Lew Rockwell Institute

By the time most of you read this column, we will have a new US President. Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated for his second term today at 11:30 AM, Eastern time, and many Americans are hopeful that the disastrous foreign policy of the past four years under Biden will be improved. There is good news and bad news.

First the good news. It is no surprise that Trump’s appointees to foreign policy and national security positions are to the person very hawkish on China. However Trump, as he often does, has defied conventional wisdom on what his China policy might be by not only inviting Chinese leader Xi Jinping to attend the inauguration, but actually picking up the telephone and having a conversation with his Chinese counterpart.

According to a read-out of the call, the two discussed “trade, fentanyl, TikTok, and other subjects” and agreed to remain in regular contact. Winston Churchill is often (inaccurately) credited with the phrase “jaw-jaw is better than war-war,” but nonetheless it is an accurate statement. It is much better to engage even with “adversaries” than to refuse contact and add more sanctions. Those who prefer sanctions over communications are the true isolationists.

On TikTok, the popular application has credited Trump with preventing the Congressional ban from taking effect. If true, it is another good Trump move in favor of our Constitutional free speech guarantees.

Likewise with Russia, media reports suggest that holding a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be among the first things Trump does as President. That is great news for all of humanity, as Biden’s dangerous proxy war in Ukraine and refusal to communicate with the Russian president has brought us to the very edge of a once-unimaginable nuclear exchange. When the end of life on earth is at stake, it is reckless to ignore the possibility of de-escalation.

In the Middle East, incoming President Trump is being credited with securing a ceasefire in Gaza, an achievement the Biden Administration seemed incapable of or uninterested in seriously attempting for the past year. Does Trump deserve all the credit? We don’t know. But we do know that thousands have been needlessly slaughtered while Biden dithered and sent more weapons. The wholesale destruction of Gaza with US bombs and financial support will be Biden’s enduring legacy and a stain on everyone involved.

The bad news is that because of President Trump’s decision to appoint the most hawkish advisors, he will be surrounded by individuals who will constantly encourage him to confront rather than disengage. For example, his special envoy on the Ukraine war has recently boxed Trump in on Iran by declaring a return to the failed “maximum pressure” campaign of his first Administration. The policy failed to achieve the desired results when first implemented and it will fail again if adopted again. Why? Iran has developed far more extensive trade ties outside the influence of the US government, for example among the BRICS countries. It is not possible to isolate Iran as it has been in the past. As with China and others, with Iran it would be far better to jaw-jaw than to war-war. Let’s hope President Trump understands that.

We will no doubt see some disappointments in incoming President Trump’s foreign policy, but there are solid reasons to be cautiously optimistic. Particularly when measured against his predecessor.

The post Can Trump Fix Our Broken Foreign Policy? appeared first on LewRockwell.

If past is prologue, Mr. Trump lacks the acumen to carry out his ambitious agenda. The first problem is management style. In his first term, Mr. Trump was a poor administrator because of his mercurial, polarizing style and a general indifference to facts and the hard work of governance. — Jack Goldsmith, The New York Times

Thus spake one Shawn McCreesh of The New York Times, America’s all-wise, all-knowing font of everlasting rectitude. But to answer his question, why blah blah: Donald Trump is glaring because he means bidness. His bidness is to shift the paradigm on the mendaciously sanctimonious managerial class of the USA, of which The New York Times is the principal mouthpiece. DJT looks stern, does he? All that really tells you is how nervous the Old Gray Lady is. A million or more brains, from sea to shining sea are about to get vacuumed out and redecorated

Readers of The New York Times — in their various C-suites, ivory towers, ateliers, yoga parlors, tasting rooms, bioweapon labs, and other haunts — remain utterly baffled about what is to begin today. No amount of ‘splainin’ seems to suffice. They behold the Golden Golem of Greatness (DJT) doing his dance onstage behind the cop, the Indian chief, and the cowpoke and all they can really see are their own careers going up in smoke (along with vested pensions, reputations, possibly even chattels, marriages, and health).

As I write, long before dawn, “Joe Biden” remains President of the US. You must wonder, as the hours dwindle to noon, what pardon power magic he’s saving for the final minutes of his term, while the whole nation is distracted by the spectacle in the Capitol Rotunda, the moiling dignitaries and celebrities, the solemn arrival of the elect, the snarky palaver of the cable news jockeys, the electric charge of history in the large room. . . .

It is a fact, perhaps missed by some of you, that Rep. James Comer’s House Oversight Committee just last week issued criminal referrals on James Biden (“Joe’s” brother) and First Son Hunter. Wait-a-minute, was not Hunter already pardoned for Gawd-knows how many misdeeds dating back to 2014, and (supposedly) preemptively for any alleged crimes to come ever hereafter? Part B of that may yet have to be adjudicated. A pardon is not intended to be a get-out-of-jail-free card. Anyway, would it be difficult for a federal attorney of average ability to draw a connection between the newly referred crimes of those two and the departing President? Hence, will “Joe Biden” pardon “Joe Biden” at 11:30 this morning?

Not to mention about 1000 other current and former public officials quaking in their Beltway McMansions this frosty morning. This is part and parcel, you understand, of the massive Cleanup in Aisle Four that must happen if the agencies of our federal government can ever be trusted again. For instance, the Department of Justice.

At the end of the workday, Friday, AG Merrick Garland made a triumphal final exit from the building past a throng of cheering and clapping employees, including dozens of federal attorneys who zealously persecuted their fellow citizens under color-of-law for no good reason, or real legal predicate, and ruined many lives and households in the process. Do you suppose they get a free pass on that? And what of the three bears of Lawfare: Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, and Mary McCord, all of them present at the creation of serial affronts against the Constitution (and decency) lo this past decade. Do they just skate? I doubt it, though it might take a while to shine a light on their turpitudes.

Will “Joe Biden” wave his pardon wand over Tony Fauci, Francis Collins, Scott Gottlieb, Deborah Birx, Rochelle Walensky, and dozens of other public health officials who sprung the Covid-19 operation and the deadly vaccinations on the country? Or Ralph Baric, hunkered out of sight in his Carolina lab? You realize, of course, that the orgy of illness and death from that is hardly over. For four years under “JB” the truth has been obfuscated and buried, because none of those characters has really had to answer for anything.

