- Meet The Young Virginia Democrat That Registered 19 Dead People To Vote In Virginia
Just yesterday we wrote about an FBI investigation into potential voter fraud in the critical swing state of Virginia after it was revealed that 19 dead people had recently been re-registered to vote (see “FBI Investigating More Dead People Voting In The Key Swing State Of Virginia“). While the Washington Post caught wind of the investigation, it was not known who was behind the operation…until now.
Meet, Andrew Spieles, a student at James Madison University, and apparently “Lead Organizer” for HarrisonburgVOTES. According to the Daily News-Record, Spieles confessed to re-registering 19 deceased Virginians to vote in the 2016 election cycle.
While this should come as a surprise to precisely 0 people, Spieles just happens to be Democrat who, accorded to a deleted FaceBook post, apparently recently ran for Caucus Chair of the Virginia Young Democrats.
It’s too bad really, sounds like Spieles had all the right “special talents” required to be very successful politician…he just forgot the most important first rule: “Don’t get caught.”
The 19 applications of deceased citizens were submitted by Spieles through an organization called HarrisonburgVOTES. According to the organization’s “About Us” page, HarrisonburgVOTES is a “non-partisan” voter registration organization in Harrisonburg, VA and the surrounding areas.
As the HarrisonburgVOTES webpage points out, the sole goal of the organization is to raise the number of registered voters in Harrisonburg to 25,000…though it’s unclear what percentage of that goal was intended to be filled by dead voters.
The sole goal of HarrisonburgVOTES is to increase the number of registered voters in Harrisonburg and the surrounding areas to increase and encourage civic engagement.
Harrisonburg has the lowest percentage of voting age population (VAP) registered to vote among Virginia localities. Very roughly, about 17,000 people are registered to vote and about 18,000 are voting age and not registered. The goal of HarrisonburgVOTES will be to overcome these issues and raise the number of registered voters to 25,000.
HarrisonburgVOTES was founded by Joseph Fitzgerald who, “shockingly”, is also a prominent democrat in Harrisonburg. Fitzgerald is currently Chairman of the Sixth Congressional District Democratic Committee in Virginia and the former Mayor of Harrisonburg.
Fitzgerald told reporters, of course, that his organization had no knowledge of Spieles’s actions and fired him immediately after his confession.
“He’s smart, and he understands the [political] process,” Fitzgerald told the Daily News-Record of Spieles. “Who the hell knows what his motivations were?”
While we agree it’s difficult to be 100% sure about anyone’s motivations, we would be willing to put money on it having something to do with registering a bunch of dead people and then having them all vote for Hillary in November….just a hunch.
- After the Debate, the Deluge? (Now With A Trigger Warning)
Submitted by David Galland via GarretGalland.com,
Trigger Warning: The following article includes an abundance of insults and harsh words directed at individuals of both of the male and female sex as well as politically incorrect statements including digs at cross-dressers and people worried about the weather. If you feel “triggered” by any of the statements, please see a psychiatrist.
**** **** *****
Dear Debate-Watchers,
“I guess he is a buffoon after all. Too bad.”
Those words were written by a dear friend and, until the lights went out on the first presidential debate, the most ardent of Trump supporters.
For the debate, a group of us had gathered at the Social Club at La Estancia de Cafayate here in the Argentine outback.
Most of our group were expats who, yearning to be free, have voted with our feet. Therefore, not indicative of broader US demographics.
It’s safe to say the audience was hopeful that Trump would wipe the proverbial floor with Mrs. Clinton. Within a few minutes, however, it became apparent it was not The Donald holding the mop handle.
If proof was ever needed that Hillary is a skilled politician, the debate provided it. She speaks in complete sentences, adroitly dodges sticky questions, and wields the rhetorical knife like a Colombian sicario.
Of course, Hillary had help. It often seemed as if the moderator had sat in on Hillary’s debate preparation, studiously taking notes as her team made helpful suggestions on questions he could use to blindside Trump or topics to be quickly passed over should they arise. Topics such as war-starting and email-server emptying.
But the moderator’s lack of impartiality ultimately didn’t matter, because, to the great detriment of the American Dream, The Donald could hardly string together a single coherent thought. Trump huffed and puffed—and oddly, sniffed—but in the end couldn’t have blown out a paper match.
When he did make an understandable point, as often as not, I disagreed. For instance, it seems like he’s advocating imposing a fresh round of trade tariffs, something that history has proven time and again to be a bucket of cold water over the free flow of goods and services. And he appears to favor using US military muscle to “take the oil” of Middle Eastern countries.
So, here we are.
And by “here,” I mean on the verge of electing the ultimate statist and an unindicted conspirator in too many shady deals to list here.
The Real Problem
As mentioned last week, this month’s edition of Compelling Investments Quantified, released yesterday, leads off with a fairly deep dive into the regulatory morass gunking up the workings of the US and global economies.
To give you the smallest sense of the situation, the graphic below shows the stunning increase in regulation under Obama.
As you can see, the biggest new burden foisted on the economy is an aggressive ramping up of the Environmental Protection Agency, Grand Inquisitors of the Holy Church of Weather Worriers.
While I have long held the attitude that anyone wanting to be a politician is possessed of serious character flaws, I confess to caring about Trump winning the debate and, more to the point, prevailing in the November election.
My reasons were not that he is a man of stellar character with a firm grasp on the issues, but rather because it is clear from his many public actions that he is not a politician in the conventional sense.
