Given that NATO has seen fit to engage in a proxy war in Ukraine it makes sense that Russia would return the favor and engage in a proxy war in Iran. Don’t be surprised to see a lot of discussion in the media in the coming months about Russian “advisers” in Iran as well as Russian weaponry. Russia already has military bases in Syria and defense agreements with Iran. It would appear that the US and allies are being set on a collision course with Russia that will lead to direct kinetic interactions.

At this stage world war will already be well underway. Russia and the US may never actually try to strike each other’s territory and nuclear exchange makes little sense for anyone (especially the globalists who would lose their financial and surveillance empire in the blink of an eye) but they will be fighting each other in regional wars in multiple spots across the globe. It seems to me that this process has already been set in motion, and once the avalanche starts, it’s very hard to stop.

*  *  *

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Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“It is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That’s the way to soften up a democracy.”

- J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit

“Nothing is real,” observed John Lennon, and that’s especially true of politics.

Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.

Take the media circus that is the Donald Trump hush money trial, which panders to the public’s voracious appetite for titillating, soap opera drama, keeping the citizenry distracted, diverted and divided.

This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.

Everything becomes entertainment fodder.

As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer’s seat, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.

Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it’s all reality TV, entertainment news included—the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.

“We the people” are watching a lot of TV.

On average, Americans spend five hours a day watching television. By the time we reach age 65, we’re watching more than 50 hours of television a week, and that number increases as we get older. And reality TV programming consistently captures the largest percentage of TV watchers every season by an almost 2-1 ratio.

This doesn’t bode well for a citizenry able to sift through masterfully-produced propaganda in order to think critically about the issues of the day.

Yet look behind the spectacles, the reality TV theatrics, the sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions, and the stomach-churning, nail-biting drama that is politics today, and you will find there is a method to the madness.

We have become guinea pigs in a ruthlessly calculated, carefully orchestrated, chillingly cold-blooded experiment in how to control a population and advance a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.

This is how you persuade a populace to voluntarily march in lockstep with a police state and police themselves (and each other): by ratcheting up the fear-factor, meted out one carefully calibrated crisis at a time, and teaching them to distrust any who diverge from the norm through elaborate propaganda campaigns.

Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest propagandists today is the U.S. government.

Add the government’s inclination to monitor online activity and police so-called “disinformation,” and you have the makings of a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

This “policing of the mind” is exactly the danger author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that “information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of what will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought.”

You may not hear much about the government’s role in producing, planting and peddling propaganda-driven fake news—often with the help of the corporate news media—because the powers-that-be don’t want us skeptical of the government’s message or its corporate accomplices in the mainstream media.

However, when you have social media giants colluding with the government in order to censor so-called disinformation, all the while the mainstream news media, which is supposed to act as a bulwark against government propaganda, has instead become the mouthpiece of the world’s largest corporation (the U.S. government), the Deep State has grown dangerously out-of-control.

This has been in the works for a long time.

Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, in his expansive 1977 Rolling Stone piece “The CIA and the Media,” reported on Operation Mockingbird, a CIA campaign started in the 1950s to plant intelligence reports among reporters at more than 25 major newspapers and wire agencies, who would then regurgitate them for a public oblivious to the fact that they were being fed government propaganda.

In some instances, as Bernstein showed, members of the media also served as extensions of the surveillance state, with reporters actually carrying out assignments for the CIA. Executives with CBS, the New York Times and Time magazine also worked closely with the CIA to vet the news.

If it was happening then, you can bet it’s still happening today, only this collusion has been reclassified, renamed and hidden behind layers of government secrecy, obfuscation and spin.

In its article, “How the American government is trying to control what you think,” the Washington Post points out “Government agencies historically have made a habit of crossing the blurry line between informing the public and propagandizing.”

This is mind-control in its most sinister form.

The end goal of these mind-control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state.

The government’s fear-mongering is a key element in its mind-control programming.

It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled whether through propaganda, brainwashing, mind control, or just plain fear-mongering.

Fear not only increases the power of government, but it also divides the people into factions, persuades them to see each other as the enemy and keeps them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being brainwashed—manipulated—into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward.

This unseen mechanism of society that manipulates us through fear into compliance is what American theorist Edward L. Bernays referred to as “an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

It was almost 100 years ago when Bernays wrote his seminal work Propaganda:

“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

To this invisible government of rulers who operate behind the scenes—the architects of the Deep State—we are mere puppets on a string, to be brainwashed, manipulated and controlled.

All of the distracting, disheartening, disorienting news you are bombarded with daily is being driven by propaganda churned out by one corporate machine (the corporate-controlled government) and fed to the American people by way of yet another corporate machine (the corporate-controlled media).

“For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it,” writes investigative journalist Nick Davies.

So where does that leave us?

Americans should beware of letting others—whether they be television news hosts, political commentators or media corporations—do their thinking for them.

A populace that cannot think for themselves is a populace with its backs to the walls: mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s time to change the channel, tune out the reality TV show, and push back against the real menace of the police state.

If not, if we continue to sit back and lose ourselves in political programming, we will remain a captive audience to a farce that grows more absurd by the minute.

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

EMPs (Electromagnetic Pulse) are a trope that is often used in prepper fiction.

We often think of an EMP attack as the worst-case, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario that is just around the corner.

There’s little doubt that it would change everything, but what’s the truth?

Here’s what an expert has to say about EMPs

Nobody knows this better than Dr. Arthur T. Bradley. Dr Bradley is a NASA engineer and the leading expert on EMPs in the preparedness community. He’s the author of Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness and the must-have Disaster Preparedness for EMPs and Solar Storms. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with him before myself, and you couldn’t ask for a nicer, more down-to-earth person. He really knows what he’s talking about and he shares information without hyperbole. He is the person I trust the most for information in this genre.

In this compelling interview, Brian Duff interviews Dr. Bradley to get the real answers. If you want to separate fact from fiction, watch this video.

Just over a week ago, we asked our readers a very straightforward question: Who is funding this chaos? This question followed incidents where pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted critical infrastructure, such as shutting down airport terminals, blocking bridges, causing major traffic congestion on highway arteries, and targeting the distribution networks of major corporations. 

So, what does shutting down critical infrastructure have to do with helping poor Palestinian children? It has absolutely nothing and more to do with a Marxist movement, similar to the Black Lives Matter movement several years ago, with the one goal to crash the US economy, destroy freedom, and abolish democracy.

Mike Shelby, a former military intelligence non-commissioned officer and contractor, and now the CEO of intelligence services company Forward Observer, sheds more color on a leftist revolutionary group that is very active today and responsible for some of the chaos in 2020 called "A15." 

"A15 is actually a reprise of efforts from Antifa and the far-left revolutionary class we saw in 2020. these activists and militants were making plans to oust then-President Donald Trump if he stayed in office," Shelby wrote on X.

A15 is actually a reprise of efforts from antifa and the far left revolutionary class we saw in 2020.

these activists and militants were making plans to oust then-President Donald Trump if he stayed in office.

— Mike Shelby | Do Your Area Study (@grayzoneintel) April 22, 2024

He said, "Their plan was to effectively shut down the US economy to force Trump out of the White House," adding, "Activists publicly stated they would keep the economy disrupted until Trump caved to public pressure and resigned." He warned, "That was their plan and probably still is." 

their plan was to effectively shut down the u.s. economy to force trump out of the white house.

activists publicly stated they would keep the economy disrupted until trump caved to public pressure and resigned.

that was their plan and probably still is.

— Mike Shelby | Do Your Area Study (@grayzoneintel) April 22, 2024

Shelby said the group has circulated literature on critical chokepoints that, if hit by an attack, could trigger a massive shock to the US economy. 

starting in january 2020, far left militants began circulating a pamphlet called “Chokepoints in a Fragile Network” (image below) pic.twitter.com/S4oosYq2YY

— Mike Shelby | Do Your Area Study (@grayzoneintel) April 22, 2024

He continued: "A15 is connected to the Tides Center + Foundation -- the social justice organization central to the 2020 uprisings -- through ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising arm for the democratic party." 

A15 is connected to the Tides Center + Foundation -- the social justice organization central to the 2020 uprisings -- through ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising arm for the democratic party.

— Mike Shelby | Do Your Area Study (@grayzoneintel) April 22, 2024

Shelby warned with the "2024 election less than 7 months away," there are mounting risks of "mass mobilizations" of these bad actors. 

A15 matters because the 2024 election is less than 7 months away.

mass mobilizations aren't something you "cold start" in november.

organizations have to start applying accelerators of conflict to turn the temperature up.

A15 is just a vehicle for the broader movement.

— Mike Shelby | Do Your Area Study (@grayzoneintel) April 22, 2024

As Marxist revolutionary groups plot their next attacks on critical infrastructure, we would like to remind readers about the surge in news stories in recent years about train derailments, food processing fires, power grid disruptions, and other incidents on critical infrastructure, which some seemed like accidents - but it's not against the law to question if these mysterious incidents were attempts by leftist groups to disrupt the economy. Even one month after the container ship slammed into a bridge in Baltimore and collapsed, it's still not against the law to question if that was an attack on America's infrastructure by foreign adversaries. 

According to Bloomberg data, headlines in the corporate press featuring train derailments have surged over the last 4.5 years. 

Coincidence, who knows? 

Let's gravitate back to pro-Palestinian protests that have a weird obsession with doing absolutely nothing for the poor Palestinians overseas but more to do with trying to disrupt critical infrastructure.

Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman recently warned on X that these protests have "nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinians—most of the protesters are entirely ignorant of those issues."

Friedman continued, "It is a Marxist movement to destroy capitalism, freedom and democracy. The protesters have cleverly hijacked a complex issue and tapped in to the ever-present vein of antisemitism." 

"Make no mistake, these Marxists are not just after Israel. Their real goal is to destroy our Western values and way of life," Friedman concluded.

Watch this video and you will understand exactly what the anti-Israel crowd wants to achieve. It has nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinians — most of the protesters are entirely ignorant of those issues. Instead, it is a Marxist movement to destroy capitalism, freedom and… pic.twitter.com/YrMeXmmBL6

— David M Friedman (@DavidM_Friedman) April 10, 2024

And the latest A15 disruptions: 

NEW Video: An Amazon worker joined pro-Palestine activists blockading an Amazon distribution center in a Minneapolis suburb during last week's #A15 global day of action against Israel’s war on Gaza. They spoke on why they protested. [CC]

More: https://t.co/LncP1MDtxF

"Today is… pic.twitter.com/HDMxqjctxW

— UNICORN RIOT (@UR_Ninja) April 22, 2024

Southbound 880 at 7th blocked #A15 day if econ shutdown, another shutdown on 880 elsewhere northbound pic.twitter.com/wcBU49wcTV

— Jaime Omar Yassin (@hyphy_republic) April 15, 2024

It was all coordinated by Democrat Dark Money, George Soros. #A15 😡😡😡☕️

Good Morning Patriots 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/XR23x9yWsy

— 𝐉𝐎𝐇𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝕏ʰⁱᵗᵐᵃⁿ 🏴‍☠️ (@imUrB00gieman) April 16, 2024

🚨 BREAKING: A15 Economic Blockades protests underway across the world, and yet none to be seen against the Federal Reserve.

