Having ignored the election for far too long, rates traders are starting to price in US election risks to Treasury and volatility markets, according to Goldman strategists who continue to recommend shorting 10-year TSYs versus German bunds. Meanwhile, Citi took profit on a long breakevens position, while BMO looks to enter the trade should rates fall to more favorable buying levels.

As a reminder, now that the Nov 5 election has entered the 30-day “catalyst window” of the VIX…

… the VIX remains stubbornly high, and in fact as Goldman trader Brian Garrett noted recently, it is extremely rare to see the VIX print above 20 when the S&P hits a new all time high as it just did.

A big reason for this is that the market is finally starting to sweat the outcome of the Nov 5 election, which at least until very recently, it would blissfully pretend doesn’t matter.

But before we take a look at how equity traders are assessing the election, here is a snapshot of what Wall Street’s rates traders and strategists are saying:

Bank of America (Mark Cabana, Meghan Swiber and others, Oct. 11  report, available to pro subscribers)

• Maintains dip-buying stance and real steepeners bias, favors adding duration with 10-year trading between 4% to 4.25%; five-year the preferred tenor
• “We prefer to allocate to longs at the belly vs back end of the curve as election remains a risk” while “We recommend holding off on adding to duration further out the curve until we pass peak election risk”

Barclays (Anshul Pradhan and others, Oct. 10 report, available to pro subscribers)

• Keeps view to pay 5y5y USD versus EUR rates (via OIS vs. ESTR, entered at 80bp): “US far forward rates still do not appear to be pricing in enough term premium, and EUR far forwards should reflect the risk of a low neutral rate”
• “All in all, the data argue against the need for a material easing beyond some further re-calibration, and Fedspeak implies risks are skewed towards over-easing”

BMO Capital Markets (Ian Lyngen and Vail Hartman, Oct. 11 report)

• Stays in 2s10s steepener (entered at 9.8bp, currently around 14bp) but were stopped out of 2s30s steepener
• Looks to enter long 10-year breakevens in the event they fall below 223bp, the close on Oct. 4 jobs report day
• “With CPI and PPI in hand, our read is that the September inflation profile has solidified expectations for a 25 bp rate cut next month” while “there is a very high bar for the remaining pre-Fed data to truly put a pause on the table for the November FOMC meeting”

Citi (Jabaz Mathai and others, Oct. 11 report, available to pro subs)

• Takes profit on long 10-year breakeven position around 2.342%, writing “The Treasury curve is now back to levels that are more consistent with a realistic assessment of benign/soft landing vs. hard landing probabilities for the economy”
• Upside data surprises like September CPI “raise the likelihood of a skip this year if payrolls don’t deteriorate into year-end. The Fed will in all likelihood go 25bp in November, as monetary policy is still quite some distance away from neutral”

Goldman Sachs (William Marshall and others, Oct. 11 report, available to pro subs)

• Maintains recommendation to be short 10-year Treasuries versus bunds, “which we think is positioned well for our baseline but can also benefit if the market presses on election-related risks (either fiscal or tariff-related)”
• Traders and vol market are increasingly focused on US election with most key data risks behind us (save for October jobs report)
• “Shorter expiry vol on longer term yields has richened on the surface since the start of the month, likely reflecting a combination of uncertainty shifting away from the very near-term Fed path towards terminal rate considerations, as well as a greater focus on post-election risks”

TD Securities (Gennadiy Goldberg and others, Oct. 11 report)

• Re-enters 5s30s steepeners, prompted by several reasons including:
  • Easing inflation and jobs momentum hints at more gradual cuts ahead
  • Less prohibitive carry
  • Election uncertainty
• “We remain of the view that labor market dynamics are likely to continue driving policy decisions by the FOMC in the near term”

While rates strategists are dignified, nuanced creatures, stock traders, on the other hand, are simpler brutes, and here things are somewhat easier. Indeed, one can see a dramatic reversal with Goldman’s Republican Victory basket – a proxy for Trump’s odds – surging in recent days to new all time highs, while the Democrat Victory basket – a proxy for president Kamala – suddenly sinking.

