The S&P 500 index closed above the 5,000 mark for the first time in history today.  The Nasdaq closed just short of 16,000.

The yield curve is still mostly inverted with the 3-month yield considerably higher than the 10-year yield and 30-year yield.  It has been inverted for over a year now.  Does this mean that the coming recession will be much bigger than normal?

And while the Fed has seemingly stopped hiking its target interest rate, it is still draining its bloated balance sheet.  The Fed balance sheet peaked at about $8.965 trillion in April 2022.  It now stands at about $7.63 trillion.

Even though the balance sheet had exploded from about $4 trillion in early 2020, we have still seen well over a trillion dollars drained in almost the last 2 years.  The correction is going to come sooner rather than later if the Fed doesn’t do anything drastic.

It is still the Fed’s policy to allow maturing debt to roll off the balance sheet to the tune of $95 billion per month.

Bullish Investors

But none of this matters to the bullish investors.  They are pushing stocks to their all-time highs while ignoring the Fed monetary deflation and the inverted yield curve.  They think the party will keep going.

Maybe some aren’t ignoring it and just figure they can get out at any time.  You can get out at any time, but at what price?  Only a select few can get out at today’s prices.  It doesn’t take a lot of sellers, relatively speaking, to drive down the prices.

Of course, this is why almost nobody gets rich by timing the market.  If the market goes down 5% next week, what does that tell us?  Is it the start of a bad bear market?  Or is it just a little blip down before the bull market resumes?

I continue to believe that a recession in 2024 is likely.  The problem is that investors are completely irrational at this point.  They are bullish because others are bullish.  They feed each other’s optimism.  When the optimism breaks this time, it is going to break hard.

I think of the people who have retirement plans in the near future and are still heavily invested in stocks.  I hope they have a Plan B.

The Correction

A major correction could actually help much of middle-class America if the government and the Fed don’t intervene too much to stop it.  We need a correction to get some rational prices.  We need a correction so that consumer prices can come down.  We need a correction to set the stage for some real growth and rising real wages in the future.  It would also help people who have been priced out of the housing market.

Most of all, we need a correction in order to force the government to cut back on its wasteful and destructive spending.  It seems like there is no limit to what the government can spend, but there are political limits, even if it doesn’t seem to be the case right now.  We just haven’t quite reached those limits yet.

This was one of the most bizarre and fascinating interviews I’ve seen in a long time.  Dave Smith interviewed Robert Kennedy Jr. on his podcast.  At times, it was more of a heated debate than an interview.

If there’s been one small area where I’m a tiny bit critical of Dave, it is that he doesn’t push hard enough when he has guests where he has significant disagreements.  I remember when he had a woman from Reason on his show and he seemed to take it a bit too easy on her.  Still, I understand not wanting to be rude to guests on your show.

When Dave had Tucker Carlson on his show, there are obviously areas where Dave could have challenged Tucker, but I’m glad he didn’t.  It would have been easy to get bogged down in some argument about libertarianism when Tucker probably has a slightly different definition of what constitutes a libertarian.  It is good that they focused on the issue of foreign policy and hammering away at the deep state.

I was surprised at how forceful Dave was with RFK Jr.  I don’t think Dave was rude at all, but he definitely made it clearly known when he disagreed.  It was mostly about Israel and Gaza.  This is an important issue, and like many libertarians, I am not sure how RFK can be so right on Ukraine and other important areas and yet be so wrong on his support for U.S. government funding of Israel.

When Dave asked Kennedy about the Israeli lobby, I thought Kennedy was going to get up and walk out of the interview.  Dave asked him about Israeli influence on U.S. government policy, and there was a pause of at least 5 seconds.  After the incredibly uncomfortable pause, Kennedy answers, “I don’t know.”  He then goes on to say that he hasn’t been in political office.  It’s kind of a strange response.  I have never been in political office, but I can easily recognize that there is a military-industrial complex.  I can see that big pharma has great influence on U.S. government policy.  I’m sure Kennedy can easily see those things too.

Overall, I thought Kennedy did a poor job of explaining his position.  He rambled on about a lot of things that didn’t directly answer the objections to his position.

I have been turned off of Kennedy since shortly after the October 7^th attacks in Israel because of his stance.  Kennedy has repeated the establishment narrative and seems to offer no criticism of killing tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza.

I have also been critical that Kennedy seemed to disappear from the alternative media world after this.  He gained back some credibility with me for going on Dave’s podcast, even though I disagreed with much of when he said.  I give him credit for at least facing some hard questions.

And if That Wasn’t Enough

The podcast episode was even more bizarre than that though.  At the beginning of the podcast, Kennedy said that he heard that Dave had considered running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket.  He complimented Dave and said that he’s glad he doesn’t have to go up against him.

Dave explained that he had considered it but that he decided against it this time around for family reasons.  Then Kennedy made an offer to Dave to be his running mate.  I believe this came completely unexpected to Dave.  You normally don’t get offered a spot to run for vice president of the United States when you are interviewing someone on a podcast.

Maybe Kennedy was only half serious when he made the offer.  After that, they get into all of the Israel/ Gaza talk, and it gets quite heated at times.  There was no name calling, and it mostly remained civil, but there was complete disagreement on the issue.

After over an hour of debate on the topic, Dave starts wrapping up the podcast and saying that he at least appreciates Kennedy for coming on the show.

What is Kennedy’s response after an hour of debate?  He reiterates his offer to Dave to be his running mate.

Are you serious?

When I watched this, I was partly in shock, and I was partly laughing.

And then Dave responded about it being dangerous to be on a Kennedy ticket.  Dave basically joked about Kennedy being assassinated, but then said that he would actually be good life insurance because he is no LBJ.  Kennedy responded, “That’s exactly why I want you.”  He said Dave is a worse version of himself that nobody will want.

