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‘Gun-Toting’ St. Louis Lawyers Will Appear At Next Week’s Republican National Convention

‘Gun-Toting’ St. Louis Lawyers Will Appear At Next Week’s Republican National Convention

Tyler Durden

Tue, 08/18/2020 – 12:00

With the DNC snooze-fest fading in the rear view mirror already, focus now turns to the upcoming Republican National Convention that will take place next week.

On the guest list of those attending will be none other than Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who famously took to their front lawn, guns drawn, to protect their property from a group of protesters. They are expected to express their support for President Trump during the upcoming virtual convention, according to the NY Post. 

Recall, the St. Louis couple made headlines in June for displaying firearms in front of their home as a group of BLM activists marched towards the Mayor’s house. They were later charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon and fourth-degree assault.

St. Louis’ top prosecutor, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, announced last month that she would be filing charges:

“It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner — that is unlawful in the city of St. Louis,” Gardner said in a statement, adding that she was recommending community service in lieu of up to four years in prison, according to Politico.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner

The McCloskey’s defenders – including several GOP leaders, President Trump and  others have urged Attorney General William Barr to investigate Gardner – while Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) said in a radio interview last month that he would likely pardon the McCloskeys if they were charged and convicted.

He later called the charges “a chilling effect on Missourians’ exercising the right to self-defense.”

The McCloskeys have repeatedly said they were defending themselves as tensions have flared during destructive and violent BLM riots across the country.

Last month, St. Louis authorities raided the McCloskey residence, confiscating the AR-15 used by Mark McCloskey. The couple said their attorney was in possession of the pistol Patricia McCloskey brandished during the confrontation.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3iSMoTY Tyler Durden

Top 10 Rookie Trader Mistakes From A Former SAC Portfolio Manager

Top 10 Rookie Trader Mistakes From A Former SAC Portfolio Manager

Tyler Durden

Tue, 08/18/2020 – 11:39

In a recent note, DataTrek’s Nicholas Colas, who prior to becoming a market strategist was a portfolio manager at SAC and a sellside analyst, focuses on an age-old question “Is investing an art or a science?” His answer is that it is neither: “It is a craft, a combination of both sorts of disciplines. And like all crafts, one learns it in part by making mistakes.”

He details his observations and lessons below:

Given everything that’s happened in the last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about “rookie mistakes”, those errors of judgement that stem from inexperience. Having done everything from being a sell side analyst to working at a hedge fund to writing market strategy over a +30-year career, I think I’ve either made every rookie mistake in the book and/or watched others do the same.

And, because investing is a craft, some of these lessons come from masters in the field who either stumbled into a rookie mistake or showed me how to avoid one. Three-star Michelin chefs still burn themselves, and master carpenters will occasionally hammer their own thumbs. It happens.

Here is a Top 10 list of “rookie mistakes” that I still consciously try to avoid even after +3 decades in this business:

#1: Planning IN a crisis instead of planning FOR a crisis. Trading at SAC during the dot com bubble bursting taught me one thing: just as there seem to be only geniuses in bull markets, there’s a lot of bad decision-making in down ones. In part that is because many investors wait until markets are in free fall before developing a plan to profit from the chaos. By then, fear has captured body and spirit and planning is nigh-on impossible.

The only solution for this problem is to plan ahead, something else I learned at SAC. For example, when things started to go south in March 2020, we told you to buy every 5% down day on the S&P 500. The history of the Financial Crisis showed that was a winning approach, and it worked. If/when we have another round of market volatility, we will tell you again to buy every down 5% day.

#2: Believing in “Buy low, sell high”. Rookies mistakenly think this adage says to buy new lows, especially in single stocks or sectors. Big mistake. Assets make new lows for a reason, and generally they’re pretty good reasons. The right approach is to “scale in off the lows and scale out higher”. Not as pithy, but a whole lot more profitable.

