Breaking: IRS Admits To Specifically Targeting Tea Party Conservatives – Obama Was Going After His Political Enemies

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has won a years-long legal battle against the Internal Revenue Service in which the agency admitted that it wrongfully targeted Tea Party conservatives, during the Obama Administration, specifically because of their political viewpoints.

In issuing an “apology” to the clients represented by the ACLJ, the IRS admitted that it was wrong to use the United States tax code simply because of an entity’s name. They also admitted the bombshell fact that this discrimination happened specifically because of the applicants political viewpoints. Keep in mind the fact that the mainstream media has spent years telling the American people that this didn’t happen.

In other words, outlets such as The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times directly lied to their readers and viewers to protect a Democratic president whose administration was openly breaking the law.

Surprise. Surprise.

On top of an admission of guilt, the IRS apology also included:

· A declaration by the Court that it is wrong to apply the United States tax code to any tax-exempt applicant or entity based solely on such entity’s name, any lawful positions it espouses on any issues, or its associations or perceived associations with a particular political movement, position or viewpoint;

· A declaration by the Court that any action or inaction taken by the IRS must be applied evenhandedly and not based solely on a tax-exempt applicant or entity’s name, political viewpoint, or associations or perceived associations with a particular political movement, position or viewpoint; and

· A declaration by the Court that discrimination on the basis of political viewpoint in administering the United States tax code violates fundamental First Amendment rights. Disparate treatment of taxpayers based solely on the taxpayers’ names, any lawful positions the taxpayers espouse on any issues, or the taxpayers’ associations or perceived associations with a particular political movement, position or viewpoint is unlawful. 

[…]

Finally, and of crucial significance, the IRS admits it targeted conservative and Tea Party groups based on their viewpoints (i.e., “policy positions”) and that such viewpoint discrimination violates fundamental First Amendment rights. This is the first time the IRS has admitted that its targeting scheme was not just “inappropriate” – as TIGTA found – but, as our clients alleged and we have vigorously and persistently argued for years, blatantly unconstitutional.

ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow noted the historic victory as well as the terrifying fact that the Obama Administration used the IRS to go after their political enemies, knowing full well that most of their allies in the media would ignore or discredit any reporting that exposed this disgusting and illegal practice.

“Throughout litigation of this case, we have remained committed to protecting the rights of our clients who faced unlawful and discriminatory action by the IRS. Our objective from the very beginning has been to hold the IRS accountable for its corrupt practices. This Consent Order represents a historic victory for our clients and sends the unequivocal message that a government agency’s targeting of conservative organizations, or any organization, on the basis of political viewpoints, will never be tolerated, Sekulow said in a statement.

“This Order will put an end, once and for all, to the abhorrent practices utilized against our clients, as the agreement includes the IRS’s express acknowledgment of – and apology for – its wrongful treatment of our clients. While this agreement is designed to prevent any such practices from occurring again, rest assured that we will remain vigilant to ensure that the IRS does not resort to such tactics in the future.”

So there you have. Former president Barack Obama used a corrupt IRS to go after Tea Party groups that he disagreed with in what should be one of the largest political scandals in decades. This is high-level, “we will take out our enemies, screw the law,” type corruption.

One can imagine that the same liberal journalists that downplayed the initial IRS revelations will either ignore this or laughably try to somehow pretend something that the IRS admitted themselves wasn’t true because… Fox News.

There Is No "Political Center" In Modern America

Authored by Gaius Publius via Down With Tyranny blog,

An entirely false but constantly sold view of the American electorate

In an April 2016 piece, in the middle of the Democratic primary, I wrote this about modern independent voters and the upcoming general election:

If you look at the swell of new voters in both parties, the increase is for the "change" candidate, not the one promising to retain and refresh the status-quo. The presidential candidate who wins this election will be the one who best appeals to the new "radical independent"...

Today"s independents aren"t "moderates" who want conventional, faux-centrist policies and less "gridlock." Political partisans want less gridlock around issues of disagreement, because it advances individual party agendas and careers in addition to those issues. But in the main and with a few important exceptions — women"s health and rights, racial justice, gun violence — both parties have agreed and cooperated on broad policy goals.

Leaders of both parties, for example, broadly believe in the current military style of policing. Both believe in a justice system that coerces defendants into plea bargains, guilty or innocent. Both believe in the "importance of Wall Street to the economy" and that big financial institutions should be defended, not broken up. Both parties have offered and enacted a long and strong diet of lower taxes, spending austerity, war and more war. We"ve had these policies, delivered in a fully bipartisan way, for decades....

Today"s independents, in contrast, are done with that.

This led to a prediction that "to win, Clinton must win Sanders independents. If she fails, she is likely to lose. The problem for Clinton is, how to do that."