Kennedy was exactly correct on this point.  That’s the same reason I say that Trump should pick someone like Tucker Carlson or Vivek as his running mate.  It will be his best protection against assassination or impeachment.

Should Dave Consider?

It seems that Dave Smith has declined the offer as far as we know.  He still has the same family reasons as before as a reason for not running for president.  Perhaps, running as VP would be a little less intense, but it is obviously still demanding.

I have no idea if Kennedy wants to run on the LP ticket.  It is a way to get relatively easy ballot access.  Even though it makes it easier and cheaper to get on state ballots, there is a big question of whether he would get the LP nomination, even with Dave’s support.

Or maybe Kennedy really just wants Dave on his ticket as an independent candidate.

Let’s just say that Kennedy wants to stay as an independent and is serious about having Dave as a running mate.  And let’s say Dave decides he can handle this and his family is ok with it.

Would this be beneficial to liberty?

Let’s say that Kennedy wants to run on the Libertarian Party ticket with Dave and Dave’s family is ok with it.

Would this be beneficial to the Libertarian Party?

Those are two separate questions.  They are not necessarily the same thing.  It could be harmful for the LP but beneficial for the cause of liberty.

The Mises Caucus took over control of the party just a couple of years ago.  There hasn’t been a presidential cycle yet with the Mises Caucus in control.  So, it might not look good if the first candidate nominated is someone who was just recently a Democrat and still holds most of the same positions as when he was a Democrat.

You might see some of the Mises people quit the party over it.  Some might endorse it because they agree with Dave’s message.  It is really hard to say.  It makes it harder to make a case for principled candidates in the future.

With that said, there is a case for Dave to be Kennedy’s running mate, regardless of whether it is or isn’t on the LP ticket.  I think Dave would only do it and should only do it if Kennedy agreed that Dave can openly state his positions even on issues where they disagree.

They could just be open with the media and say they have a big disagreement over Israel policy and also some economic issues.  But for the sake of the country and uniting against the deep state, they are running together.

If Trump asked me to be an advisor on foreign policy or economics or COVID vaccines, I wouldn’t necessarily say “no” just because I have so many disagreements.  If there is a chance he will listen to me, maybe I would consider it.  If I could explain my views in public, then it could serve to educate others.

And that is the key to this whole thing.  We gain greater liberty by educating others on the morality and benefits of liberty.  If tens of millions of people got a dose of Dave Smith (truth telling), then this would be a great advancement in liberty.

I don’t care about maximizing the number of votes.  I highly doubt this ticket would win the election.  But imagine if 15 million people enthusiastically supported the ticket and all of these people get familiar with Dave’s hardcore libertarian views.  This could be a great win for the prospects of liberty in the future.

Conclusion

I understand that hardcore libertarians don’t want to compromise their principles.  And I am not telling Dave to compromise his principles.  I don’t think Dave as Kennedy’s running mate would necessarily be selling out his principles.  If anything, he might help move Kennedy in the right direction while influencing millions of people.

If you have someone offering you a major platform for your libertarian views, I don’t think it is necessarily an unlibertarian thing to accept it, as long as you continue to tell the truth.

The latest FOMC statement on monetary policy was released on Wednesday afternoon.  As was widely expected, the Fed kept its target federal funds rate the same.  The release of the statement was followed by a press conference from Jerome Powell.

Powell does not exactly speak like Alan Greenspan did.  He is a bit more coherent.  At the same time, he really parses his words and holds back.  He is careful with what he lets out.  You know there is something wrong with our world when a few words from a central banker can dramatically change market conditions and cause billions of dollars in buying and selling.

Powell indicated that it would not be likely that we will see a rate cut in March at the next Fed meeting.  On the one hand, he’ll say that inflation is under control.  On the other hand, he’ll say that they aren’t confident enough yet (that inflation is under control) to lower rates.

Stocks were already down on the day, but they moved even lower.  Gold was up earlier in the day and retreated in the afternoon, but still managed to show some gains.  The 10-year yield fell a little bit and sits just below 4%.

For some reason, the statement dropped the language that “The U.S. banking system is sound and resilient.” Is it because people like me were making fun of it, or are they worried they will get made fun of when it is obvious that the banking system isn’t all that sound?

The Implementation Note from the statement shows that the Fed will continue to drain its balance sheet by $95 billion per month.  It is for this reason that I do believe that the Fed is determined to bring price inflation under control, at least for as long as the economy seems to be humming along.

Things Change Quickly

Sometimes time just flies by in life.  You wonder how we have entered another year.  Or maybe you wonder how you’ve hit another birthday when that time comes.  Sometimes things just hum along, until they don’t.

I remember the 2008 financial crisis quite well.  There were warning signs in 2007 and early 2008, but things were mostly just humming along.  All of a sudden, in September 2008, which happened to be right before a presidential election, the economy imploded.  It seemed unreal at the time of the things that were happening.  At the same time, life mostly went on.  It was particularly devastating for some people, but not that big of a percentage.  Most people kept their jobs and just watched their portfolios go down.  Some people also saw housing prices plummet, but it wasn’t a huge deal for anyone who could comfortably afford the mortgage payments.

The point is that things change slowly, and then they change all of a sudden.  They aren’t really expected.  If they were expected, then the market crash or whatever would have already happened.  If everyone expected stocks to crash next month, then most everyone would be selling now.

When the financial crisis finally does come, then it is like watching a train wreck from the distance.  You just have to be careful not to get too close so that it doesn’t directly impact you.

We could be set up for a financial crisis and economic implosion that beats 2008.  Even there, life usually goes on.  It is more important to stay out of World War III than to stay out of a bad economic recession.  Unfortunately, we don’t have much control over either one.

