Article by Robert Spencer in PJMedia

 

Media’s 'Biden Is the Greatest Catholic Since Francis of Assisi' Narrative Is Not Going Well

The establishment media has been pulling out all the stops, as Stephen Kruiser noted Monday, to convince us that Joe Biden is the most serene Catholic monarch since King St. Louis IX. Huffington Post writer Beth Stoneburner even wondered if “Christians will ever allow themselves to admit that a Democratic president is actually doing more for their supposed causes than the Republican Party ever did.” The New York Times hailed Old Joe as “the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century,” who “regularly attends Mass and speaks of how his Catholic faith grounds his life and his policies.” However, a wrench was thrown into this propaganda machine on Friday by the unlikeliest of sources: the U.S. Catholic bishops.

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop David J. Malloy, chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace, issued a statement on Thursday saying that Biden’s executive order removing blocks on funding for abortion providers overseas was “incompatible with Catholic teaching.”

Heinously indifferent to their contravention of the prevailing propaganda, Naumann and Malloy wrote: “It is grievous that one of President Biden’s first official acts actively promotes the destruction of human lives in developing nations. This Executive Order is antithetical to reason, violates human dignity, and is incompatible with Catholic teaching. We and our brother bishops strongly oppose this action. We urge the President to use his office for good, prioritizing the most vulnerable, including unborn children.”

Even before that, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote on Inauguration Day: “Rather than impose further expansions of abortion and contraception, as he has promised, I am hopeful that the new President and his administration will work with the Church and others of good will. My hope is that we can begin a dialogue to address the complicated cultural and economic factors that are driving abortion and discouraging families. My hope, too, is that we can work together to finally put in place a coherent family policy in this country, one that acknowledges the crucial importance of strong marriages and parenting to the well-being of children and the stability of communities. If the President, with full respect for the Church’s religious freedom, were to engage in this conversation, it would go a long way toward restoring the civil balance and healing our country’s needs.”

The U.S. Catholic Bishops have never been known for their conservatism or for any significant opposition to the Left’s overall agenda, so even the fact that these statements were issued is momentous. But wait. How could something “incompatible with Catholic teaching” issue from the hands of Saint Gropey’s handlers? Well, you see, to their minds there is no contradiction, for, as The New York Times put it, Biden represents “a different, more liberal Christianity” that is, it claims, now “ascendant: less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change and racial inequality.”

Labeling murder of the unborn a matter of “sexual politics” is creative, but it doesn’t succeed in papering over the inconvenient fact that the Ten Commandments has something to say about killing, but relatively little about massively expanding the federal government and turning over one’s obligation of charity to it. Confiscatory socialist policies that reward unemployment and broken families do more to ensure racial inequality than to heal it, but the propaganda machine isn’t about to let sweet reason intrude into its manipulation of your emotions.

We are being hectored into believing that Biden is a good Catholic, an incredible Catholic, the best, maybe ever, as his predecessor might have put it, not because The New York Times or the rest of the media cares one whit about Catholicism or Christianity in general, except as an obstacle to its social agenda that must be cleared away. We are pelted with this propaganda because if the likes of the Times, Beth Stoneburner, and the rest can hoodwink and guilt-trip Christians into thinking that big government socialism, taxpayer-funded abortions, and the destruction of the freedom of speech are as Christian as the cross and the Lord’s prayer, a significant potential source of opposition to the Left’s program could be swept away.

That’s what this is all about. But now the media will do what it always does: vilify Gomez (that has already started, at least among leftist Catholics), Naumann, and Malloy, if it doesn’t ignore their statements altogether, and inundate us with more nonsense about the Holy Wonderworker of Scranton. Nothing ever gets in the way of our moral superiors pushing their agenda.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/01/30/medias-biden-is-the-greatest-catholic-since-francis-of-assisi-line-is-not-going-well-n1419619

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Auctioneers predict 'world record' for rare whisky

 

One of the world's rarest single malt whiskies is predicted to become the most expensive bottle ever sold when it is auctioned next month.

The Macallan 1926 Fine and Rare 60 Year Old is one of only 14 of its kind.

It is expected to beat the current world record hammer price of £1.2m, which is held by a Macallan from the same original bottling batch.

The bottle leads the sale of the second half of one the world's largest private whisky collections to go to auction.