Stay safe and don’t forget to wear your mask to save lives 😷 pic.twitter.com/LkxCHItguD

— 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚆𝚑𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚁𝚊𝚋𝚋𝚒𝚝 (@White_Rabbit_OG) April 15, 2024

Chaotic video shows the moment a driver stuck on the Golden Gate Bridge clashed with a group of Pro-Palestinian protesters in San Francisco Monday. Organizers say these protests are a part of A15, a worldwide economic blockade in solidarity with Palestine. https://t.co/bqMuHwbIDK pic.twitter.com/8qrBxtZCGg

— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) April 15, 2024

And Gulf sources too? 

Oddly enough - I believe its George Soros.

The A15 action network gets their funding from the tides foundation.

The tides foundation gets their funding from...Open Society.

Open Society = George Soros https://t.co/jtpnkEWDWB

— HelioWave (@heliodown) April 23, 2024

Activists from St. Louis, Missouri, joined A15 Action, a coordinated economic blockade for a free Palestine around the globe, and blocked Boeing Manufacturing Plant 598.

Boeing facility produces Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) and GBU-39 Small Diameter bombs, just some of… pic.twitter.com/L90cFBwqI1

— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) April 15, 2024

BREAKING: Dozens arrested in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, following “Coordinated citywide disruptions” earlier today as part of the anti-Israel, “A15 Action” day. pic.twitter.com/ntlLquVPz2

— Breaking 4 News (@Breaking_4_News) April 15, 2024

Activists shut down Pratt and Whitney's facility in CT for an A15 action in response to the manufacturer supplying Israel w/ military aircrafts for the illegal occupation beginning in 1947, & they’re currently sustaining the Israeli Air Force's fleet of F100-PW-229 engines. 🌹🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/J5fKDlTZ3i

— Connecticut DSA 🌹🐳 (@ConnecticutDSA) April 15, 2024

Besides A15, we recently pointed out that a little-known international organization called Samidoun could be behind some protests. The Israeli government declared Samidoun a terrorist organization in 2021.

"They support terrorism, and they want to gain public opinion — support — for terrorism," Yossi Kuperwasser, the former chief of the research division in the Israel Defense Forces' military intelligence unit, recently said. 

Who is funding this chaos that appears to be ramping up ahead of summer? Is it dark Soros money or Gulf sources? 

Also, why is Biden's Department of Justice publicly silent on this increasing national security threat? 

By John Kartch of Americans For Tax Reform

President Biden has formally proposed the highest top capital gains tax in over 100 years.

Here is a direct quote from the Biden 2025 budget proposal: “Together, the proposals would increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to 44.6 percent.”

Yes, you read that correctly: A Biden top capital gains and dividends tax rate of 44.6%.

Under the Biden proposal, the combined federal-state capital gains tax exceeds 50% in many states. California will face a combined federal-state rate of 59%, New Jersey 55.3%, Oregon at 54.5%, Minnesota at 54.4%, and New York state at 53.4%.

Worse, capital gains are not indexed to inflation. So Americans already get stuck paying tax on some “gains” that are not real. It is a tax on inflation, something created by Washington and then taxed by Washington. Biden’s high inflation makes this especially painful.

Many hard working couples who started a small business at age 25 who now wish to sell the business at age 65 will face the Biden proposed 44.6% top rate, plus state capital gains taxes. And much of that “gain” isn’t real due to inflation. But they’ll owe tax on it.

Capital gains taxes are often a form of double taxation. When capital gains come from stocks, stock mutual funds, or stock ETFs, the capital gains tax is a cascaded second layer of tax on top of the current federal corporate income tax of 21%. (Biden has also proposed a corporate income tax hike to 28%).

The proposed Biden top capital gains tax rate is more than twice as high as China’s rate. China’s capital gains tax rate is 20%. Is it wise to have higher taxes than China? And with Biden’s combined federal-state capital gains rate of 59% in California, residents will face a rate nearly three times as high as China.

The capital gains tax was created as its own tax in 1922, at a rate of 12.5%. See the chart below to see how Biden’s proposed capital gains tax for 2025 puts the United States in uncharted territory.

Biden’s proposed capital gains tax hike will also hit many families when parents pass away. Biden has proposed adding a second Death Tax (separate from and in addition to the existing Death Tax) by taking away stepped-up basis when parents die. This would result in a mandatory capital gains tax at death — a forced realization event.

As previously reported by CNBC:

“When someone dies and the asset transfers to an heir, that transfer itself will be a taxable event, and the estate is required to pay taxes on the gains as if they sold the asset,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. 

Biden’s proposal to take away stepped-up basis has already been tried, and it failed: In 1976 congress eliminated stepped-up basis but it was so complicated and unworkable it was repealed before it took effect.

As noted in a July 3, 1979 New York Times article, it was “impossibly unworkable.”

NYT wrote:

“Almost immediately, however, the new law touched off a flood of complaints as unfair and impossibly unworkable. So many, in fact, that last year Congress retroactively delayed the law’s effective date until 1980 while it struggled again with the issue.“

As noted by the NYT, intense voter blowback ensued:

“Not only were there protests from people who expected the tax to fall on them — family businesses and farms, in particular — bankers and estate lawyers also complained that the rule was a nightmare of paperwork.“

Biden’s 2025 budget calls for about $5 trillion in tax increases over the next decade.

Russia has just vetoed a very rare and interesting resolution set before the United Nations Security Council focused on banning nuclear weapons in space:

The treaty bars signatories, including the U.S. and Russia, from placing "in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction" or anywhere else in outer space.

On Wednesday Russia registered the lone veto which shot down the draft resolution aimed ultimately at preventing a future nuclear arms race in outer space.

China was the only abstention while the US was among the 13 UNSC members that voted in favor. It had been drafted and brought forward by the US and Japan.

In February the US government alleged that Russia was preparing to deploy a 'space weapon' which might be nuclear, which subsequently set off a frenzy of media speculation. 

Reuters  had reported at the time, "The space-based weapon U.S. intelligence believes Russia may be developing is more likely a nuclear-powered device to blind, jam or fry the electronics inside satellites than an explosive nuclear warhead to shoot them down, analysts said."

The Kremlin has blasted what it characterized as a "malicious fabrication". It claimed US officials were seeking to distract the public and ram through more foreign aid and defense spending in Congress.

The US press release summarizing Wednesday's failed resolution included the following description:

The detonation of a nuclear weapon in space would destroy satellites that are vital to communications, agriculture, national security, and more worldwide, with grave implications for sustainable development, and other aspects of international peace and security. The diverse group of cosponsors of this resolution reflects the strong shared interest in avoiding such an outcome.

Additionally National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned that in the absence of any international prohibition or treaty, nukes in space could cause "physical destruction" on Earth.

Putin issues orders for nuclear space program https://t.co/t07yQ26tku pic.twitter.com/IGJQf0MTf2

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) April 11, 2024

US Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield after Moscow's no vote lashed out at Russia's ambassador: "Today's veto begs the question: why? Why, if you are following the rules, would you not support a resolution that reaffirms them? What could you possibly be hiding," she said.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Children who received an original COVID-19 vaccine have little protection against hospitalization just months after vaccination, according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Children initially have 52 percent protection against hospitalization but that estimated effectiveness plummeted to 19 percent after four months, according to the paper.

Protection against so-called critical illness also dropped sharply, from 57 percent to 25 percent, researchers found.

The researchers include CDC employees and the paper was published in the CDC’s weekly digest on April 18.

The study covered children who received two or more doses of the original Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines from Dec. 19, 2021, through Oct. 29, 2023.

The study involved children aged 5 to 18 who were hospitalized with acute COVID-19 and tested positive for the illness and compared them to a control group of children hospitalized with COVID-19-like symptoms but who tested negative for COVID-19.

Researchers drew data from the Overcoming COVID-19 Network, which includes health care sites in most of the United States, and ended up with 1,551 case patients and 1,797 in the control group.

The study found that “receipt of ≥2 original monovalent COVID-19 vaccine doses was associated with fewer COVID-19–related hospitalizations in children and adolescents aged 5–18 years; however, protection from original vaccines was not sustained over time,” Laura Zambrano, a CDC epidemiologist, and her co-authors wrote.

It also recorded a similar drop in protection against critical illness, defined as being placed on mechanical ventilation, vasoactive infusions, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or dying.

The researchers asserted that the results highlighted the current CDC guidance that all people aged 6 months and older receive one of the newest COVID-19 vaccines, which were introduced in the fall of 2023 with clinical data from just 50 humans and no efficacy estimates. The CDC only publishes papers in its weekly digest, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, after they’re shaped to “comport with CDC policy.” The papers are not peer-reviewed.

Ms. Zambrano did not respond when asked for data suggesting that the currently available shots provide longer-lasting protection than the original vaccines.

The CDC’s website says, in promoting vaccination, that COVID-19 vaccines are “effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying” but the hyperlink that ostensibly supports the statement goes to a page that is not live.

U.S. authorities have been moving COVID-19 vaccines to a once-a-year model, similar to influenza vaccines. The model features updating the formulation of the vaccines on an annual basis, in an acknowledgment that any protection the vaccines give quickly wanes. The formulation is typically updated in the fall.

Just 14 percent of children, and 23 percent of adults, have received one of the newest vaccines as of April 6, according to CDC estimates. The available vaccines are messenger RNA (mRNA) shots from Pfizer and Moderna and an alternative from Novavax.

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, noted that, according to the new paper, the maximum effectiveness estimates against hospitalization were 61 percent, regardless of how the data were sliced, that more deaths were recorded among the case patients, and the median hospitalization duration was four days for both groups.

“I do not see how a clinician whose concern is treating patients and whose job does not depend on pushing mRNA vaccines would find this a basis for recommending shots—quite the contrary,” Dr. Orient, who was not involved in the research, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“It reeks of conflict of interest.”

Stated limitations of the paper include not assessing post-infection immunity and a lack of sequencing data.

The conflict of interest section runs 688 words and includes some of the authors reporting funding from Pfizer and Moderna or ownership of Pfizer stock.

With Biden's $60 billion in funding for Ukraine now fully authorized and implemented, the question is now what? The US President on Wednesday announced just after signing the bill that the Pentagon will start sending equipment to Ukraine "in the next few hours" straight from the US stockpile.