And indeed, Clinton did lose.

There"s more to say, obviously, about why Clinton lost. But it"s certainly true that, if 2016 were not a "change year" election, Clinton would have won by a mile. For example, if Clinton were running for a second term in 2012 instead of Obama, she"d have had no problem beating the Republican. It"s only in a "change year" election — 2008, for example — that a status quo candidate has trouble against a "change" candidate; and indeed, Clinton was defeated by that year"s "change" candidate, Barack Obama.

In 2016, instead of sailing to victory Clinton was nosed out in a squeaker. Even if that win was stolen it could only have been stolen if it were close. To use a football analogy, the refs can"t throw the game to your opponent if you"re winning by four touchdowns. In a hostile stadium with hostile refs, best not be barely ahead with two minutes to go.

In the Center of Nowhere

Confirmation of part of this analysis — that Clinton"s attempt to win by wooing "centrist" voters sloshing undecidely between the parties was an error — comes from a 2016 book, Democracy for Realists, by political scientists Larry Bartels and Christopher Achen. As Eric Levitz writes in a recent New York Magazine article,

"The notion that there is an easily identifiable, median political ideology in America derives from the "spatial model" [i.e., linear] of the electorate, which first gained prominence in the middle of the 20th century."

This "spacial model" of the electorate should be familiar to every American, since it"s sold by every mainstream media outlet. This model posits a single line of policy choices — arrayed in just two dimensions from "left" to "right" — with voters arrayed somewhere along it as well. Thus there are "left" policy choices, "right" policy choices, and voters in a kind of bell-shaped curve arrayed along it as well. "Left" voters prefer "left" policies, "right" voters prefer "right" policies, with the vast majority of voters somewhere in the middle.

Bartels and Achen, as quoted by Levitz, describe the linear analogy this way (my emphasis):

[T]he political “space” consists of a single ideological dimension on which feasible policies are arrayed from left to right. Each voter is represented by an ideal point along this dimension reflecting the policy she prefers to all others. Each party is represented by a platform reflecting the policy it will enact if elected. Voters are assumed to maximize their ideological satisfaction with the election outcome by voting for the parties closest to them on the ideological dimension, Parties are assumed to maximize their expected payoff from office-holding by choosing the platforms most likely to get them elected.

[T]his framework is sufficient to derive a striking and substantively important prediction: both parties will adopt identical platforms corresponding to the median of the distribution of voters’ ideal points.

In other words, if it is assumed that most voters are on the "left," the party to the "right" will drift that way. If it is assumed most voters are on the "right," the "left" party will similarly move. And if voters are in the "center," both parties will tend to move there with them.

What Bartels and Achen discovered was something that should have been obvious from the start — that this is just not the case. What they discovered is that there is no political "center" in modern America.

As Levitz writes:

A 2014 study from Berkeley political scientists David Broockman and Douglas Ahler surveyed voters on 13 policy issues — offering them seven different positions to choose from on each, ranging from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. On only two of those issues — gay rights and the environment — was the centrist position the most common one. On marijuana, the most popular policy was full legalization; on immigration, the most widely favored proposal was “the immediate roundup and deportation of all undocumented immigrants and an outright moratorium on all immigration until the border is proven secure”; and on taxes, the most popular option was to increase the rate on income above $250,000 by more than 5 percent. Meanwhile, establishing a maximum annual income of $1 million (by taxing all income above that at 100 percent) was the third most common choice, boasting four times more support than the national Republican Party’s platform on taxation.

When pundits implore Democrats not to abandon the center, they do not typically mean that the party should embrace legal weed, much higher taxes on the rich, and mass deportation. More often, such pundits call on Team Blue to embrace a combination of moderate fiscal conservatism, a cosmopolitan attitude toward globalization, and moderate social liberalism — in short, to become the party of Michael Bloomberg (minus, perhaps, the enthusiasm for nanny-state public-health regulations). The former New York mayor is routinely referred to as a centrist in the mainstream press, despite the fact that his policy commitments — support for Social Security cuts, Wall Street deregulation, mass immigration, and marriage equality — when taken together, put him at the fringes of American public opinion[.]

Note that this analysis is multi-dimensional. Even a two-dimensional representation couldn"t do it justice.

Why Do Democrats Pursue Non-Existent "Centrist" Voters?

If there are no voters in the political "center," a strategy based on winning them is likely to fail. So why pursue them? Perhaps because voters aren"t what the Democratic Party - or either American political party these days - is pursuing. Perhaps it"s because what both parties are actually pursuing - is money.

Levitz seems to agree. In his article he quotes David Broockman, the study"s co-author, as saying this in an interview:

When we say moderate what we really mean is what corporations want …

Within both parties there is this tension between what the politicians who get more corporate money and tend to be part of the establishment want — that’s what we tend to call moderate — versus what the Tea Party and more liberal members want.