I know Jerome Powell is saying that a March rate cut is unlikely, but it is meaningless.  The reason it is meaningless is because it can change in an instance.  The economy could implode tomorrow morning, and we’d be seeing an emergency Fed meeting within days.

The yield curve is still mostly inverted, which seems hard to believe.  This points to trouble ahead, but we don’t know how far ahead.  I suspect that Powell knows there is trouble ahead.  Politically, he is not allowed to admit this.

I have maintained that I don’t think the Fed will return to quantitative easing (money creation) just because stocks go down 20 or 30 percent.  Maybe they will lower rates sooner if this happens.  What will cause the Fed to return to balance sheet expansion is trouble in the bond market or bank troubles.

Don’t expect the Fed to bail out your stock portfolio.  You can expect the Fed to bail out the banks as needed.

Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for the 2024 presidential race.  Even though the primaries have barely begun, it is clear he has the support of the majority of the electorate in the party.

Regardless of what you may think of Trump, the establishment obviously hates him.  They will do anything to keep him from becoming president again, as long as they think they can get away with it.  They might even do something even if it means not getting away with it.

In 2020, I said that I wouldn’t blame someone for voting for Biden just because they wanted some normalcy again.  I warned that normalcy probably wouldn’t return, but I understood the sentiment.  Even if you think COVID hysteria was the establishment’s way of punishing Donald Trump and his supporters, I could understand someone not supporting Trump only because they wanted the punishment to stop.  They wanted it to go back to pre 2020.

It’s the same way I wouldn’t blame someone for paying ransom to a kidnapper.  Sometimes it is a matter of self-preservation.  It is better to pay a lesser cost and let a criminal get away with the crime.

If Trump is elected president in 2024 and is able to take office in 2025, the establishment is going to punish us again.  It may be a new virus.  It may be more riots in the streets.  It might be something new.  It might be all of the above.  If Trump is president, the establishment is going to make everything as chaotic as possible.

Chaos Reigns

Here’s the breaking news.  We are already in chaos.  We finally came out of the worst of the COVID hysteria but not before tens of millions of people were coerced into getting jabbed with something they didn’t want.  And then there were millions who were punished for not getting jabbed by not being able to keep a job or to travel to certain places or to visit loved ones.

Even aside from COVID, we have had nothing but chaos under Criminal Biden and his handlers.  He just arbitrarily dictates things like student loan forgiveness.  Even if the Supreme Court strikes it down, it’s not like there are any consequences for the illegal orders and the chaos.

Of course, like nearly every president, Biden just drops bombs on people with no authorization or declaration of war.  He’s funneling money to Ukraine, which seems to be part of his money laundering scheme.  Now he is lobbing missiles into Yemen while continuing to engage in wars all over the place.

We have barely scratched the surface economically on the domestic front.  The national debt continues to grow at an outrageous and unsustainable pace, and the economy is going to implode at any time.  Real wages are going down.

Also on the domestic front, we have Biden and company trying to degrade our culture by making it normal for people to change genders like they change underwear.  Meanwhile, they are also purposely flooding the border with young males in order to cause even more chaos.  It’s not that Biden isn’t doing anything to stop illegal immigrants from crossing the border.  He is actively helping them just to cause chaos.

So even if Trump is elected president and allowed to take office, we shouldn’t worry any more about chaos than if he loses.  If Biden or his replacement is inaugurated in January 2025, then they will just take it to mean that the people have spoken in favor of more chaos.

Either way, we will be surrounded by chaos.  The bad guys have been exposed way more than they thought possible, and some people are actually revolting in the form of not being fully obedient.  They don’t like that their lies are being exposed.  They don’t like that their power is being threatened.  The evil beast is not going to die quietly.

It is an unfortunate step towards liberty.  It is a miracle that the Soviet Union died suddenly with almost no bloodshed once it occurred.  I don’t think the U.S. empire is going to go as quietly into the night.

There are a lot of people who have committed a lot of crimes on behalf of the state.  They have a lot to lose by being exposed or just by losing power.  If we are going to gain significant liberty, it is not going to be easy, and it is going to come with some chaos.

Donald Trump won the New Hampshire primary over Nikki Haley.  If Haley couldn’t beat Trump in New Hampshire, it is unlikely she can beat him in any Republican primary.

In New Hampshire, you don’t have to be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary.  Therefore, Haley was probably drawing many votes from independents.  It’s not hard to imagine that maybe even some Democrats unregistered from the party in order to vote against Trump in the Republican primary.

Democrats in general will do anything to stop Trump from becoming president again.  Even the so-called anti-war left will support Nikki Haley if it means getting Trump out of the way.  It doesn’t seem to matter that Nikki Haley is a bloodthirsty war hawk.  We can see where the priorities lie with most of the political left.

Trump clearly has the Republican nomination locked up.  The media like to report on these races for ratings, but the race was obviously over before New Hampshire started voting.

Yet, there is a lot of doubt that it will be Trump versus Biden in the general election in November.

Why is Nikki Haley Staying in the Race?

Haley has vowed to fight on.  I don’t know if this is purely her decision or that of her establishment controllers.  I do think I understand why she is not dropping out.

The powers-that-be have insinuated (and sometimes not too subtly) that they will do anything to keep Trump from returning to the White House.  I believe they will do anything that they think they can get away with.

They would prefer he have a health issue to keep him from running.  They are willing to keep him off ballots or throw him in jail.  I don’t doubt they would do far worse if they thought they could get away with it.

They would, of course, be willing to cheat in the actual counting (or not counting) of votes.  But that is too risky for them.  They generally only control the big cities in the important swing states.  These are places like Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.  If Trump has a wide enough margin of victory, overturning an election with voter fraud becomes difficult.

