Webmaster addition: $80K for a watch!?! I'll stick with my iWatch, thank you!

Ron DeSantis’s response to a pending indictment of President Trump has, to say the least, left a lot of people disappointed.

While the Florida governor has accurately labeled Alvin Bragg’s planned prosecution as politically motivated, he’s also said he plans not to get involved in the matter, and has gone out of his way to snipe at Trump over the underlying causes of the case.

At this point, it’s obvious that DeSantis plans to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024, so some conflict between the two is inevitable. But it’s also disappointing, at a moment of profound crisis for the American republic, to see a muted reaction from one of the few men with the real power to do something about it.

Because Ron DeSantis can, in fact, do something, and Rep. Matt Gaetz is urging him to do it:

Gaetz’s proposal is straightforward, but dramatic: He is calling for Ron DeSantis to directly intervene in the case to prevent the extradition of Trump back to New York for trial.

Former Project Veritas head James O’Keefe is suggesting he has insiders on the grand jury reportedly considering indicting former President Donald Trump.

Trump has suggested he would be arrested this week. He is being probed by a Manhattan District Alvin Bragg over a payment made to adult actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.

A grand jury is reportedly considering charges against Trump.

After an O’Keefe supporter wondered whether O’Keefe has someone on the inside, O’Keefe suggested there are multiple insiders.

You don’t need to get an economics degree from Princeton to understand economics.  In fact, it will likely imbue you with a dangerous level of self-importance and indoctrinate you with dogmatically false concepts (see Princeton grad Jerome Powell who thinks destroying an economy solves inflation).

All you need to do is read my columns and watch my podcast and remember Rob’s Rules. For absolutely no charge I explain easy to remember rules based on the predicable activities of human nature. The foundation of the current “banking crisis” starts with understanding the Rob Is Right Rule of “Other People’s Money” and its “flip side” rule “You Fuc#ed Up, You Trusted Us” brilliantly articulated by Otter to Flounder in Animal House. Since they don’t teach these rules at Princeton, if you are a freshman, go ahead and drop out now, because you will never understand the way the world works without understanding the human elements associated with “property.”  Have your parents put your yearly tuition into an investment account that I manage (for a fair and equitable fee of course).  Then get a job selling vacuum cleaners door to door for four years. By the time your classmates graduate with their economics degree, you will know much more about economics and the world than they do.

It doesn’t seem that Joe Biden gets the memo. Despite all the damage he’s already done, he is hellbent on pushing every hair-brained socialist idea that the left gives him. Most of the time, he’s just trying to buy people’s votes. But what ends up happening is taxpayers–and working Americans–get the shaft.

One of Biden’s “brilliant” ideas was an obvious bribe to millions of Americans. He contradicted his previous statement to rush out this plan–just weeks before the midterm elections. The move has been halted by the courts and panned by most working folks. And now, Republicans in Congress are moving to shut it down for good.

From Daily Caller:

Republican Virginia Rep. Bob Good will introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution to roll back the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness scheme…

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a challenge to the scheme, although some legal experts have suggested that the plaintiffs do not have standing to challenge it…

Three Republican senators introduced a companion resolution to Good’s on March 17.

In a move to preserve its very existence, National Public Radio cut four of its major podcasts and 10% of its workforce on Thursday, a major reduction not seen since 2008.  

The reasoning behind the decision seems to be a drop in ad revenue from the podcasts “Invisibilia,” “Louder Than a Riot,” “Everyone and Their Mom,” and “Rough Translation.” 

“We literally are fighting to secure the future of NPR at this very moment by restructuring our cost structure. It‘’s that important. It’s existential,” NPR chief executive John Lansing stated in an interview. 

“The layoffs will affect employees who work behind the scenes to produce shows, podcasts, design visual elements, and conduct audience research. The layoffs are done to preserve NPR’s core ‘public service mission,’” Lansing lamented.  

The US banking system is broken. That doesn’t portend more high-profile failures like Credit Suisse. The central banks will keep moribund institutions on life support.

But the era of dollar-based reserves and floating exchange rates that began on August 15, 1971, when the US severed the link between the dollar and gold, is coming to an end. The pain will be transferred from the banks to the real economy, which will starve for credit.

And the geopolitical consequences will be enormous. The seize-up of dollar credit will accelerate the shift to a multipolar reserve system, with advantage to China’s RMB as a competitor to the dollar.

Gold, the “barbarous relic” abhorred by John Maynard Keynes, will play a bigger role because the dollar banking system is dysfunctional, and no other currency—surely not the tightly-controlled RMB—can replace it. Now at an all-time record price of US$2,000 an ounce, gold is likely to rise further.