#3: Thinking XYZ stock/sector is up/down for no reason – it’s just “general market action”. If I learned one thing from Stevie Cohen, it is that there is always a reason for any price movement. The issue is “is it worth my time to find out what’s happening?” Sometimes it is, but most of the time it is not. Understanding how to tell the difference is a big part of the investment “craft”, because time is the only truly scarce resource.

There is an apocryphal story that Stevie only traded one stock when he started his hedge fund: IBM. He got to know all the analysts who covered it, the specialist who made the market, and the investment criteria of all its largest owners. He knew why every tick was happening in Big Blue. It was never just “the market”.

#4: Believing valuations actually matter. Steve had another saying I’ll never forget: “math is not an investment edge”. Stocks, sectors, and even entire countries trade with a given set of valuation metrics like price/earnings ratios. But everyone knows that number, which means there is no investment value in that analysis. The “why” matters much more – why so cheap, why so expensive” – and the “how” is the center of the investment case – “how do market perspectives change?”.

#5: Thinking policymakers play by the rules. One of the oddest things about the last 4 months has been seeing the raft of negative commentary about the Federal Reserve’s corporate bond buying program and the $2 trillion CARES Act stimulus. “They can’t do that!” is the most common critical thread, with the idea being that fiscal/monetary policymakers are constrained by the letter of the law or historical precedent. Wrong – they make the rules and investors have to allocate capital based on their decisions.

#6: Saying “this won’t end well”. I get the idea – that markets can be so unbalanced that they crash – but the rookie mistake is believing anything actually “ends”. Bad endings are the best entry points.

#7: Thinking stocks move just on fundamentals. There’s an old saying among traders: “Analysts? In a bull market you don’t need them, and in a bear market they’ll kill you.” I first heard that from hedge fund clients in the 1990s, and since I was an analyst it stung… But there are certain times when stocks don’t care about fundamentals. There are two reasons why. First: as we saw in March, price leads fundamentals since markets quickly sniff out future economic reality. Second: asset price correlations always go to 1.0 in a crisis, and it doesn’t matter if a company sells electric power or electric cars.

#8: Using inappropriate timeframes for historical analysis. A senior Fidelity money manager in the early 1990s taught me a trick I use to this day: only look at charts where the time period shown matches your holding period. If you plan to hold US equities for 20 years, look at a 20-year chart. If you want to understand how the US dollar trades through an economic cycle, only use a 10-15 year chart.

All the chatter about the US dollar’s sudden recent weakness or gold’s resurgence comes from those who are looking at 1-year charts or shorter. Historical context (which is all charts really show) is a productive thing to have, but only if you look at an appropriately long history.

#9: Sizing an investment idea inappropriately (both large and small). The smartest hedge fund risk consultant I know makes a very good living by monitoring his clients’ position sizing like a hyper-attentive bird dog. His edge: looking for the scattered small positions that can cumulatively hurt a portfolio. Even rookies know that a big position gone wrong will kill performance. Only veterans know that 5 lousy 1% positions can do the same thing.

#10: Believing you’ll never make a rookie mistake. You probably saw this coming, but it’s a good place to end the conversation. The craft of investing is not one anyone really masters; the best goal may well be to just make fewer mistakes.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Yceamt Tyler Durden

Kamala Harris May be Descended from a Slaveowner. So What?

Various right-wing populist media personalities and sources seem to think that revealing that Kamala Harris has, according to her father, a distant ancestor who was a slaveowner in Jamaica is some sort of “gotcha.” In particular, they often suggest that this is evidence that Harris is “not really black” or is “barely black.”

As I noted previously, because Harris has black African ancestry and identifies as black, she is included in the legal definition of “black/African” we use in the U.S. This legal definition both reflects and informs common parlance.

Beyond that, the racial categories we use in common parlance in the U.S. do not track genetic ancestry, but are rather sociological. In the U.S., the one-drop rule generally prevailed historically, where anyone with discernible African ancestry was deemed black. According to what I’ve read but not independently confirmed, the U.S. is the only country that had African slavery where the one-drop rule has been standard.