Therefore, the Pollyannaish side of me hoped that, upon taking office, he would stop providing water and nutrients to the growing bureaucracy that is literally destroying the US economy, as well as the very idea of America.
And by the latter, I mean a corner of the Earth where private property rights are respected and where everyone has a decent shot at attaining whatever it is they deem to be success.
You know, the America where rugged individuals are considered archetypical.
Instead, the American entrepreneur is forced to struggle through a minefield of politically correct landmines and hundreds of thousands of pages of laws and regulations.
Should he or she succeed financially, the government celebrates such success with progressively punitive taxes.
As a symbol of the New American, I would nominate campus Safe Spaces, such as the one promoted on the sign shown here, from the hallway at Hofstra University where the presidential debate was held.
I will now briefly pause, dear readers, to let out a string of loud and very politically incorrect expletives.
That out of the way, and falling in line with what it means to be an American in this day and age, I must confess to feeling “triggered” by the implications of Trump’s debate pratfall.
After the Debate, the Deluge?
During the debate, Mrs. Clinton made it clear that—rather than reversing the tide of regulation and taxation, prerequisites to getting the US economy off the blocks—she is going to double down.
Starting by ensuring that those individuals whose energetic pursuit of success has resulted in them earning above-average incomes are forced by the state to “pay their fair share.”
We all know how unfair that statement is, given that the top 1% of income earners already pay about half of all income taxes, while the bottom 80% pay just 20% of the total. And a very large percentage of that total pay no taxes at all.
Mrs. Clinton is aware of these facts, but fairness and facts have no role to play in Progressive America. The only thing that counts is how the narrative plays with the rubes.
Will she be worse than Obama in terms of regulations and implementing punitive taxes? Based on her history and stump speeches, the Magic 8 ball points to “YES.”
The following quote is from a Clinton-fawning article in the Huffington Post, entitled, “The Future of America Is Being Written in This Tiny Office.”
“…Clinton’s plans are as unambiguously progressive as any from a Democratic nominee in modern history—and almost nobody seems to have noticed.”
Among those plans are free college for the 50% or so of Americans who are already not paying any taxes; subsidies so no one has to pay more than 10% of their income on child care; guaranteed paid family leave; new layers of special treatment for non-whites and non-heterosexuals; new regulations to help unions regain their bargaining power and even, in her own words, to “rewrite the rules” on capitalism.
And so, at the very point in time when the US desperately needs to cut away the bureaucratic Kudzu holding back capitalism, the country is falling into the hands of a socialist sociopath who views the state as a hammer to be unhesitantly used to beat society flat.
In addition to higher taxes for those on the wrong side of the income divide, and more handouts for those on the right side, I think we can correctly anticipate some other consequences of Zer election as La Presidenta, many of which will have implications for investment markets:
- Bank bashing. Mrs. Clinton has promised, when elected, to burden the banks with even more regulations. Coming on top of the massive Dodd-Frank bill, the flow of bank funds, which in a healthy economy provides upwards of 90% of total money supply (M4), will continue to remain frozen.
- Dastardly deeds done to dirty energy. Oil, gas, nuclear, and in particular coal—are going to come under even greater pressure. Fracking is going to get fracked.
- Obamacare is dead, long live Hillarycare. Make no mistake, Hillary and her brain trust will set about “fixing” Obamacare by adding yet more bureaucracy. Universal healthcare was her pet project back in the day. She is plenty peeved Obama pulled off his version of it and so will go to great lengths to make it her own again.
- Political correctness on steroids. The morning after she is sworn in, Hillary will get to work pandering to the miscellany of special interest groups to win a second term. With George Soros on her arm and supported at every turn by the not-so-invisible hand of Silicon Valley, she’ll find ways to assure Black Lives Matter in every way they think they should matter. Ditto, the Hispanic populations and every other non-white male demographic, especially Bernie’s Millennials, who will be a far bigger factor in the next election than they are in this one.
- An economic circus, but not of the funny sort. The US economy—and most of the world’s largest economies—have suffered extensively at the hands of government bureaucrats who, through ignorance or deliberate malfeasance, have burdened it with regulations to the point of breaking.
However, given that Clinton will have grand plans to make her tenure historically significant for something more than possessing a womb, you can expect a tidal wave of new regulation designed to create a more perfect world.
As the new wave of regulations will threaten to kill the already gagging golden goose, the Clinton administration will need to get very creative to keep the deficits from running amok.
I can’t even begin to guess how, but literally anything that can be imagined is on the table. Wage and price controls, higher estate taxes, big penalties for companies with assets overseas (unless, of course, her hubby is on the board), confiscating foreign-held assets… really, anything is fair game.
- Prosperity on hold. Most importantly, instead of turning back toward the light, a Clinton victory ensures that the current economic stagnation and the attendant societal tensions will only worsen. Rig for a long dark night and for the deluge that is all but certain.
While the blame for the precarious situation the US finds itself in could justly be placed at the feet of any number of players, and extends well back in history, at the risk of angering some dear readers, in terms of the here and now, I choose to throw a razzberry in the direction of Donald Trump.
That’s because he arrogantly failed to properly prepare for the debate. As a consequence, he walked into one sucker punch after another and, when smacked, had no snappy retorts prepared to steer the debate back to themes less flattering to his opponent.
By failing to prepare, he let down the millions of people who had allowed themselves to become reengaged in the political process and who dared hope the cultural Marxism overrunning the nation could be slowed.