So, today another door opens. The To-Do list for Mr. Trump and his aides-de-camp is dauntingly long, the corrections needed are monumental. You might have even noticed that such corrections are badly needed all over the other countries of Western Civ, and strangely many are already following suit. The WEF-inflected governments of France, Germany, and the UK are already a’wobble, and Justin Trudeau threw in the towel two weeks ago. An Arctic blast could not be more fitting for what will move through the DC Swamp at high noon today. That is, if Mr. Trump manages to survive the hours until his swearing-in. Godspeed Number 47! And everybody else: put your tray tables up! A patch of turbulence ahead!

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

The post Another Door Opens appeared first on LewRockwell.

A fatal bout of runaway instability becomes inevitable when “extraordinary emergency measures” become permanently essential to keep the bubbles from popping.

A funny thing happens as policies intended to fill financial potholes transition from “temporary emergency measures” to “we need to keep doing this to stabilize the status quo”: extremes get more extreme as what were once viewed as extraordinary policy measures required to keep the rickety system from collapsing become the “New Normal.”

Of course the Federal Reserve continues suppressing interest and mortgage rates even after the financial crisis has passed, because if they stopped, the system would revert to crisis and collapse.

I’ve assembled a few charts of extremes becoming more extreme as a consequence of “emergency policies” becoming not just normalized but the keystone of the entire economy. What were desperate expediencies at first are now the lifeblood of the economy: withdraw them and the economy collapses in a heap.

I discussed these extremes in a podcast with Richard Bonugli (26 minutes), with the following charts providing context.

What’s extraordinary is the systemic nature of the current extremes. New heights of precarity are being reached across the entire spectrum of the economy, not just in stock market bubbles but in the concentration of “wealth” in risk-on speculative assets–the very assets most prone to destabilization and reversion to the mean, the statistical dynamic in which outlier metrics eventually return to their starting point.

The causes of this reversion don’t matter; after the fact, pinpointing the cause becomes a popular parlor game, but the reality is systems revert without any specific cause: suppressing instability with extreme policies creates a temporary illusion of stability, but the extreme policies actually increase instability.

Credit-asset bubbles are a manifestation of extremes generating an illusory euphoria of stability while beneath the surface, these extremes are ramping up instability to the point that sudden breakdown / collapse is the only possible outcome.

When the economy becomes dependent on ever more extreme financial trickery to maintain the illusion of stability, a death loop becomes normalized: as instability leaks through the extreme policies, then even more extreme measures are instituted, generally behind the scenes. Obscure methods of expanding liquidity are normalized, bank credit and other mechanisms (repos, etc.) are jacked up, all of which serve the goal of duct-taping the system to appear stable to unknowing eyes.

The problem with this financial fentanyl is that it’s impossible to detect the lethality of the dose until it’s too late. That’s the current situation in American and global markets.

Let’s go through a few of the many extremes flashing red warning signs of systemic precarity.

Read the Whole Article

The post Extremes Become More Extreme, Then Revert to the Mean appeared first on LewRockwell.

In my last column, I wrote about the new Independence Day, Jan. 20. This is when a corrupt and tyrannical administration exits Washington, D.C., for Delaware beaches or unwatchable and dying left-wing cable news shows.

Such a housecleaning is long overdue. Thanks to former (that has a nice ring to it) President Joe Biden, America has 10-15 million new illegal aliens, mostly young men of military age, from virtually every country across the globe.

Biden upped the national debt to over $36 trillion, with annual interest payments on this debt exceeding $1 trillion, more than we spend on defense. Crime is out of control, as exemplified by a New York City subway rider being set on fire and a flight attendant getting her throat slit on the 16th Street Mall in Denver.

We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars securing the borders of Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, and others while leaving our borders open with a large welcome mat.

The government has been weaponized against domestic opposition, ranging from a presidential candidate to nonviolent protestors, school board attendee parents, Latin Mass aficionados, and those challenging the whimsical and fickle COVID “science.”

Inflation has wrecked the finances of middle-class America, making it challenging to put groceries on the family table, pay basic bills, and enjoy anything close to the lifestyle of past generations.

The people spoke several months ago, on Nov. 5, by a commanding margin, asking for another helping of MAGA (Make America Great Again) after four years of MASA (Make America Suck Again). We now have president (that has an even better ring) Donald Trump taking a second bite of the presidential apple.

Trump is no longer a neophyte to Washington, D.C., as he was in 2016. He visited the nation’s capital only 17 times before moving into the White House the first time. As the 45th president, he had an up-close-and-personal view of the deep state, administrative state, ruling class, swamp, blob, or whatever you choose to call the permanent and unaccountable national power structure.

America had a chance to vote based on a head-to-head comparison. Both Trump and Biden/Harris had four years to lead the country, for better or for worse. Trump also had four years off the field, planning his second-term strategy.

He has stood down a special counsel investigation based on fabricated campaign opposition research. He was impeached twice. The media criticized his every word or action for four years.

He picked his cabinet, advisors, and inner circle far more strategically and thoughtfully than eight years ago. Rather than trying to play nice with the GOP establishment and ruling class, he is going scorched earth. He has two, maybe four, depending on how the midterm elections go, years to deliver a fatal blow to the corrupt administrative state.

Trump needed his four-year walk in the wilderness to rethink, regroup, and prepare himself for battle. If he won reelection in 2020, his second term would be bogged down with treacherous and disloyal advisors and lawfare from both Republicans and Democrats, threatening to ruin or bankrupt Trump, his family, and his supporters.

Democrats and the ruling class will rue the day they pilfered the 2020 election. Instead of a weakened lame-duck President Trump serving his second term, with the lawfare chihuahuas constantly nipping at his ankles, they had the failed Biden presidency.

Now in 2025, it’s a new and improved Donald Trump, refreshed and ready to release a can of Mar-a-Lago whoop-ass on Washington, D.C.

As Obama adviser David Plouffe threatened, “It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.”

For four years, from 2020 through 2024, they certainly tried. If the 2024 presidential election turned out differently, Plouffe’s warning would have come true.