The Kremlin in response is vowing to push back the front lines deeper into Ukraine, and says that newly infused American weapons will burn. Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov has said in fresh remarks that "The American aid won’t save Zelensky. New weapons will be destroyed, and the special military operation goals will be achieved."

The diplomat continued, "the military shipments of the US and its satellites have been burned, are being burned and will be burned by the Russian Armed Forces."

Wednesday afternoon comments by Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan hailed that the long sought defense aid for Kiev has finally become a reality, but also cautioned that Russia could still break through Ukrainian defensive positions soon.

"It was a long road to secure this funding, and I have to say standing here today, it was too long, and the consequences of the delay have been felt in Ukraine," Sullivan told reporters, and explained that troops have had to resort to rationing ammunition, resulting in lost ground in the east.

"And while today's announcement is very good news for Ukraine, they are still under severe pressure on the battlefield. And it is certainly possible that Russia could make additional tactical gains in the coming weeks," he warned.

The reality is that Ukraine is fundamentally suffering a severe crisis of manpower. This essentially means that even as US weapons and equipment arrive, there are fewer and fewer troops experienced enough to actually man and operate them.

This is a grim trend which has especially been on display this week, for example in a Tuesday announcement by  Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who said the government would be cutting off consular services for military-age men living abroad. The move is to encourage them to return home and fight for their country.

"How it looks like now: a man of conscription age went abroad, showed his state that he does not care about its survival, and then comes and wants to receive services from this state," the top diplomat wrote on X. "It does not work this way. Our country is at war."

"The obligation to update one’s documents with the conscription centers existed even before the new law on mobilization was passed," Kuleba also explained. The new policy requires that all men 18 to 60 must update their information with a state office - and if they don't comply then they get cut off from all consular services abroad.

According to The New York Times, US weapons could start arriving in Ukraine within days. But on parts of the front line, Ukraine's situation is desperate. And it still has a major problem that aid can't fix: a lack of troops.

"The most important source of Ukrainian weakness is the lack of manpower," Konrad Muzyka, director of the Rochan military consultancy in Poland, told Reuters. --Business Insider

Meanwhile, inside Ukraine military officials are trying to get creative amid the ongoing manpower shortage. Reuters reports, "As Ukraine's efforts to conscript enough men to fight Russia are stymied by public skepticism, defense officials and military units are embarking on a multi-pronged charm offensive to recruit a citizens' army to resist the invasion."

The “Experts” are finally admitting that Russia is winning the war in Ukraine, but they are still lying about why. The reason is not congressional inaction over further funding. The reason is that Russia has more manpower than Ukraine; it produces more artillery than the West;… pic.twitter.com/TnE7EuLEII

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) April 16, 2024

"This softer call-up is being conducted on job-search sites and outreach centers, as well as billboards and social media, and offers a wartime novelty: an element of choice," the report continues. "Candidates can select their precise unit and roles suiting their skills, for instance, as well as how long they will serve."

And yet we are likely to still witness more examples of recruitment officers brutally seizing young men off the streets, as was seen at various times over the course of the first two years of the war.

Authored by Christopher Roach via American Greatness,

On Friday, the 31st anniversary of the massacre of Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, the ATF issued new regulations that make it more difficult to comply with federal laws regulating gun dealing and background checks.

Since the 1930s, federal law has required gun dealers to be registered as Federal Firearms Licensees (FFL). The requirements hinged on the meaning of “engaged in the business of” gun dealing. This language has always been ambiguous, and there has never been (even after the announcement of the new rules) a true “bright line” that distinguishes when one graduates from selling a few guns from one’s personal collection into full-fledged gun dealing.

The law previously required the primary purpose of sales to be “livelihood and profit.” The new rules reduce the requirements to seeking profit alone, tracking the a congressional amendment to existing law in 2022. The changes are more extensive than the legislative guidance, though, by stating that selling guns in the original packaging or shortly after purchase create a rebuttable presumption of being “engaged in the business.”

The potential risk is substantial, as violations are felonies. Flipping a gun for a price higher than one paid, even if one originally intended to keep it, now may turn one into a dealer, making any such sale unlawful if it does not involve all the licensing and paperwork that govern FFLs.

The War on Gun Collecting

The new rule is the latest salvo in the ATF’s longstanding war on gun shows and private transfers. In the 1980s, the ATF wanted to make it easier to become a dealer because that meant fewer private transfers as well as more records and tax revenue. In those days, it only took $10 and filling out some forms to become an FFL. These were sometimes referred to as the “kitchen table” dealers, and the numbers of FFLs increased substantially.

Then, during the Clinton years, the ATF wanted to limit FFLs, so it began requiring a larger fee as well as a storefront. They realized a lot of guns were being sold by these guys, and these measures cut down FFLs considerably. Clinton thought gun control was a great wedge issue to peel off suburban moderates from the Republican coalition.

Now, with a Democrat again at the helm, the ATF wants to further limit private sales with the threat of criminal punishment by expanding the definition of gun dealing while leaving it vague enough to dissuade private sales.

Everything under the sun that is collected has a community and events associated with it, and this typically includes shows. Shows are places where people can buy, sell, trade-up, and learn about their hobby. Fishing, boating, cars, coins, beanie babies and every other hobby and collectable has shows.

Gun shows are particularly popular because guns tend to hold their value well, and lots of people collect guns. Since many gun owners are of modest means, many of these guns eventually need to be sold, taken to a pawn shop, or otherwise converted into money after they are purchased. Gun shows allow ordinary people to sell guns to other collectors and enthusiasts, whether they are dealers or not.

Background Checks Sound Good, But Accomplish Little

While the 1993 Brady Bill mandated FFLs conduct background checks on all transfers, private sales are unregulated. This is sometimes described incorrectly as the “gun show” loophole. Contrary to the propaganda, most sales at gun shows are conducted by FFLs, and all FFL sales include a background check. But, whether conducted at a gun show or a barbeque, private sellers transferring their personal firearms do not have to conduct a background check. As I was told by a cop when I was new to the game, selling a personal gun is like selling a toaster.

While this lack of regulation conjures images of shady back-alley transactions, these sales often involve family and friends, fellow collectors at a gun show, and sales to FFLs, who have already been thoroughly vetted when they were licensed. The only legal requirement is that a gun cannot be knowingly sold or transferred to a felon.

We have heard a lot in recent years about universal background checks as a cure for most criminal misuse of guns. This doesn’t sound crazy on its face. Most people support background checks because they don’t want guns in the hands of criminals and lunatics. Also, background checks are not particularly scary because most gun owners have been through many background checks when buying guns from FFLs or obtaining concealed weapons permits.

Even so, mandatory background checks would prevent the private sales that facilitate gun collecting as a hobby. Moreover, while background checks sound like they would stop illegal guns, they don’t seem to have much of an impact. There is an extensive black market for guns, and many criminals using guns are already prohibited possessors because of felony records.

One more law is unlikely to stop criminals from getting guns, and the inevitable failure of such a law will be used to provide support for a national gun registry, which is a necessary precursor to mass confiscation.

Letting Criminals Go Free While Turning the Law-Abiding Into Criminals

Like most gun control laws, reducing crime appears to be a secondary goal of the latest ATF move. But this change will have the effect of harassing and dissuading gun enthusiasts. The new and ambiguous regulations will have a chilling effect, making gun owners think twice before liquidating a personal collection or conducting a private sale. This will make gun ownership more expensive and less inviting to newcomers.

The law will also, through selective prosecution and strong pressure to turn people into confidential informants, destroy organic gun clubs and friend groups. Facing decades in prison, the pressure put on those caught in the net to become snitches will be tremendous. Government-sponsored sales, entrapment, and the creation of unintentional new criminals may become widespread in the same way it always is when federal law enforcement is involved.

The Democratic Left’s continuing pursuit of gun control is a bit of a surprise. In the 1990s, they hypothesized that it would get suburban moms to vote their way, but it has barely moved the dial as a wedge issue. Many thought it backfired, motivating gun owners in certain swing states to vote Republican.

That said, as with much of the left’s actions in education, popular culture, and sexual mores, any short-term political cost is outweighed by a longer-term and more sinister aspect. In this case, the accretion of rules and uncertainty surrounding gun collecting and trading undermines the networking, organic friendships, and cooperation that allow gun owners to organize and present a real threat to the leviathan state.

Smaller is better...at least in the world of building EVs for the Asian market.

And while less scrupulous publications might take this opportunity to make stereotypical jokes about height, we'll do no such thing and instead will simply report that according to the IEA's Global Electric Vehicle Outlook 2024, released Tuesday, China dominated the EV market in 2023.

In fact, it made up 60% of global sales, according to a new report from Reuters. The report forecasts that by 2030, electric vehicles will represent one-third of all cars in China.

The latest IEA report highlights China's increasing dominance in the global electric vehicle market, particularly across Asia's burgeoning economies. China is capitalizing on its extensive industrial capabilities to expand its EV influence, promoting more affordable electric vehicles in nations like Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, the report says.

The key to China's success has been managing cost, the IEA report notes: "In China, we estimate that more than 60% of electric cars sold in 2023 were already cheaper than their average combustion engine equivalent."

It continued: "However, electric cars remain 10% to 50% more expensive than combustion engine equivalents in Europe and the United States, depending on the country and car segment."

"In 2023, 55% to 95% of the electric car sales across major emerging and developing economies were large models that are unaffordable for the average consumer, hindering mass-market uptake," the IEA report continued, according to Reuters.

"However, smaller and much more affordable models launched in 2022 and 2023 have quickly become bestsellers, especially those by Chinese car makers expanding overseas."

The report emphasizes China's growing edge due to making affordable EVs, which is proving successful across Asia.

European and U.S. automakers, by contrast, target wealthier customers with costlier, luxury EV models.

In Asia, countries like Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia are rapidly adopting EVs, supported by favorable policies and incentives, enhancing the market share of Chinese manufacturers.

In 2023, EV sales soared in these regions despite broader market contractions. Additionally, China faces its challenges, including potential EU tariffs and an oversupply in its EV market. The IEA report suggests that for widespread EV adoption, European and U.S. manufacturers need to focus on lowering costs and improving infrastructure.

You can read the IEA's full report here. 

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The US Navy will convert surplus oil rigs in the western Pacific into mobile military bases as part of the US military buildup aimed at China, The Defense Post reported on Tuesday.

The naval engineering firm Gibbs & Cox developed the concept, known as the Mobile Defense/Depot Platform (MODEP), and presented it earlier this month at the Sea Air Space Expo. The idea is to convert oil rigs into mobile missile defense and resupply bases.

"Our target here is to find a solution to help the challenging problem of having capacity issues in the Western Pacific. For not enough cells, not enough missiles, not enough of being able to keep those ships in the forward station," Dave Zook, an architect at Gibbs & Cox, told Naval News.