From this we can easily draw three conclusions:

• The only "center" in modern American politics consists of policies the people who finance elections want to see enacted.


• The mainstream media and both political parties regularly labels these policies "centrist."


• The way to be called "moderate" by the mainstream press is to advocate for "centrist" policies.

And yet, one can easily predict a series of "change year" elections stretching far into the future in which "centrist" candidates will fail again and again, since America"s economic problems show no signs of being fixed anytime soon.

This is not because the means of fixing those problems don"t exist, though, and aren"t readily at hand. Levitz closes by saying:

On most of these [economic] issues, effective policy responses aren’t unknown — they’re just considered politically untenable. We know how to reduce inequality and eradicate poverty: you redistribute pre-tax income from the rich to the poor. When America expanded the welfare state, its poverty rate went down; when it scaled back the safety net, the opposite occurred. Nordic social democracies devote more resources to propping up the living standards of their most vulnerable citizens than most other countries, and their poverty rates are among the lowest in the world, as a result.

We know how to reduce student debt: You have the government directly subsidize the cost of higher education. And we know to reduce medical costs while achieving universal coverage — you let the state cap reimbursement rates, and subsidize the medical costs of the sick and the poor until everyone can afford basic medical care, (as they do in virtually every other developed nation on Earth). And while we can’t be certain about exactly what it will take to avert ecological catastrophe, we know that the more rapidly we transition our energy infrastructure toward renewable fuels, the better our odds will be.

It just means that voters" desire to see them fixed will go unfulfilled by any party running a "status quo" candidate.

Radical Independents Are Here to Stay

The day of the "radical independent" is here. Yet by not selling themselves as proponents of economic reform in addition to reform on the numerous "rights" or "identity" issues, the Democratic Party is abandoning the demographic it needs to start winning elections again.

Has anything changed recently with the introduction of the Democrat"s "Better Deal" campaign? Richard Eskow convincingly argues no. It may be time to admit that the reason we have Republicans in power — in a majority of states as well as the federal government — owes less to Vladimir Putin than it does to mainstream Democrats themselves.

Americans have not much ability to "fix" Vladimir Putin. Do American have the ability to "fix" the Democratic Party, to cure it of its need to pursue money instead of voters? Perhaps, but not if the Party doesn"t want to be fixed.

Chicago’s Insane Soda Tax Shows What Happens When Crooked Govts Collapse—They Rob the People

When Chicago implemented a new tax on soft drinks, the Illinois Retail Merchants Association responded with a lawsuit arguing that the tax should be overturned because it would hurt sales. While the lawsuit failed, the county is now reportedly retaliating against IRMA to the tune of $17 million.

According to a report from Chicago Tonight, “The county is looking for some payback from those suing to stop the new sweetened beverage tax.” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s office confirmed that it is suing IRMA for “damages” brought about by their lawsuit. At issue is the county’s contention the lawsuit delayed the county’s ability to rake in taxes hand over fist from the consumption of soda.

Preckwinkle’s spokesman Frank Shuftan told Crain’s Chicago Business Journal in an email, “The financial damage to the county as a result of this delay is projected at more than $20 million … The county has every right to be made whole as a result of the judge’s ruling upholding the ordinance and removing the TRO (temporary restraining order).” In other words, Cook County wants the money they would have received from the tax, had IRMA not filed a lawsuit in the first place.

The move to sue IRMA admittedly upset County Judge Daniel Kubasiak, who said:

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“I can tell you that I’m troubled by this, the chilling effect of the government saying that you best not challenge us because if you’re proven wrong we will come and get damages from you.”

Preckwinkle’s office responded by saying, “Our motion seeking damages has nothing to do with chilling anyone; it is to capture badly needed revenues to which the county is entitled based on the ordinance.”

The county’s response may be indicative of its budgetary woes. It has been projected that Cook County’s budget shortfall will likely reach $98 million, even with the soda tax factored in. The county even wanted to make the tax applicable to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as “food stamps,” but the courts prohibited the attempt by Cook County to tax its own governmental program.

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Cook County employees will likely be affected by the budget shortfall. Preckwinkle said in June, “We’ve made it clear to our workforce that this is going to be an extremely challenging period, and I don’t think there’s any expectation on either side of the table that those kinds of increases will be repeated in this bargaining session.”

With the lawsuit against IRMA proceeding, it now seems Cook County will stop at nothing to not only overburden its residents with a senseless soda tax, but to also go after its businesses—including the ones that already pay sizeable taxes—if they dare to challenge the county’s revenue generating policies.