Read the Whole Article

The post Has the Storm Arrived? appeared first on LewRockwell.

TikTok is back in the US after a brief shutdown, reportedly because Trump pledged to suspend the Biden administration’s ban. A Gaza ceasefire has also finally emerged due to pressure from Trump after Biden stalled for 15 months, and NBC News is reporting that the Trump administration plans on pressuring the Israeli government throughout negotiations to establish a permanent peace beyond the 42 days scheduled for the first phase of the agreement.

Remember this: it’s not that Trump is good, it’s that Democrats are just that bad. Biden’s completely unconditional facilitation of Israeli atrocities has actually been the exception rather than the norm among US presidents, as Trita Parsi explained in Foreign Policy last April. From what we are seeing so far, Trump is just returning things to their horrible standard baseline.

Trump will go on to do many evil things as president, just as he did during his first term, but none of this will reverse the fact that Biden just spent four years advancing genocide, nuclear brinkmanship and authoritarianism. The Democratic Party plays just as crucial a role in promoting the tyranny and abuse of the US empire as the Republican Party does, and it is nonsensical to think of either of them as a lesser evil. The empire itself must end.

❖

Do yourself a favor and spare yourself the indignity of thinking the ceasefire and suspending the TikTok ban indicate that Trump is going to be a good president. You don’t get to become the US president unless the powers that be trust you to inflict the evils necessary for running the empire.

The system does not work. You cannot vote your way out of the tyranny of the empire, and the president is not going to save you. Trump will do many evil things as president, because that’s what US presidents do.

Don’t believe me? Then watch and pay attention. And learn the lessons you failed to learn last time.

❖

It’s possible that Trump’s term will constitute another swing from Bush-level depravity to Obama-level depravity.

It isn’t normal for the US empire to be as openly depraved as it has been in Gaza. Normally its evils are much more well-disguised, because it is in the empire’s interests to preserve its image in the eyes of the western public. You only see the really in-your-face acts of monstrosity when a coalition of forces within the swamp are able to seize on a rare opportunity to shove them through, as we saw in the wake of 9/11 and again in the wake of October 7.

The rest of the time, the empire likes to be a lot subtler about its abuses, like it was during the Obama administration and the first Trump administration. Starvation sanctions. Staging coups. Secretly arming proxy forces. Drone assassinations. Covert ops. It prefers these means over the Hulk Smash ground invasions like we saw during George W Bush’s first term, and the overt genocidal atrocities like we saw during Biden’s.

The Zionists, war profiteers and empire managers seized on the rare opportunity presented by October 7 combined with a senile lifelong Zionist in the White House to push through agendas in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon that they had wanted to push through for years, but they greatly damaged the empire’s propaganda interests in the process. We can expect the empire to try to move its ugliness out of the spotlight as swiftly as possible in the coming years and attempt to restore its false public image as a force of good in the world, while continuing to advance its psychopathic agendas in sneakier ways.

❖

Young Americans can take the same lessons from the TikTok ban that they’ve taken from Gaza: that they live in a tyrannical dystopia, and that the Democratic Party is not their friend.

❖

To be clear, when you hear people saying that US lawmakers voted to ban TikTok in order to shut down criticism of Israel among young people, it’s not some antisemitic conspiracy theory; they have openly admitted that this was in fact what they were doing. Legislators like Chris Murphy, Mitt Romney, Mike Gallagher and Mike Lawler are all on record saying they supported the ban because of the prevalence of pro-Palestinian content on the platform.

❖

One of the most politically interesting developments in recent days has been Americans flocking to the Chinese app Red Note in response to the looming TikTok ban and interacting with people in China for the first time in their lives with the help of translation technology.

If you had asked me last month what country I wish ordinary Americans would start communicating with at mass scale, I would have said China without a moment’s hesitation. If this keeps up it’s going to cause some real problems for the empire propagandists down the track.

______________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post It’s Not That Trump Is Good, It’s That Biden Was Just That Bad appeared first on LewRockwell.

I no longer read today’s shysters, those grubby-fingered leeches called journalists, mostly because they’re as far removed from fairness and the truth as I am from LGBQTVMGM. The fact that Trump has won has not reminded them of their primary duty, which is to inform, not to convert. Most of them are envious creatures who erroneously believe in their moral superiority and their left-wing ideology, which is par for the course. One such jerk, writing in The New York Review of Books after November 7, announced the following: “There will be mass round ups and treason trials….” In other words, Stalin- and Hitler-like methods in the Land of the Free. The author of such rubbish is one Fintan O’Toole, probably the kind of wokester who thinks opening a door is unpaid labor.

Never mind. There are a few who have remained old-fashioned and tell it like they see it, not how they wish it were. One who comes to mind offhand has a tongue twister for a Christian name, Srdja Trifkovic. Basically he’s an academic, not a hack, as I call journalists.

Here’s Srdja on Metternich: “His impact on European affairs during the first two decades of the 19th century was arguably second only to Napoleon.” He then goes on to explain how the great Rhinelander became the architect of political balance following the Congress of Vienna in 1815. “By restoring the European balance of power, his diplomatic finesse helped create the conditions for 99 years of relative peace and unprecedented flourishing within the Old Continent.”

“We could use a few Metternichs these days.”

Hear, hear! Ninety-nine years of peace. We could use a few Metternichs these days. Instead we have midgets: Macron instead of Talleyrand, Scholz instead of Hardenberg, and the biggest joke of them all, Lammi instead of Castlereagh. Metternich, like most great men, was a swinger. He was happily married but was always in love with various grand ladies and mistresses. Wilhelmina, Duchess of Sagan, was his favorite, but she fell in love and ran off with the best-looking young Austrian nobleman, Frederick von Windischgraetz. Freddy had challenged Tsar Alexander to a duel over the Russian’s compliments to Wilhelmina, and the tsar was forced to make a public apology to the Austrian.

“I am no longer good for anything, I have lived in the space of two years through more torment, pain and sorrow than would be found in 20 years of lives lived by the majority of humans,” wrote Metternich to Wilhelmina, but to no avail. Such was Metternich’s torment over the duchess that both his wife and Talleyrand advised him to perk up and stop feeling sorry for himself.