The "Perfect Collection' was amassed over decades by former US bottling magnate Richard Gooding, who died in 2014

 

 

The first part of the collection - more than 1,900 bottles - made more than £3.2m when it was auctioned online last year.

The remaining 1,900 lots were due to go on sale last April, but Perth-based seller Whisky Auctioneer pulled the auction after it was hit by a cyber attack. The company later reported that no data was compromised and the issues had been resolved.

 

 

 

Whisky Auctioneer founder Iain McClune said: "The 1926 has only been at auction once in recent years and at that time it broke the world record for the most expensive bottle of whisky ever sold, and we're hoping that will happen again.

"The second part of the collection we expect to sell for several million pounds.

"We've got whisky dating back to 1921 - 100 years ago - and others from closed distilleries in Scotland that have rarely been seen before at auction."

 

 Who was Richard Gooding?

 

 

Richard Gooding's grandfather, James A Gooding, started the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company of Denver in 1936.

His father took over the business before Richard himself became owner and chief executive in 1979.

He sold the company to PepsiCo in 1988.

Mr Gooding regularly travelled from his home in the US to Scotland with his pilot to source special bottles at auctions and distilleries before his death in 2014.

His collection was housed in what Mr Gooding called his "pub" - a dedicated room in his Colorado family home that was specially designed to showcase his whiskies.

 

 

 

Angus MacRaild, an expert on old and rare whiskies, said: "There's never been a collection of this volume, breadth and scale that has come up for auction ever.

"There's a good chance the Macallan 1926 Fine and Rare will break the world record for the most expensive whisky sold. For completists, particularly of Macallan, it's the pinnacle bottle."

Mr MacRaild said among the bottles on offer is what he considers to be one of the greatest ever - a 12-year-old Largiemeanoch from Bowmore Distillery on Islay.

"Having tasted it myself it's one of the most exquisite examples of Scotch whisky ever bottled and a good illustration of the kind of taste Mr Gooding had," he said.

 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-55749561 

 

 

 

 

 

The Most Important Question About the 2020 Election

Unless Democrats knew they were lying for four years when they labeled Trump a fascist, racist, Nazi, dictator, etc., were they not duty-bound to cheat on Biden's behalf?

by Dennis Prager for American Greatness

Since the day after the 2020 presidential election, I have said I am agnostic with regard to whether the election was honestly or dishonestly decided.

The primary reasons for my agnosticism are the usual ones:

The anomalies:

In 132 years, no president has received more votes in his run for reelection and lost. Yet Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016 — and lost.

Trump won 18 of the 19 counties both Democrats and Republicans regard as the “bellwether” counties that virtually always go with the outcome of presidential elections. Yet he lost.

He won four bellwether states—Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and North Carolina. Yet he lost.

Republicans held onto all the House seats they were defending and gained another 13 seats. Yet, Trump lost.

Add the following to the anomalies:

Unprecedented efforts were made in some states to change election laws.

Mostly Democratic states sent out tens of millions of ballots or applications for absentee ballots to people who never requested them.

Voting began in some states six weeks before Election Day.

People have submitted sworn affidavits at great personal cost and with possible perjury charges that they witnessed ballot tampering on election night.

But all these things would matter little if Democrats involved in ballot-counting felt morally compelled to count votes honestly.

So, then, there is one question I have never heard posed that trumps all other considerations: Would moral considerations prevent Democrats from cheating to oust Trump? Or, to put the question in the positive: Would Democrats deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Joe Biden?

The answer to the first question is no: Moral considerations would not prevent decent Democrats from cheating to prevent Trump’s reelection. The answer to the second question is yes: Decent Democrats would deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Biden.

For four years, the media and their party, the Democrats, told us every day that Trump is a fascist, a dictator, a racist, and a white supremacist; that he was an agent of the Russian government—a real-life Manchurian candidate. We were also repeatedly told by the lying media (Trump’s accurate description of the mainstream media) that in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump said there are “very fine” Nazis (see the PragerU video, “The Media’s ‘Very Fine People’ Myth”). Yes, the media told us with a straight face that a man with a Jewish daughter, Jewish son-in-law, and Jewish grandchildren said there are fine Nazis. Biden said he decided to run for president because of this lie.

So, then, here is the question: Why would anyone who sincerely believed Trump is a white-supremacist fascist dictator not cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming or remaining president of the United States?