For those who may not think the tax is all that big of a deal, and who may drink the Koolaid believing people shouldn’t consume soda in the first place, here is an example of how the tax will affect the consumer. Considering all of the birthday parties that take place daily, the purchase of a simple 24-pack of Sprite will now cost Cook County residents about $10.

Ed Atwell, a resident of Cook County—or as he called it “Crook County”—uploaded a photo on Facebook of a Sprite purchase from Tony’s Finer Foods. The cost of the box of soda was a reasonable $5.99. The new soda tax was $2.88 at $.01 per ounce. Including the sales tax of 10.25% and the additional soft drink tax, the total for 24 cans of soda rose to a staggering $9.66. If that’s not an example of the proverbial highway robbery, we don’t know what is.

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“Crook County! Check out the tax on a $5.99 case of Sprite. I can’t believe my fellow citizens that keep voting these clowns in office.” — Image via Ed Atwell, Facebook

The tax doesn’t just hit soda either. As the Chicago Tribune reports, the tax applies to soda and diet soda, ready-to-drink sweetened coffees and teas, sports and energy drinks, and juice products that aren’t 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice, among other beverages. The tax also applies to free refills of lemonade.

Cook County sweetened beverage tax applies to free refills of lemonade. pic.twitter.com/PDztyTDIBl

— ChiTrib Clout Street (@ChiTribCloutSt) August 2, 2017

It appears as though Americans are powerless to change their government’s officials, and even when they do, budget shortfalls are often used as an impetus to discontinue the failed policies of previous administrations. But instead of fighting back, and becoming defendants in egregious lawsuits such as what IRMA now has to endure, consumers are voting with their feet. They are taking their business outside of Cook County, in an effort to save money.

As ABC Chicago 7 reported, residents are now going to neighboring counties to avoid the soda tax that went into effect Wednesday. Shopping outside of Cook County is estimated to cost the county 25 percent of its retail sales. Shopper Marty Dwan told Chicago 7:

“It all adds up, I mean, a little here and a little there. Well worth it to wait five minutes until I’m out of Cook County.”

When will the residents of Cook County finally reach their breaking point? Between the over-taxation of property values to the exorbitant soda tax, Chicagoans are feeling the pinch. Instead of fighting back, however, many are simply leaving, leading to the budget shortfalls the county is now facing. Enough is enough.

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Will there be a new Tea-Party-style revolution take place in Cook County, but with soda? As if the street crime isn’t bad enough, now the county itself is reaching further into the pockets of its residents for a soda tax, shaming them for drinking the sweetened drinks in the process, and suing anyone who gets in their way. That’s not what capitalism looks like. That’s what theft looks like. The framers of The Constitution would be overthrowing the government of Cook County right now!

The "Dusenberry Effect" In The U.S. Economy

Via Global Macro Monitor,

Just saw this chart on Zero Hedge yesterday, which takes me back to the days of graduate school and an unfinished Ph.D. dissertation.

One part of the “Dusenberry Effect” basically states that consumers do not give up their consumption patterns very easy even if their incomes decline.

They, in effect, “ratchet” down their living standard very slowly by first having a second wage earner enter the workforce as we saw in the 1970’s when women began to enter the workforce en masse and then by taking on debt to finance their previous standard of living.

…[a] significant part of Duesenberry’s relative income hypothesis is that it suggests that when income of individuals or households falls, their consumption expenditure does not fall much. This is often called a ratchet effect. This is because, according to Duesenberry, the people try to maintain their consumption at the highest level attained earlier. This is partly due to the demon­stration effect explained above. People do not want to show to their neighbours that they no longer afford to maintain their high standard of living.

Further, this is also partly due to the fact that they become accustomed to their previous higher level of consumption and it is quite hard and difficult to reduce their consumption expenditure when their income has fallen. They maintain their earlier con­sumption level by reducing their savings. Therefore, the fall in their income, as during the period of recession or depression, does not result in decrease in consumption expenditure very much as one would conclude from family budget studies.

– YourArticleLibrary

We suspect the cumulative policy decisions of bailing out debt holders and punishing savers over the past 30 years has changed attitudes on debt accumulaton.  

We know several people that didn’t pay their mortgages for more than three years and were not foreclosed on.   That is just un-freaking-fair, folks!

The Rise of Tea Party

The duplicity of the policy makers and the banks gave rise to much anger thoughout the country from those who basically, “did the right thing”,  paying their bills and mortgages on time. And was one reason for Rick Santelli’s rant in February 2009, which many atrribute to the birth of the Tea Party.

Upshot?  No wonder the country is so divided.

Is IRS exec Lois Lerner’s life in danger?

