Tag: finance

Authored by Jessica Corbett via CommonDreams.org,

After the FBI took to Twitter Monday with a message that allegedly aimed to honor “the life and work” of Martin Luther King Jr., a chorus of critics promptly urged the bureau to “sit this one out,” pointing to its history of spying on King and trying to convince the civil rights leader to kill himself.

Each year on the national holiday dedicated to King, progressives criticize and work to counter the whitewashed public narrative of a man who, particularly in the years leading up to his April 1968 assassination, passionately condemned the “evils” of capitalism, militarism, and racism.

The FBI, during both the Obama and Trump administrations, has provoked a wave of criticism for posting shoutouts to King on social media, given the bureau’s past treatment of him. Monday was no different.

Writer and radio host Richard “RJ” Eskow — who detailed King’s radical vision and activism in a piece for the People’s Action blog Monday — shared the FBI’s 2020 tweet dedicated to MLK along with his own interpretation.

“FBI, translated: Of all the people we have wiretapped, blackmailed, and tried to drive to their deaths through suicide, there are none we think more highly of than Dr. King,” Eskow tweeted.

FBI, translated: Of all the people we have wiretapped, blackmailed, and tried to drive to their deaths through suicide, there are none we think more highly of than Dr. King. https://t.co/rEOkwfYJjS

— Richard (RJ) Eskow (@rjeskow) January 20, 2020

Some critics expressed anger and disbelief. Rewire.News senior legal analyst Imani Gandy wrote in response to the FBI, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Journalist David Corn posed “a sincere question,” asking: “Has the FBI ever apologized to King’s family for wiretapping King, blackmailing him, and trying to get him to commit suicide?”

Others posted an unsigned letter from 1964 that the FBI, then under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, sent to King in an attempt to use evidence of his extramarital affairs to compel him to kill himself.

The unredacted letter was published by Yale University American history professor Beverly Gage in the New York Times in 2014.

Reposting this correct tweet from @Jaboukie that got his account suspended pic.twitter.com/jseuemrB6a

— James Adomian (@JAdomian) January 21, 2020

As Vox reported in 2018:

According to Enemies, journalist Tim Weiner’s history of the FBI, [the bureau’s domestic intelligence chief William Sullivan] “had a package of the King sex tapes prepared by the FBI’s lab technicians,” and sent it along with this letter to King’s home. The package was opened by King’s wife.

ACLU social media manager Emily Patterson declared on Twitter that “the FBI social media manager continues to prove we really, really need to do a better job of teaching kids history in this country.”

Acknowledging the bureau’s track record of posting about MLK, Patterson added, “Do y’all think there’s anyone over at FBI marketing who at least *tries* to get them not to do this annually?”

The official ACLU account warned that “if we let the government whitewash history, we risk letting abuses repeat themselves.”

The civil liberties group linked to a piece that Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, published in Rolling Stone on MLK Day last year—detailing “Hoover’s obsession with King,” which Crockford concluded “bordered on the fanatical,” and the consequences of that obsession, including the letter.

Crawford also noted that “the FBI’s surveillance of black Americans isn’t just history. [In 2018], we learned the FBI has been spying on black activists, labeling them ‘Black Identity Extremists.’ The feds also use powers obtained through national security laws like the Patriot Act to target people in the racially biased drug war.”

Read the letter the FBI sent MLK to try to convince him to kill himself – Vox https://t.co/kXSogP5q9W

— Chuck D (@MrChuckD) January 21, 2020

“More disturbing: The FBI that spied on King and today classifies Black civil rights activists as ‘extremists,'” Crockford continued, “is now partnering with Big Tech to amass unprecedented surveillance powers that history has taught us will be used to target communities of color, religious minorities, dissidents, and immigrants.”

FBI director Christopher Wray testified before Congress in July 2019 that the bureau has stopped using the term “black identity extremism.” However, some groups and individuals on Monday shared critiques of the FBI’s current practices alongside denunciations of the bureau’s past behavior.

The London-based advocacy group CAGE, which works to empower communities impacted by the War on Terror, tweeted Monday that the FBI still tries “to suppress dissent” and uses “dirty tactics that would make Edgar Hoover proud. But [is] happy now to co-opt MLK to try to cover up the above.”

