June 06, 2023
The commercial real estate market is ready to pop - and with it the U.S. economy.
According to the Daily Caller:[/lin
About $1.5 trillion in commercial real estate mortgages will come due over the next two years, spelling a major risk to the $20 trillion commercial real estate market ahead of the next presidential election, according to Politico.
Remember the commercial leases cannot simply be terminated. Now many businesses have been stuck paying them, but when those leases expire they will be gone. And with so much commerce being done online now many of those commercial properties will be permanently vacant.
This will start a chain reaction of bankruptcies among commercial developers and landlords. Which in turn will lead to defaults on loans.
Anybody in the know in real estate is aware of the looming menace of a commercial real estate crack-up.
On top of rising interest rates, commercial buildings have also faced a fall in value due to remote work-related office vacancies, according to the Federal Reserve’s May report.
"Right now, we have the double whammy of much higher interest rates and the commercial real estate market going through a shock post-covid,” Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told Politico. "So I don’t think we can presume that… we’re going to be able to simply glide through [without a crash]. I’m still trying to sort through some of the policy options. … I have encouraged the White House, though, that we need to do some more intervention on these regional banks right away.”
Commercial real estate holders could experience credit loss due to "the magnitude of a correction in property values,” which "could lead to credit losses by holders of CRE debt,” according to the Federal Reserve.
Just one more nail in the coffin of the American economy.
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It was in fact the Ukraine that attacked the Nordstream II pipeline - and the U.S. knew full well what they were doing.
Read about it here.
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The People's Republic of Illinois is going to allow non-citizens to become police officers - with the power to arrest citizens.
Here is the story.
FTA:
House Bill 3571 passed both Houses this past week with Senate Floor Amendment 1.
SA1permits counties and municipalities to hire non-citizens as deputy sheriffs and police officers in the same manner as hiring U.S. citizens, as long as they are: "legally authorized under federal law to work in the United States and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm, or who is an individual against whom immigration action has been deferred by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm”
What this means in Illinois, is that you may soon see non-US citizens wearing police badges, with arrest powers over US citizens. Senator Rose spoke against its passage, suggesting it would violate the United States Constitution.
Senate passed the bill with SA1 on May 18, and the House concurred on May 19.
The only Senate "NO” votes were from Anderson, Bennett, Bryant, Chesney, Curran, DeWitte, Fowler, Harriss, Joyce, Lewis, McClure, Plummer, Preston, Rezin, Rose, Stoller, Syverson, Tracy, Turner S, and Wilcox.
Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie voted in favor of this bill.
They should change the name of the state to illegois
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Fox's prime time viewership down a whopping 62%.
So why don't they take steps to bring it back? They fear something far more than losing half their audience.
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The New York Times FINALLY admits the Ukrainian military is full of Nazis.
Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
"
In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.
The photographs, and their deletions, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II.
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That relationship has become especially delicate because Russian President Vladimir Putin has falsely declared Ukraine to be a Nazi state, a claim he has used to justify his illegal invasion.
Ukraine has worked for years through legislation and military restructuring to contain a fringe far-right movement whose members proudly wear symbols steeped in Nazi history and espouse views hostile to leftists, LGBTQ movements and ethnic minorities."
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So many people moving out of Illinois that "junk removal" servies are thriving by cleaning up people's homes as they pack up to move.
'Junk' removal company remains busy as more people opt to leave Illinois
cbsnews.com
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It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
Thomas Sowell
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June 05, 2023
Here's a question for all you evolutionary biologists. Scientists now believe the first plant life appeared on the scene about 700 million years ago. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2018/february/plant-life-on-earth-is-much-older-than-we-thought.html But animal life appeared about 800 million years ago. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17453-timeline-the-evolution-of-life/
This seems counter-intuitive, but it's not exactly; plant life - chlorophyll producing life forms - were NOT the oldest life forms on Earth. There were anaerobic life forms before them (such as botulism or gangrene) and of course fungi and other chemsynthesis- using things. Theoretically animals could have eaten the non-plant life.
But what would they breathe? It was the rise of chlorpohyll using plants that made the Earth's atmosphere so highly oxygenated.
So we have to assume the plants came first, and that those plants had to predate animals by a considerable amount.