In short, having a white ancestor, including slave-owning ancestors, has never disqualified anyone from identifying or being identified as black/African American. The only legitimate objection is the history of forcing that identity on people regardless of how they see themselves, and then discriminating against them because of it.

The civil rights group challenging the segregation law in Plessy v. Ferguson purposely chose Homer Plessy as the test-case plaintiff, because, as the Supreme Court related, he was “of mixed descent, in the proportion of seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth African blood; .. the mixture of [African] blood was not discernible in him.” Among other things, the litigants hoped to show the absurdity and arbitrariness of American race law.

In the course of my research on government mandates requiring use of race for classification in medical studies, I found that researchers who have done genetic studies estimate that the average self-identified black person in the U.S. has European ancestry ranging from 7 to 24% (depending on the study). Bryc Katarzyna, et al. The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States, 96 Am. J. Human Genetics 37 (2015). People who self-identify as black/African American have anywhere from 2% to 100% African ancestry. This obviously is a confounding factor in trying to use American race categories as proxies for genetic origin, but it also points to the fact that there is no contradiction between having some European ancestry and identifying as black or African American.

Not all of all African Americans with white ancestry have white *slaveowner* ancestry, but some of them do. It doesn’t make them less “black”; it does reinforce the horrors of slavery, as slaves were forced into sexual relationships with slaveholders, and their offspring remained slaves unless specifically freed by the father.

It would be preferable if society advanced to the point where differences in “racial” origins were considered largely irrelevant to anything but one’s own self-identity. Obviously we haven’t reached that stage yet. Meanwhile, it’s completely uncalled for to suggest that Senator Harris isn’t “really” black.

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Senate Panel Releases Final Report On Russian Interference In 2016, Says Manafort Posed “Grave Counterintelligence Threat”

Senate Panel Releases Final Report On Russian Interference In 2016, Says Manafort Posed “Grave Counterintelligence Threat”

Tyler Durden

Tue, 08/18/2020 – 11:22

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released a 966 page final report on Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election, and outlines “Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities” during the race.

The panel interviewed over 200 witnesses and reviewed over 1 million pages of documents, according to The Hill – finding that while Russia made efforts to interfere in the election through disinformation and cyber campaigns, there was insufficient evidence that the Trump campaign ‘colluded’ with the Kremlin, as we were promised was the case by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the MSM over the course of several years.

“No probe into this matter has been more exhaustive,” said acting Senate Intelligence Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL) in a statement, adding “We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election.”

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the Committee’s Vice Chairman, had a different interpretation – saying “At nearly 1,000 pages, Volume 5 stands as the most comprehensive examination of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign to date — a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections.”

And while there was no evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, the panel found that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s contacts with ‘Kremlin-linked’ officials (as the Washington Post describes them) posed a “grave counterintelligence threat.“

The volume, released Tuesday, states that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern. –WaPo

“One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC).

The report also found that Trump-hating Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya – who was granted a visa under “extraordinary circumstances” by the Obama DOJ to lobby and defend a client in the United States after she was initially rejected – had “significant connections” to the Kremlin.

That said, the panel also found that the FBI’s conduct during the 2016 election was “flawed,” and that the agency gave “unjustified credence” to allegations of Trump’s ties to Russia contained in the infamous Steele dossier, and that it was “based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.”

And of course, as The Hill notes, “The conclusion of the Senate committee’s probe comes as security officials and experts are warning that Russia will likely seek to interfere in the upcoming presidential election — as well as other countries.”