CAGE also shared the FBI’s letter to King and, like many other critics, referenced COINTELPRO, the domestic counterintelligence program under which the FBI spied on King and many other activists and organizations, including the Black Panthers and protesters of the Vietnam War.

President Trump’s impeachment isn’t the only major trial that Americans will be following in January.

Now that the jury has been picked (sadly, Gigi Hadid didn’t make the cut, much to the disappointment of the New York Post) and the defense has succeeded in limiting the number of young, white women on the jury to just 2, it’s time for what some are hyping as the next trial of the century.

Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood studio head and kingmaker whose fall from grace inspired the #MeToo movement, is facing a criminal trial in Manhattan on charges of rape and assault. I convicted, it’s extremely likely that the 67-year-old Weinstein will be sentenced to life in prison, while civil suits and penalties eat away whatever is left of his fortune.

With opening statements about to begin next week, Weinstein’s legal team has started laying out its defense in the press.

According to ABC News, Weinstein’s team is pushing to include a trove of “intimate email correspondence” between the former mogul and his accusers – emails that they say would paint a wildly different picture of their relationships with the defendant.

Some of the emails even show that some of the very same women accusing Weinstein of rape once bragged to friends about being in a sexual relationship with the mogul. Given Weinstein’s stature in the industry, many of his accusers are women who wanted or needed a favor from him, even if it was merely a small role in one of his films.

Though Weinstein’s reputation has been thoroughly sullied in a way that makes it impossible to portray him as a victim (except inside his own head), the lawyers could argue that this evidence weakens the witnesses’ credibility, suggesting that they might have reluctantly consented to Weinstein’s advances.

Conveniently, Weinstein’s health has apparently deteriorated over the last two years – or at least that’s what his lawyers want the public to believe.

The trial is moving ahead in Manhattan as Weinstein’s lawyers have so far failed in their push to change the venue outside of New York City, where hatred for Weinstein is likely at its highest. 

Considering the number of celebrities and the circus like atmosphere that engulfs everything in NYC, Weinstein’s lawyers argued that he would never received a fair trial. But the judge rejected those claims.

In December, he underwent a bilateral laminectomy, a back surgery that was allegedly vital to repair damage from a one-car crash. Weinstein said he swerved off the road trying to avoid a deer. That must have been some deer.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Migrants in central America say they are waiting for President Trump to be voted out of office and for Democrats to reopen the borders so they can cross illegally into the US without the fear that authorities will ‘throw them back.’

The Center for Immigration Studies reports that many migrants are sitting in wait in Mexico, praying for a Trump defeat.

U.S.-bound migrants stuck in Mexico say they’re staying, calculating a Trump 2020 election loss and Dems will reopen the southern border. “The Trump-defeat gambit offers powerful motive, a 50-50 chance that the U.S. border will clear in less than a year.”https://t.co/jQmPyUEclo pic.twitter.com/9d90U1Fdwe

— Todd Bensman (@BensmanTodd) January 19, 2020

“I’ll wait for that because it would make things easier to get in.” Honduran Katherine Cabrera told researchers, adding “I want Trump out!”

Another told CIS that many are not attempting to illegally gain entry to the country “until Trump leaves,” because the prevailing expectation is that “right now, the Americans will throw you back” to Mexico.

“A lot of people in El Salvador believe he (Trump) is the reason all this is happening, that he is selfish and cruel and doing everything he can to make us suffer,” another migrant commented, adding “But once Trump is defeated and the Democrats take over, things are going to get better.”

Other groups of migrants are attempting to cross in greater numbers, believing that it will give them a better chance of evading capture:

A migrant Caravan from Guatemala gathered near the Mexican border on Sunday, waiting for more migrants to arrive in hopes that greater numbers may give them a better chance in their attempt to cross into Mexico. pic.twitter.com/elxYkDqOMO

— ANews (@anewscomtr) January 20, 2020

On Monday, Thousands of migrants stormed a bridge over the Suchiate River from Guatemala to Mexico, attempting and failing to move further north.

