Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“Most people do not get a clear opportunity to vote against Communism and prevent a historical evil from taking hold. We have that opportunity. Vote Trump.”

– James Lindsay

You thought Halloween was over, but somehow the horror show won’t stop, and it’s not so much fun anymore.

Those oversized ghouls, werewolves, and dead souls you erected in the front yard, like shrines to wickedness, represent something truly roiling and moiling around the zeitgeist of this troubled land: the ruling Party of Chaos.

Look at what they have done to you and what they are still doing. Hoaxing you, sucking the life-blood out of you, and lying about everything. Wrecking the country.

Why does it seem that the Democratic Party is in it solely to remain in power?

I will tell you: because it controls the money-flows to the vast cadres of a vicious parasitical bureaucracy and its support system of outside orgs that commit crimes and make war on the rest of us.

It’s called “the blob” for a reason. It’s exactly like that monster out of the 1950s horror movies, a shape-shifting leviathan that devours everything in its path with only one purpose, to grow ever larger until it consumes. . . everything.

In my state of New York last week, the DEC authorities sent a swat team to seize a man and woman’s pet squirrel and raccoon and then killed the animals. Why? Because they could. How is that different from the DOJ swatting and seizing a grandmother for walking through the US capitol building and then stuffing her in prison for the rest of her natural life on misdemeanor charges? It’s not different. They are both demonstrations of deliberate cruelty — and that’s why the squirrel story resonated so widely around the country. You know exactly what it says: we can take whatever is dear to you. . . your pets. . . your livelihood. . . your freedom. . . your life.

Who failed to notice that candidate Kamala Harris was unable to articulate any coherent notion about how her government might manage its business beyond some empty nostrums about “joy,” and “turning the page?” Because the party’s actual purpose, which it hides and lies about, is just to push you around, tell you what to do and what to think, and to punish you if you don’t comply — in other words, to exercise despotic power. It can’t do anything else with that power.

It lacks the competence to manage an economy from the top down, and it certainly won’t allow the countless volitional transactions of people at liberty to produce and sell things of value on their own. It will go to war against anything to steal more money: some pitiful foreign kleptocracy of country. . . the liberty-minded people of our own country. . . against sound ideas, proven principles, standards of decency, and, not unusually, against reality itself.

And now you and I face the ordeal of an election that, by design, will be nearly impossible to audit, will remain inconclusive for weeks, and subject to endless dispute. Why, because it serves the purpose of the Party of Chaos, which is. . . chaos! The scheme was to introduce so many devices of uncertainty as to guarantee political paralysis. Why else would you use batteries of hugely expensive computerized vote-counting machines that can be easily hacked, untraceable mail-in ballots with no chains of custody, the automatic registration of non-citizens, and laws (as in California) to literally forbid the requirement of voter-ID?

This was the work of lawfare terrorist Marc Elias — with hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal, some from the government itself, a bunch from the party, and some from rogue billionaires such as George Soros, Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman, and then disbursed surreptitiously through hundreds of NGOs — to elect officials such as Secretaries of State and district attorneys who will ignore or bend the law, to pay off state legislators around the country to change voting rules, to hire brigades of ballot “harvesters,” and to file ruinous lawsuits against anyone who objects to these pranks. It is an enormous, dastardly machine designed to deprive you of your consent to be governed. It is the work of political psychopaths.

You’ve no doubt heard about one of the blob’s instrumental players, Rep. Jamie Raskin’s audacious plan to un-do the election, should Donald Trump happen to generate a landslide vote that overwhelms Marc Elias’s ballot-box-stuffing operation. The Raskin scheme is to disqualify Mr. Trump as an “insurrectionist” by an act of Congress before the January 6 certification ceremony. Of course, that would suppose a Democratic majority in Congress, which is unlikely to be the case.

But Mr. Raskin put his foot in his mouth so deeply that he nearly choked to death last week when, discussing election matters with entertainer Bill Maher on TV, Mr. Raskin stated that he would accept the results only of a free and fair election – with himself left to determine whether it was free and fair.

This, you understand, is exactly what he accuses Donald Trump of doing in 2020: thinking-and-saying that the election might not have been free and fair.

The problem for Mr. Raskin is that this sort of “election denial” he exhibits is exactly the basis for accusing Mr. Trump of “insurrection” in the first place.