Of course, there is another possible explanation for Trump’s performance. Maybe he did prepare rigorously for the debate—and according to his campaign co-chair, he did—in which case, could his dismal performance be a sign that, per my friend’s assessment, he actually is a buffoon? Or, as they say in Texas, he’s all hat and no cows.
Regardless, his dismal showing has fully exposed the tender belly of what was left of the American dream, granting a big opening for the progressives to move in for the kill.
Game Over?
Given the debate disaster, is it game over for Trump and, by extension, America?
It’s impossible to say. On the one hand, demoralized as Trump’s supporters may be, the idea of President Hillary is probably enough to get them off their couches come election day.
In fact, much to my surprise, following the debate, Trump’s fundraising efforts soared. And while I have heard from many Trump supporters who share my assessment of his debate performance, every one of them appears to remain committed to their candidate come election day.
However, as far as independents go, I think his performance may have poisoned that well for good.
At the end of the day, it will all come down to turnout. Whereas prior to the debate, Hillary couldn’t get any respect, I don’t think anyone who watched could deny that she appeared more presidential.
Condescending? Arrogant? Slippery? Absolutely.
But at least she was coherent.
I cannot tell you how it pains me to write these words, because I tend toward optimism in my life. Despite having removed our family from ground zero, I had hoped the driving force behind Trump’s near miraculous candidacy—an up-swelling of popular anger at the poor condition the bureaucrats have left the country in—heralded a step back toward the path of sanity for the United States.
Maybe Trump just had a really bad day and will do well enough in what’s left of the campaign season to prevail. And maybe, if elected, he’ll surround himself with smart people and then wander off to the nearest golf course like his predecessor.
At this point, given the choice between the anti-capitalist crook and the big unknown that is Donald Trump, I would still have to pull the lever for Trump and hope for the best.
However, after the dismal debate, the future has just gotten a lot more unpredictable.
- In Hacked Fundraiser Recording, Hillary Mocks Bernie Supporters "Living In Their Parents’ Basement"
The reason why the Trump campaign has been so eager to find transcripts and recordings of the private speeches Hillary Clinton has delivered during her extensive, lucrative speaking career, is because it is there that she reveals that rare glimpse into what she truly thinks, or at least what $250,000 per hour will get her to believe. One such example is a recently hacked recording of Hillary Clinton, where in a private conversation with campaign donors in February, Clinton distanced herself from progressive goals like “free college, free healthcare” and described her place on the political spectrum as spanning from the center-left to the center-right.
The newly disclosed comments first noticed by the Intercept, came in audio from hacked emails revealed this week by the Washington Free Beacon. Clinton was speaking at a Virginia fundraiser hosted by Beatrice Welters, the former U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, and her husband Anthony Welters, the executive chairman of an investment consulting firm founded by former Clinton aid Cheryl Mills.
The hacked audio provides another peek into the ideological chameleon that Hillary is on a day to day basis. As the Intercept notes, “Clinton has been inconsistent in the past about espousing political labels. She has at times touted herself as stalwart liberal. For instance, she said last July: “I take a backseat to no one when you look at my record in standing up and fighting for progressive values.” But a few months later, she told a group in Ohio: “You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center. I plead guilty.”
In one segment of the leaked audio, Hillary focused on her opponent at the time, Bernie Sanders, was pointed to successful programs in Scandinavia which provide universal daycare, family leave, and government sponsored healthcare and college education, as policies that he would seek to adopt. “Progressive” Hillary mocked the compared idea of “free college, free healthcare” to the “extreme” ideas promulgated by the right, which include “populism, nationalism and xenophobia.”
It is important to recognize what’s going on in this election. Everybody who’s ever been in an election that I’m aware of is quite bewildered because there is a strain of, on the one hand, the kind of populist, nationalist, xenophobic, discriminatory kind of approach that we hear too much of from the Republican candidates. And on the other side, there’s just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we’ve done hasn’t gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don’t know what that means, but it’s something that they deeply feel. So as a friend of mine said the other day, I am occupying from the center-left to the center-right. And I don’t have much company there. Because it is difficult when you’re running to be president, and you understand how hard the job is — I don’t want to overpromise. I don’t want to tell people things that I know we cannot do.
Recording below::
Clinton then went on to explain why she felt so many Democratic voters, many of whom “live in their parents’ basement” were gravitating to Sanders. Ironically, for a presidential candidate that touts the economic recovery the US is going through, she admits these “children of the Great Recession” don’t see much of a future…
Some are new to politics completely. They’re children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents’ basement. They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don’t see much of a future.
… and with an entire generation unexpectedly finding itself in a dead-end economy, it provides a perfect incubator for what according to Hillary is an army of Bernie supporters: “if you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista… then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing.”
I met with a group of young black millennials today and you know one of the young women said, “You know, none of us feel that we have the job that we should have gotten out of college. And we don’t believe the job market is going to give us much of a chance.” So that is a mindset that is really affecting their politics. And so if you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn’t pay a lot, and doesn’t have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing.
One wonders whose fault it is that millions of young people are stuck in dead end jobs, living in their parents basement, while both Obama and Hillary make TV appearances touting the strength of the economic recovery.
But the punchline was what Hillary, who has been scrambling to secure the much-needed Millennial vote in recent weeks, truly thought about about the millions of young people whose vote she is trying to win: a diatribe of mockery, in which she describes the concept of a political revolution as a “false promise” which has attracted all these disillusioned and disheartened young people “living in their parents’ basement.” Does Hillary have anything to offer them? No, but she desperately needs their vote, even if behind the scenes at generously paid private functions, she mocks them in front of all those present.