The scenes were chaotic with Mexican National Guard troops confronting the migrants:

#BREAKING Migrants from new caravan cross Suchiate river and have reached Mexico. pic.twitter.com/CKCdFqsATP

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) January 20, 2020

VIDEO: 🇬🇹 🇲🇽 Thousands of Central American #migrants wait on the #RodolfoRobles bridge on the Guatemala-Mexico border as they hope to enter Mexico legally on their journey to the US pic.twitter.com/6I3xz9MTxy

— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 20, 2020

Migrants have just crossed the Guatemala-Mexico border. pic.twitter.com/epkdH7WTH9

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) January 20, 2020

The CIS reports that apprehensions of illegal crossers are down from about 144,000 last May to 40,000 in December, owing to new reinforcements on the US side of the border, and the asylum agreement made by the US government with Mexican authorities that allows migrants to wait in Mexico.

Further reports suggest that President Trump wants to divert billions in funding to the border wall:

Meanwhile, Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, the “moderate” opposition to Trump, declared Monday that he will seek to end all illegal immigration detention “across the board”.

Joe Biden: end all illegal immigration detention “across the board” pic.twitter.com/YkwHiNJYcC

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 20, 2020

Just days ago we reported that the NHTSA was evaluating a petition claiming that 500,000 Tesla vehicles are subject to “unintended acceleration” incidents. In response to the petition, the NHTSA said it was going to be considering an investigation, but there has been no final word on any action (or lack thereof) yet.

But over the weekend, we were finally treated to Tesla’s perfunctory and predictable “official” response to the news, which has of course been to blame short sellers.

In a blog post posted on Monday titled “There is no ‘unintended acceleration’ in Tesla vehicles“, Tesla claims that the problem is just a figment of everyone’s imagination and that evil short sellers are to blame.

“This petition is completely false and was brought by a Tesla short-seller,” the post says. “We investigate every single incident where the driver alleges to us that their vehicle accelerated contrary to their input, and in every case where we had the vehicle’s data, we confirmed that the car operated as designed. In other words, the car accelerates if, and only if, the driver told it to do so, and it slows or stops when the driver applies the brake.”

Well that makes us feel better…

The company also claims that Autopilot sensors (because they’ve worked so well) and company owned and managed data about its vehicles support its defense.

Unique to Tesla, we also use the Autopilot sensor suite to help distinguish potential pedal misapplications and cut torque to mitigate or prevent accidents when we’re confident the driver’s input was unintentional. Each system is independent and records data, so we can examine exactly what happened.

But then, despite trying to place the blame on shorts, Tesla seems to backhandedly admit that there are customer complaints about the very same issue.

The blog post concludes: “We are transparent with NHTSA, and routinely review customer complaints of unintended acceleration with them. Over the past several years, we discussed with NHTSA the majority of the complaints alleged in the petition. In every case we reviewed with them, the data proved the vehicle functioned properly.”

Hopefully, the next body we hear from with regard to this petition is the NHTSA.

Although, judging by Tesla’s past success in swiping away extremely serious issues and sweeping them under the rug of blaming short sellers without addressing key issues, we’re not optimistic about the outcome. 

The NHTSA petition news came just days after we reported that the NTSB would be investigating a fatal Tesla Model X crash in February. 

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Cato Institute Research Fellow Patrick Eddington recently filed several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to find out if the Federal Bureau of Investigation ever conducted surveillance of several organizations dealing with government policy, including my Campaign for Liberty. Based on the FBI’s response, Campaign for Liberty and other organizations, including the Cato institute and the Reason Foundation, may have been subjected to FBI surveillance or other data collection.

I say “may have been” because the FBI gave Mr. Eddington a “Glomar response” to his FOIA requests pertaining to these organizations. A Glomar response is where an agency says it can “neither confirm nor deny” involvement in a particular activity. Glomar was a salvage ship the Central Intelligence Agency used to recover a sunken Soviet submarine in the 1970s. In response to a FOIA request by Rolling Stone magazine, the CIA claimed that just confirming or denying the Glomar’s involvement in the salvage operation would somehow damage national security. A federal court agreed with the agency, giving federal bureaucrats, and even local police departments, a new way to avoid giving direct answers.