So, the red menace is out there, lurking, and may strike again – despite the Kremlin’s failure to impact the outcome of the 2016 election. The US, meanwhile, claims moral high ground – despite CIA’s decades-long history of interfering with foreign elections.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FszjlU Tyler Durden

Peak Schizophrenia: Wall Street Turns Extremely Bullish Just As It Finds All Assets Overvalued Most Ever

Peak Schizophrenia: Wall Street Turns Extremely Bullish Just As It Finds All Assets Overvalued Most Ever

Tyler Durden

Tue, 08/18/2020 – 10:57

In addition to manipulating what was once a “market” and is now simply a political tool, the Federal Reserve has also proven itself to be the best manipulator of investor psychology, because after it relentlessly ramped stocks since their March lows to a new all time high hit moments ago, the bears have well and fully capitulated as the latest Bank of America fund manager survey funds.

According to BofA CIO Michael Hartnett, who just concluded the August Global Fund Manager survey which polled 181 participants with $489 billion in AUM, a majority of professional investors say it’s no longer a “bear market rally” contrary to the prevailing view since the March lows...

… and in a world where “the price is right” – all thanks to the Fed of course – they now expect higher growth with (net 79%, the highest since Dec’09)…

… profits & inflation…

… expect a COVID-19 vaccine announcement early Q1’21, all of which is inflationary and yet the same group of “professionals” also believe the 10-year Treasury yield will be below 0.5% by year-end which would be a deflationary supernova. So just the typical schizophrenic contradictions we have grown to expect from the monthly BofA survey.

What is most remarkable however is that by pumping $80BN into the market every month without stopping, the Fed has managed to shift the prevailing consensus from “it’s a recession” to this is actually an “early cycle”; indeed in the last survey, only 53% believe in the former, while a whopping 31% believe in the latter, the most since the financial crisis.

That said, not everyone has gotten the Men In Black market neuralyzer treatment, and while bullish sentiment now prevails, a tiny minority (17%) now expect a V-shaped recovery, many expect W-shape (37%) or U-shape (31%).

At the same time CIO’s want CEO’s to reduce debt (57%) not expand capex (30%), with almost nobody demanding with buybacks and dividends, and why should they: stocks are already at all time highs thanks to the Fed buying everything so who needs buybacks.

And the punchline of this latest entry in the annals of Wall Street schizophrenia is that even as they rush back into stocks, these so-called professional investors believe that all assets (stocks/bonds/gold) most overvalued since 2008…

… and while they expect nominal yields to drop to all time lows, they are – a BofA notes – rotating into inflation assets: Europe & EM stocks (US$ debasement theme), banks, small cap & value stock.

Some other observations: FMS investors say long US tech (59%) most crowded trade…

… then long gold (23%), corporate bonds (8%) even though we expect that short USD 4% will be next month’s most popular trade as we noted over the weekend…

… while top tail risks are COVID-19 second wave (35%), followed by US-China trade war (19%) & US election (14%).

Putting the August survey in context, Hartnett summarizes that this was the most bullish FMS since Feb’20, but he does not think “positioning is dangerously bullish” as FMS cash levels down to 4.6% but in neutral range (<4% = greed, >5% = fear)…

… and the BofA Bull & Bear Indicator up to 3.7, far from excess bullish.

As a result, asset allocation is stubbornly skewed toward US growth stocks; but Aug FMS shows “green shoots” for “inflation assets”…rotation to Europe & EM stocks ($-debasement theme), banks, small cap & value stocks.

FMS contrarian trades: risk-on vaccine & higher rates = cyclical rotation best played via long small cap value, short tech; risk-off political volatility (roughly 70% think flip of US Senate is risk-off) best played via short healthcare stocks.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2EhonXD Tyler Durden

This Is One Of The Single Biggest Threats To The Dollar Today

This Is One Of The Single Biggest Threats To The Dollar Today

Tyler Durden

Tue, 08/18/2020 – 10:40

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

In late November 1943, as World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, leaders of the ‘Big Three’ allied nations– the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union, held a key strategy meeting in Tehran.

It’s hard to imagine anymore that the United States and Soviet Union were, at least for a time, allies. Many of us grew up in a world where the Cold War dominated, and threat of mutual nuclear annihilation was ever-present.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Relations between the Soviet Union and the West started out as fairly neutral in the 1920s. And even by the mid-1940s the two sides were allies.