It scares me what they are planning for Trump.  It’s not that I love Trump, but he obviously represents a threat to the ruling elite.

This is why Nikki Haley is staying in the race.  If something “unfortunate” happens to Trump, she is there to step in and attempt to claim the nomination.

The Trump Threat

Donald Trump did a lot of bad things during his presidency.  I won’t go into all of the anti-liberty things that he did.  He also surrounded himself with a lot of bad people who would do him harm.

I think the ruling elite see Trump as an even bigger threat this time because Trump might have become wiser from his first experience.  I’m not so sure this is the case, but he might actually try to appoint some non-swamp creatures.

There are also a lot of things hanging out there.  There are four different indictments against Trump.  There are the events of January 6^th.  There is a feeling that Trump maybe understands that the so-called intelligence agencies were working against him.

Even though Trump is sometimes like Inspector Gadget, you can see where Trump is a major threat to the status quo.  And that is the status quo of corruption and criminal activity.  If Trump exposes 5% of the nefarious activities going on in Washington DC, it would practically destroy the entire reputation of the ruling class and the federal government.

Trump may miraculously take office and make all of the same mistakes over again.  But the powers-that-be do not want to take this chance.  This is why Nikki Haley is still in the running.  They are trying every avenue possible to keep Trump out of the presidency.

I am going to make the case for being a middle-of-the-road libertarian, but not in the sense that one might think.  I am proudly a radical libertarian when it comes to political issues.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with being radical if you are taking the correct and moral position.  I am radically against murder.  I am radically against war.  I am radically in favor of peace and prosperity.

I want to make the case of being a middle-of-the-road libertarian when it comes to judging other people.

There are some libertarians who are incredibly naïve and think that all other people who aren’t libertarians are just misguided.  Maybe they make a few exceptions, but not many at all.  These people think that if Joe Biden’s advisors would only give him some good advice, then we could steer our country on the right track.  They think if only their congressman would read an economics book that he would realize the harms of the minimum wage and then would vote the right way.

Some libertarians even had these thoughts on COVID.  They thought that Fauci was doing his best to keep people safe, but he might have been going about it the wrong away.

These types of people have trouble recognizing that there are some deeply evil people in the world, and it tends to be widespread at the top.  Even outside of direct politics, they have trouble seeing that some people, in what are deemed noble professions (doctors, teachers, military, police), respond to incentives more than any moral compass and will do things that may harm other people.

I probably leaned more in that camp in my younger days.

The other camp of libertarians consists of people who throw their hands up in the air and proclaim nearly everyone evil who is not on their side.  Maybe this is an exaggeration, but you see the people I’m talking about.  They see no redeeming hope in mankind and just think everyone who isn’t a hardcore libertarian as either evil or part of the sheeple class.

I have probably slightly leaned more in that camp in more recent years.  I do recognize though that there are different degrees of evil.  I was also somewhat sympathetic towards people who fell in line with certain things during COVID hysteria because they were just trying to survive.  I tried to never judge someone who was forced to take a vaccine to keep their job and pay the bills.

I recently saw two videos that put me more in the middle-of-the road camp in judging other people who are clearly not libertarians.

Meghan McCain

I saw an interview that Michael Malice had with Meghan McCain.  I am not a regular watcher of Malice, but I was surprised when I saw her as a guest on his show.  I couldn’t help myself and watched the whole interview.

Meghan McCain is the daughter of the late John McCain.  She is a war hawk like her father.  I had probably seen a total of 15 minutes of Meghan McCain before watching this video.  I had seen some clips of her on The View.  I knew she was a war hawk and did not like her.

I was surprised that she was friendly with Michael Malice.  In the interview, she was still a war hawk, but maybe not quite as bad as I had originally thought.  It seemed like there was some room to convince her to at least be a little better on the issue in general.

There is one hilarious part of the interview where Malice asks McCain with a straight face if The View is a government psyop to try to repeal the 19^th Amendment.  Meghan McCain answered the question seriously and said, “No, I don’t think so.”  I don’t even know if she knew what the 19^th Amendment is.  She didn’t know that Malice was asking a sarcastic and funny question.  It is at about the 8:00 minute mark if you want to watch.

This moment actually made Meghan McCain go up a notch in my eyes.  (She was at the very bottom before.)  It showed that she could be kind of stupid at times.  I’m sure she is very smart in other areas, and she was mostly well-spoken in the interview, but she has some major blind spots.

The reason it elevates her in my eyes is because I just thought she was evil before.  Now I think she might be more dumb than evil.  That’s a good thing.  I would much rather be in the company of someone who is dumb in some areas.  At least there is hope.

If McCain were just evil, it means she would never change her position on war.  If she has been propagandized and is just taking a stupid position, there is always hope of her changing her position.

So, I’m glad that Michael Malice interviewed her and allowed me to see a different side.

As a side note, I once put Michael Malice in the naïve libertarian camp.  It is hard to believe because he is so intelligent and so quick-witted.  I remember when Dave Smith was interviewing Malice during COVID hysteria and Malice made a reference to Andrew Cuomo, who was the governor of New York at the time.  Malice said that he is probably losing sleep at night over all of the people dying of COVID.  Dave actually questioned him on this.

This is where I fall into the other camp and think Cuomo is more evil than stupid.  He wasn’t lying awake at night worrying about people dying of COVID except in how much it would impact his political career.