The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called this moment a “historic turning point.” In Japan, a famous comedian named Tamori coined the (somewhat obscure) phrase “new prewar,” and it has been widely used to say much the same thing: That Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced both countries to take their own military preparedness more seriously.

In February last year, Mr. Scholz promised to use a fund of 100 billion Euros to strengthen Germany’s neglected military forces and to push Germany’s military budget over the 2% of GDP required by NATO. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida paid a surprise visit to Ukraine this week, the first time a Japanese prime minister had set foot in a country at war. Though still constrained by the pacifist constitution drawn up after World War II by American jurists, Mr. Kishida has vowed to boost defense spending by 50% over the next five years and to acquire missiles that could strike enemy targets if Japan were attacked.

Multiple tornadoes have ripped through Mississippi leaving a trail of destruction in its wake - killing at least 23 people, while 4 people remain missing.

At least 11 tornadoes tracking at 80mph, with one stretching at least one mile wide, were recorded Friday night. 

They obliterated neighborhoods, ripped roofs off homes and downed power lines - leaving victims trapped under rubble and thousands without power. 

Following a drone strike by Iranian forces that killed one American contractor and wounded five U.S. service members and another contractor, the U.S. military retaliated by conducting multiple precision airstrikes in Syria on Thursday.

The Pentagon confirmed that the UAV that crashed into the coalition base was of Iranian origin, prompting the President to authorize a proportional and deliberate response that limited the risk of escalation.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said, "At the direction of President Biden, I authorized U.S. Central Command forces to conduct precision airstrikes tonight in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)."

On CNN March 14, Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, said that American banks were on the verge of being nationalized:

What the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. What that really means … is that they have guaranteed the entire deposit base of the U.S. financial system. The entire deposit base. Why? Because you can’t guarantee all the deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and then the next day say to the depositors, say, at First Republic, sorry, yours aren’t guaranteed. Of course they are.

… So this is a breathtaking step which effectively nationalizes or federalizes the deposit base of the U.S. financial system.

The deposit base of the financial system has not actually been nationalized, but Congress is considering modifications to the FDIC insurance limit. Meanwhile, one state that does not face those problems is North Dakota, where its state-owned bank acts as a “mini-Fed” for the state. But first, a closer look at the issues.

Bail In, Bail Out, or “Socialism for the Rich”?

Addressing a ceremony at the Daejeon national cemetery to commemorate the anniversary of West Sea Defense Day, Yoon declared that South Korea would "drastically strengthen our three-axis system in the face of North Korea's nuclear and missile advancements and provocations and will further solidify security cooperation with the United States and also trilaterally with the United States and Japan." His remarks followed North Korea's claim that it had successfully simulated cruise missile attacks and an underwater nuclear drone launch.

 Valerie Plame Wilson landed herself in hot social media water when she tweeted out a link to a story titled "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars" on Thursday without any commentary to explain why she was sharing it.

The article, published in The Unz Review, was published Tuesday by Philip Giraldi, a former CIA case officer and Army intelligence officer. Subtitled "Shouldn't they recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?," Giraldi argued that American Jews are pushing for war in the Middle East and pointed to Iran in particular, which he said "does not conceivably threaten the United States."

American Jews, according to Giraldi, are faking the threat and dragging politicians and the media down with them. American Jews with an attachment to Israel, he added, should not be allowed anywhere near positions where they might deal with Middle East policy because it would be a "conflict of interest."

The Wagner PMC which is fighting for the city of Bakhmut warned that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have trained about 200 thousand reservists and received a large amount of military equipment from NATO. The Ukrainian military is expected to attempt large-scaled offensive operations on the Donbass front lines, including in Bakhmut. The head of the Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin urged the Russian Defense Ministry to join forces, because the “Bakhmut meat grinder” can only work well in case of full cooperation.

“Ukrainians have received a large number, a very large number of various NATO equipment, various armored vehicles, tanks, Leopards, <…> and have prepared reserves of about 200 thousand people,” Prigozhin said.

According to Yevgeny Prigozhinm, up to 80,000 Ukrainian servicemen are concentrated in the Bakhmut region, including in Konstantinovka, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Chasov Yar, Seversk and Druzhkivka.

US weapons abroad are being relocated in line with Washington’s new strategic priorities. According to recent reports, the US will send old and outdated attack aircraft to the Middle East, replacing the modern and advanced aircraft that are currently stationed in the region. The goal is to transfer the most efficient military equipment to Europe and the Pacific, where it can eventually be used against Russian and Chinese forces – which are currently the main concerns for the US government.