Indeed, with just weeks to go until the election showdown between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, odds are increasingly shifting in Trump’s favor: “A Trump victory would likely be positive for risk sentiment, though more for US assets at the expense of Europe and rest of the world,” Kumar said. “In our view, the environment remains broadly positive for risky assets.”

And while public polls remain irrevocably politicized, with massive Democrat oversampling still skewing results grotesquely to the point where most polls are meaningless – although even here we are seeing a massive surge in support for the former president with the latest poll by MSM flagbearer NBC showing Kamala’s 5 point lead evaporate…

New NBC poll: Harris 5 point advantage over Trump is now gone. pic.twitter.com/V3bEtZMTh0

— Shermichael Singleton (@MrShermichael) October 14, 2024

… in far more accurate online betting markets, Trump’s spread over Kamala on Polymarket is now the highest it has been and is approaching Trump’s blowout odds observed against Joe Biden… Pelosi.

… before he was forced to pull out of the race by Nancy

In its latest Weekly Rundown note (available to pro subscribers), Goldman advised clients to position themselves ahead of the election: “Buy GSP24REP if you expect a Republican sweep or Buy GSP24DEM if you expect a democratic sweep.“

Some more from Goldman: “The sensitivity of our Republican Policy Outperformers (GS24REPL) to election events since this summer implies the it could move +8% if Trump wins the presidential election%. Over the summer, investors have tactically traded around election events and have shortly unwound their trades.”

And the punchline: “Considering we are only ~1 month away from election day, we notice a shift in focus: our client near-term outlook depends on the election outcome and they are becoming more comfortable positioning themselves accordingly.”

Finally, while some have speculated that whether Trump or Kamala wins, it doesn’t really matter unless there is a sweep, the reality is that while the market was frowning on the odds of either party winning both the House and the Senate, in the past few days we have seen a surge by the Republicans, where Polymarket odds of a sweep are now the highest they have been in three months.

Finally, it’s not just Goldman: UBS writes that as recent election poll results seem to be shifting in favor of the Republican party, the bank’s Republican Win basket continued outperform the Democratic Win basket (BBG index UBPTREDE) by 2.4% on Monday, marking almost 6% over the past five sessions.”

In other words, while rigged polls do everything in their power to convince the marginal voter that Kamala is still in the lead, Wall Street traders have already taken the other side of the bet.

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute,

Following Hurricane Helene, many private helicopter pilots launched their own search and rescue missions. One would think government officials would welcome the help of these volunteers, but instead they harassed them and even threatened to arrest them!

For example, one private helicopter pilot rescued an individual stranded by Helene. Unfortunately, he was threatened with arrest if he flew his helicopter back into the impacted area to save someone left behind on the earlier flight.

In a video shared by comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore, Jonathan Howard, a member of the Florida State Guard and volunteer for the nonprofit group Aerial Recovery, discussed how the government took credit for the rescue of an 11-day-old baby even though the rescue was done totally by volunteers. Mr. Howard stated that when he goes on a search and rescue mission he sees around forty other private helicopters and just two military helicopters.

One reason the federal government is unable to provide adequate aid to those impacted by Helene (and now Milton) is the government is sending military aid worth billions of dollars to Ukraine and Israel. In fact, over 700 members of the Tennessee National Guard are deploying to the Middle East as people in the state deal with damage from Hurricane Helene!

When questioned on Fox News about Helene’s impact, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham made an impassioned plea …. for more aid to Israel. Senator Graham is far from the only member of Congress to put the needs of foreign countries and the military-industrial complex ahead of Americans.

Congress will likely consider a multi-billion-dollar disaster relief bill in the post-election “lame duck” session. Conservative Republicans will (properly) demand the spending be offset by cuts in other spending. The problem is most of these “fiscal conservatives” will vote to increase the national debt to fund the military-industrial-complex.