We should all be really understanding of that and should try to do the best we can not to be, you know, a wet blanket on idealism. We want people to be idealistic. We want them to set big goals… But those of us who understand this, who’ve worked in it know that it’s a false promise. But I don’t think you tell idealistic people, particularly young people that they’ve bought into a false promise.
Especially when you are trying to secure their votes?
Then again, considering the eagerness with which Bernie Sanders has endorsed Wall Street’s favorite candidate, it is quite clear that the real “false promise” here was Sanders’ “revolution” all along. We wonder if in light of this hack, if Bernie Sanders would care to make some statement why he is endosing the candidate who behind closed doors, openly mocks everything that his supporters believe in.
Clinton has been accused numerous times in the past of patronizing young Sanders supporters. On Meet The Press in April, Clinton said she said “I feel sorry sometimes for the young people” who believe Sanders’s claims about her taking money from the fossil fuel industry.
During her remarks, she reiterated her belief that politics is the art of the possible, dismissing the more aspirational approach of Sanders and his supporters. “I want to be very clear about the progress I think we can make,” she said. There was no discussion of her view that the ideology of millions of progressive, young people is a false promise.
And while America’s young voters will be given an opportunity to respond to Hillary in just over 5 weeks time, one wonders what, in a world where Donald Trump’s every word is brutally attacked by the pro-Clinton media. would emerge if even a handful of Hillary’s Wall Street speech transcripts were the finally emerge.
- A Furious Rick Santelli Rages At Janet's Jawboning: "Please, Don't Help Anymore"
CNBC’s Rick Santelli turned it up to ’11’ today as The Fed’s Janet Yellen joined the world’s central planners in suggesting intervention directly in the stock markets would ‘help’ the average joe.
Santelli exclaims “don’t help anymore!!” How has any of their ‘help’ helped in the last 7 years?
“Central banks buying in the [stock] market… you really think that’s a good idea?” Raging about picking winners, buying Deutsche Bank, and keeping stocks “steady” around elections, the veteran pit trader exploded, “is that the world we really want to live in?”
The Fed’s buying stocks “will completely and utterly and in every possible way destroy and value in the marketplace…”
3 minutes of brutal reality slapped into the face of a ridiculous rumor-driven day…
- "Message Sent?" – Russia, China Release Stunning Panoramic Video Of Naval Drills
Helicopters and warships dominated the South China Sea, as Russia and China continued their joint eight-day naval exercises, dubbed Joint Sea 2016.
A total of 18 ships and supply vessels, 21 aircraft and over 250 service personnel took part in the Joint Sea 2016 naval drills on September 12-19 in the South China Sea.
Does this look like Russia and China are sending a message?
- The Complete A To Z Of Nations Destroyed By Hillary Clinton's "Hubris"
Submitted by Wayne Madsen via infowars.com
In an email sent to his business partner and Democratic fundraiser Jeffrey Leeds, former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote of Hillary Clinton, “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”
Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State during Barack Obama’s first term was an unmitigated disaster for many nations around the world. Neither the Donald Trump campaign nor the corporate media have adequately described how a number of countries around the world suffered horribly from Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy decisions.
Millions of people were adversely harmed by Clinton’s misguided policies and her “pay-to-play” operations involving favors in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative.
The following is a before and after recap, country by country, of the destabilizing effects of Clinton’s policies as Secretary of State:
Abkhazia
Before Hillary: In 2009, more and more nations began recognizing the independence of this nation that broke away from Georgia and successfully repelled a U.S.-supported Georgian invasion in 2008.
After Hillary: Clinton pressured Vanuatu and Tuvalu to break off diplomatic relations with Abkhazia in 2011. The State Department pressured the governments of India, Germany, and Spain to refuse to recognize the validity of Abkhazian passports and, in violation of the US-UN Treaty, refused to permit Abkhazian diplomats to visit UN headquarters in New York. The Clinton State Department also threatened San Marino, Belarus, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, Somalia, Uzbekistan, and Peru with recriminations if they recognized Abkhazia. Georgia was connected to Clinton through the representation of Georgia in Washington by the Podesta Group, headed by Tony Podesta, the brother of Mrs. Clinton’s close friend and current campaign chairman John Podesta.
Argentina
Before Hillary: Under President Nestor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina’s economy improved and the working class and students prospered.
After Hillary: After former president Nestor Kirchner’s sudden death in 2010, the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires became a nexus for anti-Kirchner activities, including the fomenting of political and labor protests against the government. Meanwhile, Clinton pressed Argentina hard on its debt obligations to the IMF, also crippling the economy.
Bolivia
Before Hillary: Bolivia’s progressive president Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous Aymara leader, provided government support to the country’s coca farmers and miners. Morales also committed his government to environmental protection. He kept his country out of the Free Trade Area of the Americas and helped start the Peoples’ Trade Agreement with Venezuela and Cuba.
After Hillary: Clinton permitted the U.S. embassy in La Paz to stir up separatist revolts in four mostly European-descent Bolivian provinces, as well as foment labor strikes among miners and other workers in the same model used in Venezuela.
Brazil
Before Hillary: Brazil’s progressive presidents, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, ushered in a new era for the country, with workers’ and students' rights at the forefront and environmental protection and economic development for the poor major priorities.
After Hillary: Clinton’s authorization of massive electronic spying from the US embassy in Brasilia and consulate general in Rio de Janeiro resulted in a “constitutional coup” against Rousseff and the Workers’ Party government, ushering in a right-wing, CIA-supported corrupt government.