Gibbs & Cox claims that the floating bases would be able to hold 512 vertical launch system cells or 100 large missile launchers, which is five times the capacity of a US Navy destroyer.

The idea is to counter China’s ballistic missiles that could take out US warships and bases in the region in the event of an open war.

US military officials have been explicit about the fact that they’re preparing for a direct war with China in the region despite the obvious risk of the conflict quickly turning nuclear. The US has been expanding its military footprint in the Philippines and in Pacific island nations to give China more targets that it will have to hit.

Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the former head of US Pacific Air Forces who is now the commander of Air Combat Command, made this clear in comments to Nikkei Asia last year.

"Obviously, we would like to disperse in as many places as we can to make the targeting problem for the Chinese as difficult as possible," Wilsbach said. "A lot of those runways where we would operate from are in the Pacific Island nations."

One side effect of GLP-1 medications for weight loss is "Ozempic Face." This happens when the rapid loss of body fat produces a hollowed-looking face, wrinkles, sunken eyes, and changes in the size of the lips, cheeks, and chin. To counter this, skincare companies are ramping up the marketing of products to 'fix' this side effect as these blockbuster drugs sweep the nation. 

Swiss skincare company Galderma Group's Chief Executive Officer Flemming Ornskov told Bloomberg in an interview after this week's first-quarter earnings that its skin treatments and dermal fillers "should be able to restore this [Ozempic Face]." 

"I think that will be another growth wave in that space, which I will make sure to capture," Ornskov said. 

Has Wall Street woken up to Galderma's ability to indirectly capitalize on the weight loss craze?

Goldman's GLP-1 winners basket still shows a strong upward trend. 

Novo Nordisk A/S's blockbuster treatments, Ozempic for diabetes, and Wegovy for weight loss, are both two names for the same drug: semaglutide. The FDA approved Ozempic for diabetes in 2017 and Wegovy for obese people in 2021. 

The issue with Wegovy is its effectiveness. Within four weeks of treatment, the average weight loss is around 5% of body weight, increasing to 8% after two months. Semaglutide, the active ingredient, significantly decreases appetite and hunger.

"If weight is lost in a more gradual way, these changes may not be as noticeable. It's the faster pace of weight loss that occurs with GLP-1 drugs that can make facial changes more obvious," Harvard Health Publishing wrote in a note. 

Here are real-world examples of Ozempic Face: 

Google searches for "Ozempic Face" are soaring to record highs. 

For those who can afford Ozempic Face, try also walking around in $1,000 'dirty' Gucci sneakers to complete your look as a starved homeless person - or unvetted, starved illegal alien. 

Instead of being the guinea pig for the pharma-industrial complex, why not just put down the processed foods from the food-industrial complex and just go outside for a jog? 

At this rate, with a new study from Kaiser Family Foundation showing upwards of 3.6 million people will be subsidized for the miracle weight loss drugs, this could ultimately accelerate the bankrupting of Medicare.  

Via The College Fix,

A new study out of UCLA says same-sex couples are at greater “risk of exposure to the adverse effects of climate change” than straight couples.

These effects include “wildfires, floods, smoke-filled skies, and drought,” according to a report from KQED.

Same-sex couples disproportionately live in coastal regions and cities, which are more vulnerable to such disasters. They’re also more likely “to live in areas with poor infrastructure, worse-built environments.”

Washington DC, which rates high for “climate risks” such as heat waves, floods, and “dangerously strong winds,” has the greatest proportion of gay couples in the U.S.

San Francisco ranks second, and also faces a high climate change risk. According to KQED report, the city’s Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District flooded 22 years ago, “swamping” the entire area.

The closest supermarket, Rainbow Grocery, also got flooded.

Ari Shaw, director of International Programs at UCLA’s School of Law’s Williams Institute who specializes in “international human rights, LGBTI politics, and U.S. foreign policy,” noted the study “cuts against the narrative” that LGBT individuals “have access to all the resources that they need.”

From the story:

Shaw said his team considered same-sex couples because the U.S. Census gathers information on cohabitating same-sex households but does not broadly collect sexual orientation or gender data.

“This study helps to shine a light on what is likely a much larger and more complicated picture,” he said. “Our findings probably understate the true impact that climate change is having on LGBTQ people.”

The new research moves the needle in helping the nation understand who is at risk of climate disasters, UC Irvine sociology professor Michael Méndez said. He previously studied how queer communities are often left out of disaster planning.

“The needle is moving slowly,” Méndez said. “These disasters are not happening in isolation. If an individual is feeling discrimination, or a lack of safety in their home and a disaster happens, they can feel even more vulnerable.”

But what Méndez said the study doesn’t reveal is who the same-sex couples are in terms of [race], income and their positions in society.

Among several recommendations, Shaw and study co-author Lindsay Mahowald say climate disaster relief should be “administered without discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression,” and that future surveys like the U.S. Census ought to include “measures of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

An anti-work anthem has gone viral on the Chinese social media platform TikTok in recent days. This comes after youngsters have complained on social media about President Biden's disastrous 'Bidenomics' policies that have sparked elevated inflation and crushed their financial mobility. 

The viral video, posted by TikTok user "tedymakesmusic," has been viewed 1.4 million times and liked nearly a quarter million times.  

Here are the lyrics: 

I don't want to contribute nothing to society.

I don't struggle I don't hustle.

If you want it, you can have it.

Sorry, I wasn't born to Work. No, I wasn't born to work. 

I'm too pretty to get dirty. Yeah, I said it. You can sue me. 

Don't want to lift the finger. For the money. 

This song is currently going viral on TikTok. pic.twitter.com/hcU0ojUbVg

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) April 24, 2024

"Can every corporate worker please turn this on super loud at their desk????" one TikTok user said in the video's comment section.

Another person said, "This Gen Z's anthem." 

"Me thinking about quitting my job & living out a van," someone else said. 

Youngsters are starting to realize just how much the federal government, college, and the Federal Reserve are scams. These institutions are failing the youngsters and have provided them with worthless degrees and an economic environment that is some of the worst living conditions in a generation due to failed policies. Fed Chair Powell, you had one job - and one job only... 

Plus, woke leftist universities are indoctrinating multiple generations with collectivism, i.e., socialism, which has left some of these folks believing the government will be handing them stimmy checks (universal basic income) and student debt relief checks. Thanks to Powell and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, these kids got a taste of Covid helicopter money via stimmy checks and want more - instead of working. 

For those who don't want to contribute to society and the economy, remember Goldman's note from last year specifying that generative AI could displace hundreds of millions of jobs by the end of the decade. 

Authored by Tom Croner via RealClear Wire,

I’m an 81-year-old, seventh-generation farmer working with my son T. Richard on a multigenerational grain and hay farm in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. We grow corn, soybeans, wheat, rye, and hay.

I'm proud to see him out there by himself at night, and regret that I can’t always join him. As the Bible says in John 3:16: “That God so loved the world, he gave his only son.” I don’t know if I’d be able to do that, but I know I am fortunate to have a son who wants to continue the family farming tradition. He is raising his two teenage sons in the same tradition. God only knows what their choices will be.

The latest USDA agriculture census numbers show that the number of farmers over the age of 65 is greater than that of younger farmers. Almost 1.3 million farmers are now at or beyond retirement age, while just 300,000 farmers are under the age of 35.

Passing a new farm bill that addresses these challenges is the best way to help create an environment that attracts new farmers and enables families to pass their farms on to the next generation. In recent years, some federal programs have been put in place to help do that. 

We have participated in USDA cost-sharing programs that encourage cover crops (plants grown to benefit the future growth of other crops) and no-tillage practices that improve soil health, with less erosion and fewer cost inputs. We have seen significant increases in yield, with the same dollars invested.

In 2022, Congress made a generational $20 billion investment to help farmers adopt tried-and-tested conservation practices. Pennsylvania has already gotten $255 million to help farms in our commonwealth.

But unfortunately, like everything else it seems, the funding has been politicized, and it’s at risk in the upcoming farm bill. There’s nothing partisan about taking care of our soil, planting cover crops, and keeping our land viable year after year. That’s what conservation funding encourages, and it’s just good commonsense.

We need our lawmakers in Washington to maintain conservation funding and make sure that it’s included in the upcoming farm bill.

I’m proud that my son is still out managing the farm where I have worked. I’m proud that he’s using good practices that we’ve learned and refined, which have kept our farm healthy for years.

We need Washington to protect conservation funding so that the next generation of Pennsylvania farmers, and the generation after that, can continue to be stewards of the land.

A 33-year old Iranian activist and rapper who has recently been involved in anti-government demonstrations has been handed a shockingly draconian sentence by an Iranian court. Toomaj Salehi was first arrested in Oct. 2022 for publicly backing the so-called 'anti-hijab' protests which swept the ultra-conservative Islamic country. But this week...

"Branch 1 of Isfahan Revolutionary Court... sentenced Salehi to death on the charge of corruption on Earth," his lawyer quoted the court's ruling as saying. The state laid out its case focused on a highly ambiguous charge of spreading "propaganda".

Salehi's lawyer further described that the court "in an unprecedented move, emphasised its independence and did not implement the Supreme Court's ruling" - while noting that "we will certainly appeal against the sentence."

The charges further centered on the Revolutionary Court accusing him of "assistance in sedition, assembly and collusion, propaganda against the system and calling for riots."

In September of 2022, Iran's Islamic 'morality police' arrested 22-year old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini for "improper hijab" as she entered a subway station. Activists say she had been beaten and later died in custody, while Iranian authorities claim she suffered a natural health episode (state media and officials described it as a heart attack), fainted and hit her head on the ground.

Her death sparked months of protests across major cities featuring anti-government slogans and clashes with police. Some international reports say that in total over 500 demonstrators died, while reports said dozens of police and security service personnel were killed and wounded.

Iranian authorities at the time attempted to tie the raging domestic unrest to an externally supported destabilization campaign by Tehran's enemies Israel and the United States.

As for the rapper and his immense popularity and influence in Iran, Sky News has observed that "Salehi, who has 2.3 million followers on Instagram, had posted videos after Amini's death talking about 'revolution' and resistance." According more of his background:

His songs also highlight the widening gap between ordinary Iranians and the country’s leadership, accusing authorities of “suffocating” the people without regard for their well-being.

His angry lyrics resonate among Iranians who are increasingly discontent and alienated by Iran’s clerical establishment -- and by the politicians who fail to keep their promises of change.

Salehi has shared his songs on his Instagram and Twitter accounts. But those accounts became inaccessible while he was in custody.

An sample of his music:

Iran (alongside Saudi Arabia and Egypt) leads the Middle East in number of executions each year. In 2023 alone, Iran hanged at least 834 people, which was an 8-year high. This is partly because the Islamic Republic has recently launched a new 'war on drugs' crackdown, but also amid geopolitical tensions it has executed suspected spies in greater numbers.