When I served in Congress, I voted against federal disaster aid even when the disaster impacted my district. Inevitably my office would receive complaints from outraged constituents. After a few months of jumping through the federal government’s bureaucratic hoops in seeking to recover from the disaster, many constituents would call my office to say that they now agree that they would be better off if the government would stop trying to “help” the victims of natural disasters.

One of the helicopter pilots who voluntarily flew into the areas impacted by Helene was Curves fitness chain founder Gary Heavin. Mr. Heavin, in addition to being a successful businessman, is a passionate advocate for liberty who serves on the advisory board of my Institute for Peace and Prosperity. It is not surprising that someone who believes in liberty would be willing to help those in need rather than rely on the government to provide assistance.

Contrary to the lies spread by authoritarians, libertarianism does not require selfishness. Libertarians welcome voluntary action to help those in need. Libertarians object to government assistance because it is based on force. Authoritarianism leads to poverty, war, chaos in the streets, and a lack of compassion for the less fortunate. Liberty leads to prosperity, peace, and a flourishing of private charities.

In many major cities, real home prices have declined as high interest rates are dampening demand.

Simultaneously, property markets are slowing due to tough financing conditions and rising construction costs. As a result, housing bubble risks have eased in cities like Hong Kong, London, and New York. However, strong demand in the luxury market and a booming stock market are fueling bubble risks in cities like Miami and Los Angeles.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the cities with the highest real estate bubble risk, based on the UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index 2024.

Methodology

To analyze real estate bubble risk, UBS looked at the following factors across 25 major cities:

• Price-to-income ratio

• Price-to-rent ratio

• Change in mortgage-to-GDP ratio

• Change in construction-to-GDP ratio

• City-to-country price ratio

More specifically, bubble risk refers to the likelihood of a significant price correction due to distortions in global property markets

Miami Ranks Highest for Housing Bubble Risk

With real housing prices increasing nearly 50% since the end of 2019, Miami has the highest bubble risk across cities analyzed.

This has pushed the price-to-income ratio higher, as buyers compete for limited waterfront luxury properties. At the same time, the city’s relative affordability compared to other major U.S. metros, along with no state income tax and a favorable climate, has fueled demand.

Ranking in second is Tokyo, one of the most unaffordable cities in the world.

Ultra-loose monetary policy and economic stability has contributed to high property valuations in Tokyo. Last year, a 646 square foot apartment cost 15 times more than an average skilled worker’s salary, exceeding levels seen in London and New York.

Although Dubai hasn’t entered bubble territory, home prices surged 17% between Q2 2023 and Q2 2024—the fastest increase among the cities analyzed. Over the past year, the city saw record transaction volumes and strong population growth as buyers flocked to this global financial hub.

By contrast, a number of cities saw their bubble risk decline as real home values dropped, including London, Hong Kong, Paris, and Toronto.

To learn more about this topic from a housing affordability perspective, check out this graphic on the least affordable property markets around the world.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

The censors are losing patience. They have gone from regretting the existence of free speech and gaming the system as best they can to fantasizing about ending it through criminal penalties. 

You can observe this change in temperament – from frustration to fury to calling for violent solutions – over the last several weeks. And it serves as a reminder: censorship was never the end point. It was always about controlling society’s “cognitive infrastructure,” which is how we think. And to what end? A secure monopoly on political power. 

This week, Fox reporter Peter Doocy was sparring with the White House spokesperson over whether FEMA is funding migrants even as it cannot help American storm survivors. She immediately shot back and called this “disinformation.” Peter wanted to know what part of his question qualified. Jean-Pierre said it was the whole context of the question and otherwise never said. 

It was clear to anyone who was watching that the term “disinformation” means to her nothing other than a premise or fact that is unwelcome and needs to be shut down. This messaging has been further reinforced by a Harris/Walz ad blaming unnamed “misinformation” from Trump for exacerbating hurricane suffering following Hurricane Helene. 

This exchange came only days after Hillary Clinton suggested criminal penalties for disinformation, else “they will lose total control.” It’s an odd plural pronoun because, presumably, she is not in control..unless she regards herself as a proxy for an entire class of rulers. 