The Glomar response means these organizations may have been, and may still be, subjected to federal surveillance. As Mr. Eddington told Reason magazine, “We know for a fact that Glomar invocations have been used to conceal actual, ongoing activities, and we also know that they’re not passing out Glomars like candy.”

Protecting the right of individuals to join together in groups to influence government policy is at the very heart of the First Amendment. Therefore, the FBI subjecting such groups to surveillance can violate the constitutional rights of everyone involved with the groups.

The FBI has a long history of targeting Americans whose political beliefs and activities threaten the FBI’s power or the power of influential politicians. The then-named Bureau of Investigation participated in the crackdown on people suspected of being communists in the post-World War I “Red Scare.” The anti-communist crackdown was headed by a young agent named J. Edgar Hoover who went on to become FBI director, a position he held until his death. Hoover kept and expanded his power by using the FBI to collect blackmail material on people including politicians.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the FBI spied on supporters of the America First movement, including several Congress members. Two of the most famous examples of FBI targeting individuals based on their political activities are the harassment of Martin Luther King Jr. and the COINTELPRO program. COINTELPRO was an organized effort to spy on and actively disrupt “subversive” organizations, including antiwar groups.

COINTELPRO officially ended in the 1970s. However, the FBI still targets individuals and organizations it considers “subversive,” including antiwar groups and citizen militias.

Congress must hold hearings to determine if the FBI is currently using unconstitutional methods to “monitor” any organizations based on their beliefs. Congress must then take whatever steps necessary to ensure that no Americans are ever again targeted for surveillance because of their political beliefs and activities.

Days after Benghazi-based General Khalifa Haftar and his rebel LNA forces blocked all oil under their control from leaving Libyan ports (the LNA currently controls territory which includes some 90% of the nation’s oil facilities), the United States has demanded the immediate resumption of oil exports.

“The suspension of National Oil Corporation (NOC) operations risks exacerbating the humanitarian emergency in Libya and inflicting further needless suffering on the Libyan people,” the US embassy in Tripoli said in a Twitter statement Tuesday.

“NOC operations should resume immediately,” it said. Haftar had previously issued the order, which immediately resulted in condemnations from some Western capitals, on Saturday just ahead of the Berlin peace conference on Libya. The action blocked several key export terminals, notably Brega, Ras Lanuf and Al-Sidra ports.

Bloomberg reported Saturday that pro-Haftar foces “blocked oil exports at ports under his control, slashing output by more than half and posing a potential setback for an international conference on Sunday that aims to broker an end to a civil war in the OPEC nation.”

The move is seen as aimed at protesting Turkey’s increased military intervention in the conflict which has raged for much of the past two years. Turkey has recently sent both national troops and Syrian ‘rebel’ mercenaries to defend the Tripoli Government of National Accord (GNA). Haftar has in turn declared any Turkish vessel or aircraft a target to be destroyed. 

The oil stoppage also has military implications on the ground, given the GNA’s national army relies on the country’s oil revenue to purchase weapons via Tripoli’s central bank.

We are deeply concerned that the suspension of National Oil Corporation (NOC) operations risks exacerbating the humanitarian emergency in #Libya and inflicting further needless suffering on the Libyan people. NOC operations should resume immediately. https://t.co/NWvIdYADAq

— U.S. Embassy – Libya (@USAEmbassyLibya) January 21, 2020

Libya’s Tripoli-based National Oil Company said Monday: “The storage capacity of these ports is limited and the NOC will be obliged to put a complete halt to crude production once maximum capacity has been reached.” 

S&P Global Platts has warned the country’s oil sector could enter a “tailspin”: 

Libya’s oil sector could go into a tailspin with two-thirds of its total crude oil production of around 1.20 million b/d at risk after its key oil ports were suspended Saturday by the Libyan National Army…

Haftar has vowed repeatedly to not give up his military offensive until he has control of the Libyan capital, despite fighting for months staying at a relative stalemate, and despite multiple failed ceasefire efforts. His dramatic move to cut off the nation’s vital oil lifeline was widely interpreted additionally as an effort toward gaining “veto” leverage over any ‘ceasefire deal’ attempt in Berlin at the start of this week.