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

China is currently constructing a total of 26 nuclear power units with a combined capacity of 30.3 gigawatts (GW), the highest in the world, according to a report by the China Nuclear Energy Association (CNEA) cited by local media.

China's nuclear power units Hualong One in Fuqing, Fujian Province, China. /CFP

Last year, China approved the development of five new nuclear power projects and began construction of five units, the report found.

Air pollution from coal-fired power plants is a major impetus for China to expand its nuclear generation fleet, according to the World Nuclear Association.

China is not giving up coal, but it is betting on nuclear, too, to meet its rising power demand with cleaner energy sources. 

Many countries in the West, with the notable exception of Germany, have also recognized that nuclear power generation would help them achieve net-zero emission goals.

At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai at the end of last year, the United States and 21 other countries pledged to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, saying incorporating more nuclear power in their energy mix is critical for achieving their net zero goals in the coming decades.   

The United States, alongside Britain, France, Canada, Sweden, South Korea, Ghana, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), among others, signed the declaration at the COP28 climate summit.

China is not a signatory to that declaration, but it aims to develop more nuclear energy capacities to reduce emissions as its demand for electricity rises.

As of September 2023, China had 55 nuclear power units in operation with a combined installed capacity of 57 GW, and 24 units under construction with a total installed capacity of 27.8 GW, Xinhua quoted CNEA official Wang Binghua as saying. By 2060, that capacity is expected to jump to 400 GW, the official said.

China is also expected to approve six to eight nuclear power units each year “within the foreseeable future.”

During Wednesday's signing ceremony authorizing the House and Senate-approved 95$ billion emergency foreign aid package, President Biden in his remarks took a swipe at "MAGA Republicans" for causing the holdup. 

"It’s a good day for America, it’s a good day for Europe, and it’s a good day for world peace," Biden said, confirming he signed the legislation. "It’s going to make America safer, it’s going to make the world safer, and it continues America’s leadership in the world and everyone knows it."

"To my desk, it was a difficult path. It should have been easier, and it should have gotten there sooner. But in the end, we did what America always does; we rose to the moment, came together and we got it done," Biden said before going on the offensive with the words: "For months, while MAGA Republicans were blocking aid, Ukraine’s been running out of artillery shells and ammunition. Meanwhile, Putin’s friends are keeping him well supplied." This latter phrase was an apparent reference Iran, North Korea and China.

Biden in a prior phone call pledged to Zelensky that the aid would be coming "quickly" and in follow-up Wednesday the US president told the press that "vital" aid and military equipment would start being transferred to Ukraine "in the next few hours" from the U.S. stockpile.

As many more billions of American taxpayers' money is once again being shipped off to foreign countries, Biden in his remarks admitted there's nothing allotted for the United States' own border protection:

The president on Wednesday also noted the foreign aid package doesn’t include border security, which was part of the initial $111 billion national security package requested by Biden last year.

"It should have been included in this bill, and I’m determined to get it done for the American people," Biden said.

Half a TRILLION has been sent globally to the most corrupt country on earth. Not a single audit. Meanwhile Ukrainians are partying like never before while Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are audited for sending $600 to a friend. pic.twitter.com/WWreiRpeDu

— Stalingrad & Poorski (@Stalingrad_Poor) April 24, 2024

Meanwhile some conservative pundits online have noted that Ukrainian leaders are 'partying' with American public funds, and that it this might only encourage the kind of rampant corruption which has long been well-known in Kiev, with no oversight or accountability. 

Some authors have also pointed out that it was Trump's nod which allowed House Republicans to cave in the first place, however.

We are told daily we need to send BILLIONS to Ukraine so they can defend themselves, but…

𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐒 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐁𝐒 𝐢𝐧 𝐔𝐊𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐰/𝐥𝐨𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬

Nightlife is… pic.twitter.com/lWtOuAyHrh

— Amy Kremer (@AmyKremer) April 21, 2024

As we've detailed before, the now fully authorized package sets aside $61 billion for Ukraine, $15 billion in military aid for Israel, and $9 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza. There's also $8 billion in security assistance to deter "Chinese aggression" in the Indo-Pacific.

As for Israel funding, Biden said, "We will always make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against Iran and the terrorists it supports." On this point Biden continues to have problems unifying Democrats and especially the Progressive wing of the party, also as campus protests have grown.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has continued weighing in. She's pushing back on Biden's Israel/Gaza policy ironically at the very moment that her party pushed through the massive aid package. According to her fresh statements to an international press outlet:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., former speaker of the House, called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign, describing him as an "obstacle" to peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

"We recognize Israel's right to protect itself. We reject the policy and the practice of Netanyahu — terrible. What could be worse than what he has done in response?" Pelosi said in an interview on Monday with a news outlet based in Ireland. "He should resign. He's ultimately responsible."

Pelosi also said: "I don't know whether he's afraid of peace, incapable of peace, or just doesn't want peace. But he has been an obstacle to the two-state solution."

Pelosi calls on Netanyahu to resign calling him an 'obstacle' to peace as Israel continues the war in Gaza.
Translation: The Democrats are losing votes because of Biden Administration approach to the Middle East conflict. #Velsig https://t.co/tGqV2bzYVc

— Velina Tchakarova (@vtchakarova) April 24, 2024

But again, her very party just spearheaded handing over $15 billion for Israel and the Netanyahu government as it continues the military onslaught in Gaza, and as a ground assault is reportedly being readied for the refugee-packed southern city of Rafah.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Supreme Court on April 23 directed the U.S. Department of Justice to reply to a man convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.

Justices said the department’s response to Russell Alford is due May 23.

Mr. Alford was convicted by a jury of four misdemeanor counts but is challenging two of the charges, arguing that they don’t apply to his conduct.

The charges should not have been brought because the laws on which they’re based bar disorderly and disruptive conduct in a Capitol building and in a restricted building, but Mr. Alford merely entered the Capitol and stood silently against a wall before exiting, the Supreme Court was told in a filing from Mr. Alford’s lawyers.

U.S. District Judge Tonya Chutkan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, originally rejected Mr. Alford’s request to dismiss the counts, finding that his “mere presence inside the Capitol disturbed the public peace or undermined public safety.”

A federal appeals court, after reviewing the rejection, upheld it in January. While Mr. Alford was “neither violent nor destructive ... a jury could rationally find that his unauthorized presence in the Capitol as part of an unruly mob contributed to the disruption of the Congress’s electoral certification and jeopardized public safety,” the ruling stated.

“The court should grant review because this case presents an important question of federal statutory interpretation,” Mr. Alford’s lawyers wrote to the Supreme Court, describing the appeals court ruling as “establish[ing] a slippery and counter-textual standard for criminalizing conduct in settings for political activity.”

One of the laws, 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(2), bars people from “knowingly, and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of government business or official functions, engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct in, or within such proximity to, any restricted building or grounds when, or so that, such conduct, in fact, impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of government business or official functions.”

The other, 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(D), makes it a crime to “utter loud, threatening, or abusive language, or engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place in the grounds or in any of the Capitol Buildings with the intent to impede, disrupt, or disturb the orderly conduct of a session of Congress or either house of Congress, or the orderly conduct in that building of a hearing before, or any deliberations of, a committee of Congress or either house of Congress.”

The lower court rulings were wrong in part because they focused on the effects of Mr. Alford’s conduct, not the nature of the conduct, according to the writ to justices.

That focus “collapses the conduct element into the harm element by giving the adjectives no apparent force,” they said. They argued later that merely being present “is not disorderly conduct unless the presence is in defiance of an order to disperse.”

If the court grants the petition, it would review the case and decide if the rulings were appropriate.

The Department of Justice’s Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, told the court on April 12 that the government was waiving its right to file a response to the filing, “unless requested to do so by the court.” The petition was distributed to justices on April 18 for their scheduled May 9 conference. Then, on Tuesday, justices directed the Department of Justice to file a response to Mr. Alford.

Lawyers for Mr. Alford and the government did not respond to requests for comment.

If justices take up the petition and rule in favor of Mr. Alford, a number of other Jan. 6 defendants and convicts could see charges thrown out.

Obstruction Charge

The court already agreed to review another charge brought against many Jan. 6 defendants.

Justices sat for oral arguments on April 16 concerning obstruction of an official proceeding, a charge brought against former police officer Joseph Fischer after he entered the Capitol on Jan. 6.

One of Mr. Fischer’s attorneys said the charge should not have been brought because the law was only intended to be used in cases of evidence tampering.

Ms. Prelogar told justices that the charge was proper because it was “not limited to evidence impairment.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch, appointed by former President Donald Trump, wondered whether the government would bring the charge against people who heckled the court.

“Would a sit-in that disrupts a trial or access to a federal courthouse qualify? Would a heckler in today’s audience qualify, or at the State of the Union address? Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?” he asked.

Another justice later questioned if protesters blocking access to a trial would face the charge, noting that protests have taken place in the past at the Supreme Court but the government did not charge the protesters under the law.

Ms. Prelogar said the law might apply in such cases, if there was proof of “corrupt intent.”

Justices are due to hand down a decision in the case at some point in the future.

Dairy cattle moving between states must be tested for the bird flu virus, U.S. agriculture officials said Wednesday as they try to track and control the growing outbreak.

AP reports that the federal order was announced a day after health officials said they had detected inactivated remnants of the virus, known as Type A H5N1, in samples taken from milk during processing and after retail sale. They stressed that such remnants pose no known risk to people or the milk supply.

“The risk to humans remains low,” said Dawn O'Connell of the federal Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.

The new order requires every lactating cow to be tested and post a negative result before moving to a new state. It will help the agency understand how the virus is spreading, said Michael Watson, an administrator with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

“We believe we can do tens of thousands of tests a day,” he told reporters.

Until now, testing had been done voluntarily and only in cows with symptoms.

As The Epoch Times' Zachary Steiber reported earlier, commercially available milk from grocery stores has tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on April 23.

The FDA said in a statement it has been testing milk from cattle that have been sickened with the influenza, commonly known as the bird flu or H5N1, as well as milk “in the processing system, and on the shelves.”

“Based on available information, pasteurization is likely to inactivate the virus, however, the process is not expected to remove the presence of viral particles. Therefore, some of the samples collected have indicated the presence of HPAI using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) testing,” the agency said.

While samples tested positive, that does not mean they contain an intact pathogen, according to the FDA.

“Additional testing is required to determine whether intact pathogen is still present and if it remains infectious, which determines whether there is any risk of illness associated with consuming the product,” the FDA said.

The agency is injecting samples into fertilized chicken eggs to see whether any active virus replicates, among other experiments. It is also completing testing on samples taken from pasteurized milk from across the nation.

“To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe. Results from multiple studies will be made available in the next few days to weeks,” the FDA said.