Meanwhile, former presidential candidate John Kerry said the existence of free speech is making government impossible. Kamala Harris herself has sworn to “hold social media accountable” for the “hate infiltrating their platforms.” And well-connected physician Peter Hotez is calling for Homeland Security and NATO to put an end to debates over vaccines

You can detect the fury in all their voices, almost as if every post on X or video on Rumble is causing them to lose their minds, to the point that they are just saying it out loud: “Make them stop.”

Hurricane Milton seems to have caused the censors to flip out in a violent rage, as people wondered whether and to what extent the government might have something to do with manipulating the weather for political reasons. A writer in the Atlantic explodes: “I’m running out of ways to explain how bad this is. What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis,” while decrying “outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet.”

Catch that? It’s the viewing itself that is the problem, as if people do not have the capacity to think for themselves. 

The old meme of the man staying up late typing because “someone is wrong on the Internet” applies now to an entire swath of the ruling class. They want freedom out and the stakeholders in control, somehow forcing the whole of the digital age into a version of 1970s television with three channels and 1-800 numbers. The Biden administration even refounded the Internet, replacing the Declaration of Freedom with a new Declaration of the Future.

We are reminded of Katherine Hepburn’s performance as Violet Venable in Tennessee Williams’s play Suddenly, Last Summer. 

Violet is an heiress and widow with a son Sebastian on whom she doted and with whom she traveled internationally for many years. One summer, her niece Catherine (played by Elizabeth Taylor) goes on the trip instead and the son dies. 

Catherine was clearly traumatized by something but she doesn’t know what. But this much remained in her memory: Sebastian was not a good man. Instead he used the women who accompanied him as bait to procure boys for his sexual pleasure. 

Violet was so infuriated with this observation – all she could remember about Sebastian’s death –  that she sent Catherine to a mental hospital. She further has every intention of endowing a local hospital to specialize in lobotomies on the condition that they give one to Catherine. 

Violet wants Catherine to stop her “babblings” and instead “just be peaceful.” Catherine observes that they simply want to cut the truth out of her head before she comes around to recalling the whole of it, which is more horrible than one can imagine. 

Doctor: “There still is a great deal of risk.”

Violet: “But it does pacify them, I’ve read that. It quiets them down. It suddenly makes them peaceful.”

Doctor: “Yes, that it does do, but…”

Her goal was an invasive surgery on her sister’s daughter, which she was willing to fund in order to assure it would take place by a major gift in the guise of philanthropy. It was all in the interest of psychological self-protection. 

Violet simply did not want to know the truth. She wanted instead her own “truth” to be the constructed narrative: her son was a wonderful and pious gentleman and her niece was a crazy person, a deplorable, a speaker of misinformation and disinformation. 

In order to protect Violet’s own self-perceptions and her own delusion, she was willing to invade the brain of her own niece with a knife to stop her from clear thinking and clear speaking. 

Catherine: “Cut the truth out of my brain. Is that what you want? You can’t. Not even God can change the truth.”

As with all of Tennessee Williams, and all great literature, the story is about far more than what it seems. It is really about the lengths to which a wealthy ruling class is willing to go in order to prevent the puncturing of their own illusions about the world. 

In those days, lobotomies were more common, even approved, and often deployed by those who could afford them to be imposed on relatives. The stories are quite legendary, so there was nothing unrealistic about Williams’s story. Psycho-surgery was deployed for decades in the service of cutting truth out of people’s brains. 

So far we’ve only experienced a relatively low-grade version of this compared with what they really want. YouTube accounts have been demonetized and deleted. Facebook posts have been throttled and banned. LinkedIn’s algorithms punish posts that take issue with regime narratives. This has not slowed down in light of litigation but rather continued and intensified. 

The goal is to close up the Internet. They would have done it by now if it were not for the First Amendment, which stands in their way. For now, they will continue to work through university cutouts, third-party providers, phony baloney fact-checkers, pressure on tech firms that provide government services at a price, and other mechanisms to achieve indirectly what they cannot do directly just yet. 