Let me sharpen this question: Isn’t someone who could prevent a fascist, white-supremacist, Nazi-defending dictator morally obligated to cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming president?

I certainly would. If I were in a position to cheat in order to prevent a fascist from becoming president, why would I not cheat? I think of the most relevant example: the Nazis in the 1932 elections, Germany’s last free election until after World War II. Though the Nazi Party did not receive a majority of votes, the Nazis held the most seats in the Reichstag, and the head of the party, Adolf Hitler, was named chancellor of Germany. If I were in a position to have prevented the Nazis from coming to power by cheating in the vote count, wouldn’t I have been morally obligated to do so—and therefore done so? The answer is obvious.

To repeat, I have never said Biden did not win the election. And even if there was considerable fraud, that doesn’t mean the election result would have been different.

But there are consequences to beliefs. Unless Democrats knew they were lying for four years when they labeled Trump a fascist, racist, Nazi, dictator, etc., were they not duty-bound to cheat on Biden’s behalf? So, then, when you have circumstantial evidence (not proof), combined with opportunity, desire, motive and, most important, no moral argument against cheating and a strong moral argument for cheating, it isn’t a “lie,” and it isn’t a crackpot conspiracy theory, to wonder about the integrity of America’s 2020 presidential election.

 

Article by Patrice Lewis in World Net Daily

 

Open letter to President Trump

Patrice Lewis tells '45' he did 'something no politician has ever done'

At various times over the last four years, I've wished I could communicate directly with President Trump to express my gratitude. Then it occurred to me: I have this column as a platform. While I have no hope he will actually see this editorial, I would like to submit an open letter to the president.

Dear President Trump:

We voted for you because you promised not to be a politician. You proved yourself by doing something no politician has ever done: You kept your campaign promises.

When you first took office, you didn't whine that you inherited a sucky economy (which you did). You didn't claim there was nothing you could do to fix it. Instead, you rolled up your sleeves – and fixed it. Tens of millions of Americans found jobs that sustained their dignity. The economy roared. Did the left give you credit for that? Of course not.

You had an unbelievably steep learning curve for this job. Most presidential candidates aren't businessmen; they're politicians to the bone, with inept "service" careers spanning decades. They're used to the D.C. swamp and how to navigate through it … or rather, how to sink into it.

But you were thrown into the deep end of the pool and had to learn to swim in a hurry. And you did. In doing so, you discovered just how deep and vicious that swamp is, and how difficult it was to drain it. The fact that you accomplished such a staggering amount while fighting a 95% negative coverage from the fake news media is a testament to your strength, intelligence and patriotism.

From the very beginning, the left (Big Tech, Hollywood, academia, the mainstream media, the Democratic Party) ganged up against you with a viciousness never before seen in American history. They were relentless, unmerciful and unabating in their attacks. Attempts to impeach you happened even before you took office. You put the needs and will of the American people ahead of the desires and greed of the elite – and for that, they hated you.

Through it all, you handled things with a brilliant feint the left fell for over and over. While you whipped them into a frothing, panting frenzy with bombastic arrogance and infuriating tweets, behind the scenes you quietly dismantled onerous regulations, restored the economy, secured our borders, negotiated with world leaders, neutralized hostile nations, made us energy independent and appointed constitutional-minded judges.

You refused to turn the IRS into a government instrument of persecution against your political foes. You scoffed at political correctness, and instead focused on constitutional correctness. You proved we are not a country of racists, but a nation of opportunity for everyone. Under one common banner – patriotism – you united an unbelievable variety of citizens. People of all races, colors, creeds, professions, sexual orientation, faiths and walks of life came together to celebrate America. No one in high office has ever, ever done that.

You brokered peace in war-torn regions. You didn't send in troops to settle international disputes. You didn't get us into any long-term unwinnable wars. As a mom whose daughter is serving in the military, that alone fills me with profound gratitude.

While staying strictly within the bounds of the Constitution, you racked up a list of accomplishments that eclipsed the accomplishments of any past president by a long shot. This list is so massive that it defies belief. The media cover-up of those accomplishments is similarly massive, and it similarly defies belief. The media spent four years carefully excising the news to omit any positive references and make sure you never, ever got the credit you deserve for the thousands of acts you performed.