The conference in Tehran (followed by another meeting in Yalta in early 1945) represented the high water mark in cooperation between the Soviet Union and the West.

But after the war, their relationship rapidly deteriorated.

By the early 1950s, the two sides were in full blown Cold War– and you could see it everywhere: the Space Race, the Arms Race, the Cuban Missile Crisis, proxy wars across Asia and Latin America, massive military buildup in Europe.

These tensions escalated very quickly… and lasted for decades– the Soviet Union and the United States were mortal enemies for nearly 50 years.

We’re seeing many of the same elements today in a new, rapidly growing conflict between the US and China.

What started off as a simple trade dispute has quickly escalated into a diplomatic crisis, and now a new Cold War.

Just over the last few weeks, both sides shut down one of the other’s consulates (the US closed China’s consulate in Houston, and China closed the US consulate in Chengdu.)

The US government has threatened to ban the popular Chinese app TikTok and to de-list Chinese companies from US stock exchanges.

Foreign reporters on both sides have had their visas revoked.

And each government accuses the other of spreading the Coronavirus around the world.

This laundry-list is practically never-ending, and doesn’t even scratch the surface of hacking and spying allegations on each side.

In speech last month, the Attorney General of the United States stated, “The ultimate ambition of China’s rulers isn’t to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States.”

The following week, the US Secretary of State effectively declared Cold War against China when he said:

[I]f we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build.

If we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party, whose actions are the primary challenge today in the free world.

General Secretary Xi is not destined to tyrannize inside and outside of China forever, unless we allow it. . .

Maybe it’s time for a new grouping of like-minded nations, a new alliance of democracies.

We have the tools. I know we can do it. Now we need the will.

Pretty forceful.

Now, one important thing to remember is that, during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the US was at its peak.

Today the tables are turned. China is the rising power, and the US is well past its peak.

China is one of the world’s biggest creditor nations and has a vast pool of savings. The US is the world’s single largest debtor nation, with record-high government debt, consumer debt, etc.

This year alone the US federal government will likely increase its national debt by $5 trillion. And the debt (at $26.5 trillion) is already 136% of GDP!

More importantly, as we discussed several times over the past few weeks, economic sustainability and prosperity are no longer priorities in the United States.

Governments at the local, state, and federal levels are full of Bolshevik politicians who despise successful individuals and businesses.

They are far more concerned with chasing jobs and investment out of their districts, passing retroactive tax increases, and locking down businesses from opening up (while allowing riots, rampages, and the destruction of property).

Socially, the country has completely lost its mind and is eating itself from within.

It’s hard to imagine winning a new Cold War at a time like this.

But if this conflict continues escalating, it could have dire consequences, especially for the US dollar.

Right now the dollar is the dominant reserve currency in the world.

This means, for example, that foreign governments and central banks hold their excess savings in US dollars (most frequently in the form of US government bonds).

This is why the US federal government can increase its national debt by trillions of dollars, and the Federal Reserve can print trillions more, because the rest of the world will still readily accept their currency as THE global reserve standard.

But watch what happens as this conflict with China escalates.

The US government is rapidly pushing China out of the US financial system. They may even default on the US debt that is owned by China.

Doing so will compel China to simply create its own, competing financial system.

And suddenly every country that China does business with would start using the Chinese system and increasing their holdings of Chinese renminbi.

As a result, China’s currency would essentially take global reserve ‘market share’ away from the US dollar. And even a small portion would have a huge impact.

A smaller share of global reserves would mean that the US could no longer get away with printing trillions of dollars, or piling up its endless mountain of debt.

There would be less demand from foreign governments and central banks to buy US government bonds, which would cause the dollar to lose a LOT of value. That means serious inflation.