Among the strategies is the political persecution of dissenters. Alex Jones is a bellwether here and his company is being bankrupted. Steve Bannon, the philosopher king of MAGA, has been in jail for the entire election season for having defied a Congressional subpoena on the advice of counsel. The protestors on January 6 have been in prison not for damages caused or trespassing but for landing on the wrong side of the regime. 

Most of us had an intuition that the Covid vaccine mandates themselves were not entirely about health but rather a tactic of exclusion of those who were not fully trusting of authority. This was rather obvious when it came to the military and the medical profession but less apparent within academia where noncompliant students and professors were effectively purged for their refusal to risk their lives for pharma. 

There was an element of malice, too, in the mask mandates. Even though there was zero scientific evidence that a Chinese-made synthetic cloth worn on the face can change epidemiological dynamics, they did serve well as a visible sign to separate believers from unbelievers, and also as a sadistic means of reminding individualists of who is really running the show. 

The final means of censorship is violence against person and property, while the end is to control what you think in service of one-party rule. Major tech companies and major media are wholly complicit in bringing this about. Only a handful of services are stopping this and they are all being targeted by the regime through myriad forms of lawfare. 

In the final scenes of Suddenly, Last Summer, Catherine is finally induced to recall the horrifying details of her cousin’s death and tell family members the fullness of the truth. Aunt Violet cannot handle it and defaults into denial and psychopathology herself, dishing out her own litany of disinformation. 

Therein the viewer is presented with the deepest irony of all: every claim that Violet made against Catherine eventually comes to pertain to Violet herself. The person who wanted to use violence to cut the brain out of the truthspeaker was merely protecting herself against a terrible truth that she could not handle. 

And there it is: it’s the liar more than anyone who has reason to fear free speech.

*  *  *

Postscript: as this article is released, the website archive.org has been fully down for the better part of a week, supposedly due to a catastrophic DDOS attack. The private owners say the data has been saved and it will be restored in time. Maybe. But consider: this the one tool we have for having a verified memory of what was posted when. It is how we found that WHO changed its definition of herd immunity. It’s how we found that the CDC was behind the mail-in ballot fiasco of 2020. It’s how we know that FTX funded anti-Ivermectin studies. And so on. The links were stable and good, never down. 

Until now, two weeks before the election. We are of course supposed to believe that this shocking collapse is purely a coincidence. Maybe. Probably. And yet without this website – a central point of failure – vast amounts of the history of the last quarter century is deleted. The entire contents of the web can be re-written as vaporware, here one instant, gone the next. Even if this site does come back, what will be missing and how long will it take to figure it out? Will the Internet have been lobotomized? If not this time, could it happen in the future? Certainly. 

The Kremlin has issued a formal accusation saying Ukraine’s military has captured and is holding over 1,000 Kursk residents against their will, since launching the cross-border offensive in early August.

Russia’s presidential human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said Monday, “I’ve received messages regarding more than 1,000 such people from relatives trying to find them.”

“We know nothing about their fate. This is a gross violation of their rights and international norms of treatment of civilians,” Moskalkova added. She said she plans to raise the issue directly with the Ukrainian government.

“I think it would be useful to remind you that the forced removal of civilians from their places of permanent residence is a gross violation of the Geneva Convention,” Moskalkova continued (according to machine translation). “And the world community should probably give this a proper assessment.”

Russia has estimated that since the start of the Ukrainian army’s attack on its southwest border region, over 112,000 residents have been displaced from their homes. 

Social media videos have often confirmed that amid the Ukrainian troop invasion a number of Russians have remained – often elderly people have been spotted, perhaps unable to flee.

Moskalkova has identified that over 12,000 of the displaced Russians are living at temporary displacement shelters in various parts of Russia. Other have been forced to stay with relatives in safe parts of Russia.

Ukraine has claimed that its forces are treating Russian civilians in captured territory humanely. In September Kiev requested that teams from United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) come in and verify the situation in areas of Russia’s Kursk.