Stewart Rhodes, Army Airborne Veteran, Yale Law School Graduate, OK Founder and President

Sheriff Richard Mack, Former Sheriff of Graham County, Arizona

John D. Shirley, Retired Duty Peace Officer - Houston, TX. National Lead Liaison to Peace Officers.

Jay Stang, Veteran US Marine Corps - Texas Chapter President

Jim Ayala, EMT Veteran, Oath Keepers Treasurer, Merchandise

Sgt. Maj. Joseph Santoro, Retired Army, infantry, EOD. OK National Operations NOC

Michele Imburgia, Texas State VP

Sheriff Denny Peyman, Retired Jackson County, KY Sheriff, OK National Peace Officer Liaison

John Kerriman, Current Missouri police academy instructor, police veteran, OK National Peace Officer/LEO Liaison

---

The Simple Reason Why A Second American Civil War May Be Inevitable

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

America has always had its divisions, and Americans have never really been a monolith. We’ve always been a nation of many nations. The culture of New England is different from the culture of the Deep South, which is different from the cultures in the West Coast or the Midwest. People living in the cities have different beliefs than people who live in the countryside. Within those areas, there are ethnic, linguistic, and religious enclaves. It’s always kind of been like that (probably to a lesser degree in the past), and somehow we’ve been able to find enough common ground to keep this country together for more than a century.

However, something has changed. You can feel it in the air. Our nation has clearly never been this divided since the Civil War. A lot of people noticed it after the last election, but the truth is that these divisions have been deepening for decades, and they’re just now reaching a very noticeable breaking point. That’s obvious enough when you look at how the left and the right have been going at each other. It used to be a war of words, but it’s turning into something very dark.

Consider what happened last week in Berkeley after Trump supporters and counter protesters clashed for the third time. 21 people were arrested and 11 were injured (that we know of), six of who had to be taken to the hospital. At least one person was stabbed. The police confiscated confiscated knives, stun guns, and poles. One Trump supporter admitted to being surrounded, pepper sprayed, and beaten with sticks by a mob of “protesters.”

But wait, that’s not the dark part. After these groups clashed, the leftist protesters took to Reddit and admitted that they lost this particular battle (I can’t believe I’m using the word “battle” to describe it), and that it was time for them to attain more combat training and better weapons, including firearms.

Do you see what’s going on here? Conservative demonstrations, which used to be placid affairs (remember the Tea Party protests?) are now turning violent as conservatives grow tired of restraining themselves, and are no longer afraid to hit back. Liberal demonstrators are responding by ratcheting up the level of force that they’re going to bring to the next street battle. It’s a tit for tat that keeps escalating, and I shudder to think of where it’s going to end up.

Honestly, I think we’re in the early stages of a second civil war. I can’t say what it’ll look like precisely, but I can tell you that our nation is on this path, and it’s not clear how we can get off of it. In fact, I fear that it may be inevitable, and there’s a very simple reason why.

It’s because Americans have been self-sorting themselves along geographic and political lines for a long time. A book titled “The Big Sort” made light of this trend back in 2008.

Basically what’s going on, is that Americans are moving to communities that align more with their politics. Liberals are moving to liberal areas, and conservatives are moving to conservative communities. It’s been going on for decades. When Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, 26.8% of Americans lived in landslide counties; that is counties where the president won or lost by 20% of the vote.

By 2004, 48.3% of the population lived in these counties. This trend continues to worsen. As Americans move to their preferred geographic bubbles, they face less exposure to opposing viewpoints, and their own opinions become more extreme. This trend is at the heart of why politics have become so polarizing in America.

We’re also seeing the same trend emerge online with social media. Despite the fact that the internet allows us to be exposed to more opinions that ever before, people choose to follow online voices that they already agree with. They’re slipping into digital bubbles that are comparable to their geographic bubbles.

This trend is irreversible as far as I can tell. That’s because it’s tied to innovation. As our country became more interconnected with roads and Americans gained more mobility, we chose to move to like-minded places. We’re given the internet, the greatest source of information in human history, and we use it to seek out only the information that reinforces our current beliefs.

We’re self-sorting at every level. Because of this, Americans are only going to grow more extreme in their beliefs, and see people on the other side of the political spectrum as more alien.

You can see how this is creating the perfect breeding ground for a real, physical war. The polarization makes it easier to dehumanize the other side. The self-sorting creates definable geographic boundaries that are necessary for a war. It spawns two sides with beliefs that are so divergent, that they cannot coexist.

We’re becoming two distinct nations with two competing visions for what the country should be. Two visions that are diametrically opposed. We used to be a nation of many nations that was held together, because there was still some common ground on what it means to be an American above all else. Now we can’t even agree on that.