Conflict with China is by far one of the single biggest threats to the dollar. So it’s worth paying attention to, because, as the last Cold War proved, it can escalate rapidly and persist for decades.

*  *  *

On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/317Xbnf Tyler Durden

Kamala Harris May be Descended from a Slaveowner. So What?

Various right-wing populist media personalities and sources seem to think that revealing that Kamala Harris has, according to her father, a distant ancestor who was a slaveowner in Jamaica is some sort of “gotcha.” In particular, they often suggest that this is evidence that Harris is “not really black” or is “barely black.”

As I noted previously, because Harris has black African ancestry and identifies as black, she is included in the legal definition of “black/African” we use in the U.S. This legal definition both reflects and informs common parlance.

Beyond that, the racial categories we use in common parlance in the U.S. do not track genetic ancestry, but are rather sociological. In the U.S., the one-drop rule generally prevailed historically, where anyone with discernible African ancestry was deemed black. According to what I’ve read but not independently confirmed, the U.S. is the only country that had African slavery where the one-drop rule has been standard.

In short, having a white ancestor, including slave-owning ancestors, has never disqualified anyone from identifying or being identified as black/African American. The only legitimate objection is the history of forcing that identity on people regardless of how they see themselves, and then discriminating against them because of it.

The civil rights group challenging the segregation law in Plessy v. Ferguson purposely chose Homer Plessy as the test-case plaintiff, because, as the Supreme Court related, he was “of mixed descent, in the proportion of seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth African blood; .. the mixture of [African] blood was not discernible in him.” Among other things, the litigants hoped to show the absurdity and arbitrariness of American race law.

In the course of my research on government mandates requiring use of race for classification in medical studies, I found that researchers who have done genetic studies estimate that the average self-identified black person in the U.S. has European ancestry ranging from 7 to 24% (depending on the study). Bryc Katarzyna, et al. The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States, 96 Am. J. Human Genetics 37 (2015). People who self-identify as black/African American have anywhere from 2% to 100% African ancestry. This obviously is a confounding factor in trying to use American race categories as proxies for genetic origin, but it also points to the fact that there is no contradiction between having some European ancestry and identifying as black or African American.

Not all of all African Americans with white ancestry have white *slaveowner* ancestry, but some of them do. It doesn’t make them less “black”; it does reinforce the horrors of slavery, as slaves were forced into sexual relationships with slaveholders, and their offspring remained slaves unless specifically freed by the father.

It would be preferable if society advanced to the point where differences in “racial” origins were considered largely irrelevant to anything but one’s own self-identity. Obviously we haven’t reached that stage yet. Meanwhile, it’s completely uncalled for to suggest that Senator Harris isn’t “really” black.

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Notes from our Sovereign Woman

Today’s Notes from the Field are a little bit different.

As you’ll notice instead of Bahia, this letter is coming to you from Dubai, UAE. And, is pinned by a Sovereign Woman.

Hi, I’m Viktorija, for those who don’t know me yet, I’ve been with Sovereign Man for the majority of its existence, working behind the scenes most of the time.

I’ve traveled to about 100 countries around the world, and I am working on eventually beating Simon’s record of 122.

While most of the world seems to be on lockdown, I wanted to share some travel stories with you.

And before you ask– yes, traveling is definitely possible during this time. And frankly it’s been pretty enjoyable.

Once I turned off the news went outside, the first thing I noticed was that life is pretty much back to normal in many parts of the world.

I had the pleasure of spending the peak of the Covid-19 lockdown phase in Puerto Rico and after that I traveled to Chile, then to Europe, and now in Dubai.

The range of government restrictions in these places has been remarkable.

In Puerto Rico where I spent time with Simon at his home, life was normal-ish.

As Simon likes to say, Puerto Ricans don’t have much regard for their government, so most people have openly defied government rules about lockdowns, and most of those rules have loosened up anyhow.

Chile was the total opposite.

When I was there last month, the Chilean government had kept people in total lockdown. Chileans were allowed to leave their homes only twice each week, and they had to apply online for a special permit to do so.