The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment for more details, including how many samples tested positive and which stores the milk that tested positive came from.

Bird flu has been confirmed in 33 herds of cattle in eight states after spreading to ruminants for the first time in the United States earlier this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. One person, a farm worker in Texas, has also tested positive for the influenza.

U.S. authorities previously said that milk from diaries with sickened animals was “being diverted or destroyed so that it does not enter the food supply” and that “pasteurization has continually proven to inactivate bacteria and viruses, like influenza, in milk,” but critics noted the authorities produced no evidence of testing to back up their position.

“There could be viruses in the milk on grocery shelves right now,” Gail Hansen, a veterinary expert who was formerly the state public health veterinarian for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and Andrew deCoriolis, executive director of the group Farm Forward, wrote in a recent op-ed.

Ms. Hansen said on the social media platform X that the FDA finding virus particles was “a little bit better than finding whole virus” but was “still not good.”

Rick Bright, the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, noted the shifting language from the government. The FDA now says that pasteurization “is very likely to effectively inactivate heat-sensitive viruses like H5N1 in milk from cows and other species.”

It also acknowledged that “no studies on the effects of pasteurization on HPAI viruses (such as H5N1) in bovine milk have previously been completed,” although it pointed to previous studies on effective pasteurization.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, said the findings mean “milk from sick cows is being used” in the commercial supply. While pasteurization likely makes the milk safe, that safety is “not guaranteed,” he added.

Some experts emphasized that, at present, there were no indications that the positive tests meant the virus detected was infectious.

“There is no evidence to date that this is [an] infectious virus and the FDA is following up on that,” Lee-Ann Jaykus, an emeritus food microbiologist and virologist at North Carolina State University, told the Associated Press.

But Angela Rasmussen, a virologist, said on X that the positive samples “suggests there are undetected herds shedding virus into the milk supply” because they show intact virus “was once present.”

“It’s hard to say more as no raw data was shared, so we just have to take their word for it,” she added.

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

The UniParty's Day Of Infamy, Part 1

The clusterf*ck in the US House of Representatives this past weekend is surely the final straw. The dreadful grip of the UniParty on national security policy has finally produced sheer madness in a single package. To wit:

• $95 billion of foreign aid boondoggles that do not benefit America’s homeland security in the slightest.

• An extension of section 702 of FISA that wantonly expands an already egregious affront to the Fourth Amendment.

• The illegal transfer of billions of sovereign assets stolen from Russia to its enemies in Kiev.

• A national security ban on 15-second TikTok videos about dances, pranks, pets and poppycock viewed overwhelmingly by under 30-year-old Americans whose viewing habits are of zero value to the Chicoms in Beijing.

It is bad enough that there is not an iota of informed consideration behind any of this. But what is really alarming is that every single House Democrat (210) voted in favor of $61 billion for the Ukrainian Demolition Derby. This included a 97-0 vote among so-called Dem “progressives”, who also voted 96-0 in favor of aid to Taiwan—the purpose of which is surely not a more pacific neighborhood on the Pacific Rim.

Once upon a time, the Democrats were the party of the peace candidates. No more, which surely explains their fury at RFK, who is.

At the same time, only fourteen Republicans voted against all four components of this wholesale assault on constitutional liberty and fiscal rectitude. As we have previously documented, America is now careening on fiscal automatic pilot toward a $140 trillion 4/23/24, 12:40 PM The UniParty’s Day of Infamy, Part 1 https://davidstockman.substack.com/p/the-unipartys-day-of-infamy-part 2/11 public debt by mid-century, but the overwhelming share of House Republicans choose to hammer the US economy with even more debt to fund pointless foreign aid boondoggles, while shackling private citizens and entrepreneurs with government intrusions based on the paranoid lies of the national security state.

In this context it was the predictable histrionics of the bevy of neocon warmongers on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal that brought home the full extent of the challenge. Namely, that the mainstream narrative in the Imperial City and among the nation’s elite media is so utterly wrong-headed and morally obtuse that only the complete abandonment of the core framework of contemporary national security policy can save the day.

Accordingly, the “domino” theory needs be repudiated once and for all. Likewise, the Washington-Jefferson doctrine of “no entangling alliances” needs be revived in place of the vestigial cold war notion that informs Washington’s current destructive and bankrupting policies. We are referring to the wholly obsolete notion that America’s homeland security depends upon a worldwide system of military alliances, bases and kinetic power projection capabilities that enable Washington to function as the great Global Hegemon, who is ready, willing and able to intervene in virtually any spate that erupts among the 8 billion peoples of the planet.

The fourteen GOP stalwarts listed below essentially said, no dice to these tired, dangerous, costly and risible formulations: Neither Russia nor China pose even a remote military threat to the American homeland, while proxy wars and economic sanctions against “adversaries” demonized by the Deep State actually undermine domestic liberty and prosperity for no justifiable reason of homeland security at all.

With respect to the latter, for instance, there is no real reason for the sweeping multihundred billion cost to the American economy of sanctions and trade restrictions on China, Iran or Russia. And, similarly, there are no security threats in the world today that even remotely justify the national security state’s intrusion into the rights and privacies of American citizens.

Still, the pseudo-intellectuals at the WSJ trotted out Hitler, Tojo and the “isolationist” epithet as if these references prove anything at all, when, in fact, none have any real relevance to the world of today. There are simply no industrial state tyrants on the march anywhere on the global horizon that resemble even the apparent facts of the 1930s, let alone the actual historical realities of the matter.

The fact is, Stalin and Hitler were sui generis. They were one-time accidents of history arising from the folly of Versailles and the punitive peace of the victors enabled by Woodrow Wilson’s pointless intervention in a European war that would have otherwise ended in stalemate and the mutual exhaustion and bankruptcy of all the combatants.

That is to say, the DNA of the world’s nations is not infected with incipient tendencies toward totalitarianism and aggression. Maintaining the global peace and pacific commerce of the nations does not depend upon an alliance of virtuous interventionists or a Global Hegemon, prepared to enforce its writ at the slightest breakout of local and regional quarrels and conflicts.

At the end of the day, laissez faire is the path to prosperity in both economics and international affairs. Military alliances and Hegemons everywhere and always fall captive to the arms merchants they foster.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the honor roll from last weekend’s rampage of folly by the UniParty consists of a mere 14 House Republicans, who were awarded the scarlet “I” by the war-happy globalists at the Wall Street Journal:

Fourteen Republicans voted against all four bills on the House floor, including the one that would force a sale of TikTok from Chinese ownership. Here’s the dishonor roll in alphabetical order: Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Andrew Clyde (Ga.), Elijah Crane (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Bob Good (Va.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Andy Harris (Md.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Troy Nehls (Texas), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Matt Rosendale (Mont.), Chip Roy (Texas).

The unavoidable meaning of the votes is that these Members don’t believe the U.S. should support allies threatened by authoritarians on the march. Like Republicans in the 1930s who slept while Hitler and Tojo advanced, these Republicans apparently think America can sit out these fights in splendid isolation. But history suggests that if they prevail, American sons and daughters would eventually have to fight. Better to help allies who want to help themselves.

The isolationist caucus lost this round, but this GOP tendency is dangerous. Another 17 Members voted for arms for Israel but not for Taiwan and Ukraine. Do they want to encourage a Chinese invasion? Perhaps if Florida is attacked, they’ll awaken to the reality of the world’s growing dangers.

No, Florida is not about to be attacked by Putin, Xi or the Ayatollahs. This is just scary bedtime story stuff that no informed adult should accord any credibility whatsoever.

Needless to say, the GOP most rabid neocon and warmonger, Senator Lindsay Graham, is neither informed nor, apparently, even of adult mind.

His incoherent, bloodthirsty rant actually made the WSJ editorialists sound thoughtful by comparison.

“Here’s what I will tell you. If you give Putin Ukraine, he will not stop,” Graham said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is not about containing NATO and if you give him Ukraine, there goes Taiwan because China’s watching to see what we do.”

“I want to know what they’re talking about over there before they kill us here. And if you shut this thing down, you’ve turned the war into a crime,” Graham said. “We’re not fighting our crime, we’re finding a bunch of people who would kill all of us if they could get here. So, when you intercept information from a foreigner overseas talking about America, I want to know what they’re talking about.”

The Ukranian military, with our help, has killed about 50 percent of the combat power of the Russians,” Graham said Sunday. “This is the year [of] more. They’re going to have more weapons, but we also want them to have new weapons.”

Nor was the House GOP to be outdone by Senator Graham’s bellicose fulminations. Recently resigned Rep.  Ken Buck let it be known that if you actually understand that America’s homeland security is in no way enhanced by Washington’s misguided proxy war on Russia, as does Rep. Marjorie Greene, why then you surely are a traitor in the pay of Vlad Putin himself:

“Well, Moscow Marjorie has reached a new low,” Buck said of his former colleague.

“She is just mouthing the Russian propaganda and really hurting American foreign policy in the process. She’s acting completely irresponsibly. And again, when history looks at this period of time, Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine is fighting for its freedom, and we should be with the freedom fighters in this war.”

Of course, the insanity of $200 billion of NATO funds already wasted; hundreds of thousands dead; millions fleeing the country to avoid the mayhem of war and the cruelty of being drafted as cannon fodder to serve the perverted pleasure of Washington’s armchair warriors; and the civilian infrastructure of one of Europe’s largest countries in shambles—all have nothing whatsoever to do with “freedom fighters”.

The undeniable fact is that there is nothing at stake worth fighting for in Ukraine that even remotely resembles democratic virtue. It has been a cesspool of egregious corruption virtually since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991, and recently even required a visit from the head of the CIA to tell Zelensky and his fellow thieves to “knock it off” on the corruption front.

To the contrary, as the venerable anti-war writer William Astore put it, the real purpose of Ukrainian installment of the Forever Wars is the enrichment of the merchants of death who have captured the levers of power in Washington:

Of course, this is yet another triumph for the MICIMATT: the military-industrialcongressional-intelligence-media-academe-think-tank complex. Its power and greed are almost irresistible. Add that to AIPAC, threat inflation, and fear-mongering and perhaps it is irresistible until the U.S. empire final collapses under the weight of its own folly.

Yet all of the mindless bellicosity of the Washington interventionists is not simply ludicrous nonsense from an empirical viewpoint. More importantly, the current neocon/interventionist Washington consensus blatantly repudiates the sage advice of both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson from more than 220 years ago. Together they articulated a theory of foreign policy that was not “isolationist” at all, but realist and evidence-based.

That is, these wise Founders held that foreign policy should be based on the facts and circumstances of national interest at any given point in time, and that when the facts change and alliances become obsolete, they should be jettisoned.