Thus: Mr. Raskin has just made a potential “insurrectionist” of himself. What’s more, as if the Jack Smith Case in Judge Chutkan’s DC court was not already compromised enough by the SCOTUS decision on presidential immunity, Mr. Trump’s lawyers can now call Jamie Raskin as a witness in the case, play the video of his remarks to Bill Maher, and ask him how expressing doubt about the freeness or fairness of an election amounts to “insurrection.”

One way or another, looks like we’re in for a hard, anxious winter.

Threats galore loom concerning possible blob / Party of Chaos mischief ahead, designed to disorder our national life: false flags prompting the imposition of martial law. . . aggressive censorship and cancellation of free-speaking regime opponents. . . deployment of Antifa mobs against civil order, with violence, looting, arson.

This symbiotic enemy of the people is desperate to evade accountability for the crimes they’ve already committed as officials running institutions: abuse of power, conspiracy to deprive many citizens of their civil rights, perhaps even treason. They’re capable of anything. They must be defeated.

The equity market was mixed today with The Dow lagging and Small Caps leading (S&P/Nasdaq modestly lower) ahead of tomorrow’s big day. NOTE the drop in the morning was reportedly triggered by WSJ HLs that Russia is suspected of a plot to send incendiary devices on US-bound planes, citing Western security officials, but that was quickly BTFD back…

The bigger theme of the day was profit-taking on the so-called “Trump Trade” after extreme outpereformance of the Kamala basket in recent weeks…

Source: Bloomberg

VIX ended the day notably elevated with the vol term structure extremely inverted ahead of this week’s extreme event risks…

Source: Bloomberg

…in fact this is the VIX’s longest stretch above its 200dma since 2019…

Source: Bloomberg

For the first time since early 2019, VIX Specs are net long futures…

Source: Bloomberg

Maybe this is more than an election-uncertainty trade… maybe it’s structural…

Source: Bloomberg

Mega-Cap Tech fell once again today but has found support for now…

Source: Bloomberg

After Friday’s utter chaos in bond land, reality set in that piss poor payrolls means lower yields and Treasury yields tumbled across the board with the long-end outperforming (2Y -3bps, 30Y -8bps). Yields are still marginally higher from Thursday’s close…

Source: Bloomberg

The 10Y yield ended back at pre-payrolls levels…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar continued to drift lower (ignoring the manic buying after payrolls)…

Source: Bloomberg

Arguably another “Trump Trade” continues to build as the Mexican Peso plunges to its weakest since Sept 2022

Source: Bloomberg

Despite the dollar weakness, gold trod water today, holding just above support around $2730…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin fell again after tagging record highs last week. BTC is finding support in the $67-68k region for now

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices rallied (with WTI back up near $72), erasing last week’s plunge on Israel-Iran optics…

Source: Bloomberg

With oil prices rising again, we wouldn’t question you for being surprised that pump-prices are testing multi-year lows (right ahead of the election)… probably nothing, right?

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, what happens to USA Sovereign Risk tomorrow?

Source: Bloomberg

From 12-month highs – will a divided govt soothe the pain?

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

The insane neo-Keynesian policies implemented by the Biden-Harris administration have created persistent inflation and record levels of debt with two objectives: to bloat Gross Domestic Product and jobs with public spending and government jobs.

The United States’ insane inflation is solely due to out-of-control spending and currency printing. Corporations, wars, or supply chains cannot cause aggregate prices to rise, nor can they consolidate the increase even at a slower pace. Although this can have an impact on individual prices, the only factor that causes aggregate prices to rise year after year is the decline in the value of the US dollar that the government issues.

Over 20.5% accumulated inflation over the past four years, government deficit spending has reached nearly $2 trillion annually despite record tax receipts and a growing economy, public debt has reached almost $36 trillion, and the monthly job figure includes an astonishing 43,000 new government jobs each month. In 2023, nearly 25% of all job gains were government ones, and the entirety of the growth of the labor force in the past four years came from foreign workers. The latest jobs figure is so poor it seems disingenuous to blame it on hurricanes and strikes, as if economists and forecasters had not considered those two factors in their estimates. Furthermore, the only factor that continued to increase uncontrollably was the number of government jobs, adding 40,000 new positions to an overall total of just 12,000 jobs. No wonder the labor participation rate and employment-to-population ratios remain below 2019 levels. Furthermore, in the latest GDP figure, government spending accounted for 30% of the annualized growth, while investment was basically stagnant. In the past nine quarters, government spending has been one of the top drivers of GDP growth, and its contribution to GDP in the third quarter of 2024 was the largest in a year.