Howie Mandel

There was a recent interview of Robert Kennedy Jr. talking to Howie Mandel.  They were discussing the so-called COVID vaccines.  RFK was going deep into the Pfizer trials.

https://rumble.com/v47hzpl-rfk-jr-schools-howie-mandel-on-mrna-covid-vaccines.html

RFK pointed out that, in the trials, there was one person in the vaccinated group who died of COVID.  There were two people in the placebo group who died of COVID.  That’s where they came up with the vaccines being 100% effective.

Then he pointed out that there was one person in the placebo group who died of a cardiac arrest.  There were five people in the vaccinated group who died of cardiac arrest.  (I will also note that more people died overall in the vaccinated group than in the placebo group, which should have instantly meant the vaccine was not safe to go to market, at least until more testing.)

Howie Mandel could not wrap his head around what RFK was saying.  Even if Mandel is evil and trying to shill for the vaccines, he did not have a coherent response.  I think Fauci would have come up with something better.

Howie Mandel was extremely confused.  He seemed to understand that the COVID vaccines were supposedly effective at preventing death because one extra person died in the placebo group (double the number).  But then when you look at deaths due to heart problems, he seems to not understand the significance of that.

Maybe he was just playing dumb, but I really got the impression that he was dumb.  Again, I’m not saying he is dumb with everything in life.  He has had a successful career in comedy and entertainment.  But in this part of the interview, he came across as really dumb.  And I really want to believe that he is dumb on this topic.

If he is dumb, that means there is a chance he could be corrected.  He might see the light and change his views.  If he is evil, then he will never be convinced because he will only take the position that is most beneficial to him.  He won’t ever consider it from a logical standpoint or a moral standpoint.

Conclusion

Politics can make some otherwise intelligent people really dumb.  Going back to Michael Malice, he said it is easier to train a smart dog.  I knew a lot of intelligent people who bought into all of the COVID and COVID vaccine propaganda.

Joe Biden is evil.  Nikki Haley is evil.  You can usually count on the heads of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to be evil.  There are a lot of evil people at the top.  But it is good to step back and realize that there are a lot of people who aren’t evil but just get things wrong.

There is also the courage factor.  Some people are afraid to go against the grain.  Sometimes they are rightfully afraid because it could hurt them or their family.  Sometimes it is just a matter of not wanting to take criticism or be seen as an outcast.

Perhaps there is a point where a lack of courage is evil.  But there is obviously a lot of nuance there.  I wouldn’t have blamed Edward Snowden one bit if he had never blown the whistle on the U.S. government’s spy program.

This is my call to being a middle-of-the-road libertarian when it comes to judging others.  Some people really are evil.  Some people are just dumb.  Sometimes you have to give people the benefit of the doubt and get to know them to know where they are coming from.

Tucker Carlson once favored the Iraq War.  Now he is a vocal opponent of U.S. wars overseas.  People change.  If someone is not evil, there is always a chance they can be persuaded to take a more moral position.

I hate politics because politics is a game of who gets to use violence over others (i.e., participate in state activities). Yet, I am a bit of a political junkie.  It seems contradictory.  Even though we live in a world that I wish was vastly more libertarian, it is something of a game to me as well.

I haven’t been heavily paying attention to the presidential race up to this point because there isn’t a lot to analyze at this point.  I followed the Republican debates without Trump only because I was curious what would be said.  They were only interesting because of Vivek Ramaswamy.

It has been quite obvious that Trump is the easy frontrunner.  He has the support of a majority of the Republican electorate, which means he should easily get the nomination.

It was puzzling to me back in 2008 when John McCain took the Republican nomination.  It was less puzzling in 2012 with Romney, only because I had already seen what happened in 2008.  McCain got a plurality of votes in some of the primaries, but the numbers weren’t that impressive.  I remember seeing him get something like 30% of the vote, yet candidates just started dropping out of the race and assuming it was McCain’s.  I’m screaming at the television, “That means that 70% of the Republicans want someone else.”

I really followed closely in those days because of Ron Paul.  That’s what made it all interesting.  Even with Iowa, the media tried to ignore him.  When they didn’t ignore him, they often tried to smear him or dismiss him.  They did to Ron Paul what eventually didn’t work against Donald Trump in 2016.

Trump Victor

As expected, Trump easily won the Iowa Caucuses.  He received about 51% of the vote.  Ron DeSantis was in a distant second with 21.2%.  The horrible Nikki Haley, who is fully backed by the establishment, got 19.1%. Vivek got a somewhat disappointing 7.7%.

The results show Trump getting 20 delegates.  DeSantis got 9 delegates, and Haley got 8 delegates.  Vivek got 3 delegates.

This was an absolute clear win for Trump, no matter how the media or other candidates try to spin it.  The reason DeSantis and Haley haven’t dropped out yet is because they are banking on the deep state to take out Trump in some way.  If Trump lands in jail or is off the ballot or is unable to run for some reason, then each of them are hoping to step in.  In Haley’s case, she may even end up running outside of the Republican Party.

If Trump had to drop out right now, I think most of his support would go to DeSantis over Haley.  That’s the good news.

Vivek

Almost immediately after the results came in, Vivek dropped out of the race and announced his support for Donald Trump.  It may have been bad timing by Trump to attack Vivek for the first time just a few days prior.

I have thought all along that Vivek was trying to position himself as a possible running mate for Trump.  I doubt this is the direction Trump will go, although it would make me more optimistic about a Trump presidency if he did choose Vivek as a running mate.  The only realistic scenario I can envision that’s better is having Tucker Carlson.

There was a lot of theorizing that Vivek was trying to position himself as Trump’s backup in case Trump couldn’t run.  But that is obviously not the case now because Vivek dropped out.  If Trump is forced out for some reason, now there is just Haley and DeSantis to choose from.

Vivek’s showing of 7.7% in Iowa is probably indicative of where he stands nationally.  It is the more liberty-minded people who favor Vivek.  I think most of his supporters will go to Trump or to nobody at all in the Republican field.