Once the last shreds of common ground and understanding dissipate, a moment that is rapidly approaching, another civil war will be impossible to avoid. I wish I knew what the solution is, but I don’t. All I can say is, unless Americans go out of their way to listen to people on other side, whatever that side may be, there’s going to be a lot of blood in the streets.

Pack Instinct (Fertile Grounds For Meatheads)

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

On Monday, I shared with you a conversation I had with an entrepreneur Mahdi Kazemzadeh, who"s built a business in Iran.

Here"s the astonishing thing: despite being Iranian Mahdi isn"t a terrorist. No, really!

The mere mention of Iran gets the dog-pack enzymes flowing with an easily influenced Western media-fed crowd. Pack mentality surfaces, except that those who are exhibiting it don"t call it that. No, instead they call it patriotism (discussed here), which miraculously is seen as a good, honourable, virtuous quality rather than a mental disorder.

I"ve spent a lot of time discussing the qualitative aspects affecting the global macro landscape and I receive hundreds of emails each month thanking me for sharing them. I"m deeply humbled and in fact 99.9% of readers are kind, curious, engaging, and where they disagree they do so in an intelligent and intellectually stimulating way. I genuinely love it, even if I can"t respond to all.

I like to think of Capitalist Exploits as a home for independent, objective thought. The ability to step back, observe, question where the consensus may be wrong, look to economic history for guidance, and to then objectively invest according to probabilities is at the very centre of how I feed my family and what this little corner of cyberspace is all about.

We"re here to make money, not to be popular.

As such, it"s amusing when occasionally a moron pops his wee little head up.

Fortunately, morons are desperately easy to spot. They stick out like a giant zit on a prom queen. Logic has left the building, wild accusations are used, and the pack instinct is alive and kicking. They operate purely from an emotional level, not unlike a 4-year old who"s been told Santa isn"t coming this year.

After publishing the conversation on Monday discussing Iran with Mahdi I received the usual thank yous and then this doozy:

"Listen you kangaroo meat eating hill billy...

you better quit talking ignorant bullshit about the U.S. and Trump, two subjects you know absolutely nothing about. I know you"re probably upset with yourself since you turned out to be a shit money manager and are having a very tough time dealing with redemptions but why don"t you concentrate on educating yourself and start practicing some class."

Bless this poor intellectually retarded soul.

The reason I share this with you is to demonstrate something that we"re all going to have to get very used to.

The seasons have changed. This, folks, is the pack animal zeitgeist that I"ve written about in "What the Incoming "Strong Men" Mean for the Global Economy" and elsewhere in these pages.

Humans have an insuperable tendency to form packs and proceed to bark at other packs. When a neighbour"s dog walks past my property, my dog rushes to bark at it. Every time! The neighbour"s dog isn"t a threat, it"s just what dogs do.

When a Japanese military recon plane enters Chinese airspace, fighter jets scramble furiously to bark at it. They know it"s not going to bomb China. It"s what pack animals do.

I"ve little doubt that the clown who emailed me (the one with the intellectual capacity of ringworm) gathers his knowledge of Iran from the @realDonaldTrump Twitter feed. A pack animal. Grrr! Woof! Bow-wow!

The odds he"s visited Iran? Slim!

Ever been threatened by Iran? Nope. Grrr! Woof! Bow-wow! My guy says it"s so. The hoi polloi never learn. Remember Bush"s Iraq war? The one where Saddam had weapons of mass destruction? Same pack response then. Same pack response now. Grrrr! woof!

Paradoxically, when I was writing about why "the ginger ninja" was going to win the presidency (for example, this one) I received a good dozen emails which could be summarised as, "Whoo yeah! Go Trump, stick it to em!".

I get it. It was the point I was making : the rising anti-establishment zeitgeist. The thing is - and I made this clear but it still falls on deaf ears: I"m interested in outcomes. It doesn"t matter one iota what I might wish to happen. If I was to trade based on what I wish would happen I"d not be able to afford this fancy machine I"m writing to you on.

No. The only thing that matters is outcomes and attempting to protect yourself and profit accordingly. Some seem to have unfortunately mistaken my identifying a trend for my supporting of a trend.

The response that I get when I say this is, "Oh, so you support Hillary then?". Well, no.

Actually, I was tickled pink that the reptile was kicked to the curb but that doesn"t mean you don"t question what"s taking place, and it certainly doesn"t mean that you need to support the opposition either. It"s useful to remember that your vote is statistically meaningless, anyway.

I wrote an entire article about why voting is a terrific waste of your time years ago:

"The reason I don’t vote, apart from the mathematical certainty that my vote is meaningless and the near mathematical certainty that I will be contributing towards propelling a parasitic self serving, egotistical, yet entirely ignorant, podium doughnut towards stardom is that I don’t care for any political party either. Not the Reds, Whites, Pinks or Browns, the Tea party, Libertarian party, or any other party.