This is upside-down economics in full swing. Private sector investment weakness, higher taxes for the productive economy and government spending and debt driving the economy. Of course, this never ends well.

The Harris-Biden administration arrived in January 2021, when the economy was bouncing back strongly. Instead of allowing the private sector to thrive, it embarked on a strategy of out-of-control spending and tax increases with two objectives: increase the size of government in the economy so much that the next administration would be unable to reduce it enough in four years. The second objective was to bloat growth and job figures so aggressively that the next administration will see a recession if it reduces public sector growth. You may ask yourself why they would do it if Harris intended to win the elections. If Kamala Harris wins, she will continue to expand the size of government, inflate prices through spending and printing, and blame companies and stores for these actions.

The Biden-Harris administration has left a massive time bomb for Trump and Elon Musk’s government efficiency office if they win. It will be almost impossible to avoid a recession if they cut discretionary spending and eliminate duplicate jobs. It is the same strategy that the socialists followed in Greece, Spain, and France, by the way.

However, the socialist strategy may backfire. The evidence is that citizens do not value Biden’s policies and the state of the economy. The approval rate regarding the economy is atrociously low, 39.8%, according to RCP. United States citizens do not believe that they are better off than in January 2021. Inflation, immigration, and rising taxes have crippled small businesses and families. Furthermore, a strong pro-growth strategy and lower taxes will likely boost the dormant investment figure, create jobs in the private sector, and help small businesses achieve critical mass and grow. In Argentina, Milei recognized the necessary actions and cautioned the citizens about the inevitable reduction of the bloated state. The Kirchner socialists left a more significant time bomb legacy than what Trump might inherit. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Lower inflation led to lower taxation, an eight-month budget surplus, and rapidly improving public finances.

The biggest risk for the United States economy and the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency is out-of-control public spending and constant currency printing added to tax hikes. Healing public finances and reducing government jobs may have a temporary negative impact on GDP, but higher exports, investment, and private sector jobs will likely compensate for it, and the result will be better for the US dollar and American citizens.

More government is always poorer citizens. The potential of the United States economy’s private sector is much greater than the short-term negative impact of efficiency and budget control on headline GDP.

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via VonGreyerz.gold,

There is a fine line between happiness and misery, as Dickens describes in David Copperfield. Copperfield’s landlord, Mr Micawber, was just on the wrong side of happiness by six pence. 

In a recent article called THE END OF THE US ECONOMIC AND MILITARY EMPIRE AND THE RISE OF GOLD, I stated: “Unsustainable deficits and galloping debt levels, combined with a crumbling military, are the perfect recipe for the end of an Empire.”

So, we are obviously not talking about a six-pence deficit in the case of the virtually bankrupt US empire but instead about a debt that is growing exponentially, now by several trillions of dollars annually.

History doesn’t just rhyme, but it repeats itself over and over and over again. 

Let’s just look at the final stages of a debt crisis. 

The table below shows the disastrous result of irresponsible governments during the last 54 years.

Governments never tell their people that they consistently destroy the value of the people’s money. 

In 1971, when Nixon took away the dollar’s gold backing, he said: “YOUR DOLLAR WILL BE WORTH AS MUCH TOMORROW”.

If Tricky Dick was still alive today, he can, of course, argue that he didn’t lie.

Because a dollar today is still worth a dollar, he would argue. But he wouldn’t tell anyone that the dollar 53 years later has lost 99% of its purchasing power.

Gold is up 78X since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971. The next phase will be acceleration.

As I explain in this article, gold will rise by multiples in the coming years (obviously with corrections).

The Roman emperors who ruled the Roman Empire from 190 to 290 AD could argue the same, although the Denarius silver coin went from almost 100% silver content to zero. 

The same was true for Friedrich Ebert, the president of the Weimar Republic in the early 1920s. He would have argued that a Mark is always a Mark, even when it has lost 100% of its purchasing power. 

But gold doesn’t lie. Measured in real money, an ounce of gold in 1923, was worth 87 trillion Marks.

Until a currency totally dies in a hyperinflationary collapse, the deceit of the leaders is never revealed to public.

But we must never forget what Voltaire said in 1729 – “Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value – ZERO.”

When have we ever heard of a leader telling us that we must protect ourselves against the fraudulent destruction of our wealth by constantly debasing the value of money?

As Alan Greenspan said in 1967:

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value…The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”

Have a look at the tables above again.

These are but a few examples of thousands of currencies having been destroyed throughout history.

Governments create inflation by printing money and by allowing the financial system to create unlimited amounts of credit in the fractional reserve banking system. 

