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Evan McMullin’s Troop-less War Against Donald Trump’s GOP

Hillary Clinton, for understandable reasons, is keeping a low profile. Gary Johnson may well have disappeared off the map. (Two weeks before the election, the mentally wearied Libertarian told me “I may not even listen to the news again for the rest of my life. So I’ll be in ignorant bliss.”)

But the only other non-Bernie Sanders presidential candidate to finish as high as third place in any state, the independent conservative Evan McMullin, has spent the last two weeks tweeting out a storm of invective aimed at Donald Trump and his alt-rightiest supporters. A selection:

That last tweet in particular echoed the single biggest theme in the McMullin/Mindy Finn stump speech: that Donald Trump was violating the Declaration of Independence’s notion that all men (“and women,” they would always add) are created equal. The Gary Johnson/Bill Weld ticket may have gotten earfuls of grief (some of it deserved) for going comparatively apoplectic at the prospect of a Trump presidency—an emphasis that, perhaps ironically, drove many third-party leaners I know into the arms of McMullin. But in his campaign and post-election behavior, the former CIA operative and Goldman Sachs investment banker has sounded at various times as outraged by Trump’s rhetoric and associations as the median Comedy Central employee.

“The Republican Party can no longer be considered the home for conservatives,” McMullin said in his concession speech on election night. “Conservatism is about protecting the fundamental rights: That we are all equal, regardless of the color of our skin, the faith that we practice or our gender. But tonight there are millions of Americans, I’m sad to say, who are now in fear that perhaps their liberties will be challenged and threatened under a Trump administration that has made a campaign of targeting people based on their race, religion and gender.”

But in his bid to be the vanguard of a “new conservative movement,” McMullin has a difficult question to answer. Him and what army?

Not only did Donald Trump rout the Republican primary field and then shock the consensus favorite in the general election, the GOP maintained its control of Congress and its dominance at the state level. Conservative officeholders will likely be too busy enjoying the exercise of power to heed McMullin’s call for a new splinter movement.

Meanwhile, the #NeverTrumper finished a distant fourth place in the national vote, with 0.42 percent so far. (Many write-ins have yet to be tabulated, so that figure will go up, but the total number of write-ins stands at 0.63 percent, meaning he will certainly fall far behind Jill Stein’s current 1.03 percent.) It is true, McMullin had by far the best finish among third-party candidates in any single state, with his 21.6 percent in Utah (more than doubling Johnson’s 9.3 percent in New Mexico), but aside from his 6.7%-4.1% victory over the Libertarian in Idaho (which is the second-biggest Mormon state of the union), the independent never cracked 2 percent in any of the other nine states he made it onto the ballot. There is no evidence that he exists as a significant political phenomenon outside the Mormon belt.

Here are the current numbers for McMullin’s nine laggard states, ranked in order of his performance, and displayed along with results from the other minor candidates:

1.80% Minnesota (Gary Johnson 3.84%, Jill Stein 1.26%, Dan Vacek 0.38%, Darrell Castle 0.32%)

1.35% Virginia (GJ 2.97%, JS 0.69%)

1.18% Kentucky (GJ 2.79%, JS 0.72%)

1.17% Arkansas (GJ 2.64%, JS 0.84%, James Hedges 0.42%, DC 0.41%, Lynn Kahn 0.30%)

1.04% Colorado (GJ 5.18%, JS 1.18%, DC 0.42%)

1.00% South Carolina (GJ 2.34%, JS 0.62%, DC 0.27%, Peter Skewes 0.15%)

0.79% Iowa (GJ 3.78%, JS 0.73%, DC 0.34%)

0.73% New Mexico (GJ 9.34%, JS 1.24%)

0.42% Louisiana (GJ 1.87%, JS 0.69%)

So after the many thousands of news stories this year about the #NeverTrump movement, here are your final results: Two bronze medals, six fourth-place finishes, and three times lagging behind Jill Stein. And the only state in which McMullin even has an argument about influencing the outcome is, paradoxically, the one where he wasn’t even on the ballot: Florida.