The data was shared in an article published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on March 21. According to information obtained by the authors, there is a plan to redistribute the planes in April. It is planned that aircraft of the type A-10, an older and less efficient model, will be sent to American bases in the Middle East. WSJ sources inform that the Pentagon considers such planes to be strong enough to protect US interests in the Middle East, therefore there is no need for more modern and equipped jets.

“The imperative is to get the most suitable aircraft to the Pacific for the higher threat challenges (…) The A-10 is still relevant to the mission CENTCOM (United States Central Command) flies over the Middle East”, Larry Stutzriem, a retired Air Force major general, told WSJ.

More than a dozen state financial officers are writing to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to call on the bank to root out any internal political or anti-religious bias that may result in adverse decisions against clients of the nation’s largest bank.

The letter addressed to Dimon was signed by a group of 14 Republican state auditors, controllers, and treasurers who wrote to "convey our concern that the bank is engaged in what appears to be politically motivated de-banking of certain industries, individuals, and groups."

"In light of this concern, we urge Chase to immediately take steps to identify and address internal drivers of political or anti-religious bias that could undermine its fiduciary obligations and impair the freedom of its customers to access financial services without fear of discrimination," the group wrote.

This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new report. Unsurprisingly alarming, the report aimed to turn up the heat on governments, the business world, and every one of us to do more about the energy transition. Decarbonization, the report said, had to move faster and more dramatically. Yet that wasn’t the only document that made the headlines this week. Shell also released a report in which it detailed two different scenarios for the future to 2050. In those scenarios, the supermajor’s analysts pitted energy security against the energy transition – something the IPCC reports have never done. 

The choice between energy security and decarbonization is not one that tends to attract a lot of attention. It is a sensitive topic because it exposes the shortcomings of low-carbon energy. Yet, as Europe found out last year, it may be wise to discuss this topic before we splash $110 trillion on the energy transition.

In one of its scenarios, dubbed Archipelagos, Shell paints a familiar picture of the world of the future, at least politically. With a focus on energy security rather than decarbonization, the Archipelagos scenario describes a world similar to 19th-century Europe, where spheres of interest shift and nations ally with a view to energy security and resilience.

At a congressional hearing on Thursday, Democratic Representative Cori Bush of Missouri expressed her disapproval of Republicans' interpretation of the Second Amendment.

She argued that they prioritize "toys" over lives and favor the U.S. having an even higher share of the world's gun supply. In her words, this is a "perverted view of the Second Amendment."

"We will not succumb to the nihilist, insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment. We will not allow the apologists for gun violence to win. We will double down on a public health response to the public health emergency that is gun violence in our country," the lawmaker declared.

Webmaster addition: She actually admitted it. They are afraid of an insurrection!

At Thursday's House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government hearing, witnesses testified to the chilling effects of the Biden Administration's actions on parents' fundamental rights.

In October 2020, at the National School Boards Association's request, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to use the same tools they use to fight domestic extremism to handle the "increase in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school board members." This letter remains in effect, despite the Association's subsequent apology for their involvement in its issuance. Nicole Neily, President of Parents Defending Education, said, "No one who has been involved in the genesis of this letter has been held accountable…We demand to know how our tax dollars were used against us."

The original 2020 Covid-19 was not natural and was always a bioweapon!
Professor Francis A. Boyle is here to detail why Covid-19 is an offensive biological warfare weapon!
The Chinese Wuhan BSL4 lab is China’s Fort Detrick.
The FDA helped develop the Covid-19 biowarfare agent and is also involved in approving the clot shot vaccines for public consumption.
The Wuhan BSL4 previously published on their website that they successfully aerosolized viruses.
The only reason to aerosolize a virus is to use it as a weapon.
American intelligence services knew from the very beginning that Facui and Collins funded the creation of Covid-19!
mRNA technology was paid for, financed, and envisioned by the Pentagon’s DARPA.

What has just taken place in Moscow is nothing less than a new Yalta, which, incidentally, is in Crimea. But unlike the momentous meeting of US President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in USSR-run Crimea in 1945, this is the first time in arguably five centuries that no political leader from the west is setting the global agenda.

It’s Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin that are now running the multilateral, multipolar show. Western exceptionalists may deploy their crybaby routines as much as they want: nothing will change the spectacular optics, and the underlying substance of this developing world order, especially for the Global South.

What Xi and Putin are setting out to do was explained in detail before their summit, in two Op-Eds penned by the presidents themselves. Like a highly-synchronized Russian ballet, Putin’s vision was laid out in the People’s Daily in China, focusing on a “future-bound partnership,” while Xi’s was published in the Russian Gazette and the RIA Novosti website, focusing on a new chapter in cooperation and common development.