But despite all the lies told about you, the American people noticed your results. Oh yes, we noticed. We noticed with gratitude, appreciation, and a deep DEEP respect for all the bulls**t you put up with on our behalf. You literally gave a voice to the voiceless and forgotten people living in Flyover Country, those of us who have been ignored and ridiculed for decades by the Beltway elites, those of us mocked by every leftist in Hollywood and by every school and university laboring to stamp out any conservative spark. We noticed. In gratitude, we flocked to your rallies; and when you weren't available for personal appearances, we made our own rallies by car, boat and even Amish buggies.

You showed us an exciting possibility: what happens when a president actually follows the Constitution. For one dazzling term, you showed us the thrilling potential of what could happen when America was treated as a business with a nation of shareholders instead of a kingdom with serfs. You also showed us a dismal reality: how abhorrent the Constitution is to those who are sworn to uphold it.

If you did nothing else, you exposed the left for what it truly is. You exposed the corrupt media, the agenda of public education, the shallowness of Hollywood, the arrogance of bureaucrats and the utter depravity of the swamp. And We the People noticed.

You did not use the office of the presidency for personal enrichment. Unlike other long-term politicians (Bidens, Clintons, Pelosi, etc), you did not become wealthy at taxpayer expense. Quite the opposite; not only did you donate your entire salary, but you sacrificed your personal wealth, your business ventures and your reputation for the good of the nation. What other politician has left public service poorer than when he entered it?

You gave back America to Americans. For the first time in decades, we were permitted to be patriotic and express our love of country. We could salute the flag. We could sing the national anthem. We could gather by the tens of thousands to celebrate … well, being American.

You spent four years emphasizing the positive: telling us how great we are, how strong America's potential is, and how we can all work together to strengthen the economy and sow peace in the world. And yet we're supposed to believe Joe Biden's "dark winter" message resonated so strongly with voters that he won the election fair and square?

You showed us the enemy we are fighting – the enemy within. You revealed the evil that is taking away our children and turning them into radicals. You stripped the mask off Big Tech and their desire to silence half the nation. You exposed the ugliness of political insiders who happily sacrifice the rule of law to line their own pockets.

In short, you have been the best president this nation has known in decades, perhaps centuries. We tend to laud our Founding Fathers for pledging their "lives, fortune and sacred honor" for America. You, sir, have done the same thing – literally the same thing.

Please, Mr. Trump, stay safe. I fear for your security. These people are desperate – and evil.

 Signed,
A Grateful American

https://www.wnd.com/2021/01/open-letter-president-trump/ 

 

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Article by Mary Garmon in The American Thinker

 

What Is the Hill for Trump Voters to Die On?

The far-left Democrats in charge of our government are the true extremists who pose the greatest threat to our nation, not Trump voters.  Our side has the facts, the truth, and the moral high ground, and we are not handing over our freedom.

The Biden/Harris edicts last week include weaponizing government against an undefined group of "right-wing extremists" along with a sweeping abortion law that will solidify their financial power base, expand censorship, and exert extreme control over every aspect of American's lives.  In tandem, these pronouncements are death sentences for the nation.

It is no coincidence these poisonous moves were made on the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the most divisive, anti-American, anti-constitutional sham foisted on the American public since the Dred Scott decision..  Along with Doe v. Bolton, the framework was set for a weaponized government against its governed, starting with the voiceless and then moving on to the rest of us.

The irony is, the radical abortion ideology espoused by Biden/Harris/Obama is extreme relative even to Roe v. Wade, yet it's off most Americans' radar.  It is horrifying.

Refusing to oppose their radical death manifesto is the greatest mistake of the GOP, and disenfranchised Trump voters need to pay attention if they are to unite beyond their righteous anger over election malfeasance.

Abortion is not a mere social issue.  It is the greatest defining moral question facing Americans since slavery.  It is the one point on which most Americans would agree if they were given clear facts, and it illustrates brilliantly why the country cannot survive with only one political party.

The Republican platform states an affirmation of the sanctity of human life and its God-given freedoms and promises to protect it.  The Democrat platform promises unlimited access to abortion.

One is based on our founding principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The other is not.

Evidence shows that Planned Parenthood is a racist abortion industry functioning as a financial arm of government, giving rich returns to those who vote to fund it.  Perhaps it's the same also for those who pay lip service only to defunding it.