There, in that swingiest of swing states, the administration of Gov. Rick Scott, who runs a Trump-supporting SuperPAC, reversed precedent and outraged ballot-access activists by gratuitously chucking McMullin off the ballot. Donald Trump ended up winning the Sunshine State and its delicious 29 electoral votes by 1.19 percentage points as of current tabulations. While it’s true that McMullin only cleared that number in two of his nine non-Mormon states, had he somehow duplicated his Minnesota total of 1.8 percent, that may have been enough to turn Florida blue, given how pre-election polls in Virginia showed him pulling almost exclusively from Republicans and conservatives.

If Florida had repeated its 2000 role as the pivotal state in a tight presidential election, just imagine the national conversation we’d be having now. “The Scott administration put up a shield wall to protect Donald Trump at every turn,” McMullin advisor and Florida native Rick Wilson told me three days before the election. “This thing stank on ice.”

As it stands, McMullin’s Florida exclusion is a footnote of a footnote. Only time will tell whether his campaign to build a new, more equality-based conservative movement will suffer the same fate.

Read my election eve interview with Evan McMullin and Mindy Finn here.

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Anniversary of Alternative Reporter’s Death

Via The Daily Bell

We got the very sad news today, Nov. 22, 2015, that Dave McGowan passed away from cancer at 12:47 p.m.  – Truth and Shadows

We missed the anniversary of McGowan’s death, which was yesterday, but he was one helluva a writer, exposing in brief books the“directed history” of the modern era. So, we’ll remember him today. We’ve written about him before, here.

He died of an extremely aggressive form of lung cancer, which made some of his fans speculate that he’d actually been assassinated. Unfortunately, much of Dave’s work is no long freely available on the ‘Net, though some is available here.

The following is Dave’s last post here from his Blog Center for an Informed America (June 14, 2015).

Just nine weeks ago, on April 14, I presented a lengthy video deconstruction of the 2013 Boston Marathon incident through the Caravan to Midnight radio show/podcast. About a week later (on April 20, of all days), the nearly four-hour video presentation was uploaded to YouTube.

Not long after that, someone using the username Phoenix Archangel posted an interesting comment: “John [Wells, the host of the show] always signs off with some of the best advice ever. Speaking of advice: this David McGowan fella really ought to quit smoking. With all the elitist feathers he’s ruffling, he’s likely to come down with a spontaneous case of hitherto undiagnosed stage 4 inoperable Pancreatic cancer.”

… Mr./Ms Archangel … wasn’t too far off, though I’ve been told that it’s actually incurable small-cell lung cancer that has already spread to my liver and bones. And no, that’s unfortunately not a joke. It’s my new reality as of just a few short weeks ago, when my entire world was turned upside-down and I suddenly found myself being admitted to the oncology ward at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. Four days later, I was beginning my first round of chemotherapy infusions. The second round begins tomorrow, on Monday, June 15.

More from Truth and Shadows:

The first thing I read from McGowan was his series on the Apollo Moon missions called “Wagging the Moondoggie.” This amazing 14-part series is what finally convinced me that the Moon landings never took place. What struck me was not only his insight but his wit. Very dry, which is the best kind.

In addition to what became a whole series on 9/11, I was also blown away by series on the Boston Marathon “bombing” and dark side of the music scene in Laurel Canyon in the 1960s (which became a book). Other books he has written include Programmed to Kill, Understanding the F-Word: American Fascism and the Politics of Illusion, and Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You to See.

We ran into McGowan’s work very early in the 2000s when we were researching an article on the Peak Oil hoax. At the time, libertarian analysis was mostly theoretical, but we were trying to focus on a synthesis between free-market theory and “directed” history.

We could hardly believe McGowan’s comments on Peak Oil. Without, apparently, a deep background in Austrian free-market economics, he nonetheless fully grasped the idiocy of asserting that the modern world was running out of oil, and that since alternatives were not going to be developed in a timely manner, the only solution was drastic, government action. He even mentioned abiotic oil, see here, as we recall.

When we read his short books, we were further impressed. McGowan moved far beyond simplistic assertions of “conspiracy” to show you clearly how modern history seemed to work.

For us, the book on the mid-1960s Laurel Canyon music scene here was perhaps the most brilliant. Who knew that Jimi Hendrix was in the military, here, prior to becoming a rock star? Who knew that many of the musical stars of the early- to the mid-1960s were somehow gathered together in Laurel Canyon prior to their fame, here – and that many or most had military ties or came from military families.