He did just that. He spent a night with the fabulously beautiful Russian princess Katya Bagration, widow of the hero of Borodino, General Prince Bagration. The aged general had taken a cannon shot that partly took his leg off and was bleeding heavily. Urged by his staff to dismount and be attended to, he replied in the negative: “If they see me get off they’ll run.” His troops held fast, and the old general bled to death. His widow received the honors and was invited to Vienna for the congress by her then lover Tsar Alexander (whose Tsarina wife was also in the throes of love with the Polish prince Adam Czartoryski).

In the late morning after his tryst with Katya, Metternich was informed that he had missed an opportunity to settle an important border dispute with the Prussians. That is when he gave one of the loveliest responses where hanky-panky is concerned: “Ah, but she was worth it.” Tana and Milana Windishgraetz, direct descendants of Freddy’s, are great friends of mine and are both married to grand Italian and German princes. Adam Czartoryski’s direct descendant, also called Adam, was a contemporary of mine, and I begged him time and again when we were young to hit and run but not fall desperately in love each time. (He never listened and is now dead.) But I repeat: Between all the fooling around, the drinking, the dancing, and the debauch, Metternich, Castlereagh, Alexander, Talleyrand, and Humbold managed to seal a deal that kept the peace for 99 years in Europe. Perhaps that’s what’s missing from today’s diplomatic missions: more debauch.

Read the Whole Article

The post Diplomacy of Debauchery appeared first on LewRockwell.

I have no credit card debt and no car payment and my credit score is in the 800s.  I got a letter from Macy’s telling me that my old Macy’s credit card that I haven’t used in years will have its interest rate increased from 22% to 30%.  This is Macy’s response to Amazon.

The post No Wonder Macy’s is Going Out of Business appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Brandon/Obama/Dubya/Clinton Clown Show did not clap once or stand up like everyone else in the room did when President Trump announced that he intended to restore freedom of speech in America during his second inaugural address.  I loved how he kept his back turned to all four stooges for the entire speech.  (The only time senile old Brandon smiled was when Carrie Underwood entered the room and stood inches in front of him to sing God Bless America).

The post The Four Stooges Remained Silent appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

YouTube

The post Presidential Medal of Honor recipient George Soros appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes TMTF:

Hello Lew,

The inauguration gets more like church every year. Now, we have hymns to the sacred state.

Go back and watch Reagan’s inauguration. He takes the oath, makes his speech, and leaves.

The post The inauguration appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

RT News

The post Joe Biden issues last minute family pardon appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Biden’s Last Insult To America appeared first on LewRockwell.

. . . of the fact that an American president would have to issue an executive order that from henceforth a man will be defined as a man and a woman will be defined as a woman as President Trump is about to do today?

The post What Would Thomas Jefferson Think . . . appeared first on LewRockwell.

Comments open on Rumble

The post Michael Shellenberger Breaks Down the California Fires appeared first on LewRockwell.

Recently, I discovered that Pluto TV has all the episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. You have Pluto if you have a smart TV. So that’s become my new nightly routine, watching them until the warmth and nostalgia eventually breaks down my chronic insomnia. It was a remarkably well done show, starring really talented people.

Ozzie Nelson was a former popular big band leader, as well as a star athlete. He played several instruments, including the banjo. Harriet was the primary vocalist for Ozzie’s band. They had two sons, David and Ricky, who both appeared on the show as themselves. It was a personal look into their private lives, with some scripts taken from real life events. David projected kindness, and was the big brother anyone would want. Even better than Wally Cleaver. Ricky, though, was the star of the family, and the television series. In the early episodes, he was featured playing the drums. Before long, Ozzie- who was in full control of their careers, realized that he had the first modern teen idol on his hands. Sinatra, Elvis, didn’t appeal primarily to teenage girls. Ricky Nelson did. He paved the way for Fabian, and Frankie Avalon, Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, the Jonas Brothers. But Ricky was by far the most talented of them all.

Ozzie began inserting performances by his youngest son, with his trademark “Rick” guitar, singing his latest number at the end of nearly every episode. It was a brilliant marketing strategy, and helped Ricky to sell millions of records. Ricky’s band was renowned, especially lead guitarist James Burton, who is still alive and playing music. Keith Richards, among others, was said to be a huge fan of Ricky’s music, and especially loved the guitar work of Burton. The shows are a blend of long antiquated family values and humor, and music that holds up really well. Many of the scripts were written by Ozzie’s brother Don Nelson, so this was really a family affair. When David married actress June Blair, she was cast as his wife on the show. Shortly after that, Rick married Kristin Harmon, and she also became his onscreen wife.

Ricky Nelson, who started referring to himself as the more mature sounding “Rick” at about this time, was one of my early favorites. My sister gave me his Greatest Hits LP for my seventh birthday. I was already rocking in second grade. My first two 45s, at that same birthday, were Ricky Nelson’s “It’s up to You” and Lou Christie’s “Two Faces Have I.” I can’t remember if my sister or my cousin gave them to me. At any rate, my brother Ricky loved Ricky Nelson, too, and started wanting people to call him “Rick” at about the same time the youngest Nelson did. Not surprisingly, my brother’s family disrespected him enough to ignore his request. He would remain Ricky to all of us. I would keep buying Ricky Nelson records, but it wasn’t long before the Beatles and the Beach Boys took over, and most of my meager allowance went to their latest hit, whenever I bought records. The Nelsons were a good looking family, but Ricky was Cary Grant-level handsome. And I say that as non-gayly as possible.

Was this early sitcom, which began airing in 1952, as funny as The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, or Green Acres? No, of course not. But it was heartwarming, and the messages it conveyed were not heavy handed, unlike today’s “Woke” proselytizing. I haven’t seen a show yet where any of the family really engaged in much of an argument. No yelling. And the boys, even when they were busy with their college fraternity, and then married and on their own, literally told their parents everything that was going on in their lives. Ozzie & Harriet knew who they were dating, the names of all their friends, and were there to pitch in and help with any little bump in the road. There was not the slightest bit of dysfunction displayed to the audience. They all loved and trusted each other. Now, I know that their incredible closeness probably didn’t mirror that of many families of that era. But if feels good to watch.