From George Washington’s Farewell Address: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence, she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities… it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…”

As further amplified by Jefferson in his 1801 inaugural address, this realist doctrine viewed external military alliances to be arrangements of convenience and should be freely abandoned or reversed as indicated by changing needs of the national interest. Citing Washington’s Farewell Address as his inspiration, Jefferson described the doctrine as-

“peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none.”

That famous phrase is precisely the policy cornerstone that fits today’s realities. America’s homeland security doesn’t require militarized alliances or the wherewithal to maraud militarily around the globe because there are no military-industrial-technological powers that can threaten its security.

Accordingly, institutions like NATO may well have served the national interest 70 years ago with respect to Stalinist Russia and its military capacities and intentions toward its erstwhile but estranged wartime allies in the West. But even there the open archives from both sides of the cold war cast considerable doubt on whether Stalin and world communism were actually on the march or had either the intention or military capability to enslave western Europe, to say nothing of the American homeland on the far side of the Atlantic and Pacific Moats.

As it happened, the Henry Wallace peaceful accommodationist wing of the Roosevelt coalition may have been closer to the truth than the Wall Street based coteries of Henry Stimson, James Forrestal, Dean Acheson and the abominable Dulles Bothers, who actually formulated the nation’s cold war policies during that era.

But that question was resolved once and for all in 1991 when the Soviet Union disappeared into the dustbin of history, and not because of NATO or even Reagan’s Star Wars threat. The real reason was that centralized state communism doesn’t work: Neither for the people it exploits and oppresses, nor for the ruling elites and state-empowered comrades who may have delusions of grandeur about the sustainability of their own rule, to saying nothing of extending it to peoples beyond their borders.

Yet even as the true lesson of Soviet Communism’s collapse marched across the pages of history after 1991, the entrenched military-industrial-foreign policy apparatus was not about to relinquish its power, budgets and perks, just as Eisenhower had warned in another of America’s great Farewell Addresses in 1961. In fact, NATO morphed into something far more obnoxious than a cancellable alliance that had accomplished its mission and was slated for early retirement under the Washington-Jefferson doctrine.

And well it should have been because after 1991, there was no there, there. The Russian rump of the Soviet Union even today has a GDP of merely $2.2 trillion compared to the $28 trillion GDP of the USA and $46 trillion for all 32 NATO countries combined. And Russia has a military budget of barely 6% of NATO’s $1.25 trillion of combined defense expenditures and but one aircraft carrier.

Furthermore, the latter is a 20th century relic that has been in drydock repair since 2017 and is outfitted with neither an armada of escort ships and warplanes or even a crew. The Russian military, therefore, has no way to land on the shores of New Jersey or even enter the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, for that matter. Nor is Putin stupid enough to invade Poland, which offers nothing but centuries of animosity to all things Russian.

Then again, if Poland really believed all the anti-Putin rhetoric spouted by its rightwing government, it would be spending a lot more on defense in 2024 than $30 billion and 3.1% of GDP; nor would it be offering to house NATO nuclear weapons next door to the Russian Bear, as its president did this week.

“If our allies decide to deploy nuclear arms on our territory as part of nuclear sharing, to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank, we are ready to do so,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said in an interview published today by the Fakt newspaper.

In truth, Duda’s offer is just another case of client state politics run amuck. Rid the scene of Washington’s entangling alliance with the relic of NATO, and the voters of Poland would be looking for a new government. And they would do so even as they were sending it leaders to Moscow to seek mutual accommodation from the natural trade and commercial relationships that are inherent in its geography.

The fact is, 33-years after the demise of the Soviet Union NATO is not simply a pointless obsolete relic. It has morphed into the greatest armaments marketing and sales organization in the history of mankind. The only benefit that came from betraying Bush the Elder’s promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand a “single inch” to the east has accrued to the defense contractors, especially the US based giants.

As RFK has cogently pointed out, when the NATO alliance mushroomed from 16 nations to now 32 countries, every one of the new members had to conform their weapons systems and munitions to NATO standards. Not suprisingly, Lockheed, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics and United Technologies prospered mightily–even as they effectively roamed the halls of Congress spreading the lies embedded in the above Wall Street Journal rendition of dominoes and the essentiality of Washington’s obsolete global alliances.

Yet two of the four components of Saturday’s abomination were directed against China, predicated on the same illusion that led to the vast threat-inflation with respect to the Soviet Union. To wit, Chinese Communism, even in the thinly veiled guise of “red capitalism”, is no more viable or sustainable than the Soviet version.

At the end of the day, if you don’t have free markets, constitutionally protected property and personal rights of expression and assembly and honest bankruptcy courts to dispose of failed economic bets, you do not have a sustainable economy or permanently rising prosperity. Period.

To the contrary, China is a vast house of economic cards and statist malignancies propped up by $50 trillion of unpayable debt incurred in barely two decades. Accordingly, it is utterly dependent upon the hard currency earnings from $3.5 trillion of annual exports, mainly to the West, to keep its vast excess of infrastructure and housing investment from capsizing the whole Rube Goldberg Contraption. In the event of war, this export lifeline would soon find its way to Davy Jones’ Locker, along with China’s entire jerry-built economy.

So, it’s not going to be invading anyone, probably not even Taiwan. Chairman Xi and his team of rulers may love to quote Mao and color themselves red ideologically, but they also know that what stands between them and an uprising of China’s oppressed 1.5 billion inhabitants is a consistent and reasonably rising level of internal prosperity.

That rules out a Chinese Armada of black ships heading for the coast of California. Indeed, even the Navy they have today consists of two repurposed Soviet Era aircraft carriers and one new build of far less formidable and lethal capacity than Washington current Gerald Ford class carriers. And its other 400 Navy vessels consists largely of coastal patrol vessels that likely would not make it to the shores of California in one piece.

In terms of lethal firepower, in fact, the US Navy has 4.6 million tons of displacement, averaging 15,000 tons per ship. By contrast, China’s Navy has but 2.0 million tons of displacement, averaging only 5,000 tons per boat. That is to say, the Chinese Navy is totally visible, assessable and trackable, and is not remotely of the size and lethality that would make an invasion of America remotely plausible.

Finally, the main military capacity that is needed for homeland security in the present world, of course, is America’s triad strategic deterrent including 3,800 nuclear warheads. At any moment in time these are scrambled and dispersed -

• along the ocean bottoms among 16 Ohio class subs each bearing 80 independently targetable warheads.

• aloft in the global airspace on a fleet of 66 B-2 and B-52 heavy bombers  

• buried deep in hardened underground silos bearing more than 1,000 ICBM warheads.

This awesome retaliatory force cannot possibly be detected or 100% neutralized by a would-be nuclear blackmailer.

As it happens, the triad deterrent costs about $65 billion per year according to a recent CBO analysis, and full protection of the US shorelines and airspace behind the great ocean moats could bring a total Fortress America model of homeland defense to $400 billion per annum, at most.

The other $500 billion in today’s 050 function represents the ill-gotten budgetary conquests of the military-industrial-intelligence complex, and all the think tanks, NGOs and beltway bandits who make a living getting paid by DOD, State, AID, NED etc. to manufacturing inflated threats and scary stories about sinister foreigners. Such malefic malarky was on full display in the US House last weekend. Accordingly, there is only one cure. A powerful force from outside the beltway needs to splinter the UniParty into a thousand pieces.

That’s the real mission of Robert F Kennedy’s Jr. independent candidacy for President, as we will further amplify in Part 2.

Update (1715ET): During the earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that his commitment to Meta building the best AI models out there leads him to believe that “we should invest significantly more in the coming years."

And the return may take a while...

“It’s worth calling that out that we’ve historically seen a lot of volatility in our stock during this phase of our product playbook, where we’re investing in scaling a new product but aren’t yet monetising it,” he said on a call with investors.

“But building the leading AI will also be a larger undertaking then the other experiences we’ve added to our apps and this is likely going to take several years.”

The market did not like that and the stock is now down almost 20% - erasing all the gains since the last earnings:

*  *  *

After yesterday's eruption by the first Mag7 member Tesla, which missed across the board but gave an extremely cheerful outlook where Musk vowed he would release a lower-priced EV as soon as this year, moments ago the second, and far bigger, Mag7 member - and who really cares about Mag7 any more, it's all about the Fabulous Four these days - Meta reported results which were a mirror image: while the company beat across the board, its guidance was a mess, with revenue disappointing while projected CapEx surging by 10%, and the stock is plunging 13% after hours.

Here is what META just reported for Q1:

• Revenue $36.46B, beating est. $36.12B
• Q1 EPS $4.71, beating est $4.30

And while the historical numbers were solid, it was the guidance that spooked the market:

• Meta sees Q2 Revenue of $36.5B to $39B, with the mid-range below the est. $38.24B

Yet while revenue guidance was disappointing, the company expects to spend even more to get there, and its capex forecast increased dramatically with attention finally turning to how much money this AI dream will actually cost...

• Full-year capital expenditures expected to be $35-$40 billion, from prior range of $30-$37 billion

In other words, Zuckerberg is still betting the metaphorical house - and investing in it - on AI. Parsing the company's language on capex, the color from CFO Li on next year’s increase in spending says the company will “invest aggressively” to support “ambitious” AI research and product development.

Still, the market is not impressed - it vividly recalls how much money the company burned on the catastrophic metaverse dead end - and as Bloomberg notes, ever since Meta’s rollout for its expensive metaverse/virtual reality plans, investors have been laser-focused on expenses and how quickly those will pay off. With AI, the company appears to have a longer grace period since it’s an industrywide bet, but even that will soon come under scrutiny for Meta, seeing as its expected capex is ticking up now for the year.

And sure enough, the advertising-funded social network could not wait to turn the attention to AI, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s quote in the earnings release, citing its new large language model (Llama 3) just released:

“The new version of Meta AI with Llama 3 is another step towards building the world’s leading AI. We’re seeing healthy growth across our apps and we continue making steady progress building the metaverse as well.”

Turning to the company's actual metrics, the total number of people using Meta’s apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads) rose 7% year-over-year to 3.24 billion.

That’s the only user metric we’re getting from Meta, which said last quarter it would stop consistent reporting of MAUs and app-level metrics.

Turning to revenue, ad revenue dropped sequentially as it always does in Q1 but rose YoY...

... with Average Revenue per User dropping but higher than a year ago.

 

... as the average price per ad rose significantly in Q1.

... although the growth in ads delivered declined.

Meanwhile, even as ad revenue dipped, expenses as a % of revenues are once again rising.

Putting it all together, and taking a quick look at the stock price, we can conclude that the market is not impressed, as META shares are tumbling 13%, wiping out some $135BN in market cap...

... on pace for their worst drop since Oct 2022 and vaporizing all gains since the last earnings report.