In short, it means that banks and other financial institutions receive a deposit of, say, $100 and can lend 10 to 50X or $1,000 to $5,000 against that. Add derivatives, which allows the system to create trillions of dollars out of thin air. 

This immoral and totally undisciplined financial model doesn’t just create unlimited leverage for financial players, whether they do it in banks, hedge funds, private equity, or any part of the shadow banking system. 

This is how the total global debt of $350 trillion probably is in the quadrillions of dollars if we include all these creative “financial weapons of mass destruction”, as Warren Buffett called them. See the debt pyramid below.

Until now, conventional investment assets like stocks and property have been excellent protection as they have gone up substantially as a result of the constant growth of credit and money supply.

So, this massive liquidity injection has created colossal paper fortunes for most investors.

WHEN WILL IT END

That party is now coming to an end. Valuations of these bubble assets are now at perilous levels. History tells us that manias always end badly. 

But history doesn’t tell us when they will end. Will it be tomorrow, in six months or several years? 

So, can we forecast the end?

Well, the most exact of all sciences is hindsight. With the benefit of this very accurate method, many people will tell us afterwards that the crash was bound to happen. 

Sadly, no one realises that this time, dip buying will fail. Still, investors will buy dip after dip until they are exhausted. So when the market has fallen further than anyone expects most investors will sit tight based on greed and FOMO (fear of missing out). And just at that point, the biggest wealth destruction in history will take place. 

Very few will think of alternative investments like gold to preserve wealth until it is too late.

And at that point, gold will have gone up so much in value with very few participating. Everyone will find gold too expensive. Very few will realise that gold isn’t going up, but paper money is down.

A FASCINATING JOURNEY LEADING TO A POT OF GOLD

I was born in Sweden and have dual Swedish / Swiss citizenship. I started my career in banking in Switzerland and then in corporate life in the UK. 

In 1972, I was offered a job by a bank client, a small listed retail company called Dixons. I became Finance Director in 1974 at the age of 29. I was thereafter appointed Vice-Chairman. 

We made the company to be the biggest electric and consumer electronic retailer in the UK and a FTSE 100 company. 

It was an incredibly stimulating time building a dynamic business both organically and by acquisition. As business leaders we experienced adversity as a positive challenge. We sold electrical goods including televisions by candle light in 1974 when there was only electricity for 3 days per week due to a major coal miners’ strike. And we grew by contested takeovers of companies much bigger than ourselves.

Corporate life in a dynamic business is extremely exciting. But since I started that career in my late 20s, I felt it was time to do my own thing in my early 40s. 

So, in the 1990s, I started investing my own funds as well as the capital of some wealthy friends. 

I have always been interested in understanding risk and protecting the downside, both in banking and in corporate life. 

In the 90s I started to be concerned about the growth of debt and derivatives. So I was looking at the best ways of preserving wealth. 

Having experienced Nixon closing the gold window and the subsequent 24X growth of the gold price from $35 in 1971 to $850 in 1980, I had always been fascinated by gold. 

Seeing debt and especially derivatives growing with no shackles and especially tech stocks becoming a massive bubble in the late 1990s, I was convinced that gold par excellence was the best asset to preserve wealth.

Having experienced gold go from $35 in 1971 and then correct from $850 in 1980 to $250 in 1999, I was closely watching the gold price for confirmation of a bottom. So in early 2002 we invested heavily into physical gold at $300 for ourselves and a group of co-investors that we were advising. 

We haven’t looked back since and only increased our investment in gold over the years. Since we had created a superb system for buying and storing physical gold based on our stringent wealth preservation principles, people around the world started to ask for help.  That led to the creation of Matterhorn Asset Management / GoldSwitzerland. The name was changed at the beginning of this year to VON GREYERZ AG. 

Today we have clients in over 90 countries and are probably the biggest company in the world outside the banking system for HNWIs acquiring and storing gold. 

We have been actively involved in gold for soon a quarter of a century and experienced almost 10X growth in the gold price since we started the business. 

Still, we believe that the gold journey is only starting now.

Why, you may ask. 

Well, gold is the best-performing asset class in this century, better than the S&P including reinvested dividends and still NOBODY OWNS GOLD.

Only 0.5% of global financial assets are invested in gold. 

It is totally incomprehensible that gold has gone up 9.5X. This century, investors are not even looking at it. 

So why is gold still so unloved?

Gold held in the investor’s name in safe vaults and jurisdictions outside the financial system is the ultimate form of wealth preservation.