Both Ozzie and the boys were great athletes. Ricky and David became accomplished trapeze artists, and this was sometimes incorporated into the show as well. Ozzie was still playing volleyball regularly and in seemingly wonderful shape when he was stricken with cancer and died at only 69. Ricky, of course, died at only forty five in what seems to have been a very suspicious plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1985. Like his father, Ricky had a great affection for ice cream, milk, and hamburgers. It’s hard to believe that drug use had anything to do with his untimely death. Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band is now looked at with respect by music critics, and he is often given credit for inventing the country/rock blend that the Eagles took to new heights. I communicated some with his actress daughter Tracy, before she deleted me from Facebook, almost certainly because of my forbidden views on COVID.

It was a long and winding road from Ozzie & Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, and Father Knows Best to “reality” family shows like The Osbournes, Jersey Shore, or The Kardashians. While Rick Nelson and his family will never be forgotten, the likes of Snooki and “The Situation” already bring blank stares in polite society. The messages from these shows, and the “sitcom” Modern Family, are the inverse to those coming from Ozzie & Harriet scripts. While not many families in the 1950s were as seemingly perfect as the Nelsons, how many reflect the gay/transgender friendly “warmth” of Modern Family? While perhaps unrealistic affection was on display in Ozzie & Harriet, monstrous dysfunction was promoted and celebrated as “entertainment” in The Osbournes, starring the family of former Black Sabbath front man Ozzie Osbourne, whose lifetime of drug abuse left him largely incoherent. But he was no Cousin It.

But The Kardashians show is really the yin to Ozzie & Harriet’s yang. At least Ozzie Osbourne was at one time a rock and roll star. The entire Kardashian clan are a bunch of whining, lazy, narcissistic and talentless modern females. The brother is largely invisible, and we all know too well what happened to husband Bruce Jenner. I suppose mother Kris Jenner might be annoying enough to cause a complete break in sanity. The star of the show is daughter Kim. Or actually Kim’s very large ass. That is really the extent of her “talent.” We only know about Kim’s ass because of a sex tape she did with some Black “star” I’ve never heard of. But then again, I’ve never heard of almost all of these new “celebrities.” Kim rode that “only sleeps with Blacks” to cultural prominence, which will happen when the culture is as anti-White as ours is. Her youngest sisters, one of whom is inexplicably a billionaire, love only Black men, too.

Can we imagine Harriet Hilliard, or Barbara “June Cleaver” Billingsley promoting a sex tape? Even with White 1950s- crew cut types? Yes, Marilyn Monroe had a pretty big ass, herself, but it wasn’t the sole reason for her fame. She was a captivating presence onscreen, and could sing as well. All the “sex symbols” of the era, like Jayne Mansfield, had some acting ability. Kim Kardashian has no acting or musical ability at all. She’s really good at that resting bitch face thing, which all female celebrities must master in America 2.0. And she has the world’s most famous transsexual for a stepfather, and only wants Black men. Plus her big ass is always rear and center. So how could she not be famous? Her mother Kris I think has gone Black as well, without even a big ass. If only the Nelsons were alive. Imagine the possibilities of The Nelsons meet the Kardashians.

Read the Whole Article

The post From Ozzie & Harriet to the Kardashians appeared first on LewRockwell.

In today’s U.S., people are actually not allowed to avoid punishment if they publicly express the opinion that America’s continuing to donate the weapons and satellite intelligence that Israeli troops are using to exterminate the Gazans is unacceptable to them.

On January 16th, Caitlin Johnstone aptly headlined “None Of These War Criminals Will Face Justice While The US Empire Exists”, and opened with:

Two journalists were ejected from a State Department press conference on Thursday for asking inconvenient questions about Gaza. One of them, Sam Husseini, was physically carried out by security while demanding to know why Secretary of State Antony Blinken is not in The Hague for his war crimes.

The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal was also made to leave while asking Blinken why he allowed hundreds of journalists to be murdered in Gaza, telling State Department spokesman Matt Miller that he “smirked through a genocide.”

Husseini was then forcibly removed for asking questions about Gaza, and about Israel’s nuclear program and Hannibal directive. Blinken told Husseini to “respect the process,” to which Husseini replied, “Respect the process? Respect the process? While everybody from Amnesty International to the ICJ says Israel’s doing genocide and extermination, and you’re telling me to respect the process? Criminal! Why aren’t you in the Hague?”

The western political-media class is expressing outrage over the incident, not because of journalists being manhandled for asking critical questions of their government, but because those journalists asked critical questions. …

Just the day before, the January 15th edition of The Chris Hedges Report, “America’s Academic Gulag (w/ MIT Student Activists) | The Chris Hedges Report”, showed the great international war reporter Hedges interviewing two young rising stars and Ph.D. students at America’s leading STEM University, MIT, who are being driven out, and their scholarships and grant funding cancelled, simply because they consider genocide to be unacceptable. One, named Prahlad Iyengar, had been a National Science Foundation Fellow studying for his Ph.D. in the intersection of quantum information, quantum sensing, and machine learning; and the other, who is Richard Solomon, had been studying for his Ph.D in the political economy of trade and science, and who had previously been a Vice Consul and Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department.

That 58-minute video starts out with an excellent four-minute introduction by Hedges, and then proceeds to his interviewing each of these two young men regarding the circumstances that had led up to his virtually inevitable expulsion from MIT. Each of these two describes clearly his own activities that had caused him to be now involuntarily seeking employment outside of his intended career-path (because each of the two is now a marked man within that career-path inside the U.S. empire). Each, though in a very different professional field from the other — one of them representing the STEM side, and the other the political-science side — describes a situation that I would characterize as being the incompatibility in today’s United States, between success within the U.S.-and-allied Establishment, versus decency or what might be called “conscience,” so that a stark choice must be made between those two objectives. Holding both of them simultaneously is prohibited by the U.S. Establishment. One may pursue success, or one may pursue being decent, but one cannot pursue both at once, without being punished for doing so.

The U.S. Government and its Establishment — both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party sides of it, and their respective propaganda-agencies including academia, the press, and all the rest — are now so blatantly violating the U.S. Contitution, as to make a mere mockery of it.