McGowan didn’t state everything. Some things he left up to you. But it was hard to come away from his books without understanding his main point, that society was directed purposefully from above and that before the Internet (and people like McGowan), you would live your entire life unknowingly according to someone else’s plan.

His short book about Laurel Canyon not only shows how directed history operates, it makes the point, resonantly, that society and even culture can be shifted according to elite strategies. In other words, in not very many pages it SHOWS (not tells) how Western social manipulation actually works. Likely it has worked this way for thousands of years.

Before McGowan, it was easy to believe that social manipulation must inevitably be a clumsy affair, imposed brutally as it was in the USSR. McGowan presents ways cultural reconfiguration can take place secretly and powerfully, without anyone but a handful knowing it is happening.

For instance, the standard story of the 1960s is that young people got upset over the war and in the process of protesting, quickly created an entire counterculture that opposed much of what “corporate America” stood for. The trouble with the 1960s counterculture was that it never adequately defined the real problem, nor did it fully explain the solution.

The hippie ethos blamed much of what was wrong with America on corporate greed and the like. This led to the conclusion that government itself could rectify what was wrong. But both modern corporations and today’s massive governments are the result of monopoly force wielded behind the scenes.

In reality, as McGowan showed, the 1960s movement was likely painstakingly created to generate certain results, mostly by reinforcing social chaos. Thus, blaming problems on corporations and looking to government for solutions was only to be expected, though it was wrongheaded on numerous levels.

As we know today from Internet information, government is seemingly supported by a handful of unfathomably rich individuals – those who likely control central banking – to provide “solutions” that inevitably generate more problems not less.

We know from Austrian economics that almost every law and regulation is surely a price fix that must drain prosperity from society. We know, via “marginal utility” here that valid prices can only be generated via market competition itself.

The 1960s hippie revolution explored little of this because – as McGowan suggested – it was created and sustained by the CIA. So many 1960s figures were apparently working with the CIA.

These may have included singer Jim Morrison, whose father helped initiate the fake military incidents that Lyndon Johnson used to generate the full-on Vietnam war here – and many other musicians, promoters and business opportunists. And also those individuals who initially dispersed CIA-created LSD, here.

In fact, one can speculate that the Vietnam War itself was created as part of a Hegelian dialectic that included the creation of a manipulated 1960s alternative “hippie” culture. Each Hegelian thesis demands an antithesis that leads to a synthesis. The war was the thesis, and the counterculture was the antithesis leading to the synthesis we have today.

The goal is always globalism, apparently. And social chaos must be regularly induced in order to reinforce additional government actions. If one has the patience and the desire, it is relatively easy to discern the evolution of these modern manipulations and even to predict their future.

It’s one reason, we continue to distrust narratives present in the mainstream media and even those being offered, sometimes, in the alternative media. We’re not sure that this presidential election, for instance, is what it seems. And we have written numerous articles suggesting that a good deal of purposeful propaganda surrounds nuclear weapons, to name one additional promotion, here.

Conclusion: McGowan helped show the way, however, and we simply need to follow his lead to better our own comprehension. It’s not pleasant to pursue such information, nor come to additional conclusions, but the alternative is living in ignorance of the true influences on our life and times. Some people are content to live without embarking on such explorations. Others are not.

Editor’s Note: The Daily Bell is giving away a silver coin and a silver “white paper” to subscribers. If you enjoy DB’s articles and want to stay up-to-date for free, please subscribe here. 

More from The Daily Bell:

 

Anniversary of Great Reporter’s Death

Privatize to Get Rid of Passports and Resolve Immigration

Rand Corp. Blasts ‘Truth Decay’ – Wants Facts Determined by Appropriate Leaders

How Deep Will Trump’s Truths Go?

 

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Trump Terrors – A Lesson In Cognitive Dissonance

Authored by Dilbert Creator Scott Adams,

Imagine you are one of the anti-Trump folks who believe we just elected a racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-semitic, science-denying dictator. Let’s say that’s the movie playing in your mind. That’s some scary stuff.

Now imagine watching the news as Trump reveals in slow-motion that he’s flexible and pragmatic on just about everything. Thomas Friedman at the New York Times just reported that Trump is – as of yesterday anyway – open-minded about climate-change science, and Trump is no longer in favor of waterboarding terror suspects. 

You also watched Trump move to the middle on his immigration policies. And you watched as Trump said he plans to keep the good parts of Obamacare instead of jettisoning it whole.