Planned Parenthood was founded by racist eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who called blacks and immigrants "human weeds."  Sanger would be pleased to know that more black babies in New York City are killed than are born today.  She has in fact done more to decimate the black community than slavery could have ever dreamed possible.

Consider the fact that the population of black citizens in 1880 was 6 million, increasing to 18 million by 1960.  Compare this to 20 million black babies aborted since Roe.  These brief human lives leave a silent vacuum of untold millions who might have descended from them.  The Epoch Times quotes a Radiance Foundation estimate that "if this trend continues it will be irreversible by the year 2050."

This is a tragedy for the entire nation and a good reason to insist that all lives matter.

Two American medical studies published in the latter part of 2020 show further savage effects of unfettered abortion.  One, published by the University of Pittsburgh on humanized rodent models, grafted second-trimester aborted babies' scalps and back flesh onto rats and mice in order to study the human immune system.  Photos show images of dark, fine human baby hair growing in stark contrast to the short white hair of the lab rat.  This study was funded by the National Institutes for Health and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, the same branch collaborating with Moderna on the COVID-19 vaccine.

Another study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, studied racial differences in fetal exposure to flame retardants.  In four studies of 249 women scheduled for second-trimester abortions, permission was obtained from the mothers to draw their blood, use their placentas, and dissect the livers of their aborted babies to be studied by the University of California and the California Environmental Protection Agency.  This study was funded by the EPA.

These studies are only some among many using human remains collected from abortions, and they rival any of the experiments performed by the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

One could argue in both cases that practical use was being made of human victims who were destined for legal death anyway, but this is not the argument a civilized society makes.

In defense of such practices, Kamala Harris had David Daleiden's home raided in California in 2016 while she was attorney general of California.  Daleiden exposed Planned Parenthood's trafficking organs and brains of aborted babies, and he is still fighting five lawsuits because of it.  His undercover videos, which can only be described as horrific, were viewed by Congress in 2015 in a push to defund Planned Parenthood of its tax dollars.  Nothing but lip service was paid to the effort except by Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, who were willing to leverage a government shutdown over it.

Instead, Mitch McConnell shut them down with the pallid statement "this is another issue that awaits a new president with hopefully a different view toward Planned Parenthood."

Enter Donald Trump.

He defunded Planned Parenthood squarely from the Republican platform, affirming the sanctity of life.  He was the first president in American history to attend the March for Life.  He appointed three pro-life judges to the Supreme Court.

He requested an investigation into Planned Parenthood's potential violations of HIPAA that the Office of General Counsel never answered.  He proclaimed January 18, 2021 National Sanctity of Human Life Day, stating that "every human life is a gift to the world."  And finally, he opposed the selling of human remains and asked that this be added to the Republican platform — but was slapped down by moderate Republicans as adversarial.

These are the same moderate Republicans who refuse to absolve taxpayers of reprehensible acts of murder rivaling ancient and barbaric practices of child sacrifice.

And they are the same moderate Republicans who stand with Democrats ridiculing Trump as a traitor while shoving the rest of us toward Communist Chinese practices of forced abortion and human organ–harvesting.

These historically ignorant Democrat radicals and moderate Republicans need to understand something very clearly.

Our founding principles affirm that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Our founding fathers were not perfect men, but they were grounded in these perfect truths when they wrote our founding documents.  Abraham Lincoln proved (in his Cooper Union Address) that almost every single one of them opposed slavery on principle as a moral wrong and intended it to end, and it did.

Donald Trump is not a perfect man, either.  But he stood on the same founding principles that freed the slaves to protect innocent human life, and this is why he will be remembered as the most life-affirming president in American history.

The rabid backlash by a radical government to silence Trump and his supporters proves that a government weaponized against innocent babies will eventually weaponize against all of its citizens.

It appears that the thousands of peaceful Americans who desire to breathe the fresh air of liberty are the real threat to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  These Americans love their friends and family and have a long memory for betrayal, and they are not willing to hand over their young to be sacrificed on the altar of social progress.

The radical left Democrats and moderate Republicans have shown by word and deed what they hold most dear and sacred.  It is time for Trump voters to do the same.