Animals are essentially parasiges. They move faster than plants, and can generally think better (Joe Biden excepted). But they derive almost all of their energy from the consumption of plants (or the occasional mushroom). Plants can live without animals (although animal wastes help them, as do other acts by animals - such as bees moving pollen about.) Animals cannot live without plants.
We are all predators. It's just some animals predate on the slow moving plant life while others feed on the things that eat the plants.
(It surely is a dog-eat-dog world. The key is to not wind up on a bun slathered in mustard.)
The point? What kind of environmental pressure and random mutation would lead to the rise of animal life? And so soon after plant life arose.
One would think plant life would thrive for a long, long time before animal life arose. Plants were the pinnacle of Nature. They requires only sun and water and a few minerals from whatever chunk of ground they managed to colonize. Supremely well adapted to the Earth's environment, they had no reason to develop legs. Especially the early Earth was ideal for such life forms. And when in a Golden Age one has little reason to change. Certainly becoming an animal was not as beneficial as being able to make your own food from sunlight and water.
There just was no environmental pressure worth making the switch. Animals often struggle to find food, and plants learned early on to poison the pesky animal life. And the plants that didn't poison them USED them to spread. Seeds in animal waste could colonize other areas.
How did all this happen via Natural Selection?
I would add that most of the non-chlorophyll life is gone today. It couldn't compete with the plants. But then neither should the animals have been capable of so doing.
Being a plant is great if you don't mind the boredom! Everything just comes right to you! (Sort of like being a Democrat; you don't have to think or hold a job.)
It seems to me animal life could only have gotten going as a result of a huge catastrophe'. When plant life was struggling over a long period a creature that could simply uproot and move became viable enough to make it worth dumping the ability to make your own food.
Animals should have come WAY after plants.
Or not at all.
To me this is another problem with Darwinian-style evolution. There seems to be no good answer to this. Darwin believed species evolved based on niches in the environment being filled by random mutants. If there is food high in the trees then Supersaurus would grow long necks to reach it, because mutants with longer necks would live and their shorter cousins die out. Same for giraffes today, which are basically long-necked horses. But it is RANDOM, so evolution is necessarily slow, particularly inf the environment isn't undergoing rapid change. That's why Darwin believed whole fossil records would be found showing the change from one species to the next. That is not something anyone has found. What many Darwinists claim are complete fossil records show only one species moving in a direction then another species moving from that direction; there is no 'missing link' between them. This is a common problem in paleontology and it was what made Stephen Jay Gould theorize "punctuated equilibrium" which said species suddenly changed form. Of course Gould had no evidence for that and eventually even he had to let the theory go. So we are back to the same problems with Darwin that we always had.
Modern thinking is more subtle. Now it is believed that species share DNA, especially through viral infections, and that this leads to the evolution of species in no small part. But how does a virus change a species for the better? Viruses are primarily parasites that take over the machinery inside the cells and use it to produce more of themselves.
But that is epigenetics. The idea is once a trait is in the cell it remains so as "junk DNA" and can occasionally be expressed.
Case in point; Phorusrhacids aka the Terror Bird. This eight foot tall monster existed in the Carribean and South America area during the Cenozoic. They flourished between 51 million years ago and became extinct about ten thousand years ago - well into the era of humanity. (The first humans arrived in the Americas 25,000 years ago, so they may have encountered Terror Birds.) At any rate, this is past the age of the Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, like Terror Birds, were, well, birds. Big, nasty predatory birds, but relatives of Tweety (Silvester would have REALLY had something to worry about back then!)
What the Terror Birds represented was the re-expression of the old Dinosaur genes. They were throwbacks to the Cretaceus, which ended 66 million years ago and saw the total extinction of the dinosaurs.
So epigenetics argues that species can re-express dormant genes when environmental conditions are right, which they argue explains the sudden jumps in evolution in the fossil record.
Perhaps. But so often we see traits never seen before just appear out of the blue. And certainly the rise of animal life so shortly after the chlorophyll-using plant life is one such. I don't think Darwinian-style evolutionary theory explains it very well. At least I find it hard to swallow.
But then I'm one of those animals that took to swallowing plats millions of years ago, or so they tell me.
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June 03, 2023
It's much worse than we thought.
The Biden Administration revised the economic numbers - all down, way down.
Recession coming? I have no doubt it's already here.
The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revised a wage growth estimate by a massive margin, showing real wages actually declined in the fourth quarter of 2022, the agency reported on Thursday.