In the early 1940s the U.S. Government was against racist-fascist-imperialist-capitalist supremacism, but now it leads the world in racist-fascist-imperialist-capitalist supremacism. It’s not that the Constitution switched 180 degrees to the opposite end, to oppose the Constitution, it is instead that a heinous Deep State quickly became Established in the Government upon FDR’s 12 April 1945 death and then seeped down into the entire U.S. society to make it what it has now become. The rot in the American Establishment is now total. It is shocking.

This originally appeared on Eric’s Substack.

The post The U.S. Establishment’s Intense Commitment to Exterminating Palestinians appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Wednesday, Peter marked his return to the Peter Schiff Show studio. He tackles the most recent batch of 2025 economic data, highlights inflation signals in commodity prices, and comments on President Biden’s legacy as his term comes to a close. Donald Trump is set to take the reins on Monday, and Peter also analyzes the latest from the president-elect.

To start the show, Peter praises Trump for what appears to be a behind-closed-doors negotiation of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Despite his strengths, Trump is unlikely to solve America’s economic troubles:

You know, I criticize Trump when criticism is due. And believe me, there’s a lot of criticism that is due. And I’m going to be criticizing him later in this podcast. But I do want to get credit for what credit is due. And it’s my feeling that he has a lot to do with this. There will be some successes during the Trump presidency. Unfortunately, economically, there’s going to be a lot of failures. And it’s not necessarily because of what Trump’s going to do. It’s kind of preordained. It’s baked into the cake here.

Turning to President Biden’s farewell speech, Peter reiterates how decisively the American electorate renounced the Biden presidency:

He also talked about his accomplishments in his four years as president, which, of course, you know, he doesn’t really have any accomplishments. These are made up. I mean, the things that he’s bragging about actually undermined the economy during his four years. That’s why the public didn’t vote for four more. … The public didn’t feel that the Biden presidency was a success. They didn’t want four more years of that. They wanted four more years of Trump. And that’s because they thought the economy was better when Trump was president than it was when Biden was president.

When looking at recent economic statistics, Peter is reminded of commodity price action during the 2020 pandemic. If history repeats itself, the economy is in for another year of tough inflation:

If you remember, commodity prices really started to boom in the second half of 2020. I was talking about that on this podcast constantly, how we were going to have a big move up in inflation just looking at commodity prices. That’s when the Fed was not worried about it at all. …Look at commodity prices. They’re a leading indicator. And the big increase that we have in commodity prices in 2024, that’s not going to show up in the CPI until 2025 this year. So CPI was up 2.9% last year. Now we have soaring commodity prices. So what’s the odds that the CPI is going to be up less in 2025 than it was in 2024 before we had this big run up in commodity prices?

With alarming CPI numbers downplayed in the headlines, Peter points out that another important metric– the Empire State Manufacturing Index– plummeted this week, signaling recessionary pressures to go with inflation:

You know, while everybody was celebrating the fake good news about inflation, nobody noticed the Empire State Manufacturing Index, which was another disaster. They were looking for a positive number. They didn’t get one. They were looking for plus 1. They got minus 12.6. I think that’s about a seven-month low in the Empire State Manufacturing Index. Look, as far as I’m concerned, all the data confirms stagflation. 

Peter lambasts Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for understating the role of the Fed in causing inflation in a recent interview. In fact, the Fed monetizing deficit spending was the primary driver of inflation over the last 5 years:

The deficit spending financed by Fed money printing, that was the inflation. So it wasn’t that the deficit spending may have contributed to it. It was it. It was part of it. It takes two to tango. And in fact, Chairman Powell actually asked for these deficits. He told Congress, ‘Run big deficits, spend a bunch of money, I’ll buy the bonds.’ He was encouraging the inflationary fiscal policy during COVID. So it didn’t just have a casual incidental effect. That was it.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post All the Data Confirms Stagflation appeared first on LewRockwell.

Accidents and crime happen, all the time in fact, and generally the American public barely takes notice of the number of such events that occur on a monthly basis. The reason for this is because the vast majority of incidents don’t lead to economic and infrastructure damage on a large scale.  A disaster has to be pretty extensive to get the attention of the public and usually that attention doesn’t last long because most people are still able to go on with their day without much inconvenience.

But let’s say you are a villain; a terrorist or a social engineer (same thing).  Let’s say you are a person or group with malicious intent and you have deliberately set out to destroy a country, or a society or a civilization.  Do you try to do this with a single elaborately planned event?  Probably not.  Instead, you would coordinate and encourage thousands of smaller acts of sabotage that go largely unnoticed by the population until infrastructure breaks down and the country is in ruins.

The concept is actually rather common – We see it in the covert instigation of civil unrest and color revolutions throughout history.  We have seen it in the US with groups like the leftist/communist “Weather Underground” in the 1970s.  Such plans were executed broadly by western governments in Europe under Operation Gladio, which was exposed in the 1990s.

An interesting fictional example of this idea is the movie ‘Invasion USA’ starring Chuck Norris, about a communist network using America’s open borders to sneak thousands of foreign agents into the country.  They then coordinate a series of infrastructure and terror attacks nationwide in order to expedite a civil breakdown and economic crash.

The point is, the public doesn’t know they are under attack because all the incidents seem to be far apart and unrelated.  I believe that such a strategy is well underway within the US and parts of Europe right now, but instead of covert agents or terrorists working at the behest of some foreign adversary I argue that our OWN GOVERNMENTS are engaged in this sabotage.

I call this strategy “Monkey Wrenching”, based on the book ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang’ written by Edward Abbey and published in 1975.  I touched on the concept in my article ‘Open Borders Have Created A Terror Attack Time Bomb In The US In 2025’ published last December, and then again in my article ‘Terror Attacks Kick Off In 2025 – It’s Only Going To Get Worse So Be Prepared’.

I want to go a little more in-depth on the “monkey wrench” concept because, as I predicted last year, 2025 just started and already we’ve seen multiple terror attacks including the car attack in New Orleans and the car bombing in front of Donald Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas.