Moscow has complained about such requests, arguing that any international organization or even media must coordinate with the Kremlin before stepping foot on Russian sovereign territory. For example, Russia has issued charges targeting a CNN team that crossed the border while embedded with Ukrainian troops.

OVER 1,000 RESIDENTS OF RUSSIA’S KURSK REGION FORCIBLY EVACUATED BY UKRAINIAN ARMED FORCES ARE BEING SOUGHT BY THEIR RELATIVES – RUSSIAN COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

The forcible removal of civilians is a gross violation of the Geneva Convention; the international community… pic.twitter.com/RUJHcaA70n

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) October 14, 2024

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has said that the UN and Red Cross invitation was intended to “prove [Ukraine’s] adherence to international humanitarian law.”

Meanwhile, Kiev has accused Russian troops of conducting mass executions as it fights Ukrainians in Kursk:

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman has denounced the alleged execution of nine captured Ukrainian troops by Russian forces in the Kursk border region.

Dmytro Lubinets said he had written to the United Nations and the Red Cross about the allegations, accusing Moscow of breaching “all the rules and customs of war”.

The intervention follows reporting by Ukrainian battlefield analysis site DeepState, which published drone footage purporting to show the dead troops who it said were drone operators. Officials in Russia have yet to comment on the allegations.

Over the weekend President Zelensky said that his forces continue to “hold the line” in Kursk. But analysts agree that the Kursk operation has no impact on front lines in the Donbass, where pro-Kiev forces are losing ground.

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times,

Michigan Republican officials have secured a win in an election integrity lawsuit against the city of Detroit over “its deliberate failure” to hire enough Republican election inspectors.

The Republican National Committee (RNC), the Michigan GOP, and the Wayne County Republican committee chairs announced that the city had agreed to modify its election protocols to hire “at least one Republican poll worker in each location,” in a settlement of the lawsuit.

In August, the RNC and other entities sued the city, alleging that it violated a state law that requires election officials to hire an equal number of poll workers on both sides of the political aisle.

The city, the lawsuit alleges, hired seven times as many Democrats as Republicans, which the RNC said decreases public trust in elections.

According to the complaint, the Republican Party nominated 675 election inspectors; however, the city only appointed 52 of them for the primary election.

The city hired up to 250 Republicans who were not nominated by the RNC, leaving a ratio of seven Democrats to one Republican inspector, which the RNC said was “not even close to equal.”

In comparison, the city hired more than 2,300 election inspectors from the Democratic Party.

“This uneven distribution of poll workers not only breaches state law but also undermines the integrity and fairness of the electoral process,” the RNC said in an August press release. “Our lawsuit demands that Detroit appoint more Republican inspectors.”

In response to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, the City of Detroit’s corporation counsel, Conrad Mallett, said: “The modest extra steps we agreed to take were not complicated and not required by law. They were put in place as part of a continuing effort to ensure our citizens respect and have confidence in our election process and to demonstrate that our city clerk listens to all concerns.”

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said the win will return “much-needed transparency and accountability” to the city’s election protocols.

“Thanks to the efforts of the RNC and Michigan GOP, Detroit will now change its election processes so that Republican poll workers will be allocated to all voting locations and, as nearly as possible, an equal number of Republicans will be hired this November,” Whatley said.

The RNC’s Michigan lawsuits are part of a larger legal battle for election integrity in the state.

In July, the RNC won a lawsuit to protect signature verification requirements that election officials had been instructed to disregard.

“The signatures of absentee ballot voters have to and should be verified—it’s common sense,” state Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra said in a statement. “Michigan is crucial to the pathway to victory in November. We must protect and enforce all our election laws to maintain confidence in our system.”

In March, the RNC filed a lawsuit alleging that state election officials are violating federal law by not maintaining voter registration records.

“Election integrity starts with clean voter rolls, and that’s why the National Voter Registration Act requires state officials to keep their rolls accurate and up-to-date,” Hoekstra said.

A full two weeks have passed since Iran’s October 1st ballistic missile attack on Israel, which involved some 200 projectiles, many of which caused destruction on the ground (though Israel has been tight-lipped on the extent of it).