The LNA’s response to the US urging that oil exports must resume “immediately” will be interesting. Although for years Washington and the State Department has “officially” recognized the UN-backed government in Tripoli, President Trump starting last Spring verbalized his support for Gen. Haftar, who Trump said has “secured the oil” and is a stabilizing force. 

Oil exports make up over 90% of Libya’s national revenue and as the below 2019 Stratfor map demonstrates, Haftar has long held the majority of the nation’s oil fields.

It should also be noted that Haftar has been described by many analysts as “the CIA’s man in Libya” — given he spent a couple decades living in exile a mere few minutes from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia during Gaddafi’s rule.

An April 2019 White House statement which described a phone call between Haftar and Trump said: the president “recognized Field Marshal Haftar’s significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources, and the two discussed a shared vision for Libya’s transition to a stable, democratic political system.”

Authored by Joe Carson via The Carson Report,

The monetary policy guide has fundamentally changed and so to has the business cycle. Changes in monetary policies and practices nowadays stimulate finance over spending. The power and risks of equity markets should not be overlooked as important metrics show equity valuations to be 2X times their historical norm.

Monetary policy can stimulate too much finance (equities) as it did with spending (inflation). As such, the risks of business cycles have shifted toward finance and away from inflation.

Here are 5 examples of how monetary policies, new tools and practices stimulate finance over spending.

1. Policy Rates: The primary tool of monetary policy is the target on the federal funds rate.  Policymakers have often struggled to find a good balance, or find a rate that was equally good for the economy and finance.

Policymaker’s promise to keep official rates exceptionally low in recent years, and now for the foreseeable future, clearly favor finance over spending. To be sure, interest rates are the most important item in determining the value of equities so the promise on official rates creates the “perfect knowledge” market theory for investors since it eliminates one of the key risks and unknowns—the current and future level of official rates. 

2. Policy Bias:  Policymakers have consistently shown a bias to ease policy during sharp sell-offs in the financial markets and no bias to withdraw liquidity when finance races far ahead of the economy. This uneven policy —often call the “Fed put”—creates the impression in the minds of investors that policymakers will always ride to their rescue during sell-offs and not stand in the way when markets boom.

Policy actions of 2018 and 2019 clearly demonstrate that the policy bias is alive and well. Policymakers canceled their plans to raise official rates in 2019, following the abrupt and sharp equity market sell-off in Q4 2018, and yet show no inclination to take back any or all of the three rates cuts of late 2019 despite the resurgence in equity markets to new record highs.

3. Asset Purchases:  The Federal Reserve has become a big investor in financial assets, expanding the Feds balance sheet to $4.5 trillion at its peak, up from less than $900 billion before the financial crisis. The new Fed tool works through the portfolio channel, injecting more liquidity into the financial markets, thereby lifting the price of financial assets, while also signaling to investors an easier stance on monetary policy.

The recent selloff and rebound in the equity markets have been highly correlated with the shrinkage and the renewed expansion of the balance sheet in 2018 and late 2019. Rightly or wrongly investors view increases and decreases in the Fed’s balance sheet as a signal of easy or tight money and a risk-on or risk-off strategy.

4. Transparency and Forward Guidance:  Policymakers now telegraph their decisions on policy rates, well ahead of any actual decision and also offer forward guidance on policy rates along with their economic forecasts. Who benefits from greater transparency and forward guidance?

Investors appear to be the big winner. Never before did policymakers offer so much transparency on official rates—telling investors what they plan to do, when and by how much.  That’s not to say policy transparency has taken all of the risk out of investing, but it removed one of the biggest risks, enabling investors to devise a series of investment strategies based on “inside” knowledge on official rates.

5. Price Targeting: The Fed elevated inflation from an objective of monetary policy to an actual target. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is.

The curious thing about price targeting is the gauge policymakers chose to target.  The Fed picked the personal consumption expenditure deflator (PCE) over the more widely used consumer price index (CPI). PCE consistently runs below the CPI, so by selecting the PCE there is a clear bias towards lower rates. 

In 2019, the choice of the price index proved to be the difference between easing and tightening policy. To be sure, the core PCE reading of 1.7% tilted policy towards an easier stance, while the CPI of 2.3% favored rates inching up a bit more.