 

They all end up the same way, with some folks moving to expand their sphere of influence to the detriment of others who disagree with them. Voting is meaningless in its present form. “The people” are presented with a select group of egomaniacs with whom they have no connection, and who have proved repeatedly that they will never “represent” said “people” anyway. What a charade. I would go so far as saying its unethical to participate in such a fraud."

Despite what you"re told by the media and any given podium doughnut, George Carlin was right:

Simply investigating multiple angles is a mental challenge few are prepared to engage in, especially where it conflicts with their chosen "guru"s" ideology. Far easier to shut your mind off and follow. Just follow. Read history and tell me it isn"t so.

The psychology of a gas station lout says that if you "diss" my guy, then I"ll beat your head in with a brick. It matters not what "your guy" has said or done. The reason this matters to us as investors is because the pack actually dominates humanity.

Patriotism is simply the loyalty of dogs in a pack. 

 

Consider this: the German soldiers who murdered millions in World War II were patriots as were the Japanese pilots bombing Pearl Harbour. In fact, we can objectively say that the the thugs who drove a truck into a crowd in Nice were patriots.

Do we admire them for patriotism? No, they"re not "our" guy.

Do their own admire them for their allegiance to the pack? Sadly, yes.

Patriotism, like love, is blind because it"s driven not by logic but by emotion. It"s irrational thought at it"s finest.

Which brings me to how patriotism, nationalism, and meatheads all come together in our world of global macro finance.

I just hopped off the phone with a friend, the gracious, humble, and razor sharp Grant Williams. We were discussing this very theme. Grant, of course, wrote about this in late 2015. War is the likely outcome. Back then few thought it possible. Increasingly, it"s not only possible but highly probable. I fear Grant is probably right.

You see countries behave as idiotically as pack animals. Politics itself rewards unprincipled behaviour. The aggressive, arrogant, and self serving are drawn to the power it represents like moths to a flame. In order to achieve the top spots they fight, cheat, steal, and lie to get there. How is this different to dogs fighting for alpha status in a pack?

Once in power, these pathological ego-maniacs (that"s how you become an alpha dog) send entire countries to war with little crackpot third world nations that the electorate has never heard of, can"t pronounce, and can"t find on a map. Given the "right" information (remember Saddam"s WMD) the crowd bay for blood. Grrr! Woof! Bow-wow!

Read that email response to my podcast on Iran again and tell me this imbecile wouldn"t be one of those pack animals baying for blood in any altercation his "guru" leader tells him is just.

Humans have incredible powers of compassion, kindness, creativity, and loyalty. They also have another side, and right now from sea to shining sea lines are being drawn and the "other side" is rearing its ugly head.

A Question

Let me ask you a question, and this is a question irrespective of your nationality, religious, or political persuasion.

Tell me, have you experienced in the last few months heated debates or even outright arguments about political outcomes and those elected or those up for election?

If so, is this unusual to you? Are you finding that siding with one political party over another is today causing problems it wouldn"t have caused in the past?

Do you sense the shift on the ground wherever you are?

Can you feel the lines being drawn in the sand?

I"d love to have your thoughts and feedback in the comments section.

From where I sit I believe we"ve solidly entered an environment where pack animal behaviour is going to rule the day. You don"t need to be a genius to figure out that the probabilities of barking dogs getting into a scrap have been magnified.

- Chris

"Humans are the only animals who will follow unstable pack leaders." — Cesar Milan (The dog whisperer)

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I Helped Launch The Tea Party – Sorry Liberals, But Your ‘Resistance’ Is Nothing Like Us

BY MARK MECKLER

Feb. 24, 2017

“Eight years ago, a new president took office who scared the living daylights out of thousands of people who’d never been politically active before,” Molly Ball writes in The Atlantic. “Sound familiar?”

No, actually, it doesn’t. Ball and other liberals are fond of comparing the Tea Party and the anti-Trump hysterics who like to burn vehicles, dress up like genitalia, and assault conservatives.

“Today, a new movement—loosely dubbed ‘the resistance’—has suddenly arisen in visceral reaction to Donald Trump’s election as president, with thousands taking to the streets,” Ball writes, before hilariously adding: “For those who remember the Tea Party, it feels like deja vu.”

For those who remember it? I’ve got news for you, Molly. We’re still here and not anything like your various movements. No matter what shiny name leftists slap on themselves from day to day – Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Women’s March, Indivisible, etc. – we’re not you, and you can never be us.

Here are just seven reasons why:

1. The Tea Party challenges the Republican Party to become better; the Resistance is all about partisanship.

The Tea Party Movement has never been about opposition to a party or one political figure. We are comprised of the forgotten man and woman against those that truly wish to forget us, if not eradicate us. That’s why the movement has ultimately resulted in so many primary victories against Republicans, up to and including one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress at the time: Eric Cantor.