This just means that Trump will get even more support and will be well above the 50% threshold.  I would imagine a good portion of DeSantis supporters would go to Trump if DeSantis drops out, but not as many as Vivek.  Most of the “never Trump” vote within the Republican Party is going towards Haley at this point.

I am thankful that Vivek ran.  He has a bright future ahead of him.  Maybe he will get a position in a Trump administration.  I think Trump could put him in there as press secretary just to be the media’s worst nightmare.

I have not been shy about pointing out Vivek’s flaws.  He has been bad on the issue of China.  He has been bad on Israel, although much better than all of the others.  He has been bad a few times talking about bombing Mexican drug cartels.  Still, overall, Vivek was a breath of fresh air.  He helped expose Nikki Haley, and he wasn’t afraid to take on the media.  He wasn’t afraid to point out the climate hoax or the Russia collusion hoax or point out that January 6^th was probably an inside job.

I look forward to seeing what the future holds for Vivek and hopefully moving closer to libertarianism.

2024 – We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

Iowa was nothing compared to what is to come.  The biggest contest of 2024 is between Trump and the deep state.  The deep state includes the establishment media.

They are trying everything to keep Trump away from the presidency.  They want to throw him in jail.  They want to keep him off the ballots.  They will do anything they can get away with.

Meanwhile, we have no idea if Biden will actually be the Democratic nominee.  And if he isn’t, how will the powers-that-be replace him?  And who will be chosen?

We also have a bit of a wildcard with Robert Kenney Jr. running.  I wish he was still running as a Democrat to disrupt things there.  After the October 7^th attacks in Israel, I felt like the steam came out of the Kennedy campaign.  He repeated the establishment talking points, and he stopped going on alternative media outlets.  For that reason, he will probably be less of a factor than I originally thought.

We also have an economy that is anything but strong.  Middle class America feels the pain of price inflation, and the bubble economy could blow at any moment.

That is a lot going on just to get to the general election.  We have no idea what will happen once the results are counted or are being counted.  Will either side accept the results?

There are so many variables right now that are out of the ordinary that Iowa just seems bland to me.  Trump is the heavy favorite in the Republican Party.  In any other year, the other candidates probably would have dropped out.  But this is not a normal year.  The big stuff is yet to come.

Anecdotal evidence is not irrelevant.  If your own experiences are telling you something different than what others are saying, then you probably shouldn’t listen to what the others are saying.

In 2020, the television news was running a ticker on the screen of COVID deaths.  We had lockdowns and mass hysteria.  Yet, by the end of 2020, I didn’t personally know a single person who had died of (or with) COVID.  That’s not to say that people weren’t dying at all.  But based on my own experience, it was obviously not the horrible and deadly “pandemic” that was being claimed.

It doesn’t mean that things might not get really bad in the future.  It doesn’t mean that some people won’t die of the latest virus.  It’s just that the reality on the ground for me wasn’t matching the disproportionate hysteria.

The same thing goes for climate change.  I have no idea what the climate will do in the future, and I don’t think anybody knows.  But what the climate hysterics are saying is not lining up with reality.  Beachfront property is extremely expensive, and sometimes the rich climate hysterics themselves are buying it.  If the oceans are rising and are going to put a lot of land underwater, then why would anyone want to own real estate at or near the beach?

Sometimes observing the world around you can give you a better reality than what you are hearing from the so-called experts or hearing on the news.

A Trip to the Grocery Store

And so it is with prices.  I recently went to the grocery store.  I sometimes get a specific kind of organic peanut butter.  A few years ago, it was about $3.99.  It went above $4, but was still well under $5 for most of 2023.  In my latest trip, it was $6.89.  I don’t know the exact percentage, but it went up something like 50% from my last visit where I bought it, which was maybe three weeks before.

Maybe there’s a shortage of peanut butter.  I really don’t know.  I also noticed that jugs of bottled water had gone up a lot.  It was 86 cents probably about a year ago.  Now it is over $1.20.  Something like 40 cents doesn’t sound like a big deal until you figure out the percentage.  The price of the water has gone up nearly 50% in around a year.

This is ridiculous.  To be sure, some prices haven’t gone up much in the last year.  But I don’t know of anything that’s gone down except during sales or fruit when it is in season.

There is one thing I do know just from my own personal experience.  Price inflation at the grocery store is not around 3% per annum these days.  It is higher.  Most people I speak to agree.

The Latest Numbers

The latest CPI report was released showing the data for December 2023.  The CPI was up 0.3% for the month.  The year-over-year CPI now stands at 3.4%.  This was a little higher than expected.

The median CPI was up 0.4% for the month.  The year-over-year median CPI is now 5.1%.

I have long said that I don’t think the CPI numbers are useless.  I think they may be understated a bit.  Of course, it is impossible to measure it perfectly because different people buy different things in different amounts.  Quality and quantities change as well.

Still, I think the CPI is useful in looking at the trend.  The trend for 2023 had generally shown the rate of price inflation decelerating.

Despite the wording of some people, prices haven’t gone down at all.  The rate of price inflation has gone down.  But now, even that has stopped going down.  The CPI has now ticked upwards.

This doesn’t surprise me based on my own experiences.  It seems like almost everything just continues to get more expensive.

What Will the Fed Do?

Investors have shown great optimism because they saw a soft landing and a Fed that would begin lowering rates in 2024.  I don’t think the Fed is going to hike rates in 2024 unless the CPI really jumps higher.  But this latest reading could delay rate cuts by the Fed.

The markets haven’t seemed too bothered by the latest numbers, but who can figure the logic or illogic of moves in the stock market these days?