The Results

The numbers on finance (equity valuations) are impossible to ignore.  Household holdings of equities stand nearly 2X times the level of consumer spending as does the market valuation of domestic companies to nominal GDP. Historic norms are closer to 1X.

The narrow public ownership of equities limits the spending impulse for consumers, but the high equity valuations offer companies a huge collateral buffer to borrow.  US nonfinancial companies are sitting on over $10 trillion in debt, almost twice as much as what was on corporate balance sheets at the end of 2008, and the highest debt-to-sales ratio on record.

From many sides, monetary policy nowadays stimulates finance more than spending and as the equity market goes so goes the business cycle. 

President Trump is at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, giving a speech to the world’s elites on how the Phase 1 trade agreement is the greatest deal ever. 

Trump has touted non-stop on Twitter about how he made the biggest deal in the world, and China will be purchasing vast quantities of U.S. farm products in the coming months.

After all, it’s an election year, and Trump has to cheerlead, even as skepticism is growing over China’s capacity to buy U.S. products, reported South China Morning Post (SCMP). 

China’s commitment to purchase an additional $200 billion of U.S. goods over the next several years “may be doomed from the start.” 

Chad Bown, a trade specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), said, “a close look at the data shows that the numbers are even more unrealistic than first believed. Even worse, hostilities might renew, leading to a re-escalation of trade tensions currently on hold.” 

Much of the skepticism of trade purchases by China is from their repeated statements on how import purchases from the deal will be based on market conditions. This was reiterated by Li Xingqian, head of the foreign trade department, on Tuesday, who said, “we will expand imports from the United States based on the principles of the market and World Trade Organization rules and will not affect imports from other countries.” 

Much of the demand will be based on China’s economy, and with growth slumping to three-decade lows in 2019 – a surge in demand for U.S. products will be challenging for Chinese importers. 

China’s State Grid, the largest utility company in the country, warned that economic growth could plunge to 4% within the next four years, according to internal forecasts.

Andrei Agapi, associate pricing director for agriculture at S&P Global Platts in Singapore, told the SCMP that if “China says it’s down to market conditions, then the U.S. will have to be competitive. And the reality is that the U.S. is not competitive by a long shot already, and it hasn’t been before either.” 

Agapi said since China offered tariff waivers on U.S. soybeans imports last fall, the price has risen past Brazilian beans, which would entice the Chinese to ditch U.S. markets for ones in Latin America because of cost factors. 

We’ve noted how China has been actively diversifying farm purchases away from the U.S. towards Brazil and Argentina. 

Peter Meyer, head of grain and oilseed analytics at S&P Global Platts, said when we spoke with Chinese bean traders in the interior of the country, there’s pessimism developing that “there is no way they could even run that much in the country – it would throw the entire domestic supply chain into disarray.” 

Traders told SCMP that if China had to bite the bullet and buy U.S. farm goods despite market conditions – then it would do so via state trading companies like COFCO. 

Agapi said China has already purchased 50% of its soybean demand for the year from Latin America. Furthermore, he said demand this year will be lower because the African swine fever wiped out at least half of the country’s pig herd. 

Andrew Tilton, Goldman Sachs’ chief economist for Asia-Pacific, said Tuesday that “it would obviously take political will and maybe some easing of import restrictions in a couple of areas”.

“The surprise for us in the official document was that the amount on the agriculture side is less and the energy side was more. That might be relevant because there were a couple of sectors where orders would count as purchases. There are often long-term energy contracts that are signed, but it’s less typical in the agricultural space to see that,” Tilton said.

Bown said 28% of U.S. exports to China are part of industries not covered by the new trade agreement, and this could mean these exports are slashed while sourced from other countries. 

“Thus, in legal terms, China has little incentive to import those US$51.6 billion of uncovered products from the U.S. in 2020 or 2021,” he said.

Bown warned: “To compensate angry trading partners aggrieved because of the trade diversion, China could purchase more uncovered products from them and reduce imports from the United States. That would be painful for American companies and workers whose products Trump has chosen not to put into this agreement.”

More or less, the trade agreement will likely be broken after the election, and the trade war will resume. 