In March, the BLS previously reported a fourth-quarter increase of 4.9% for hourly compensation in nonfarm businesses, but updated it to a decrease of 0.7% on Thursday, accordingto its revised Productivity and Costs report. At the same time hourly wages fell, inflation rose, leading to a 4.7% decline in "real hourly compensation, which takes into account consumer prices,” according to the BLS.
The BLS had previously estimated that real hourly compensation increased by 0.7% in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the revised report.
"The driver of the revision to 4th quarter data on compensation per hour is the revision to source data on employee compensation for 2022 Q4, published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on May 25th,” the BLS told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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We all knew THIS was coming!
Harvard Hires Failed Ex-Chicago Mayor Lightfoot for Teaching Gig
When you are a liberal Democrat the world is your oyster. The worse you fail the better your prospects after you leave office.
Lori Lightfoot should be asking if anyone wants fries with that, not teaching at America's premier university.
This also shows how Harvard and the Ivy League are hardly the citadels of wisdom as they claim.
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I seem to remember an orb traversing the United States. Biden shot it down after it went over a bunch of military bases.
The Pentagon And NASA Have No Earthly Idea What These Flying Metallic Orbs Really Are
If anyone really believes NASA and the Pentagon don't know what these are I have some swampland for sale cheap.
They are now calling them Unexplained Anomalous Phenomenon or UAP's. Why? No doubt UFO's have become associated with crazy hillbillies on moonshine.
Our government is waging a campaign to convince America there are aliens among us. Now why do you suppose that is?
Remember when Jean Pierre theorized the Chinese spy balloon was a UFO?
I know when someone is whizzing down my back, and when it's raining.
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I seem to remember an orb traversing the United States. Biden shot it down after it went over a bunch of military bases.
The Pentagon And NASA Have No Earthly Idea What These Flying Metallic Orbs Really Are
If anyone really believes NASA and the Pentagon don't know what these are I have some swampland for sale cheap.
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We won one!
Pentagon bans drag shows on military bases after GOP pressure
Pardon, but why were drag shows being performed on military bases?
Remember the slogan "be all that you can be" I guess they should have said "be all that you can be - and a little more too!"
A day before the Pentagon celebrated the June 1 start of Pride Month, top defense leaders were quietly enforcing a militarywide ban on drag performances.
The move became public after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley stepped in to stop a drag show at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., which had been scheduled for Thursday.
In enforcing the ban, which stems from a long-standing Defense Department policy that has not always been applied, critics say the Pentagon appears to have acquiesced to GOP pressure in recent months to cancel those performances at military installations.
Republican lawmakers, in hearings and letters to the Defense Department, have raged over drag shows and diversity programs, which they claim hurt recruiting efforts and compromise warfighting.
LGBTQ rights groups have slammed the apparent shift from the Pentagon, noting the U.S. has a long history of supporting drag shows going back to at least World War I.
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said Austin has been "unwavering” in supporting LGBTQ groups, but by banning drag shows, he "chose to side with the politics of fear and discrimination peddled by extreme members of Congress.”
so now the trannies are crying like little bi, er, girls because they don't get to play dress-up in front of all those big strong soldier men.
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The Senate nullified the debt ceiling bill. They say they can break the debt ceiling in certain instances including money to Ukraine. That will soon morph into anything they want.
Why in a bare 2 1/2 years since Biden was installed are we on the brink of a nuclear war with Russia?
Because the PTB who are printing money into oblivion think they can take the 75 trillion in resources that Russia has. They will go the limit.
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So now Fort Bragg is now Fort Liberty.
I ask; did they get a corporate sponsor or something? Is Liberty Mutual bankrolling the place? Will Limu Emu and Doug be on the billboard at the entrance?
How long before they start doing such things?
Daniel 7:25 speaks of the Antichrist "he thinks to change times and laws". I don't know about the Antichrist but the woke mob certainly thinks to do just that.
Muhammed did the same when Muslims took a city; they destroyed the statues and symbols of the conquered land and replaced them with their own. It's why the Taliban kept blowing up statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan.
Or as Sun Tzu said, seize that which the enemy holds dear. They are seizing our history because we hold it dear.
They are trying to erase us as a People and replace us with their own country.
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Sure looks like militant vegans are intent on starving us.