From there I went to Europe where the situation is a lot more sensible. And from what I’ve seen, it all comes down to attitude.

In a lot of places (like parts of the US, Latin America, etc.) there are people who are terrified of Covid. And they believe the solution is to wait.

They think that if they sit in their homes and wait long enough, the virus will eventually die off and life go back to the way things used to be.

In Europe (and here in Dubai), people seem to have a longer term view.

They understand that Covid-19 is here to stay.

Even if a vaccine is developed, it will take YEARS before it’s properly tested, with billions of units manufactured and distributed around the world.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness has been marshaling manufacturing capacity worldwide in preparation to mass produce a Covid-19 vaccine.

But even their estimates are to be able to produce 2 billion vaccines by the end of next year.

That’s only 25% of the world’s population, and it’s still more than a year away. Wider adoption is going to take several more years.

So what’s the solution in the meantime– lock down every house, school, business, and church in the world? Cancel every performance and sporting event? Print infinite quantities of money to pay people to NOT work?

There will be no economy left. People will suffer from depression, and suicide rates will soar.

But this doesn’t have to be all gloom and doom.

And my travels have shown me that there are plenty of countries in the world who have a much saner, longer-term view.

Governments, businesses and people understand that they need to continue living their lives, and that means making certain adjustments.

For instance, when coming to Dubai, I had a Covid test done before boarding the plane.

Plus I had to have a travel insurance policy that would cover expenses in cases I get tested positive and needed medical care.

Hotels, restaurants and malls have all made necessary adjustments, making sure people are able to keep a reasonable distance from one another while still maintaining a happy, social vibe.

When I was in Lithuania recently, the municipal government of the capital city (Vilnius) opened up outdoor public spaces to bars and restaurants so that they could operate at maximum capacity while still giving patrons appropriate distance.

Airports and planes are cleaner than ever before, and people are actually more mindful about the space around them. It’s honestly been a real pleasure to travel right now.

Obviously I’m always careful and very mindful of my own health, and that of others around me. I’ve even had multiple Covid-19 tests to make sure I can safely visit my mother.

With all of that being said, once you turn the news off and expand your horizons, you’ll quickly realize that there is still normal, vibrant life out there.

As Simon has written extensively over the last few months, the world is not coming to an end. It’s definitely changing rapidly.

At Sovereign Man we prefer to have a positive perspective and a position of strength.

We want to be prepared for obvious risks, but also to take advantage of the abundance of opportunity that the world has to offer… especially at a time when most people are consumed with fear and hysteria.

Source

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Kamala Harris’ Limited Vision of Religious Liberty

Kamala Harris

When presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris was running for president, she appeared at CNN’s Equality Town Hall, an October event focused on the LGBTQ community. How, one questioner asked, will Harris communicate her “liberal, Californian perspective when reaching out to voters in small, conservative areas?”

Harris said she’d tell the story of a day in 2004 where she arrived at San Francisco’s City Hall to find families of same-sex couples lined up around the block to witness their loved ones’ weddings. “It was a day where people who loved each other had the ability for their love to be recognized by law,” said Harris, who herself officiated gay weddings years before they were legalized statewide in California. “And if anyone has known love, and honors the importance of love and the commitment one person is willing to make to another person in the name of love,” she continued, “they should always recognize and encourage that nobody would be treated differently under the law.”

It’s an evocative story about why gay marriage should be allowed, but it doesn’t address the chief concern you’ll hear from religious conservatives these days: Whether they’ll be compelled to participate in and pay for things, particularly in the workplace, which their creeds and consciences forbid. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a momentary lapse: Harris shows little interest in reaching common ground with voters worried about religious liberty. She even seems unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that their fears could be based in something more substantive than a failure to have “known love.”