Central African Republic
Before Hillary: Under President Francois Bozize, the CAR remained relatively calm under a peace agreement hammered out under the auspices of Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya.
After Hillary: In 2012, Islamist terrorists of the Seleka movement and supported by Saudi Arabia conducted an uprising, massacring Christians and riving Bozize’s government from power. The CAR became a failed state under Clinton’s State Department.
Ecuador
Before Hillary: Ecuador began sharing its oil wealth with the people and the economy and the plight of the nation’s poor improved.
After Hillary: Clinton authorized a 2010 National Police coup against President Rafael Correa. The economy soon plunged as labor disputes wracked the mining and oil sectors.
Egypt
Before Hillary: Under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt was a stable secular nation that suppressed jihadist politics in the mosques. The jihadist-oriented Muslim Brotherhood was kept at bay.
After Hillary: After Clinton’s 2011 “Arab Spring” and the toppling of Mubarak, Egypt saw Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood elected president. Immediately, the secular country began a process of Islamization with Christian Copts experiencing repression and violence, including massacres. Morsi’s rule resulted in a military coup, thus ending Egypt’s previous moves toward democracy.
Germany
Before Hillary: The nation was a peaceful country where German culture, as well as religious freedom and women’s rights were guaranteed.
After Hillary: Clinton’s “Arab Spring” eventually resulted in a flood of mainly Muslim refugees being welcomed into Germany from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Today, Germany is wracked by Muslim refugee street crime, unsanitary and harmful public health habits of migrants, sexual assaults by migrant men of women and children, increased acts of terrorism, and a diminution of German culture and religious practices.
Greece
Before Hillary: Greece was a nation that saw government safety net social services extended to all in need. It also remained a top tourist destination for northern Europeans.
After Hillary: The 2010 debt crisis emaciated the Greek economy and Clinton remained adamant that Greece comply with draconian economic measures dictated by Germany, the European Union, and the IMF/World Bank. Making matters worse, Clinton’s “Arab Spring” eventually resulted in a flood of mainly Muslim refugees being welcomed into first, the Greek isles, and then mainland Greece, from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Today, Greece, especially the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Symi, Rhodes, Leros, and Kos, are wracked by Muslim refugee crime, unsanitary public health habits of migrants, sexual assaults by migrant men of women and children, acts of arson and vandalism, and a diminution of Greek culture and religious practices.
Guatemala
Before Hillary: Under President Alvaro Colom, the nation’s first populist progressive president, the poor received access to health, education, and social security.
After Hillary: Clinton authorized the U.S. embassy in Guatemala to work against the 2011 election of president Colom’s wife, Sandra Torres. Colom was succeeded by a right-wing corrupt president who resigned for corruption and then was arrested.
Haiti
Before Hillary: Haiti was prepared in 2011 to re-elect Jean-Bertrand Aristide, forced out of office and into exile in a 2004 CIA coup. The prospects of Artistide’s return to power was a blessing for the slum dwellers of Haiti.
After Hillary: Clinton refused to allow Aristide to return to Haiti from exile in South Africa until it was too late for him to run in the 2011 election. Under a series of U.S.-installed presidents, all approved by Bill and Hillary Clinton, Haiti is a virtual cash cow for the Clintons. The Clinton Foundation diverted for its own use, international aid to Haiti, and the Clintons ensured that their wealthy friends in the hotel, textile, and construction businesses landed lucrative contracts for Haitian projects, none of which have benefited the Haitian poor and many of which resulted in sweat shops and extremely low wage labor practices.
Honduras
Before Hillary: Emergent multi-party democracy with a populist progressive president, Manuel Zelaya. Children received free education, poor children received free school meals, interest rates were reduced, and the poorest families were given free electricity.
After Hillary: Clinton authorized a military coup d’etat against Zelaya in 2009. Clinton family “fix-it” man Lanny Davis became a public relations flack for the military dictatorship. A fascist dictatorship involved in extrajudicial death squad killings of journalists, politicians, and indigenous leaders followed the “constitutional coup” against Zelaya. During 2012, Clinton ordered U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa to work against the 2013 election of Xiomara Castro de Zelaya as president.
Iraq
Before Hillary: Under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq experienced small moves toward an accommodation with the Kurds of the north and Sunnis. Iran acted as a moderating political force in the country that deterred any attempts by Saudi-supported jihadis to disrupt the central government in Baghdad.
After Hillary: Clinton’s Arab Spring resulted in the rise of the Sunni/Wahhabist Islamic State in northern and western Iraq and Iraq’s plunge into failed state status. Shi’as, Kurds, Yazidis, Assyrian Christians, and moderate Sunnis were massacred by the jihadis in northern, western, and central Iraq. The Iraqi cities of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Nineveh fell to ISIL forces with non-Muslims being raped, tortured, and executed and priceless antiquities being destroyed by the marauding jihadists.
Kosovo
Before Hillary: Kosovo, which became independent in 2008, initially granted its Serbian minority in northern Kosovo and Metohija some degree of self-government.
After Hillary: In 2009, Kosovo increasingly became a state ruled by criminal syndicates and terrorists of the former Kosovo Liberation Army. The rights of Serbs were increasingly marginalized and Kosovo became a prime recruiting ground for jihadist guerrillas in Arab countries subjected to Clinton’s “Arab Spring” operations, including Libya and Syria.