: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/what_is_the_hill_for_trump_voters_to_die_on.html#ixzz6l2aWAo9u

 

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The GameStop Saga Isn’t About Finance, It’s Part Of The Ongoing War Between Elites And Populists

The rules here are simple: Heads Wall Street wins, tails you lose.

by Sean Davis for The Federalist

For those who haven’t heard, there’s a bit of a brouhaha brewing with the video game retailer GameStop, which is publicly traded. Much of Wall Street soured on the company, believing it to be the next Blockbuster or Radio Shack: a dinosaur from a bygone era that has no hope of succeeding in the increasingly internet-run future. As a result, a major Wall Street hedge fund worth billions decided to make a bet that the company’s already low stock price would just keep going lower.

The traditional way to make money in stocks was to find a company that was worth more than what its stock price indicated, purchase the stock at a bargain, and then make your money either through the company’s distribution of its profits back to its equity owners or the appreciation of its stock price. Buy low, sell high. But you can also make money betting on a company to eventually circle the toilet. This is called shorting. 

To make money off a company that’s not making any, you “short” its stock by borrowing a share from an existing owner, immediately selling it and getting the cash proceeds from the sale, and then buying back the stock when its price dips and returning the share to the original owner. It sounds simple enough, but it’s also extremely risky.

Because you’re borrowing an asset, you have to pay interest on that debt, and over time that can get increasingly expensive. Even if the stock drops like you expected, those carrying costs can destroy any profit margin you thought you’d earn. And if the stock price goes up, you could be facing financial ruin. That’s because when you short a stock, your losses are potentially unlimited.

Think about it this way: If you buy a stock for $25, the most you could possibly lose if the entire investment went belly up and the price fell to $0 is $25, the price you paid for the stock. On the flip side, your gains are potentially unlimited, because who knows how high the stock price could go.

Shorted stocks are the exact opposite. If you short a stock at $50 — you borrow the stock, and immediately sell it at the current price of $50 — the most you’ll earn is $50. When the stock approaches $0, you’ll buy it for pennies, return the share back to the investor from whom you borrowed it, and the difference is your profit. 

However, if the stock price goes up, so do your losses. If it goes to $100, you have to buy it at $100 in order to return it to its rightful owner. But what if it goes to $1,000, or $10,000? Your losses could be infinite. The same goes for the various baskets of options and stock derivatives that can be used to mimic the payouts of stock shorts.

This brings us back to GameStop. A major hedge fund had a massive, and very public, short position on GameStop. Enter Reddit. A bunch of Redditors who followed the stock market realized that this billion-dollar hedge fund had a problem on its hand: Due to a combination of factors, GameStop somehow ended up with more short positions than outstanding shares.

The Redditors realized they could pull off what’s known as a “short squeeze”: If they started buying up GameStop stock and refusing to sell it, they could crush the hedge fund as its short positions came due, potentially even driving it into bankruptcy, all while profiting in the market by purchasing a stock that was once in the single digits and watching it approach $50 and then $100 and $200 and even $300.

At one point, it was estimated that the losses accumulated by GameStop short-sellers approached $5 billion. Melvin Capital, the now-notorious hedge fund with the huge GameStop short position, eventually required an infusion of $2.75 billion in cash from an even larger hedge fund to cover its possession and remain solvent. 

And that’s when the Wall Street empire struck back. Suddenly, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, which purports to be a Wall Street regulator but instead operates as little more than a Wall and Broad soothsayer to a public skeptical of Wall Street’s power, weighed in and intimated that it might investigate or even shut down the trading of GameStop stock to prevent the price from getting even higher.

Then the Wall Street-backed trading apps and the Wall Street brokerages joined in, announcing they would no longer allow their users and retail investors to buy GameStop stock. The result? When you can no longer buy a stock, its price can only go in one direction: down.

The whole saga has spawned a mini-industry of commentary on trading, markets, Wall Street, hedge funds, regulation, efficient markets theory, and who knows what else. Hedge funds are bad! No, hedge funds are good! Markets are efficient vehicles for asset price discovery! No, we need strict regulation to prevent mob-incited runs on banks!

They all miss the point. What’s happening right now has nothing to do with hedge funds or free markets or pricing theory or any of that. What’s happening right now is another front in the major war taking place in institutions and countries across the world: It’s the elite versus the populists. 

Wall Street has a long, storied history of viciously crushing short-sellers. It’s something of a local pastime. Just ask David Einhorn, who wrote an entire book on the industry’s efforts to destroy him for the crime of shorting the stock of a bank that was covering up the fact that a huge chunk of its loans were garbage and would never be paid back. The GameStop saga isn’t about the benefits, or evils, of short-sellers.