... as we officially enter the "show me the monAI" phase and as focus among investors right now is on spending “and the fact that they’re raising capex guidance by 10%” according to Bloomberg tech analyst Mandeep Singh, who adds that “investors are fearful. Whenever this company talks about spending more, the alarm bells start ringing."

The plunge in META stock is weighing on the Nasdaq and other social media stocks post-market. Shares of Snap are down 3.3%, while Pinterest has shed nearly 4%. Reddit is down 1.3%.

The company's earnings presentation is below (pdf link)

And now we await the earnings call to see if Zuck can save this catastrophic earnings report.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

"Where it will end is very much up for grabs."

Yesterday’s manufacturing PMIs shouted “stagflation”, even if some heard “rate cuts”. German manufacturing was 42.2, French 44.9, and Eurozone 45.6, as services were 53.3, 50.5, and 52.9 - but Europe must now factor in logjams appearing at key ports due to unsold Chinese EVs and the knock-on effects of the Houthi’s blockage of Suez; the UK prints were 48.7 and 54.9; and the US both 50.9 - but its fine print said: “Manufacturing has now registered the steeper rate of price increases in three of the past four months, with factory cost pressures intensifying in April amid higher raw material and fuel prices, contrasting with the wage-related services-led price pressures seen throughout much of 2023.”

Yesterday’s bigger picture was as big as it gets. No, not the UK “putting its economy on a war footing” in raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. It’s already at 2.32% despite UK armed forces being nowhere near ready for war. (Of more interest was that a tax cut might be dropped to fund this incremental spending: a ‘guns or butter’ decision we will see lots more of.)

Rather, the ECB’s Panetta gave a speech echoing Mario Draghi’s call for “radical change. He stated for the EU to thrive it needs a de facto national-security focused POLITCAL economy centered round: reducing dependence on foreign demand (i.e., fewer net exports – sorry, Germany/Netherlands!); enhancing energy security (green protectionism); advancing production of technology (industrial policy); rethinking participation in global value chains (tariffs/subsidies); governing migration flows (so higher labour costs); enhancing external security (huge funds for defence); and joint investments in European public goods (via Eurobonds… to be bought by ECB QE for a ‘strategic bond portfolio’?) Oddly, the people who spend their time transcribing every syllable of what the ECB says when it points to a slight shift in the timing of a 25bp rate move were quiet about a speech which promised to transform the entire EU economic and market architecture!

However, this is what we said Europe would do to try to achieve strategic autonomy. It’s also what I argued Western economies would do in 2016’s pre-Brexit, pre-Trump ‘Thin Ice’, which underlined that once you remove any leg of the free market ‘table’, the whole thing topples over. So, it’s now modern-day Hamiltonian economics – unless it’s “Build Back Better” all over again.

This is a global, fundamental issue. In 2025, we get either Bidenomics 2.0 or Trump 2.0: in either case we are going to see more huge fiscal deficits, protectionism, and industrial policy, but in the latter case, perhaps on steroids. At the same time, China is going to keep being mercantilist on its own steroids. Likewise, Japan and even Australia(!) are heading in that direction. Clearly, we need some understanding of what this all means beyond monthly PMI up- or down-ticks.

Narrowly, Trump 2.0 could mean a USD and US asset meltdown, or a further USD and US asset spike and an emerging market meltdown. It depends on how it’s implemented and how the world responds.

More broadly, the global system is close to massive structural change. As the Financial Times op-eds today, the US and EU can’t embrace national-security “infant industry” arguments, seize key value chains to narrow inequality, and break the fiscal and monetary ‘rules’, while also using the IMF and World Bank --and the economics profession-- to preach free-market best practice to EM ex-China. And China can’t expect others not to copy what it does. As the FT concludes, “The shift to a new economic paradigm has begun. Where it will end if very much up for grabs.”

And “up for grabs” is the key point. As far back as 1820, Hegel argued that bourgeois society was incapable of internally solving its problems of social inequality and instability arising from its tendency to over-accumulate wealth at one pole and deprivation at the other, and a "mature" civil society was thus driven to seek external solutions through foreign trade, colonial, or imperial practices. In 2024, Europe just made the point for him – but what was their alternative?

In 2020, I warned we needed a new ideological “-ism” to guide our *political* economy out of the mess it was in: Hamiltonianism is it, as predicted. However, we each want it only for ourselves, not for others. There appears no likelihood of a Global New Deal to distribute value chains and green technology so everybody gets a fair share. Yet without it, we are back to a world of all vs. all, as warned in ’Thin Ice’ – and now openly with violence. That was why we dreamed the post-WW2, post-Cold War neoliberal one-world dream: it wasn’t just so the rich could feast on the poor; it also held up a simple, illusory ideology the world could buy into to end all conflicts.

Such arguments sound silly to PMI-monomaniacs, but they matter deeply for policy. For example, in the UK there was a public St. George’s Day debate over whether it was free-market capitalism or its empire that led to the UK becoming global hegemon. Free marketeers say it was all markets, so more markets please; Hamasniks on campuses say it was all the latter, so more “decolonisation”, please. The implications are enormous.

The awkward historical fact is that it was capitalism and empire that enriched the UK. Free markets and the rule of law were essential; but so was empire – in particular India. As Arrighi (2007), notes: “India's huge demographic resources buttressed British world power both commercially and militarily. Commercially, Indian workers were forcibly transformed from major competitors of European textile industries into major producers of cheap food and raw materials for Europe. Militarily…Indian manpower was organized in a European-style colonial army, funded entirely by the Indian taxpayer, and used throughout the nineteenth century in the endless series of wars through which Britain opened up Asia and Africa to Western trade and investment. As for the financial aspect, the devaluation of the Indian currency, the imposition of the infamous Home Charges through which India was made to pay for the privilege of being pillaged and exploited by Britain, and the Bank of England's control over India's foreign-exchange reserves, jointly turned India into the "pivot" of Britain's world-financial and commercial supremacy.”

In short, free markets and forcing others not to be free has worked very well: denying that won’t help. Addressing what a global structure looks like that keeps the former but doesn’t do the latter, and which doesn’t produce inequality and destabilisation, is the issue. Or, given that may be a utopia, we at least need to predict what the all vs. all world looks like. (Which is what we did in predicting Europe would embrace the “radical” policy changes now floated even at the ECB.)

On all vs. all, the global capitalist hegemon has shifted over time to a successively larger polity/geography (Italian city states > Dutch United Provinces > England/the UK > the US) through economic or real war, with the complexity of the expanding global system requiring ever greater resources to sit at its centre. However, the US alone can no longer carry the world on its shoulders. The Triffin Paradox looms over the global role of the dollar --and any would-be successor; and the US will not be the net importer for everyone, the net provider of financial assets to all savers, nor the world policeman for all who require it. Indeed, the latter three stand in fundamental contradiction to each other.

This implies the next global hegemon has to be even larger than the US (or we fragment):

• Maybe the US will fail at a Hamiltonian relaunch and China is the next hegemon: but that implies geopolitical chaos ahead given the US won’t go home quietly.
• Maybe the US will succeed at Hamiltonianism, and the world/markets will shift accordingly.
• Maybe the scale needed for US hegemony involves it ‘bolting’ on Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and perhaps the UK and a ‘new look’ EU. But that implies a bifurcated world, with lots of bumps before we set up any buffers.
• Maybe the US will prefer what Kautsky called Ultra-Imperialism: making a global deal with China and Russia to carve out spheres of influence, and setting oligopolistic rules that benefit all three. Where does ‘old look’ Europe sit if so? Very uncomfortably, in all likelihood.

These are discussions we need, but we aren’t seeing them due to a key point Arrighi makes. The late stage of a global system has a ‘false dawn’ as the economy shifts from producing things, which make ever less profit due to competition, to producing financial assets, which make money while destabilising society and the global system itself. The Dutch Golden Age was just before it was pushed off the world stage by European mercantilism and the British; the late 19th century and early 20th century British belle époque was just before WW1; the boom in US financial services was as its industrial base has rotted away – and as wars start to break out again all over.

Those illusory good times, for some, take the market’s eyes off the prize: it’s no wonder few want to read Hamilton rather than a headline about rate cuts, and few seriously engage with what strategic decoupling and reindustrialisation might look like even when we are already seeing it via tariffs, the CHIPS Act, and the IRA. Not even when Trump may do far more, and the ECB says the EU should do it too!

Quiet macro day with Durable Goods Orders looking like a beat - but only because of sizable downward revisions - as orders and shipments are actually down on a YoY basis.

Source: Bloomberg

But stocks were messy with an opening bid immediately squelched and post-EU-close ramp faded into the US close. Small Caps were the day's laggard as Nasdaq outperformed while The Dow and S&P desperately tried to get green...

Nasdaq and The Dow got back above their 100DMAs while Small Caps cannot hold above theirs...

Goldman's Chris Hussey pointed out that, despite an uptick in rates today (yields on 10-year Treasuries are up 6bp to 4.66%), yield sensitive sectors like Tech, Utilities, and Real Estate are outperforming.

On the flip side, Industrials are lagging on the back of particularly weak earnings in Transports.

Source: Bloomberg

And stepping even further back, 9 of the 10 worst-performing stocks in the S&P 500 today reported results after the close yesterday, or before the open this morning -- highlighting how earnings are driving stocks amidst a macro vacuum (at least for today).

Volumes were muted today once again, according to Goldman's trading desk, as they noted once again that hedge funds were slightly better to buy (buying Indust., Info Tech, Disc.), Long-Onlys slight for sale (selling Mats, Disc.,).

TSLA had a big day - its best since Jan 2022 - after earnings last night (that reaffirmed its strategy wasn't too crazy)...

The basket of MAG7 stocks ended unchanged after a strong open thanks to TSLA's gains as traders await META's earnings after the bell...

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were higher across the board today (with the long-end underperforming) as the following two-day chart shows, the 10Y & 30Y yields are back above pre-PMI levels from yesterday while 2Y is at the lows from yesterday...

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve (2s30s) steepened dramatically once again, now up 14bps in two days, back to one-month highs (still inverted)...

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar ended modestly higher on the day, pulling back during the US session from overnight gains...

Source: Bloomberg

Yen was slammed (again) as traders continue to call The BoJ's interventionist bluff...

Source: Bloomberg

...as JPY is now well below the last intervention threshold (back at its lowest in 34 years)...

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin took another kicking today, tumbling back to a $63,000 handle...

Source: Bloomberg

...once again driven by extreme selling pressure from the perpetual futures market...

Amid all the excitement today, gold ended unchanged and traded in a narrow range...

Source: Bloomberg

Crude prices slipped back from yesterday's surge despite a big crude draw...

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, Goldman's Dominic Wilson and Kamkshya Trivedi highlight how geopolitical tensions and stickier than expected US inflation prints have transitioned markets to trading more of a 'policy shock' than a 'growth upgrade'...

...a development that is making directional trades trickie.