These events follow some strange and disturbing incidents in 2024, including the armed invasion of Venezuelan cartels into multiple US neighborhoods and cities, two assassination attempts on Donald Trump by leftists as well as the assassination of an insurance CEO in New York by Luigi Mangione (identified as politically ambiguous by the media but widely applauded by leftists).

Then there’s the natural disaster issue.  The government displayed what appears to be total incompetence during the horrific fires in Maui, the lack of adequate federal response after Hurricane Helene in states like North Carolina, and of course there’s the absolute neglect of practical fire precautions in LA leading to one of the worst disasters in US history (more and more evidence is being released showing that these fires were, at least in part, started by a flurry of arsonists).  But what if government apathy and inaction in the face of fires and floods are just another deliberate form of monkey wrenching?

And let’s not forget about human-composed disasters like the mass illegal immigration created by the Biden Administration.  Dropping tens-of-millions of third-world aliens into the US economy in the span of a few years is a calamity bigger than anything Mother Nature could possibly produce.

But how are any of these things connected?  Aren’t they just the natural random noise of civilization?  It couldn’t possibly be maliciously planned, right?  Well, it depends – Chaos is not always directly created, but it can be encouraged into being through policy.

Is this conspiracy theory?  We’ve seen many conspiracy theories proven true over the past couple years, from the covid pandemic lockdowns, mandates and death numbers being exposed as a sham, Twitter and Facebook now outed for colluding with government officials to censor conservatives, the US government and Ukraine blowing up the Nordstream gas pipeline to Europe.  Conspiracy theorists are racking up an impressive list of wins lately.

If it seems to you as it does to me that the frequency of destabilizing events is increasing, that’s probably because it is.  It’s not a symptom of internet “information overload” as the media claims; the internet has been around a long time now and we’re used to the ease of info access.  No, this is something new.

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Edward Abbey’s politically charged book titled ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang’ portrays a group of environmentalist extremists out to stop the “pollution” of the southwestern US using sabotage of machines and infrastructure as a means to grind development to a halt.

The Monkey Wrench Gang has long been considered an inspirational work of fiction for the political left, but it is also treated as a sort of instruction manual for leftists and anarchists – A guide for bringing down the system. It depicts the destruction of minor targets like billboards and bulldozers, up to and including the destruction of bridges, the derailment of trains and the attempted bombing of a dam. It’s sort of like the leftist version of The Turner Diaries.

The idea is that one small attack alone doesn’t do much, but thousands of attacks have an accumulative effect that can result in the downfall of a country or system.

What the book does not address is the idea that a shadow government would HELP or fund these kinds of attacks.  With the government on their side as it remains passive, saboteurs can operate with impunity. They can then commit acts of sabotage in a way that avoids drawing too many questions – In other words, they would have the ability to make the events look like accidents, or commit crimes in a way that looks random.

Leftist Reactions To Losing Political Power – The Rise Of Marxist Terror

Leftists throughout modern history have a habit of engaging in destabilization efforts when they don’t get what they want.  They view their motivations as sacrosanct and beyond criticism, be it “saving democracy” or “saving the planet” or “taking down capitalists and colonists”.

In every case where the political left had influence over social conditions and then lost that power, they revert to directed exponential disruption and violence from riots to assassination.  They claim to care about the right of the majority to have their voices heard, but in reality they don’t care at all.  When the majority goes against the leftist narrative, leftists go rogue.

If I could come up with one word to describe progressives and their behavior it’s this:  Petty.

That might sound too reserved, but there’s nothing more dangerous than people who are petty; they’re capable of justifying anything.  We saw this on a large scale after Donald Trump’s first election win in 2016 and I guarantee we’re going to see a lot more as he enters office again in 2025.  Establishment gatekeepers in the media and among globalist institutions have conjured an atmosphere in which at least 30% of the country believes that “democracy” is facing an existential threat from Donald Trump and conservatives.

They think they’re headed for concentration camps once Trump settles into the White House and that all their rights are about to be taken away.  Ironically, it’s their pettiness and propensity for sabotage that might actually end up creating the desire among conservatives for putting these people behind bars for a long time.

Establishment elites have fostered an environment in which random attacks are more easily triggered, but they also participate in the direct funding and training of Marxist extremist groups.  For anyone who thinks this kind of thing never happens, I suggest you look into the true history behind the leftist terrorists of the Weather Underground and how many of those people (who were wanted by the FBI) ended working within the government and teaching at major universities.

There WILL be a number of these groups active in the coming years.  These people will not accept failure and they will lash out any way they can.  Some of them will be given help from establishment elites with extensive resources.

The Tempting Authoritarian Response To Monkey Wrenching

The temptation in the face of mass induced sabotage of a nation is to respond with cold and calculated power.  Frankly, it’s hard to see another solution at times.  As most Libertarians will point out, government power is like the Ring of Sauron from Lord Of The Rings – You might think you can wield it for good, but ultimately it will corrupt you just as it corrupts everyone.  I tend to agree.

In the decade after WWI Germany faced a series of Marxist provocations from economic sabotage to armed violence and assassinations.  The German government and traditionalist citizens eventually responded in kind, creating militias to quell leftists and imprisoning or killing some in their leadership.  Germans were well aware of what happened under Marxism in other nations and the havoc it inspired.  Those years of instability in the 1920s and the fear they induced led to the ultimate formation of the Nazi Party and the rise of National Socialism.

Disturbingly, fascism was presented as the counter to Marxism, but even Adolph Hitler admitted on multiple occasions that fascism was inspired by Marxism. The German people, in a desperate effort to return to normalcy and prosperity, embraced a Marxist inspired political system in order to undo the chaos created by Marxist revolutionaries.

We stand at a dangerous crossroads in 2025, but this does not mean we sit back and do nothing (which, unfortunately, seems to be a common Libertarian response).  Do we form citizen militias like the Germans did and take down leftist agitators?  Or, do we let the government under Trump flirt with unconstitutional measures?  Do we arrest Democrat city or state officials that refuse to fix infrastructure problems?  Do we remove them by force if they continue protecting illegals from deportation?

Recent surveys show that nearly HALF of all federal employees plan to resist or obstruct the plans of the Trump Administration, which means they will be actively trying to sabotage the implementation of policies that most Americans voted for.  They’re telling you that the will of the voter doesn’t matter.  What should be done about these people?