The real story is how “retail investors” — the industry term for regular people who day trade now and then or have a small brokerage account for retirement or to buy stocks every now and again for fun — figured out how to take down a financial leviathan. It’s not that Wall Street dislikes retail investors, it’s that Wall Street views them as little more than commission factories for the big brokerage houses.

Those rubes don’t know anything. They’re not sophisticated. They don’t have the credentials or pedigrees of the geniuses who simultaneously destroyed the housing market and economy in 2008. And they certainly don’t have the power to move markets.

It’s Wall Street’s job to move markets. It’s Wall Street’s job to tell people which stocks and bonds to buy, which conveniently just happen to be the same assets that the mega-banks are desperate to get off their balance sheets.

A bunch of trash, mortgage-backed securities based on mortgages that will clearly never get paid back? Just put them all in the same garbage bag, claim they couldn’t all possibly start to rot at once, and then demand that the ratings agencies whose salaries you pay stamp them not as trash, but as pure gold. Then, when magically all those bags of garbage start to stink to high heaven, why, then it’s time to demand that the federal government — funded by those retail investor rubes who will probably lose their jobs and homes and savings because of those bags of Wall Street’s garbage — bail every last one of them out.

See, retail investors don’t move markets. Until they do. Which, in the case of the Redditors bidding up GameStop stock, they did. And that cannot be tolerated. The whole GameStop saga isn’t about finance or politics. It’s David vs. Goliath, the have-nots vs. the haves, the underdog vs. the heavy favorite with the best talent and training and equipment money can buy. It is a perfect microcosm of the war between the populists and the elites, the individuals vs. the institutions, the people vs. the powerful.

A bunch of internet randos found a way to take financial advantage of a company that had backed itself into a corner. They banded together, executed the strategy, and made bank. They used the exact same rules and systems that Wall Street has used for decades to screw individual investors out of their money.

That was the Redditors’ real crime. Because that’s not allowed. You are not allowed to use the same set of rules for your own advantage.

The rules here are simple: Heads Wall Street wins, tails you lose. The institutions set the rules, not you. The elite, not the populace, will determine what is allowed and what isn’t.

Which is why this isn’t going to stop with GameStop. It’s going to replicate itself within and toward every major institution of American, and global, life from here on out, whether it manifests in protests or riots or crazy elections or entire nation-states removing themselves from global super-governments.

Once the animals figure out that the pigs in charge don’t really think all animals are equal, because some animals are so obviously more equal than others, they tend to get restless.

BLM Nominated For New Nobel 'Mostly Peaceful' Prize

Babylon Bee🐝

STOCKHOLM—The Nobel Committee has announced they have nominated Black Lives Matter for the brand new Nobel "Mostly Peaceful" Prize for its hard work bringing attention to racism by burning down cities around the world. 

"No one has done more to contribute to the cause of 'mostly peace' than Black Lives Matter," said Norwegian MP Petter Eide. "They brought attention to racism, and they did it while mostly not being criminal terrorists!" MP Eide then demanded the interviewer raise his fist while shouting "Black Lives Matter" before knocking him over with a brick.

Experts are in universal agreement that this BLM is highly deserving of this new Nobel Prize category. 

BLM thanked the committee for the honor and then condemned them for not doing nearly enough. They then marched on Stockholm and burned the city to the ground in a fiery but mostly peaceful demonstration. 

 

Article by Chris Boland in The American Thinker

 

A Blackout In Which We Cancel The Culture

They say a fish is unaware of water. Analogously, we are unaware of the environment in which we live our lives. Insofar as we do consider our environment, it is usually in terms of the physical world; the air we breathe, the water we drink, the climate surrounding us. These are important things that deserve our intention, but we should not overlook a less tangible, but far more important environmental concern -- our culture.

The average American spends more than half his waking hours looking at a screen, a computer, television, tablet, or the ubiquitous smartphone. A certain percentage of this is productive, work-related usage such as spreadsheets, word programs, and the like, but an enormous block of time is consumed by our need to be stimulated and entertained. What is often overlooked is that the stimulation and entertainment we consume changes us, and it changes the way we experience our lives.