The big question has remained: when will Israel retaliate and what form will it take? The Biden administration has over the last many days reportedly been urging for Israel to avoid hitting nuclear sites as well as energy sites. But there have been conflicting reports.

For example on Monday, Harper’s Magazine editor Andrew Cockburn wrote, “Word in Washington is that Biden has approved Israeli strike on Iran’s Natanz nuclear site.”

However, within hours after this speculative statement on X, The Washington Post reported that Israel is walking back from the prospect of bombing oil as well as nuclear facilities.

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Biden administration he is willing to strike military rather than oil or nuclear facilities in Iran, according to two officials familiar with the matter, suggesting a more limited counterstrike aimed at preventing a full-scale war,” the Monday afternoon report said.

President Biden in a phone call with PM Netanyahu last Wednesday reportedly conveyed serious concern that any counterstrikes could lead to all-out war if not kept ‘limited’.

Monday’s afternoon WaPo headline was enough to send oil prices falling, also after morning reports of China’s weak demand…

At the time of last week’s phone call, Netanyahu had reportedly expressed that he favors attacks on the Islamic Republic’s military infrastructure.

The Washington Post now appears to be chalking this up as a win for Biden diplomacy:

Netanyahu was in a “more moderated place” in that discussion than he had previously been, said the U.S. official, describing the call between the two leaders.

The apparent softening of the prime minister’s stance factored into Biden’s decision to send a powerful missile defense system to Israel, both officials said.

So the quid pro quo becomes clear… this is in reference to weekend reports saying the US is sending the THAAD anti-air missile defense system to Israel, for protection against Iran, which will include US troop operators. 

However, at a moment that Israel is already engaged militarily on several fronts, especially in Lebanon with Iran-backed Hezbollah, absolutely nothing is certain.

There remain plenty of hawks in Bibi’s security cabinet who are urging Israel to go big in its response. It is also the case that Netanyahu has been talking about taking out Iran’s nuclear program for many years at this point.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Kamala Harris proved once again Friday that she is in way beyond her depth, telling a crowd that the election is “packed with some stuff,” and then laughing inanely.

“So when we think about what’s at stake in this election…Whoa, it’s packed with some stuff!” Harris said, breaking into weird over the top laughter.

“It’s packed with some fundamental stuff! HA HA HA! I say rather articulately!” She then blathered.

KAMALA: “It’s packed with some stuff! HA HA HA HA!”

She’s the funniest person she knows! pic.twitter.com/nsInOBgIxq

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 11, 2024

Did her teleprompter break again?

Kamala is imploding in Scottsdale. WOW.

“Stuff”?!

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) October 11, 2024

Elsewhere during the speech, she claimed that Donald Trump is going to weaponise the DOJ against his political opponents.

Rings a bell.

She also bragged about her leadership skills and her ability to bring people together in her office, despite the fact that nearly everyone who has worked for her in the past four years has rage quit.

Kamala: “The way that I like to lead, I bring folks in my office all the time and they know, I don’t want any yes people.”

She had a 92% staff turnover rate as Vice President. pic.twitter.com/hqy9bUPBgj

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 11, 2024

She has no coherent policies and never says anything of any substance.

There is something seriously wrong with this weird woman. https://t.co/JbAnD80y7a

— Motja (@MotjaB) October 11, 2024

She cannot think on her feet. How bad would that be if she somehow becomes the president of the country?

Ya know… I was originally agreeing that Trump should tone down the “Kamala has a low IQ” insults.
But as always, Trump was right and very much justified.

— SteveJ777 🇺🇸 🚢 💪 (@StevieJ3210) October 11, 2024

It really is a Trump must win situation.

In other news… Kamala’s brain is NOT packed with some stuff.

— Debbie (@TheInlet72) October 11, 2024

Idiocracy is in danger of looking desirable compared to this.

If this was written for a comedy, it would be rejected for being too cringe and over the top… https://t.co/9Bw3OB6F8n

— Ricky Roma (@RickyRoma0) October 11, 2024

Or Veep.