But asset managers and banks dislike gold since they can’t churn commission with an asset that can’t be turned over at regular intervals. So no commission and no performance fees. Also, very few people understand gold. 

In my view, gold is now ready to explode, measured in paper money. 

I have explained the reason for gold’s coming explosion in many articles, including this recent one.

But remember that gold never goes up. All it does is to reflect governments’ and central banks’ destruction of fiat money.

Gold is just stable purchasing power in a world where goods and services go up exponentially in price because the money you buy it with always goes to ZERO. 

Having said that, I do expect gold to do better than just keeping pace with purchasing power in the next few years.

Again let me make it clear – no paper money has ever, ever, ever survived in history (in its original form). 

With such a perfect record of destroying money, why should we believe that the FED, ECB, BoE (Bank of England) or BoJ (Bank of Japan) or any other central bank will stand a chance to save the global financial system with $2-3 quadrillion of toxic exposure?

Well, I can personally guarantee that they won’t. 

Remember that destroying the value of money by printing quadrillions is a technical default, although no central bank will call it that. 

And creating digital money for the central bank is just a technical diversion. 

Debt can never be written off without totally destroying the value of the assets it supports. That is how a balance sheet or double-entry accounting works. 

So, this global financial system will collapse, as they all have. But this is the first time it has been global. 

BRICS countries will also suffer, but not as much as the West. 

The coming era will be commodity-based. Take Russia, for example, with $85 trillion of natural reserves. They will be one of the major winners in the coming commodity era. They also have low debts. 

So, let’s look at the risks.

WAR RISK 

There are today two major wars that could lead to global conflicts and potentially nuclear war. 

The US is directly involved in both conflicts with weapons and money, although US territory is not threatened. The best chance for the world to avoid a global conflict is for Trump to be elected. He has both proven and stated that he will stop the war, especially in Ukraine. Harris will not change the direction of Biden and the neocons, which means a much higher risk of global conflict.

COLLAPSE OF GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM

As outlined above, this collapse is inevitable. The only question is when and to what extent. I strongly believe that most of the BRICS countries will suffer less from the collapse and emerge from it much faster. 

The West, with its massive debt bubble and moral decadence, has already started a major secular decline that could last for centuries.

WEALTH PRESERVATION 

Gold is not the panacea for the problems outlined above. However, history proves that in any period of crisis, gold has always stood as a protector, both financially and for personal safety.

But what is more important than anything else is protecting and helping family and friends. 

Strong family ties and a group of close friends are more important than all gold in the world. 

As Dickens said:

Throughout most of the Ukraine-Russia war, Western officials have suspected Moscow is waging an expanding sabotage campaign targeting arms and defense tech manufacturing facilities in Europe. This has included mysterious alleged arson attacks, for example including the charge that Russia was behind a huge blaze which destroyed a metal factory belonging to defense manufacturer Diehl in Berlin last summer.

But on Monday, curiously one day before the US presidential election, Western security officials have made new bombshell allegations of a Russian plot aimed at bringing down cargo and passenger planes leaving Europe.

Few details have been given on precisely how European security officials were able to quickly link it to “Russian intelligence” – but arrests have been made.

“Western security officials say they believe that two incendiary devices, shipped via DHL, were part of a covert Russian operation that ultimately aimed to start fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft flying to the U.S. and Canada, as Moscow steps up a sabotage campaign against Washington and its allies,” The Wall Street Journal writes.

The Monday report says that during two incidents in July, electronic devices inside packages actually ignited. This occurred at two separate DHL logistics hubs—in Leipzig, Germany in Birmingham, England.

Poland has arrested four suspects and charged them with terrorism-related crimes, and its National Prosecutor’s Office has alleged the individuals were working on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency.

“The group’s goal was also to test the transfer channel for such parcels, which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada,” the Polish prosecutor’s office said.

But the head of Poland’s foreign-intelligence agency, Pawel Szota, went further and strongly insinuated Russia is involved in the plot, and specifically the military-intelligence agency GRU. “I’m not sure the political leaders of Russia are aware of the consequences if one of these packages exploded, causing a mass casualty event,” the provocative statement by Szota said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has countered by saying, “We have never heard any official accusations” of Russian involvement. He followed with: “These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media.” WSJ further details the following of the alleged plot:

Now investigators and spy agencies in Europe have figured out how the devices—electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance—were made and concluded that they were part of a wider Russian plot, according to security officials and people familiar with the probe.