I think some people in the financial press got ahead of themselves and had already called the inflation threat as over.  Well, apparently the fat lady hasn’t sung yet.

This just puts the Fed in a harder position, especially if and when some kind of financial crisis/ recession hits.  If price inflation is still running high, it makes it harder for them to lower rates and create money like crazy.

It will be interesting to see the report that comes out in February for the January 2024 numbers.  Maybe this past month was just a blip.  But if the CPI numbers come in even higher for January, then the Fed is really going to have a tough situation to deal with.

I don’t know when this market is going to blow, but I don’t want to be participating in it when it does.

Libertarians shouldn’t favor democracy.  Democracy is not the same thing as liberty.  In some cases, they can be the opposite.  Democracy can lead to a lack of liberty.  It is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.  Or pick your favorite example.

Still, libertarians can have different views on democratic processes and the role they should play in government, if we are to have a government.

I, personally, have become less opposed to democratic processes in recent years because the ruling elite is so bad.  I would prefer democracy over the evil that is pushed upon us on a regular basis. The problem is that the ruling elite don’t actually follow democracy.  To them, democracy only counts if the people vote the right way, according to them.

We hear a lot about democracy these days.  Supposedly, democracy is on the ballot in 2024.  Supposedly, Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy.  Therefore, we need to remove him from the presidential race so that people can’t choose to vote for him.

You have to kill democracy in order to save it.  It’s like the establishment’s view on war.  You have to bomb Iraq in order to liberate the people there.

Removing Names from Ballots

So far, two states have declared that Trump won’t appear on the election ballots this year.  Those are Colorado and Maine.  These cases are likely to get heard by the Supreme Court.

It’s interesting that the Supreme Court has been more of a protector of liberty lately than a usurper of it.  There are many bad rulings coming from the Supreme Court, but when you compare it to the Biden administration (or whoever is running the show), then the Supreme Court looks pretty good.  It saved us from some of the most egregious vaccine mandates, and it saved us from the worst of the student loan bailouts.  Some of the reasoning isn’t great, but at least it is keeping dictator Biden somewhat in check.

There are other states talking about removing Biden from the ballot in retaliation.  Of course, Biden is a criminal in many ways, but I don’t necessarily favor this course of action.

But then I thought about what would happen if most of the states removed either Biden or Trump from the ballots in the general election.  The primaries don’t seem to matter much right now because Trump has a huge lead for the Republican nomination, and the Democratic establishment of the “Democratic” Party will just pick the nominee on their side.

Let’s say that half the states just removed one candidate or the other.  This might actually be good for liberty.

At some point, it becomes so ridiculous, both sides will just say that they won’t follow the orders of the other side.  If Trump isn’t allowed on the ballot, then Biden (or whoever) isn’t the legitimate president to the red states. (I am generalizing here, and I understand there are more than two “sides”.)

This is how we get nullification, and ultimately secession.  If Trump just isn’t allowed to win because he is in jail or off the ballots, then the people in the red states will just declare that Biden isn’t a legitimate president.  They will just stop following his dictates.  They will demand that their governors not follow the dictates.  It ultimately has to lead to secession.

The only other alternative is that it leads to violence.  And to be sure, the violence would come from the federal government and the establishment powers.  They would use violence to enforce their edicts, and they would use violence to prevent secession (peaceful independence).  But even here, they are limited by public opinion.

This isn’t 1860s America any more.  I don’t think we are going to have a literal war like the misnamed Civil War.  I think there are a lot of military members who would refuse to kill their fellow citizens.

Conclusion

I know that 2024 is going to be a crazy year politically.  It will probably be a crazy year economically as well.  It is already crazy with a tyrant in the White House trying to throw his political opponent in jail.  The powers-that-be are united against Trump.  They will remove him from ballots if possible.  They will do anything they can get away with to keep him from the presidency again.  Imagine what they would do to an actual libertarian.

The good news is that there are far fewer people who trust the establishment and its media than there were just 5 years ago.  We need as many people in the liberty camp as possible.

The only peaceful and logical solution to the craziness is for secession or some kind of functional secession where the federal government has a lot less say.  If removing names off of ballots leads to this more peaceful outcome, then I am open to it.

In May 2016, when discussing the race for the Democratic Party nomination between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, I wrote the following with regard to ways Trump could attack Hillary Clinton:

“I think the next step will be to link Bill Clinton with the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.  Clinton has taken repeated trips on his private jet.  Personally, I would be surprised if Bill Clinton isn’t a pedophile.”

I linked to an article in that paragraph.  The link is now dead (like so many things linked with the Clintons).  In 2016, almost nobody had heard of Jeffrey Epstein.  Yet, just because of a little curiosity and research, I knew about Bill Clinton’s close affiliation with Epstein and his crimes.

I have almost no resources or budget for research other than the internet.  Where is the establishment media on this?  There were no investigations by NBC or CNN that we know of.  In 2019, Project Veritas released a video of Amy Robach.  At the time, she was an ABC news anchor.  She wasn’t aware she was being recorded, but she said that they had the Epstein story three years ago that linked him to people like Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.  Robach was frustrated that ABC spiked the story.

This is why the so-called mainstream media should never be trusted.  The people making the decisions at the top are evil.  If they weren’t evil, they wouldn’t get in that position.  They purposely distort news stories. Worse, they choose not to investigate or publish things that are damaging to establishment politicians and the establishment narrative.

COVID Hysteria

In March 2020, I could already see that COVID was being oversold, to put it mildly.  I knew the statistics about a 3 to 4 percent mortality rate were fake.  They were basing that on the sick people going into the hospital in China.

I did minor in math in college, but it doesn’t take a statistician to figure out that the numbers being spit out by the government, and repeated by the establishment media, were misleading at best.