The areas in which Trump hasn’t budged in his opinion seem to be where states’ rights are involved. Trump would leave it to the courts and to the states to decide on abortion, legal marijuana, and gay marriage. You might not like the fact that Trump wants the federal government to stay out of those decisions, but it isn’t very dictator-like to leave big decisions to the states.

As Trump continues to demonstrate that he was never the incompetent monster his critics believed him to be, the critics will face an identity crisis. They either have to accept that they understand almost nothing about how the world works – because they got everything wrong about Trump – or they need to double-down on their current hallucination. Most of his critics will double-down. That’s how normal brains work.

And that brings us to our current situation. As Trump continues to defy all predictions from his critics, the critics need to maintain their self-images as the smart ones who saw this new Hitler coming. And that means you will see hallucinations like you have never seen. It will be epic.

The reason this will be so fun to watch is that we rarely get to see a situation in which the facts so vigorously violate a hallucination. Before Trump won the presidency everyone was free to imagine the future they expected. But as Trump continues to do one reasonable thing after another, his critics have a tough choice. They can either…

1. Reinterpret their self-images from wise to clueless.

 

or…

 

2. Generate an even stronger hallucination. (Cognitive dissonance.)

If Trump’s critics take the second option – and most of them will – it means you will see a lot of pretzel-logic of the type that is necessary hold onto the illusion that Trump is still a monster despite continuing evidence to the contrary. 

*  *  *

Prediction: Expect the anti-Trump press to continue asking Trump surrogates this question: “Why do you think the KKK and white nationalists support Trump?”

The question makes sense if you don’t think about it for too long. But once you realize that Trump has repeatedly and publicly disavowed those groups, you have to hallucinate extra-hard to make the racist narrative work. That’s where the “top-secret-racist-dog-whistle” comes in. You need a theory to explain why the supposed Racist-in-Chief keeps disavowing racists. How does that make any sense?

This is where cognitive dissonance comes in. In order to explain Trump’s disavowal of White Nationalists and the KKK while holding onto the hallucination that Trump is a dangerous monster, you have to hallucinate that he is playing a clever game of pretending to be against racists while secretly planning to purge the earth of all non-orange people. 

That feels unlikely to me. I think Trump just wants to do a good job for the country, thereby bringing money and glory to his family name. And he won’t get any of that by being a racist monster. He only gets that happy ending by being pragmatic and flexible, exactly as we observe him now to be.

I think the total number of KKK members is a few thousand people sprinkled across the country. But what matters more than the absolute number is the trend. The group once numbered over a million. Now they are a few thousand. Did Trump’s election cause a spike in recruitment that will have a lasting impact on the long term trend toward zero membership? I doubt it. But in any case, you have to wonder why the press isn’t reporting KKK membership trends. Every other part of the story is meaningless without that one piece of data. 

Anyway, enjoy the show. And enjoy Thanksgiving too.

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How To Play Equities After The Trump Rally (Video)

By EconMatters


We delve into Equities, Bonds, Commodities and The US Dollar in this video with what could be a likely catalyst for the next risk on move higher in risk based assets. A lot more than higher Oil Prices is riding on the OPEC Deal for a continuation of this Risk On Rally.

© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle   

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An AR-15 in Every Home: 3D Gun Printer Cody Wilson on the Right to Resistance, Hacking the Media, and Trump: New at Reason

Download Video as MP4

“It doesn’t matter what the origins of the Second Amendment were,” says Cody Wilson, creator of the first 3D-printed gun and author of the new book, Come and Take It: The Gun Printer’s Guide to Thinking Free. “With the internet, we can transform this thing into right to resistance on a global scale. If it’s just a fact that the government serves guns now, this is just a point of political life.”

Reason TV visited Wilson at an Austin, Texas-based manufacturing facility of his company Defense Distributed to discuss his new memoir about the creation of first 3D-printed firearm, which he dubbed “The Liberator.”

Watch above, or click the link below for the full transcript and downloadable versions of this video.

View this article.

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How To Play Equities After The Trump Rally (Video)

By EconMatters


We delve into Equities, Bonds, Commodities and The US Dollar in this video with what could be a likely catalyst for the next risk on move higher in risk based assets. A lot more than higher Oil Prices is riding on the OPEC Deal for a continuation of this Risk On Rally.

© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle   

via http://ift.tt/2fpevcA EconMatters

The Most Important Bond Trendline Is Broken: “Now It Gets Interesting”

Last week we showed that the 10Y was on the cusp of breaking out above the most critical trendline of this decade. Well, following today’s largely illiquid surge in the dollar and selloff in the Treasury complex, briefly halted by the steller 7Y auction mid morning, the trendline has been officially broken.

The 10Y UST Trendline That Goes Back To 2010 Is Broken

 

Now, as a trading desk put it, “is when it gets interesting.” As RBC’s head of cross-asset strategy Charlie McEliggott summarizes today’s move, “the duration unwind continues.” More: 

 “Messy move higher as the DXY breaks-out to new 13-year highs on continued strong US data (esp Durables print).  $/Y goes full ‘stop hunt’ mode into peak pre-Holiday illiquidity, currently +170 pips as well (pounding table on that long Nikkei trade FTW) while the EUR breaks down, contributing to UST yields trading dysfunctionally higher / curve steepening.  As such, classic risk-parity pain-trade ensues– developed mkt sovereign bonds, stocks, EM, credit and commodities (ex-crude) all under the cosh right now at the same time (shocker–a strategy built on a core concept of ‘negative correlation btwn bonds and risk stocks’ is going to be exposed in a regime change of this magnitude).  

His forecast: “Next stop: 10Y UST yields at 2.50 and then nothing until 2.90 (overseas buyers noting both levels before any ‘dip buying’ consideration) and 30s at 3.15, then 3.26 per RBC Macro ninja Mark Orsley.“

Aside from Tsys, this is what McElliggott thinks will happen to other asset classes:

Outside of the massive “reflation / pro-growth” focus, the Trump election is accelerating a shift that was already in motion from the major CBs months prior—that is, a shift away from ‘monetary policy’ as the focal point of asset price–and focusing instead on ‘fiscal policy’ stimulus moving forward.  Under the ‘old’ regime, financial repression was the tool to force investors out onto the risk curve (create a ‘wealth effect,’ contribute to inflation).  As such, investors went “long equities / long credit / long flatteners” and were effectively / synthetically “short volatility.” 

 

Now, with CB’s trying to steepen curves / drive long-end rates higher, there is an inherent re-introduction of dispersion into the market; a correlation breakdown into the market; and an injection of volatility back into the market—as the multi-year “secular stagnation” narrative (at least temporarily) is being reset.  Thus, investors and asset allocators are being forced to make major portfolio strategy shifts in ‘real time.’

Going back to the technical breakout in the 10Y, here are some more purely technical observations courtesy of Dana Lyons, who recently had this to say about the 10Y reaching resistance:

Rising Rates (Really) Reaching Resistance

Today’s Chart Of The Day continues our recent run of technical looks at specific price charts, particularly those nearing potential junctures of significance. The past few days it was metals in silver and steel. Today, it is a big one: the 10-Year U.S. Treasury Yield (TNX). The recent spike in yields have spawned a new “rising rates” chorus from among the investment community. Back in June, we suggested that the long-awaited turn higher in yields was perhaps finally a possibility, if only because so many had finally given up on its inevitability. However, even if the long-term cycle is finally turning higher (A LOT more evidence is needed to determine that), the rise will not be a straight line, the past 2 weeks notwithstanding. And the TNX may now be approaching a point of resistance.

Just prior to the election, we suggested that the 30-Year Yield (TYX) might see its rally struggle around the 2.65% level that it was hitting at the time. Well, needless to say the reaction to the election, er, trumped whatever potential chart resistance existed at the time as the TYX rocketed higher. Similarly, the TNX shot higher at a near-record pace and has found itself as high as 2.35% in recent days. That leaves it squarely testing a cluster of potential points of resistance between 2.30%-2.40%.

Included in this cluster of potential resistance are the following:

  • 23.6% Fibonacci Retracement of 2007-2016 Decline ~2.28%
  • 38.2% Fibonacci Retracement of 2010-2016 Decline ~2.33%
  • 61.8% Fibonacci Retracement of 2014-2016 Decline ~2.39%
  • The Post-2007 Down Trendline (on a log scale), connecting the 2014 High ~2.37%

All this adds up to possible stiff resistance to the immediate rise in 10-Year Yields. At least it should be much stiffer than the level mentioned in the post on the TYX a few weeks ago. It is certainly the most critical upside test since the late 2013-early 2014 test of the 3.00% level. The post-2007 Down trendline is the most consequential trendline before challenging the post-1987 and, ultimately, the post-1981 trendlines. And as we have said many times, the confluence of Fibonacci Retracements in the same vicinity not only adds layers of potential resistance, it goes a long way toward validating the junctures identified as significant.