Clinton pressured states receiving U.S. aid and other U.S. allies to recognize Kosovo’s independence. These included Pakistan, Palau, Maldives, St. Kitts-Nevis, Dominica, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Burundi, East Timor, Haiti, Chad, Gambia, Brunei, Ghana, Kuwait, Ivory Coast, Gabon, St. Lucia, Benin, Niger, Guinea, Central African Republic, Andorra, Oman, Guinea-Bissau, Qatar, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Honduras, Somalia, Djibouti, Vanuatu, Swaziland, Mauritania, Malawi, New Zealand, Dominican Republic, Jordan, Bahrain, and Comoros. In the Kosovo capital of Pristina, there is a 10-foot-high statue of Bill Clinton standing over Bill Clinton Boulevard. Not far away is a women’s clothing store called “Hillary.”
Libya
Before Hillary: Under Muammar Qaddafi, post-sanction Libya saw a boom in urban construction and a new major international airport to serve as a hub for Africa. Plans announced for an African dinar, supported by Libyan gold holdings, to serve the needs of Africa. All Libyans received free education and medical care. There was a program for revenue sharing of Libya’s oil wealth with the Libyan people.
After Hillary: Clinton’s 2011 regime change operations against Qaddafi, which saw the Libyan leader sodomized, beaten, and shot in the head by U.S.-supervised jihadist rebels, resulted in Clinton laughing about the incident in the infamous, “We came, we saw, he died” comment. Libya became a failed state where Islamic jihadist terrorists vied for control of the country and Qaddafi’s arm caches were given or sold to jihadist terrorists in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, the pan-Sahel region, and sub-Saharan Africa. After Qaddafi’s ouster, black African guest workers and their families were massacred by jihadist forces.
Malaysia
Before Hillary: Malaysia, before 2009, was a religiously tolerant nation where Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus enjoyed freedom of religion.
After Hillary: In 2009, Najib Razak became prime minister and he began accepting bribes from Saudi Arabia that totaled some $2.6 billion with additional Malaysian public money in Razak’s personal bank accounts plus the Saudi cash totaling some $3.5 billion. Razak began allowing Saudi-influenced clerics to push for sharia law throughout Malaysia and Christians in Sarawak, Sabah, and Penang began experiencing Wahhabist repression. Clinton was silent about Malaysian persecution of non-Muslims. The reason may have been a reported several hundred million donation from Razak’s slush fund into the Clinton Foundation’s coffers.
Palestine
Before Hillary: In 2012, Palestine was granted non-member observer status in the United nations. The 2009 Goldstone Report of the UN found that Israel violated international humanitarian law in its war against Gaza in 2009. Palestine was gaining more support and sympathy internationally and was successfully putting to rest Israeli propaganda disinformation.
After Hillary: Hillary Clinton rejected the Goldstone Report as “one-sided.” Clinton’s unbridled support for expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and its silence on the dehumanizing Israeli blockade of Gaza, emboldened Israel’s theocratic right-wing government to further encroach on Palestinian territories and cementing into place an apartheid-like series of Palestinian “Bantustans” in the West Bank and an open-air ghetto in Gaza.
Paraguay
Before Hillary: The country under Fernando Lugo began lifting out of poverty the nation’s rural campesinos and urban workers. Paraguay also began a steady move toward democratization after years of military dictatorships.
After Hillary: Clinton’s 2012 “constitutional coup” against Fernando Lugo brought back into power the military-industrial oligarchy with the nation’s campesinos being forced back into poverty and repressive rule.
South Sudan
Before Hillary: Prior to independence in 2011, South Sudan, while rife with intra-tribal feuding, was relatively calm.
After Hillary: After being rushed into independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan, a special project of Clinton, George Soros, and actor George Clooney, descended into civil war and chaos. It beat all records in being transformed from a newly-independent state into a failed state.
Syria
Before Hillary: Syria was a multi-cultural and multi-religious secular state championing the concept of pan-Arab socialism and progressive policies advanced by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Syria was not a safe place for jihadism.
After Hillary: After Clinton’s 2011 green light for the “Arab Spring,” Syria became a failed state where the Islamic State gained a firm foothold. Minority Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Kurds were massacred by jihadist groups aided and abetted by NGOs and other interests backed by Clinton.
Thailand
Before Hillary: Thailand’s Red Shirt movement was a powerful force that demanded a return to democracy in Thailand and the restoration of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a 2006 military coup, to power.
After Hillary: A Red Shirt protest in 2010 resulted in a bloody crackdown by the Thai military. Clinton remained silent about the Thai army’s killing of protesters and the mass arrests of Red Shirt leaders. U.S. military assistance to the Thai government was continued by Clinton. When Thaskin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, became prime minister in 2011, Clinton began working to undermine her and her government in a manner not unlike Clinton’s subterfuge against Rousseff in Brazil and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina. When it comes to women leaders, Clinton only tolerates conservatives who kow-tow to the United States. The pressure against Yingluck eventually resulted in her ouster in 2014 and her being criminally charged in the same manner that saw Rousseff charged in Brazil.
Tunisia
Before Hillary: Tunisia was one of the most secular nations in the Arab and Islamic world. A top destination for European tourists, the country was more European in its outlook than North African.
After Hillary: After Clinton’s 2011 “Jasmine Revolution,” a textbook themed revolution crafted by Clinton’s friend George Soros, Tunisia descended into Islamist rule and violence. Today, Tunisia is the top country for recruits to the Islamic State.
Turkey
Before Hillary: Turkey was moving steadily closer to European standards on human rights and democracy. Even under the Islamist-oriented Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country remained committed to pluralism.