The morally bankrupt Western media lied to start the Iraq War as they did dutifully about starting other wars for their imperial masters. Twenty years after, the Western media are at it again.

This week, March 20, saw the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-British war launched on Iraq. The war resulted in over one million deaths and a decade of brutal military occupation. It spawned sectarian civil war, millions of displaced and destitute, and terrorism that engulfed the entire Middle East, as well as large swathes of Africa and Asia. Iraq and several other ancient nations have been destroyed because of the Anglo-American war. And it was a war based on flagrant American and British lies over alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The 20th anniversary of the U.S.-British war on Iraq, which was also supported by NATO partners, should be an occasion for proper accounting with Nuremberg-standard war crimes prosecutions of American and British political and military figures. Persons such as George W Bush, the former U.S. President, and Tony Blair, the ex-British premier, should be facing jail time for capital crimes. The current U.S. President Joe Biden should also be in the dock since his role as a senior Senator at the time was crucial in enabling the war. Also up for indictment are several Western media outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post which promulgated the lies that made the case for war.

The 20th anniversary of the U.S. attack on Iraq for regime change coincides with the 12th anniversary of the U.S. attack on Syria for regime change. March 2003 and March 2011 have a great deal in common, but that is not where the story begins.

The destruction of two nations, sitting side by side in the Middle East, began in 1996 with the strategy paper called “A Clean Break”, written by the man known as “The Architect of the Iraq War”.

“A Clean Break” was authored in part by Richard T. Perle, an American Jew from New York. Being born a Jew is not paramount to this story, but being an Israeli agent is. There should be a test when working on sensitive and top-secret plans for the U.S., that your allegiance is sworn to the U.S. and no other country on earth. Perle was an American, but his allegiance lay elsewhere.

French president Emmanuel Macron has declared he will govern France like Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods, shortly after officials told the media his thought process was “too complex” for journalists to understand.

Summoning over 900 politicians from both houses of the French parliament to a rare Congress at the palace of Louis XIV – the ‘Sun King’ – in Versailles, he threatened to overrule lawmakers with a referendum if they try to frustrate the “reforms” he wishes to impose on the legislature. Such assemblies are usually reserved for times of national crisis.

Reuters reports him as saying he desires to reign as a “Jupiterian” president – “a remote, dignified figure, like the Roman god of gods, who weighs his rare pronouncements carefully”.

Brannon tweeted about the Anarchist tattoo she noticed on the neck of the “Trump supporter” who asked the “Q-Anon Shaman” to prove he wasn’t wearing a wire.  He “joined in jumping an cheering” with the crowd of actual Trump supporters,” she reported. But then, something caught her eye, “I noticed his circle-A tattoo—the classic symbol prominently associated with Antifa and anarchists,” she tweeted.

He knew I noticed, then put his hoodie up,” she wrote.

Oops! And just like that—when Brannon noticed the Anarchist neck tat, he quickly hid it by pulling up his hoodie.

Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian army’s fuel depot in the Zaporozhye Region over the past day during the special military operation in Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Thursday.

"In the area of the settlement of Zaliznichnoye in the Zaporozhye Region, a depot storing fuel and lubricants of the Ukrainian army’s 65th mechanized brigade was destroyed," the spokesman said.

In the past 24 hours, operational/tactical and army aviation, missile troops and artillery of the Russian group of forces struck 76 Ukrainian artillery units at firing positions, manpower and equipment in 114 areas, the general specified.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has admitted that his country's army is currently unable to launch a counteroffensive in the east, explaining this by a lack of necessary weapons, according to his interview with Japan's largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun.

"We can't launch it [a counteroffensive] yet. Without tanks, artillery and [American multiple rocket launchers] HIMARS, we cannot send our brave soldiers to the front lines," the Ukrainian leader said. He also pointed to the serious shortage of ammunition, stressing that Kiev was currently awaiting deliveries from partners.

When touching upon the possibility of resuming peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, Zelensky opined that "absolutely no conditions have been formed for this."

The US still contends with the consequences of invading Iraq 20 years ago

… there is [sic] not many who would come to the defense of this and think that this was a wise intervention that, again, I mean, I think mostly because there are two sides to the case.

 One which is there was no justification for doing it all in the first place, or, which is one kind of critique and the other is that well, there was a justification, but only if you were capable of making sure that what came after was not worse than what happened before and the combination of the two makes this pretty flawed.

Jim Steinberg, Former US Deputy Secretary of State