The Supreme Court’s June decision on Bostock v. Clayton County is a useful synecdoche for LGBTQ policies. Bostock controversially expanded employment discrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Though a subsequent ruling enhanced the “ministerial exception,” which gives religious institutions far wider latitude in hiring and firing, Bostock was considered catastrophic by many religious conservatives who want to bring their beliefs into business contexts that aren’t explicitly religious. At least arguably, the court has protected religious institutions but not individuals. Harris cheered Bostock, which accomplished a major goal of her 2017 and 2019 legislation to weaken the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The birth control fight, similarly, turns on whether the state can force employers to pay for birth control they consider abortifacient if doing so violates their religious beliefs. Harris says employers must be made to pay. In 2014, as California’s attorney general, she filed an amicus brief in the Hobby Lobby case that presented a stunningly narrow view of free religious exercise. She described it as “personal, relating only to individual believers and to a limited class of associations comprising or representing them.” The Constitution “protect[s] the development and expression of an ‘inner sanctum’ of personal religious faith,” Harris wrote, but not “the exercise of such inherently personal rights by ordinary, for-profit business corporations.”

This is a bizarre vision of faith confined to mental assent and perhaps a few private ceremonies. It is unrecognizable and nigh useless from many religious perspectives, for most religious people believe our faith should inform all parts of our lives, including our work. In that case, protecting only an “inner sanctum” is no protection at all.

Then there’s abortion. Harris is pro-choice, of course, but her stance goes well beyond ensuring abortion is legal and accessible. She’s a vocal proponent of federal funding for abortion. In California, she championed legislation forcing pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise free or cheap abortion options to their clients. (The law was later struck down as a First Amendment violation.) Critics and supporters alike have said Harris’ bill to weaken the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could be used to require Catholic health care providers, for example, to perform abortions.

Perhaps the single most revealing comment Harris has made on abortion came in 2018, when the U.S. Senate was considering the nomination of Brian Buescher for a district judgeship. “Since 1993,” she said, “you have been a member of the Knights of Columbus, an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men. In 2016, Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus, described abortion as ‘a legal regime that has resulted in more than 40 million deaths.’ Mr. Anderson went on to say that ‘abortion is the killing of the innocent on a massive scale.’ Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?”

This is what has conservative Catholics denouncing Harris as an anti-Catholic bigot. To be Catholic, they say she’s implying, is to be an extremist unsuitable for the federal bench. That’s a plausible reading, though it’s complicated somewhat by her willingness to run alongside Joe Biden—but then, Biden isn’t exactly the same sort of Catholic. The assumptions undergirding Harris’ comment suggest she doesn’t think people whose religion places them on the opposite side of the culture war merit much protection in public life.

Finally, there’s Harris’ gleefully expressed willingness to override constitutional rights by executive order. At a primary debate in September, she sneered at the “idea that we would wait for this Congress that has just done nothing” to issue a federal assault weapons ban, breaking with Biden on the constitutionality of such a move.

Biden’s view may hold sway for the next four years. But it’s not hard to imagine a President Harris in 2025, freed of Biden’s lingering constitutional constraints, deciding that executive orders could be used on First Amendment matters as well as Second. Whatever lip service Harris pays to Americans’ freedom to worship, it’s a freedom she clearly wants neatly confined to our own heads.

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Stocks, Gold, & Crypto Tumble; ThinkOrSwim Suffers Another Outage

Stocks, Gold, & Crypto Tumble; ThinkOrSwim Suffers Another Outage

Tyler Durden

Tue, 08/18/2020 – 10:25

US equities tagged a new record high this morning for the first time since Feb… and then things escalated to the downside quickly…

But clients of TDAmeritrade’s ThinkOrSwim platform can’t sell…

This is the second day in a row for ThinkOrSwim to suffer outages.

Interestingly, as stocks slump, Gold is also being punched lower…

And Bitcoin…

It seems stocks selling triggering a Dollar ‘buy’ algos and that triggered the drops in PMs and crypto.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3gc3gDw Tyler Durden