After Hillary: Clinton authorized the shipment of Libyan weapons captured from Qaddafi’s arms caches to Turkish middlemen in the employment of Erdogan’s government for transfer to the jihadist rebels in Syria. A complication in this arrangement resulted in the September 11, 2012 jihadist attack on the CIA warehouse facility in Benghazi, which killed U.S. envoy Chris Stevens and other State Department personnel. Turkey’s dalliance with jihadist rebels in Syria was mirrored by increasing Islamization of Turkey. The events of 2011 and 2012 resulted in Turkey today being ruled by an Islamist strongman, Erdogan, with open political opposition being stamped out.
Ukraine
Before Hillary: Ukraine was a stable and neutral country that neither aligned itself with the West and NATO nor with Russia under the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, elected in 2009 and inaugurated in 2010.
After Hillary: Clinton tried everything possible to ensure the 2009 defeat of Viktor Yanukovych. The State Department and its friends in the George Soros camp provided assistance to Clinton’s favorite candidate Yulia Tymoshenko to defeat Yanokovych. It was this early interference in the 2009 election that ultimately led to the “Euromaidan” themed revolution in 2014 against the government, resulting in civil war, the retrocession of Crimea back to Russia, and secessionist states in eastern Ukraine. Clinton’s policies directly led to a failed state in Europe.
Venezuela
Before Hillary: Under Hugo Chavez, the country provided basic social services to its poorest of citizens. Venezuela also provided discounted gasoline to several Caribbean and Central American countries through the PetroCaribe consortium.
After Hillary: After Clinton allowed the U.S. embassy in Caracas to foment anti-Chavez labor and political protests, the country began to falter economically. After Chavez’s 2012 diagnosis of terminal cancer, the State Department stepped up pressure on Venezuela, crippling the nation’s economy and political system.
Western Sahara
Before Hillary: Recognized by the African Union and several nations around the world as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Western Sahara saw some hope for an evacuation of illegal Moroccan occupation troops from its territory.
After Hillary: In 2010, Moroccan troops began entering Sahrawi refugee camps and attacking residents, even in UN-protected exclusion zones, where Moroccan troops were prohibited from entering. Clinton ensured that UN talks and a proposed popular referendum on the future of Western Sahara were stalled. Clinton pressured a number of states to withdraw their recognition of the SADR, including St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Paraguay, Haiti, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Malawi, Kenya, Mauritius, Zambia, Panama, and Burundi. The Clinton Foundation received a 2011 donation of $1 million from a Moroccan phosphate company owned by the Moroccan government and which has mining operations in Western Sahara.
Yemen
Before Hillary: Yemen was a largely secular state that was transforming into a federation where the rights of South Yemen and the Zaidi Houthis of north Yemen were being recognized.
After Hillary: Clinton’s “Arab Spring” of 2011 and the fall of Abdullah Saleh from power saw Yemen become a failed state. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State gained control over several areas of North and South Yemen. The fall of Saleh permitted Saudi Arabia to conduct a genocidal war in the country with Mrs. Clinton’s full support.
- China Housing Bubble Re-Inflates – "Even We Didn't Expect The Prices To Go Up This Much"
They say that history tends to repeat itself and for the China housing market, and its constantly repeating cycle of bubbles, that certainly seems to be the case. It seems like just yesterday that we pointed out the following video of ghost towns springing up all over China with millions of square feet of newly constructed residential living space but not a single resident.
And now, as we’ve pointed out numerous times recently (see posts here and here), China’s home prices are bubbling up all over again. Prices in China’s smaller cities, in particular, are seeing the largest gains as buyers from the larger tier one cities go hunting for “bargains.” In fact, per a recent account from Reuters, home prices in the city of Changsha have risen 30% in two months all while 13.5mm square meters of residential real estate remains unoccupied.
“Prices have risen 2,000 yuan ($299.84) per square meter on average in the past two months. That’s almost a 30 percent rise from July,” said Hu Yi, marketing manager at Central Courtyard, a residential project in Changsha targeting mid- to high-end buyers.
Chen Xiaochuan, marketing manager with local residential property project Xiang-Shore Park said speculators make up about a third of homebuyers in Changsha.
They are mainly from first-tier cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen, property agents said, but are also from Hefei, where home prices have doubled since the start of the year.
China Index Academy data shows there are 126,945 homes, or 13.46 million square meters, sitting empty in Changsha.
But Changsha isn’t the only city where home prices are bubbling over. Prices in the Zhengdong district have risen two-thirds this year with sales managers in the area caught off guard, “Even we didn’t expect the prices to go up this much.”
“We have already bought an apartment here, and we are looking to buy a second one,” a woman who goes by her last name Wang told Reuters just outside of project’s sales office.
“We see a flux of buyers from people outside of Zhengzhou, especially those from smaller cities in the same province,” Xu said, who apologized for his raspy voice, which he said was due to one too many sales pitches.
And for Zhang Liyang, a sales manager at Greenland Group’s HK.600606 Zhengzhou office, the price surge in the past few months came as a surprise, which meant missed opportunities as she was entitled to employee discount rates.
Of course, as we’ve pointed out numerous times, and confirmed here with data from Deutsche Bank’s China Chief Economist, Zhiwei Zhang, the whole thing is yet another debt-fueled bubble that will inevitably come crashing down again at some point in the not-so-distant future.
Per the chart below, accompanying China’s booming property market is a surge in mortgage loans with LTV’s skyrocketing to 71.2% in recent months, twice the level in 2016H1, 34.8%, which was already much higher than its peak, around 25%, in previous years.