Ireland’s mooted cow massacre is a warning to net zero Britain
telegraph.co.uk
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June 02, 2023
When the image is more important than the reality. Biden has stopped an oil company from drilling near Chaco Canyon, a site revered by American Indians.
One tiny problem. The Indians want the drilling to go ahead … but that would ruin the narrative.
w.
Biden admin issues drilling ban near Indigenous site despite tribes saying it would increase poverty
justthenews.com
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McCarthy thanks our mugger.
Let me give a good analogy about McCarthy's debt ceiling deal.
Many, many years ago I got mugged. I had been out (drinking beer, I might add) and went to a gas station. I had to go to the bathroom (I had been at a bar after all) and went to where this gas station had had the bathrooms (on the side of the building). I turned to find a large, muscular man blocking my way - and holding up a knife.
Now I was young and stupid and mad as a wet hen. I had to think about my situation; I was facing a larger opponent, nowhere to run, and he was armed with a deadly weapon. He knew what I was thinking and just stood there with the knife plainly visible. (A real pro.) Then he told me to open my wallet.
I did. I had sixty bucks inside.
He didn't take it all; he took forty and left me twenty. He let me keep my wallet.
And at the time I was grateful. I was grateful for his benevolence in not robbing me of everything - including my life.
I was also enraged but understood it could have been worse.
But that was the immediate reaction. Later I was furious at the sheer gall of this vile man to take that which was not his and threaten to KILL me if I didn't hand over a few measly dollars!
The fact is he was entitled to none of my money. Not one red cent. I was the victim of a crime.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what occurred with the whole debt-ceiling fiasco. We were victims of a crime. But Kevin McCarthy, too chicken to resist, took a deal that left him with one twenty dollar bill. Biden walked away with the rest, money he had no right to in the first place.
The thing is, McCarthy was not in peril of his life. All he feared was some political backlash.
I would say he sold us out. He got a few meager crumbs, scraps fed to a dog under the table.
And we are told we should be grateful, that this is the best deal he could get. Like me with the mugger, by the time we all get our backs up over this it will be too late.
Of course the police never did catch that mugger. But in this case we know exactly where that mugger resides; on Pennsylvania avenue in the District of Columbia. If I knew where the man who mugged me lived I would have taken action against him. But the GOP will cravenly crawl to the man who stole our lunch money.
This is a habit with the GOP.
Saul Alinsky, the author of Rules for Radicals, the playbook for all of the modern Left, observed "the fear of a thing is worse than that thing itself" and the media and the Democrats have instilled fear of blame in the GOP. They shiver with terror at a government shutdown. Now, they have gone forward with that in the past, but always they are the first to cave based on media polling. Why, pray tell, does the GOP always get the blame from the American People? Well, yes, the media frames it so, but is it really an accurate picture? Biden was the guy who was refusing to negotiate in any real way. Interestingly enough I didn't see any polls one way or the other over this. That tells me the GOP was probably winning the p.r. battle.
Alinsky also said "if you push a negative long and hard enough it will break through and become a positive". The GOP never does that. They dip a toe in the water and finding it a bit chill run back to their mommies.
Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military philosopher, admonished generals to not go half-way "penetration (into enemy territory) but a short way leads to dispersion (of forces)." Tzu believed dipping a toe in the water was worse than useless. You go all in or don't go at all. Now McCarthy has shown weakness, that he can be maneuvered out of political fear. The GOP did what they always do - caved. They pulled out their wallets and handed over the money when Biden demanded, and are telling us we should be thankful we didn't lose our shirts along with the contents of our wallet. In politics strength is everything. The PERCETPION of strength is what matters. Now the sharks smell blood in the water.
Chuck Schumer touted this deal. And Biden was all smiles. Why? They won. They showed our side was as cowardly and foolish as John Boehner or Paul Ryan used to be. And why not? We put Ryan's bestie in charge (Ryan, Eric Cantor, and McCarthy were three amigos, the so-called Young Guns.) McCarthy is cut from the same pucillanimous cloth.
So now McCarthy has handed over the one tool he had to keep the Biden Administration honest. Biden no longer faces any debt ceiling issues. He can spend as he pleases without House oversight.
He mugged the GOP and America. And the one man we relied on to stop this robbery is thanking him for not taking more.
This is much like hiring the Hells Angels to work security at a Rolling Stone concert. The security is worse than the threat.
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