It’s only because I had a little bit of curiosity and used a little logic that I figured out that COVID was not some great threat to humanity.  The reaction and totalitarian controls with COVID as an excuse were the big threat.  Even some so-called libertarians fell for it.

I am not a doctor, yet I immediately questioned the hysterical call for ventilators.  I didn’t trust the so-called experts.  I remember when Cuomo, then governor of New York, was calling for something like 40,000 ventilators.  I knew almost nothing about ventilators, but I had never heard of them as a treatment for a respiratory virus.  Why didn’t anyone in a position of power question this narrative?  It’s hard to say how many tens of thousands of people died because of this medical malpractice, to put it kindly.

At some point, you have to consider the fact that the powers in the establishment media are completely inept or they are evil.  While there may be some incompetence at times, I have to go with evil as the main source.  If they just weren’t that bright, they would still occasionally shine a light on something damaging to the establishment narrative.

Questioning Everything

The default position on everything should be to question the establishment narrative.  When a story comes out, it is best to take a deep breath and think things through.  Who benefits from this story?  Are there details that haven’t come out yet?  Does the narrative even make sense?

When I heard about the Jussie Smollett story, I instantly suspected it was false.  Some celebrity just happens to be walking alone in downtown Chicago in the middle of a winter night when he is attacked by MAGA Trump supporters.  Because when I think of downtown Chicago, I really think of MAGA country.  The whole thing was so ridiculous, yet the establishment media couldn’t help themselves because it pushed their anti-Trump narrative.  In this case, they may have been more stupid than evil.

The death of George Floyd is another incident.  On this one, I’m not sure if I got played a little bit at the beginning.  The videos that first came out were pretty damning against the cops.  Still, I was pretty sure that they weren’t trying to kill George Floyd, even if it wasn’t handled very well.  I was almost positive that it had nothing to do with race.  It was only later that I learned that the autopsy showed that Floyd likely overdosed on fentanyl.

Again, the point here is to question any narrative that is fed by the establishment media.  You should question alternative media too, but the average person doesn’t get sucked in as easily by something they saw on TikTok or social media or heard on a podcast.

It amazes me that people get duped over and over again by the same charlatans.  Even when they realize that they were duped, they still fall for it again the next time.  “Well, they may not have gotten everything right with COVID, but surely this story has to be right.”

Where I’ve Changed

I have been a libertarian for over 20 years now.  I had libertarian tendencies when I was a child and young adult.  When I was in my 20s, I started following Harry Browne, which made me more of a hardcore libertarian.

My biggest interest has always been in economics and the financial markets.  It is just part of my personality.  But economics is no longer the big issue for me politically.  It is certainly very important, and I like to write about it, but it isn’t the big thing I use to judge people and how they would be in office.

I would much prefer someone who opposes war and the national security state than someone who is sound on the minimum wage.  I would prefer someone who is sound on all of the major issues, but foreign policy is more indicative of someone’s character in a lot of ways.

Sometimes it isn’t even foreign policy but an opposition to the deep state.  If someone is sound on economics but doesn’t have a hardcore opposition to the establishment, then they are no good for me, especially on a federal level.  Maybe they would be fine on the city council.

When it comes to the presidency, it is useless to be good on economics but bad on other issues.  Even if the person really does believe in a more free market economy, it won’t do any good if they are fighting wars and funding the evil intelligence agencies.  Does anyone really think that Nikki Haley will cut spending as president?  She will need all the money she can get to fight wars and run a world empire.

Even using the case of someone who doesn’t stress foreign policy or the national security state, I would prefer the person who does and somewhat gets it right.  Larry Elder briefly ran for president, but he was shut out of the debates.  I wish he had been in the debates.  I like the guy when I hear him, and he tends to be very good on economic issues.  The problem is that I sense he has no hatred or even concern for the deep state.

As bad as Trump is on economics, I would probably prefer a Trump presidency in many ways over a Larry Elder presidency, even though Elder is thought of as a libertarian.  Elder would likely not oppose the deep state.  With Trump, at least there is a chance of him exposing some of the lies and evil that goes on.

On the Israel/ Gaza conflict, there are some libertarians who vocally oppose the indiscriminate bombing and killing of innocent civilians in Gaza, as they should.  Some conservatives will say, “How can you align yourself with these leftist whackos?”

And to be sure, many of them are leftist whackos, and I wouldn’t say some of the things they are saying when it comes to Israel.  But some of them are saying good and rational things too.  My retort is, “How can you align yourself with Nikki Haley, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton?”

I would much rather align with AOC on an issue than Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley or Joe Biden.  AOC is completely stupid when it comes to economics, despite her supposed degree in the subject.  I also think she is purposely inflammatory, and she knows she is exaggerating when she talks about how climate change will destroy the planet in 10 years.  Still, I think she has at least an ounce of good in her, and I would much rather align on an issue with her than any of the establishment creeps.  I disagree with Joe Biden and Mitt Romney on almost everything of any significance, and they come from a place of evil.

The Enemy Within

In conclusion, I think being sound on economics is very important.  But the most important thing is not trusting the establishment.  Understanding the minimum wage didn’t do much good in 2020 when you were locked in your house because of a virus that the media told you was really bad.

The number one thing people must learn is that the establishment is evil.  They are doing things that are opposed to the average person’s interests.

I hate it when I hear conservatives talk about how China is doing this or that, or that China is our biggest threat.  This is completely wrong, and I don’t even understand this way of thinking.  It is obvious that the U.S. government is by far the number one threat to the people living in the United States.

If we are ever to make great advances towards liberty, the majority of Americans must lose all faith in the establishment media and U.S. government officials.  They can figure out the minimum wage stuff later on.