Meanwhile, DB points out the average land auction premium for tier 1 cities rose from around 40% at the beginning of the year to over 90% by August. In tier 2 cities it soared to almost 70% from 25%. Note, these are premia to asking prices not even YoY price changes…seems very reasonable.
And, of course, pricing growth is almost perfectly correlated with credit expansion.
But, just like last time around, its probably nothing…
- "The Fed Is Leading Us To Economic Hell" Mauldin Warns "Only A Public Outcry Can Stop It"
Submitted by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,
The Fed argues that low rates have worked. The economy emerged from recession. Unemployment drifted back down. “Yay for us,” said the Fed.
Don't buy that statistical economic garbage. The economy recovered in spite of Fed policy, not because of it. The economy recovered because business owners, entrepreneurs, and workers rolled up their sleeves and made things happen.
It involved a lot of pain: layoffs, asset sales, lost customers, and more. But the hard-working citizens of this country slowly and painfully pulled themselves out of the nosedive.
Those are the people who deserve the credit, not the Fed. Keeping rates at artificially low levels did nothing other than push our economy into the mother of all corners.
Look where we are now.
The next recession means rates will go below zero
The US economy is going to suffer another recession in the not-too-distant future. So, for lack of anything else to do, the Fed is preparing to send rates below zero when the economy next needs goosing. That was clearly the message from Jackson Hole.
What then? Here is the most likely scenario I think we are facing—and you are not going to like it.
We are going to go into the next recession with interest rates still stuck in the sub-1% range. This doesn’t give the Fed much ammunition.
Economists (who could certainly qualify as High Priests) have done studies on recent Fed policies. These show that quantitative easing didn’t really do anything, other than maybe goose the stock market.
There is also no data that shows any positive benefit from the so-called wealth effect, which was all the academic rage at the beginning of this process. Forget the wealth effect. The fact is that when the stock market goes up, it does not trickle down to the average guy on Main Street.
(It’s ironic that the same economists who derided supply-side economics as trickle-down economics have adopted trickle-down monetary policy. I mean, that is so messed up on so many levels.)
We know that the Fed will not simply do nothing. We’ll get quantitative easing on a scale that is currently unimaginable. This will blow out the Fed’s balance sheet to a level that is unrecognizable.
Unless there’s considerable pushback from Congress. And it must come from more than just the usual suspects on the far right of the Republican Party. If not, we will see negative rates in the world’s reserve currency.
The central bankers of Europe who are experimenting with negative rates came to Jackson Hole to advise the Fed. They said that negative rates are working wonderfully. Never mind that cash hoarding in Switzerland is at astronomical levels.
(It’s a fascinating arbitrage: bank rates are -75 bips, and you can insure your cash in a safe deposit box for about 10 bips. And in Switzerland, you can find a bill worth $1000. It makes total sense.)
Negative rates will drive consumer spending down, not up. They will result in less income in retirees' pockets—forcing them to save more, work longer, and spend less.
The next 10 years will see an explosion of government debt and an implosion of the ability of governments to fulfill their promises. Any economic or investment model based on past performance under previous economic conditions will be worthless. Just as worthless as the Federal Reserve’s models.
The toughest investing climate of the last 100 years
We are truly going to have to go outside the box if we are going to figure out how to get our portfolios from where we are today to the other side of the coming crisis. There is no way to predict what our investment portfolios should look like six months or one year or two years or six years from now.
I see no way for Europe to avoid that crisis. The US might if we make some radical decisions in 2017. You can ask yourself how likely that is.
I’m telling you, this is not going to end well. You cannot assume that your investment returns will look anything like the average for the last 20, 30, 40 years.
I know some people will say that is exactly what’s going to happen. Many of them are my friends, and I enjoy sitting and talking with them over a bottle of wine and a great meal. But I will look them in the eye and tell them that they’re walking into economic hell with their eyes closed. And anyone who follows them will see their portfolio go up in smoke.
This is going to be the most difficult investing environment of the last 100 years. Only a public outcry can stop it.
* * *
Follow Mauldin as he uncovers the truth behind, and beyond, the financial headlines in his free publication, Thoughts from the Frontline. The publication explores developments overlooked by mainstream news and analyzes challenges and opportunities on the horizon.
- Debate Commission Admits There Was An "Issue" With Trump's Microphone
Almost one week after the first presidential debate, and days after Trump claimed that there were problems with his microphone, earlier today the Commission on Presidential Debates issued a brief, one-sentence statement Friday admitting “issues” with Donald Trump’s audio in during the first presidential debate held on Monday.
“Regarding the first debate, there were issues regarding Donald Trump’s audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall,” the statement read.
Was Trump’s audio purposefully impaired? It is unclear, however we do know that while Trump argued after the debate that his microphone was defective, Hillary Clinton dismissed it an excuse of someone who did poorly. Clinton, who put Trump on the defensive, mocked the republican on Tuesday for complaining about his microphone.
“Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night,” Clinton quipped while speaking to reporters on her plane.
Trump told reporters immediately following the debate that event organizers “gave me a defective mic” that he said affected the audio inside the Hofstra University venue.
In retrospect it means he was right.
“Did you notice that?” he asked a reporter immediately after the debate. “My mic was defective within the room.”
While the issue didn’t appear to affect the broadcast of the debate, it may have led to a loss of concentration at the high stakes event, giving Hillary an advantage.
“Was that on purpose?” Trump asked. We will likely never know.
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