If indeed the long-awaited start of a new secular upturn in yields is at hand, this level obviously will not hold permanently. However, it does appear to be compelling enough resistance to at least temporarily halt the recent rise in rates…really.

via http://ift.tt/2gghvsA Tyler Durden

The Most Important Bond Trendline Is Broken: “Now It Gets Interesting”

Last week we showed that the 10Y was on the cusp of breaking out above the most critical trendline of this decade. Well, following today’s largely illiquid surge in the dollar and selloff in the Treasury complex, briefly halted by the steller 7Y auction mid morning, the trendline has been officially broken.

The 10Y UST Trendline That Goes Back To 2010 Is Broken

 

Now, as a trading desk put it, “is when it gets interesting.” As RBC’s head of cross-asset strategy Charlie McEliggott summarizes today’s move, “the duration unwind continues.” More: 

 “Messy move higher as the DXY breaks-out to new 13-year highs on continued strong US data (esp Durables print).  $/Y goes full ‘stop hunt’ mode into peak pre-Holiday illiquidity, currently +170 pips as well (pounding table on that long Nikkei trade FTW) while the EUR breaks down, contributing to UST yields trading dysfunctionally higher / curve steepening.  As such, classic risk-parity pain-trade ensues– developed mkt sovereign bonds, stocks, EM, credit and commodities (ex-crude) all under the cosh right now at the same time (shocker–a strategy built on a core concept of ‘negative correlation btwn bonds and risk stocks’ is going to be exposed in a regime change of this magnitude).  

His forecast: “Next stop: 10Y UST yields at 2.50 and then nothing until 2.90 (overseas buyers noting both levels before any ‘dip buying’ consideration) and 30s at 3.15, then 3.26 per RBC Macro ninja Mark Orsley.“

Aside from Tsys, this is what McElliggott thinks will happen to other asset classes:

Outside of the massive “reflation / pro-growth” focus, the Trump election is accelerating a shift that was already in motion from the major CBs months prior—that is, a shift away from ‘monetary policy’ as the focal point of asset price–and focusing instead on ‘fiscal policy’ stimulus moving forward.  Under the ‘old’ regime, financial repression was the tool to force investors out onto the risk curve (create a ‘wealth effect,’ contribute to inflation).  As such, investors went “long equities / long credit / long flatteners” and were effectively / synthetically “short volatility.” 

 

Now, with CB’s trying to steepen curves / drive long-end rates higher, there is an inherent re-introduction of dispersion into the market; a correlation breakdown into the market; and an injection of volatility back into the market—as the multi-year “secular stagnation” narrative (at least temporarily) is being reset.  Thus, investors and asset allocators are being forced to make major portfolio strategy shifts in ‘real time.’

Going back to the technical breakout in the 10Y, here are some more purely technical observations courtesy of Dana Lyons, who recently had this to say about the 10Y reaching resistance:

Rising Rates (Really) Reaching Resistance

Today’s Chart Of The Day continues our recent run of technical looks at specific price charts, particularly those nearing potential junctures of significance. The past few days it was metals in silver and steel. Today, it is a big one: the 10-Year U.S. Treasury Yield (TNX). The recent spike in yields have spawned a new “rising rates” chorus from among the investment community. Back in June, we suggested that the long-awaited turn higher in yields was perhaps finally a possibility, if only because so many had finally given up on its inevitability. However, even if the long-term cycle is finally turning higher (A LOT more evidence is needed to determine that), the rise will not be a straight line, the past 2 weeks notwithstanding. And the TNX may now be approaching a point of resistance.

Just prior to the election, we suggested that the 30-Year Yield (TYX) might see its rally struggle around the 2.65% level that it was hitting at the time. Well, needless to say the reaction to the election, er, trumped whatever potential chart resistance existed at the time as the TYX rocketed higher. Similarly, the TNX shot higher at a near-record pace and has found itself as high as 2.35% in recent days. That leaves it squarely testing a cluster of potential points of resistance between 2.30%-2.40%.