China to Expand Imports From U.S. Based on Market Demand: Mofcom

So the entire trade deal is meaningless

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 21, 2020

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Drag queen Kitty Demure posted a viral video in which he expressed his amazement at why ‘woke’ parents are allowing their kids to be around drag queens, asking, “Would you want a stripper or a porn star to influence your child?”

Demure questioned why drag queens had attracted so much “respect” from the left given that they’ve done little more than “put on make-up, jump on the floor and writhe around and do sexual things on stage.”

“I have absolutely no idea why you would want that to influence your child, would you want a stripper or a porn star to influence your child?” he asked.

Demure went on to point out that drag queens perform in clubs for adults and that backstage “there’s a lot of sex, nudity and drugs, so I don’t think this is an avenue you would want your child to explore.”

A friendly message to mothers who want their kids influenced by drag. #dragqueensarenotforkids #dragqueenstorybookhour #drag #moms #woke #Liberals pic.twitter.com/EmOovz4E3F

— Kitty Demure (@demure_kitty) January 19, 2020

“To get them involved in drag is extremely irresponsible on your part,” Demure told parents, adding that many went along with it to appear “cool” or “woke” to their leftist friends.

“You can raise your child to be just a normal regular everyday child without including them in gay, sexual things,” said Demure.

The drag queen went on to argue that things like Drag Queen Story Time which involve kids are actually harmful to the LGBT community too because they advance the notion that gay people are perverts, pedophiles and deviants.

“We don’t need you to bring your kids around, so keep them at home or take them to Disneyland, take them to Chuck E. Cheese – but if you need your child to be entertained by a big human in costume or in make-up, take them to the circus or something,” he said.

“Don’t ruin your child’s life and don’t ruin us, because that’s what you’re doing,” concluded Demure.

As we previously highlighted, a teacher at Willis High School in Texas said parents shouldn’t have the “final say” in raising their own kids after some of them complained about a drag queen visiting the school to give a talk to the children.

*  *  *

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Fox News‘s Tucker Carlson on Monday warned Republicans not to get complacent, and that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) could wind up taking “many thousands” of votes from President Trump if he is able to secure the Democratic nomination, according to The Hill‘s Joe Concha.

“A year from today, we’ll be hosting this show from the National Mall as the next president of the United States takes the oath of office,” said Carlson, adding “Will that president be Donald Trump? As of tonight, Republicans in Washington feel confident it will be.”

“The official economic numbers are strong. The Democratic primaries are a freak show — elderly socialists accusing each other of thoughtcrimes. Republicans are starting to think victory is assured. That’s a mistake,” said Carlson. “America remains as divided as it was three years ago. No matter what happens, nobody’s going to win this election in a national landslide. Those don’t happen anymore. Trump could lose. Will he? That depends on what he runs on.“

Carlson then showed numbers for Trump on the economy that show while the main indicators are strong, there are some other numbers that should concern the president. He pointed to a Pew Research study that shows just 31 percent of Americans say the economy is helping them and their families, and just 32 percent say they believe the current economy helps the middle class.

Carlson then pivoted to Sanders’s potential appeal to certain voter groups and said Republicans need a plan to battle that appeal.

“Bernie Sanders may get the Democratic nomination,” Carlson said. “If he does, every Republican in Washington will spend the next 10 months reminding you that socialism doesn’t work, and never has. They’ll be right, obviously,” Carlson explained. –The Hill

So what’s Bernie’s appeal?

Recall that a not-insignificant Sanders supporters voted for Trump out of disgust following revelations that Hillary Clinton and the DNC conspirted to rig the 2016 primary against him.

According to Carlson, however, “if Sanders pledges to forgive student loans, he’ll still win many thousands of voters who went for Donald Trump last time. Debt is crushing an entire generation of Americans. Republicans need a plan to make it better, or they’ll be left behind.”

“They’re conservative in the most basic sense: They love their families above all,” the host concluded. “They distrust radical theories of anything because they know that when the world turns upside down, ordinary people get hurt. They don’t want to burn it down. They just want things to get better. The candidate who promises to make them better — incrementally, but tangibly — will be inaugurated president a year from today.”

According to a RealClearPolitics average of seven (oh so reliable) polls, Sanders would take Trump if he gets the nomination.