Though it resulted in the takeover of Congress by Republicans, that was never the aim. The aim is to clean up the Republican Party, which has abandoned our values. The Resistance is the traditional, tired old opposition politics… one group of party loyalists vs. the other party.

2. The Tea Party Movement is grassroots; the “Resistance” is Astroturf.

When I joined the Tea Party movement and helped create Tea Party Patriots, I knew just about nothing about politics. I joined with other people sick of the status quo and tried to make our country better. The new Resistance is made of professional protestors (as embarrassingly demonstrated when Craig’s List ads offered money to show up to protest).

Also, the Resistance has published and distributed manuals, scripts, playbooks for their professional agitators according to the New York Post:

The manual, published with OFA partner “Indivisible,” advises protesters to go into halls quietly so as not to raise alarms, and “grab seats at the front of the room but do not all sit together.” Rather, spread out in pairs to make it seem like the whole room opposes the Republican host’s positions. “This will help reinforce the impression of broad consensus.” It also urges them to ask “hostile” questions — while keeping “a firm hold on the mic” — and loudly boo the GOP politician if he isn’t “giving you real answers.”

Anyone who’s spent ten minutes at a Tea Party rally knows this is never how we’d conduct ourselves. Which brings me to…

3. The Tea Party is not violent.

The “resistance” has a distinctly leftist, fascist element of violence, threats and property destruction. The media, of course, describes the protests as “mostly peaceful.” Imagine the coverage if the tea party protestors had broken so much as a tea cup, let alone blocked streets, physically assaulted Democrats, or trashed college campuses.

May I also remind you that when Tea Partiers protested, there was no vulgarity, they were safe for children, our speakers never had to be bleeped out when on the news, we all kept our clothes on, we didn’t burn anything down, there were no windows left smashed, and we took our signs and trash with us when we left.

4. The Tea Party isn’t comprised of millennial crybabies upset at a single politician.

We’re aware the federal government is too large but we also know that corruption extends beyond one politician. Our mission was never to overthrow anyone, but to remind everyone real power rests in the hands of the citizens.

5. The Tea Party utilizes free speech; the anti-Trump resistance squelches it.

The new Democratic Party – a coalition of the media, arts and leftist ruling elite – silences the speech of its political enemies. Correction, violent intimidation is not only considered “okay,” it’s considered a part of the new fascist toolkit. If they disagree, they label the statement “hate speech.” They deem all manner of censorship and violence acceptable to fight such speech.

At Berkeley, when provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos’ planned speech turned violent, rioters dressed in black attacked people and set things aflame. National Review described these guys as those who were armed with bats, Molotov cocktails, and other weapons, hid their identities, and moved “as a group to attack people, destroy property, and intimidate the public.”

This is not about a policy battle, Congress, the Supreme Court, or even the President. It is about silencing, marginalizing, and stigmatizing those who disagree.

6. The Tea Party was attacked by the government even though they broke no laws; the Resistance is never even properly investigated by the media.

The most underreported scandal of the Obama administration is how it used an arm of the government – the IRS –  to silence the largest grassroots movement of Americans during a contentious Presidential campaign season. The IRS admitted at the highest levels to targeting, harassing and intimidating tea party, Christian, pro-Israel and other conservative groups, effectively undermining our ability to express ourselves and freely participate in the democratic process.

The Resistance gets a free pass in the culture and the media. Journalists assume they are a grassroots, “we the people” organization even though the most prominent examples are Hollywood celebrities and paid protestors. Come to think of it, the media didn’t even report on the IRS abuse against Tea Partiers.

7. The Tea Party is about love and respect; the Resistance is about hatred and contempt.

“Love” trumping hate involves a lot more assault and arson than you might think, am I right?

The Tea Party is about love of God, country, and neighbor. It’s respect for the rule of law, individual rights, freedom of speech, and law enforcement. We don’t force everyone to adhere to certain rigid principles, but welcome anyone who believed this nation has strayed from its founding principles.

The Resistance is animated by hate and disrespect. They hate America, those with whom they disagree, and “white people.” They disrespect the rule of law, individual rights, freedom of speech, and law enforcement.   The resistance takes aim at anyone on their side who strays, deterring collaboration and compromise through intimidation and ostracism.

In other words, one side wants to protect the nation by popularizing the Constitution and our founding principles. The other wants to change the nation by apparently disregarding the First Amendment rights of others while questioning the founding principles on which our nation was built.

Far from being similar, these two groups show just how distant from each other Americans have actually grown.

Read more at the Independent Journal Review