Security officials say the electric massagers, sent to the U.K. from Lithuania, appear to have been a test run to figure out how to get such incendiary devices aboard planes bound for North America.

But without much in the way of further details released to the public, some serious questions remain…

Given that sometimes electronic devices have been known to malfunction, possibly causing fires—especially devices made with lithium-ion batteries—are investigators certain this wasn’t the result of an accident?

Below: the Executive Director of the hawkish think tank McCain Institute, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia – has said this warrants deeper NATO involvement in supporting Ukraine.

Are authorities assuming the suspects are being run by Russian intelligence due merely to the geopolitical context of the Ukraine war, or have they been able to establish definitive links between the suspects the GRU (or other Russian agencies)? Past cases related to sabotage allegations involving Russian intelligence have proven flimsy at times.

And then there’s the question of motive: never has Russia before been shown to conduct terror tactics focused on bombing and bringing down large civilian airplanes… why would Moscow want to do this now?

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal judge ruled on Sunday that Iowa election officials may continue to follow Secretary of State Paul Pate’s directive to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters who have been identified as possible noncitizens.

The ruling came as a recent Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll forecast Vice President Kamala Harris leading in Iowa by three points over former President Donald Trump, while other polling organizations estimate that Trump is still ahead in what has been a safely Republican state in recent years.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa filed a lawsuit on behalf of four naturalized citizens on Oct. 30, alleging that Pate’s directive to check registered voters’ citizenship status violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

On Oct. 22, Pate directed Iowa county auditors to challenge the ballots of voters who had previously identified themselves as noncitizens to the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT).

In its lawsuit, the ACLU argued that Pate’s list of voters whose ballots would be challenged was based on outdated DOT records, and that many of those listed have already been proven to be citizens.

It alleged that the secretary’s directive places “severe burdens” on the voting rights of the affected voters by keeping the list secret, which it said could undermine their ability to resolve their eligibility.

Pate responded that voters will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot instead, which will be counted if they can prove their citizenship.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher declined to grant a preliminary injunction, citing the finding that “some portion” of the registered voter names on Pate’s list have indeed been confirmed to be non-citizens.

“This portion appears to be relatively small—no more than 12 percent—but, still, the injunctive relief requested by Plaintiffs effectively would force local election officials to permit those individuals to vote,” Locher stated in a Nov. 3 ruling.

The plaintiffs had argued that Pate’s directive violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which requires that states complete any program for removing ineligible voters within 90 days before an election.

However, Locher ruled that the NVRA was not implicated in this case because the state had not removed any voters from the voter rolls, and was only requiring them to cast provisional ballots.

“Secretary Pate’s letter is likely to impose a modest additional burden on at least some voters who should not have to bear that burden. All the same, those voters are still permitted to vote and have their ballots counted. The harm is therefore not irreparable,” the judge stated.

Pate last week had blamed the federal government for blocking his office from meeting the 90-day rule, saying that the audit was delayed to October by a lack of cooperation by the Department of Transport, which did not grant access to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database for confirming citizenship.

In a statement, Pate hailed the court’s ruling as a “win for Iowa’s election integrity,” emphasizing the importance of ensuring that only eligible voters can participate in Iowa’s election process.

He said that his office would continue to seek clarity on the citizenship status of voters who had previously self-reported to be noncitizens, while urging the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office to allow the Iowa field office to release information about those voters.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird stated on X that the ruling ensured that Iowans’ votes will not be canceled out by illegal votes.

“I was glad to lead the fight in court to defend Iowa’s long-standing election integrity laws. Only American citizens can vote in Iowa elections,” she said in a statement.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the ACLU for comment but did not hear back by publication time.

This week’s refunding auctions were surely not on anyone’s list of the most important events over the next five days, and that’s good because moments ago we just concluded the week’s first coupon auction when the Treasury sold $58BN in 3 Year paper in a relatively boring affair.

The auction stopped at a high yield of 4.152%, a 27bps jump from last month’s 3.878%, and the highest since July; the auction tailed the When Issued of 4.143 by 0.9bps, following last month’s 0.7bps tail and the highest since June.

The bid to cover was a modest improvement from last month, rising to 2.60 from 2.45, and above the six-auction average of 2.57.

The internals were also stronger, with Indirects surging to 70.6% from 56.9%, above the six-auction average and one of the highest on record. And with Directs dropping to just 9.6%, the lowest since the covid crisis days of March/April 2020, Dealers were left holding 19.8%, the highest since June.