These are the kinds of questions that are going to come up frequently in the next four years and we need to consider them seriously.

Some would argue that any violence of action whatsoever is authoritarian in nature, but I see little chance of reversing the damage done by globalists and leftists without some form of violence.  For example, mass deportations of millions of illegal immigrants will be presented by critics as authoritarian in nature.  Yet, this strategy is entirely necessary if our country is to be saved.

Do the ends justify the means?  In this case, yes.  When your civilization is under attack it is morally acceptable to defend it.  The problems arise when the act of retaliation against an enemy results in the loss of the very freedom and prosperity your society hopes to protect.  This is the conundrum created by the monkey wrench:  It’s an internal war, with internal enemies, and to strike at internal enemies you sometimes take the risk of striking yourself.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post The ‘Monkey Wrench’ Sabotage of America Begs for an Authoritarian Response appeared first on LewRockwell.

Producing quality goods that aren’t addictive or obsoleted in a few years–there’s no money in that, fool. Get real. You want to get rich, “invest” in a bet in the casino.

Is placing a bet in a casino an “investment”? Absolutely! An “investment” is now defined as a wager, often leveraged, at a gaming table in the casino. Anything that offers a gain is an “investment.”

This is of course at odds with the classic understanding of “investing in new productive assets” that is core to classical capitalism in which the open market for goods, services, labor, risk and capital allocates capital to the highest and best use, i.e. the most profitable use, via the maximization of self-interest by all participants.

Once upon a time, increasing productivity was the most profitable deployment of capital. Now financial trickery in the casino is the source of outlandishly large gains. For example, buying back shares of the corporation’s outstanding stock, reducing the number of shares “sharing” the company’s earnings, cash flow and valuation.

So management creates a million new shares as compensation to managers and employees, and then uses surplus capital to buy back two million shares, jacking up the value of the newly created shares that are now mostly in the hands of senior management. $10 million for you, $100 million for me: easy-peasy.

What risk-laden investment in higher productivity could possibly match the gains generated by this low-risk financial mechanism? There is none, hence the rise of stock buybacks as a core use of surplus capital and borrowing power, for it’s even smarter to borrow vast sums to fund buybacks and then service this debt with earnings, as borrowing vast sums to fund huge buybacks boosts shares prices far more than a trickle of net earnings.

What makes sense is offloading the risks and low profit margins of production to overseas companies and using the gains from this transfer of risk to fund more stock buybacks and other financial tricks in the casino.

In the happy story, the money investors buy shares with is invested in new equipment that boosts productivity. But this describes a tiny sliver of the financial realm: yes, a new start-up company will issue shares to raise capital to fund its expansion. But this is approximately 0.1% of the transactions in the casino, which is all about trading existing shares–and financialized derivatives of those shares–of companies.

Read the Whole Article

The post Is Placing a Wager in a Casino an ‘Investment’? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Just before he leaves office, President Biden is commuting the prison sentences of 2,500 people who have been convicted of non-violent drug offenses. Biden stated, “This action is an important step toward righting historic wrongs, correcting sentencing disparities, and providing deserving individuals the opportunity to return to their families and communities after spending far too much time behind bars.”

Biden’s last-minute drug-war commutations raise several questions.

First, why did he wait until now to release those people from prison? Given his professed concern for righting wrongs, correcting sentencing disparities, and giving people more time with their families, why didn’t he issue those commutations during his first week in office? Why did he force those people to spend four more unnecessary years in prison?

Second, and more important, why were those people in prison in the first place? In other words, what business does the federal government (or any government) have punishing people for engaging in purely peaceful behavior, even if it is considered harmful?

That’s the question that all too many Americans simply refuse to ask. Having been born and raised under a vicious drug war, they view drug laws as something permanent, immutable, and perpetual. From the first grade on up, they were indoctrinated into believing that government has a legitimate role in controlling what people ingest and punishing them when they ingest something that the government hasn’t approved.

Control of people is what the drug war is all about. All of the drug-war enforcement measures have one aim in mind: to prevent people from possessing and ingesting what the government says is harmful to them. Amazingly, with the exception of libertarians, no one finds that objectionable.

In 1944, Friedrich Hayek wrote his famous book The Road to Serfdom. While Hayek was referring to the push toward government regulation and economic control, it would be difficult to find a better example of America’s serfdom society than the drug war. With its power to determine what people possess, ingest, and distribute, the federal government has firmly established that it is the master and that the citizens are the serfs. Drug laws demonstrate perfectly that, for all practical purposes, the federal government owns the American people. They exist to serve the government.

Why shouldn’t people be free to possess, ingest, and distribute anything they want, no matter how harmful it might be? Why should the government wield the authority to send them to jail for any period of time, short or long? Why should there be any drug laws at all? After all, we don’t have laws against the possession, ingestion, and distribution of alcohol and tobacco. Why not the same for other drugs?

There is also a utilitarian question that needs to be asked? What good are drug laws? Sure, they enable the government to punish people who engage in self-destructive activity. But so what? People have always engaged in self-destructive activity. Moreover, despite all of the harsh measures that government has taken to enforce its drug war — which Biden and presidents before him have acknowledged with their pardons and commutations — people continue to engage in self-destructive activity.

The drug war has done nothing to change that aspect of human nature. What the drug war has done is make society worse. Consider the drug cartels and the drug gangs and the massive violence that has come with them. The cause? The drug war. Without drug laws, there would be no drug cartels or drug gangs or drug violence.

Or consider the massive assault on civil liberties brought on by the drug war: asset-forfeiture laws, no-knock raids, unjustified stopping of people and pat-down searches, and warrantless searches. Consider also mandatory-minimum sentences, assaults on financial privacy, and money-laundering laws. Consider also the never-ending parade of much-publicized record drug busts and criminal prosecutions.

None of it has worked to achieve a drug-free society. Yet, the drug war just keeps going and going and going. Just mindlessly repeating the same patterns, with every U.S. president striving to show how good and caring he is by issuing last-minute commutations and pardons of people for crimes that should never have been crimes in the first place.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Biden’s Commutations Remind Us of the Horror of the Drug War appeared first on LewRockwell.