Over the last few years, I have participated in a Catholic men’s program titled “Exodus 90” that observes a challenging regimen of asceticism, including cold showers, 60 minutes of prayer and meditation daily, dietary restrictions, rigorous exercise, and fasting. The most powerful tool, and the most difficult to observe, however, is the “blackout.” Over a period of 90 days, ending on Easter Sunday, there is no television, no radio, no social media, no movies, no pop music, no texting. It’s complete abstinence from contemporary forms of entertainment and stimulation.

To fill the void, which can easily be eight hours per day, participants are asked to appreciate silence or to limit inputs to that which challenges intellectually, philosophically, and theologically. I chose to re-read classics such as Crime and Punishment, discover obscure gems such as The Power and the Glory, or to find new insights into old texts such as The Confessions. While doing mundane labor, which is a significant part of my work, I would listen to lectures and long format discussions featuring such diverse speakers as Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker, and Bishop Robert Baron. 

It is a difficult and trying experience. The pull of popular culture is powerful and relentless, but in the end, after ninety days of the blackout, one is changed in ways that are both subtle and profound. You can see that all entertainment has a didactic value and that everything you consume has an effect. From characters to the storyline, from background music to dialogue, almost everything has meaning. Even the absence of a message means something. Even the most hollow and meaningless entertainment changes our worldview so we see life as hollow and meaningless.

Maybe Marshal McLuhan was right when he wrote “the Medium is the Message”. For example, consider the phrase “the soundtrack of our lives.” We associate this term with the imagined music that ran in the background as we acted out periods of our lives.

We seldom consider how cheap and artificial this reduction is. Instead of remembering our experiences as they truly were, whether it was the thundering of a waterfall as we rounded the bend of a canyon, or the soft and heartbreaking sobbing of a lover who discovers the end has arrived, or the overwhelming silence of a desert mountaintop, we cheapen and destroy the truly meaningful moments by thinking of them in terms of pop entertainment. We have shifted our worldview from the priceless and unique to the artificial and commercial, a life lived as Steven Spielberg would want it, devoid of any telos and true meaning. It’s only entertainment.

There has been much said and written recently about “The Great Reset.” It threatens to be an even larger and more powerful consolidation of power and influence than the Reformation. We can be confident that the tech titans and media moguls who are the engine of this reset are not jeopardizing their own power and influence.

But what if the reset came from us? What if we drove the reset? After all, Marxist structuralism has a fatal flaw because, ultimately, it is culture, not economics, that drives change. Economics influence change, but it is how people live their lives and view the world – that is, culture -- that maintains or changes things.

Concurrent with, and an integral part of the Great Reset, will be the de-platforming of opposing voices and the consolidation of the communication channels. We witness it now with the tech titan’s de-platforming voices on the right, most notably former President Trump, as well as snuffing out competition such as Parler, an alternative social media platform.

There are voices in the opposition who call for constructing an alternative economy complete with social media platforms, news outlets, banking, commerce, educational institutions, professional services, and everything else that has been infected by the woke mob culture. This is not the answer because it does not address the problem. The problem is us. We would still be like the fish, only in different water, unaware.

This brings us back to the blackout. Some people say it takes ninety days to break a bad habit such as, alcoholism, drug abuse, pornography, and all the things that impede us from living our lives as we might wish. The popular culture is the same, although perhaps less apparent. By breaking the cycle, by learning to discriminate between good and bad, by tolerating and, eventually, relishing silence we are changed. We can become a fish who is aware of the water.

To truly change the culture and, subsequently, the political environment, we must become aware, and awareness does not reside on cable news channels, Facebook posts, Twitter feeds, or the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Awareness is not virtual, it's transcendent. Imagine how the culture would change if Hollywood spent hundreds of millions on a superhero or Star Wars movie and could not sell any tickets, if Facebook and Twitter usage dropped by 15-20% if a large portion of cable programming and streaming diminished by half. The changes would be tremendous.

Andrew Breibart is credited with saying that politics is downstream from culture and, while this was observed less succinctly by Jacques Barzun and others long before Breitbart, it overlooks the fact that the culture is downstream from the individual. It is time for a Great Reset, but the reset needs to be on an individual level, a change where we become aware of the water and begin to live our lives and make our choices on the foundation of this awareness. The first step to this awareness is the blackout.

 https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/a_blackout_in_which_we_cancel_the_culture.html#ixzz6l2TRo9m7

 

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