While the secondary market saw a big drop in yields after Friday’s blowout, the mixed auction was spooky enough – largely due to the tail – to send yields to session highs, rising to 4.325% at last check, up from 4.27% at session lows.

It is possible that the market, always clutching for soundbites, merely noted the auction’s tail and ignored the rest of the otherwise solid auction; if so watch as yields sink lower in the next few minutes as humans override their dumb algo traders.

Once again Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has taken his requests and demands of Western backers a big step further while lambasting lack of action and adequate support.

In a weekend Telegram post he warned that North Korean troops are already mustering just inside Russia within striking distance from Ukraine, and that long-range missiles are needed from the West to directly attack their encampments.

“Now we see every site where Russia is accumulating these soldiers from North Korea on its territory – all their camps,” The Ukrainian leader began. He urged that Ukraine needs the capability to attack “preemptively”. 

“We could strike preemptively if we had this opportunity – to strike at a sufficiently long range. And it depends on the partners,” Zelensky continued.

That’s when he lashed out against his own allies who have provided Ukraine’s military billions up to this point. “But instead of such necessary long-range attacks, America is watching, Britain is watching, Germany is watching,” he stressed. “Everyone is just waiting for the North Korean military to start attacking Ukrainians as well.”

The Russian and North Korean governments have still not overtly or definitively confirmed the deployment, but have have strongly hinted at it, pointing to the defense pact inked between Presidents Putin and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang this past summer.

But things might not be going so well with attempts to integrate Russian and North Korean soldiers on the ground. While the story is unverified, Newsweek mentions the following:

A Russian soldier has spoken of how North Korean troops deployed to fight against Ukraine endangered their own unit by shooting in the wrong direction.

The claims in a clip posted on social media comes as Kyiv said that the first North Korean soldiers stationed in Russia’s Kursk region had come under fire. Concern grows internationally at the addition of a third party into the conflict.

Some reports say that Russian commanders really don’t known what to do with the North Korean units, and there will remain obvious problems of communication and differences of military culture as well.

As for what’s in it for North Korea, the same report details the following based on regional reports:

Pyongyang will get money, food, and space technology from Russia in return for their contribution to Putin’s war effort, The Korea Herald newspaper reported on Sunday. It cited Wi Sung-lac, a South Korean lawmaker it said had been briefed by the country’s National Intelligence Service (NIS).

North Korean soldiers will also get $2,000 per month salary, making a price tag of around $240 million a year if 10,000 soldiers are deployed, he said.

As for this latest escalation of Zelensky’s rhetoric complaining about the Western alliance, the West has indeed still been resisting Ukraine’s demands to greenlight long-range missile strikes deep into Russian territory. Putin has warned that this would cross all ‘red lines’ and unleash major war.

Ukrainian soldiers, now mostly with only small caliber ammo, no air cover, waiting for promised F-16’s that never arrive, artillery shells that never arrive, defending against a coalition of Russia, Iran and North Korea.
https://t.co/IeerkH5GFO

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) February 18, 2024

Any such escalation could also impact the Korean peninsula if North Korean troops are in the midst of direct conflict in Eastern Europe as well. All of this suggests the slow, increasing internationalization of the war.

Authored by Sundance via The Conservative Treehouse,

For more than two years we have been saying to keep an eye on Moldova in the background.  Yesterday Moldova held their national election, and while the actual number of people living in Moldova voted for the anti-war position, once the overseas ballots were added the results changed.  The nationalists became the minority and the pro-war/pro-EU globalists declared victory.

This may seem like a relatively ‘over there’ and small issue.  However, the people who control Joe Biden, the U.S. State Dept and the CIA have been positioning themselves in/around Moldova for several years now.  Watch out for Moldova to become the spark that leads to escalated conflict with Russia.

Moldova has a significant population of pro-Russia citizens in the east, which makes the internal domestic dynamic a little strenuous to manage. It is very similar to Ukraine in that regard. It is much smaller than Ukraine, but similar inside the national political dynamic.  Additionally, the geopolitical dynamic that is unfolding with the use of Moldova is identical to how the U.S/NATO exploited Ukraine.

A lot depends on what happens tomorrow in the U.S. election.  This aspect cannot be overstated.  However, there is now a high degree of confidence, if the people behind Kamala Harris are able to pull off a manipulated USA election, Moldova will immediately become the fulcrum for expanded direct conflict between the “west”, led by the USA, and Russia.