Included in this cluster of potential resistance are the following:

  • 23.6% Fibonacci Retracement of 2007-2016 Decline ~2.28%
  • 38.2% Fibonacci Retracement of 2010-2016 Decline ~2.33%
  • 61.8% Fibonacci Retracement of 2014-2016 Decline ~2.39%
  • The Post-2007 Down Trendline (on a log scale), connecting the 2014 High ~2.37%

All this adds up to possible stiff resistance to the immediate rise in 10-Year Yields. At least it should be much stiffer than the level mentioned in the post on the TYX a few weeks ago. It is certainly the most critical upside test since the late 2013-early 2014 test of the 3.00% level. The post-2007 Down trendline is the most consequential trendline before challenging the post-1987 and, ultimately, the post-1981 trendlines. And as we have said many times, the confluence of Fibonacci Retracements in the same vicinity not only adds layers of potential resistance, it goes a long way toward validating the junctures identified as significant.

If indeed the long-awaited start of a new secular upturn in yields is at hand, this level obviously will not hold permanently. However, it does appear to be compelling enough resistance to at least temporarily halt the recent rise in rates…really.

via http://ift.tt/2gghvsA Tyler Durden

An AR-15 in Every Home: 3D Gun Printer Cody Wilson on the Right to Resistance, Hacking the Media, and Trump: New at Reason

Download Video as MP4

“It doesn’t matter what the origins of the Second Amendment were,” says Cody Wilson, creator of the first 3D-printed gun and author of the new book, Come and Take It: The Gun Printer’s Guide to Thinking Free. “With the internet, we can transform this thing into right to resistance on a global scale. If it’s just a fact that the government serves guns now, this is just a point of political life.”

Reason TV visited Wilson at an Austin, Texas-based manufacturing facility of his company Defense Distributed to discuss his new memoir about the creation of first 3D-printed firearm, which he dubbed “The Liberator.”

Watch above, or click the link below for the full transcript and downloadable versions of this video.

View this article.

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Liberal Hampshire College Stops Flying American Flag – “Symbol Of Fear”

After the presidential election, the liberal Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts made the decision to lower its U.S. flag on campus to half-staff due to, at least according to president Jonathan Lash, “a range of views on campus, including people whose experience growing up have made the flag a symbol of fear, which was strengthened by the toxic language during the campaign.”

According to CBS Boston, the “gesture” quickly sparked outrage on campus among veterans and their families which ultimately resulted in someone removing the flag on Veterans Day to burn it.

He said the trouble started with a gesture meant to help provoke “meaningful and respectful dialogue” on campus–a stance he outlined in a post on the college’s Facebook page. In that post, he said the Board of Trustees decided to fly the flag at half-staff due to the “environment of escalating hate-based violence” in the wake of the election.

 

Lash said the gesture was also meant to be an “expression of grief” over deaths around the world, including those of U.S. service members. Unfortunately, the move didn’t work as planned, and many–especially veterans and families of veterans in the Hampshire College family–saw it as being disrespectful of the tradition of expressing mourning on a national level.

 

“Frankly, doing that, it didn’t help,” he said. “Flying the flag at half-mast just created more controversy.”

 

Tuesday afternoon, the school posted on its Facebook page to say they were temporarily suspending comments because their staff was about to go on holiday, and could not keep up with the huge volume.
Hampshire College

 

Of course, university president Jonathan Lash points out that extensive therapy sessions will be required with the “triggered” snowflakes on campus before the “symbol of fear” can be flown on campus again.

The plan now that the flag is down is for group discussions with faculty, staff, and students about the issues, but there is no timeline for when the flag might fly again.

 

“We intend to go forward with that, and then reconsider how we fly the flag going forward,” Lash said.

 

“When President Obama ordered national flags at half-staff to recognize the victims in Paris, something we completely agreed with, there were a number of people on campus that said ‘Yes, but, what about the hundreds of people being killed  by terror in Syria and Lebanon and Pakistan?’ and asked that the school find some way to recognize victims globally,” said Lash. “So we periodically lowered the flag to recognize victims of violence.”

 

He said the school will focus on completing those group conversations before putting the flag back up.

Will this madness never end?

via http://ift.tt/2gBr75h Tyler Durden