With the globalists and pro-war EU institutions how cemented into the national politics of Moldova, all of the elements for an unstable powder keg are in place.  Just like Ukraine, Vladimir Putin will not permit the open use of geographical proximity to provoke conflict directly on Russia’s border.  What Ukraine was, Moldova now is.

ASSOCIATED PRESS – CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) — Moldova’s pro-Western President Maia Sandu has won a second term in a pivotal presidential runoff against a Russia-friendly opponent, in a race that was overshadowed by claims of Russian interference, voter fraud, and intimidation in the European Union candidate country.

With nearly 99% of votes counted in the second round of the presidential election held Sunday, Sandu had 55% of the vote, according to the Central Electoral Commission, or CEC, compared to 45% for Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general who was backed by the pro-Russia Party of Socialists.

The result will be a major relief for the pro-Western government, which strongly backed Sandu’s candidacy, and her push for closer Western ties on Moldova’s path toward the EU.

[…] When polls closed locally at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT), turnout stood at more than 1.68 million people — about 54% of eligible voters, according to the CEC. Moldova’s large diaspora, which cast ballots in record numbers of more than 325,000 voted, heavily in favor of Sandu in the runoff. (read more)

It was the Moldovan ex-pat community, living outside Moldova, that overwhelmingly decided the fate of this small nation that borders Russia.

Oddly, and I have made ancillary mention to this in the past, there is an absolutely massive population of ex-pat Moldovans living in/around Jackson Hole Wyoming.  Years ago I started noticing it, but I had no real context to understand why there was such a dense population of people from a relatively obscure country all in one place. We all know who else lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming: Dick and Liz Cheney.

The people living in Moldova are majority aligned with Russia.  However, the people voting in the election from outside Moldova changed the dynamic of the election.  This reality creates a major source of angst for Russia and Vladimir Putin.  This dynamic also creates the point on the stick the EU/USA and CIA will use to poke the bear.

Watch closely.

War is more imminent today than it was yesterday.

Campaigning this weekend in the swing state of Michigan, Kamala Harris made a final desperate pitch to Arab-Americans, issuing a vague promise that if she becomes president her administration will end the war in Gaza.

Michigan is of course home to huge communities of Arabs as well as Muslim Americans. There are also many Arab Christians in the state – but all are united in their condemnation of the Biden-Harris White House’s blank check support to Israel and the IDF’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians during operations against Hamas.

A mere day out from the election, Harris on Sunday tried to turn disgruntled progressives and Democrats in her favor, many who have vowed to register a protest ‘uncommitted’ vote, by saying she’ll “end” the death and destruction in Gaza at an event at Michigan State University.

But nowhere in her comments did she outline how she hopes to end the Gaza war:

“This year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon, it is devastating. And as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure, and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination,” Harris said to applause during a rally in East Lansing city of Michigan, home to 200,000 Arab Americans.

Progressives have over the course of the last year slammed the Democratic administration for paying lip service to peace, all while ramping up deliveries of heavy arms and bombs, and committing further billions to Israel.

But even now, as the campaign is at the finish line, pundits are pointing out the hypocrisy and contradictory messaging. She’s been accused of saying one thing in front of Jewish voters, and another in front of Arab-American voters.

The New York Post explains:

Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly tailored her messaging to appeal to Jewish and Arab American voters in battleground states who can sway the election with contradictory ads that emphasize her position on Israel and Gaza.

The Harris campaign released multiple ads underscoring her commitment to Israel targeting undecided Jewish voters in Pennsylvania – while ads in Michigan aimed at the Arab American population express her solidarity with civilians in Gaza, CNN reported. 

Facebook ads in the Keystone State feature a video of Harris’ Democratic National Committee speech, where she explains her support for Israel during the ongoing war in the Middle East – omitting two sections that also highlight the “human suffering” in Gaza. 

“And let me be clear — I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself,” Harris says in the ad.

This is not going to fly in Michigan, and so her weekend attempts to present a solution to the Gaza crisis fell flat with many, and is unlikely to sway large swathes of voters.

A lot of the Arab vote looks to go to Jill Stein…

Arab-Americans on MSNBC panel won’t vote for Harris over Gaza genocide, with the majority choosing to vote for Jill Stein instead: “There’s nothing she can do or say to change our minds.” pic.twitter.com/fOkuLlPIZX

— HalalFlow (@halalflow) October 22, 2024

The Trump campaign has meanwhile been heavily reaching out to the Arab-American population this year, and has even opened a campaign headquarters in Hamtramck, Michigan in order to be a more visible presence among this demographic.