Articulate my arse. This woman is an absolute joke. If it wasn’t so serious it might be funny but this is running for President of the United States of America. Drop out now. https://t.co/QmqEpHnC9z

— L G (@LG8889664252176) October 11, 2024

To quote tampon Tim Walz, We can’t afford another four years of this.

I won’t make it through 4 years of this….. https://t.co/hUW9jm2rJ7

— HedgedIn (@noalpha_allbeta) October 11, 2024

*  *  *

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A group of ‘performative’ pro-Palestinian protesters swarmed the front of the New York Stock Exchange in Lower Manhattan this morning, demanding an end to Israel’s war in Gaza against terror organization Hamas and denouncing war profiteering by US defense firms like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. These protesters failed to realize that the NYSE is just one giant TV studio, and the real NYSE moved to New Jersey many years ago. 

Only to find it’s one giant TV studio and the real New York Stock Exchange moved to New Jersey 15 years ago https://t.co/fOMMJ1iNBT

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 14, 2024

The activists appear to be part of the far-left ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ group. The X account tied to JVP posted a series of tweets about the NYSE takeover:

“Hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers and friends are shutting down business as usual at the New York Stock Exchange right now to demand the US stop arming Israel,” JVP wrote on X. 

Hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers and friends are shutting down business as usual at the New York Stock Exchange right now to demand the US stop arming Israel. pic.twitter.com/mX9tNtBHud

— Jewish Voice for Peace NYC (@jvpliveNY) October 14, 2024

JVP explained, “At this very moment, the Israeli military is massacring family after family in North Gaza in a war of extermination. So hundreds of Jews and friends are shutting down the New York Stock Exchange to demand the US stop arming Israel and profiting from genocide.” 

BREAKING: At this very moment, the Israeli military is massacring family after family in North Gaza in a war of extermination. So hundreds of Jews and friends are shutting down the New York Stock Exchange to demand the US stop arming Israel and profiting from genocide. pic.twitter.com/LPb8pRPekt

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 14, 2024

JVP dressed the ‘Fearless Girl’ statue in front of NYSE with one of their shirts that read: “Stop Arming Israel.” 

On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, the Israeli military carried out a mass extermination in North Gaza, raining down bombs on refugee camps and school shelters. They are still massacring family after family now. pic.twitter.com/CzeB7sLGol

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 14, 2024

Activists chained themselves to the doors. This is all theatrics. 

Biden wants us to believe that his $18 billion slush fund this year for the Israeli government is for “Jewish safety.” As Jews, we reject this myth with every fiber of our beings. We refuse to let our traditions, histories, and identities be used to massacre Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/GLvMvXTglv

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 14, 2024

And fences. 

This Indigenous Peoples Day, we pay homage to the movements that have fought against genocides Wall Street has always profited from, since its founding as a market of enslaved people kidnapped from Africa by settlers who carried out genocide against Indigenous people. pic.twitter.com/7UTfQDhmdS

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 14, 2024

Next internet meme photo?

So much for NYPD and co caring about Jewish saftey. Here they are dragging anti-Zionist Jewish protesters for calling for an arms embargo. pic.twitter.com/27C9LRN6sn

— Sumaya Awad (@sumayaawad) October 14, 2024

Technically, nothing was shut down. Plus, most market trades are made by algorithms, not traders standing on the NYSE floor. 

As @jvplive shuts down the NY Stock Exchange to demand the US stop arming Israel, I thought it’d be a good time to repost this @twittlesis map of the top shareholders – BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, etc – of major US weapons companies.

Map: https://t.co/LouNBXU0O7 pic.twitter.com/HdEoJKMYZi

— Derek Seidman (@derekseidman80) October 14, 2024

Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs labeled JVP as a “Jewish far-left, anti-Zionist” group that is known for “direct action,” some of which have been conducted on school campuses. 

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Old Joke: what do you call a hundred thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea?

Answer: A good start.

You think the bankers are up to no good? No band of scoundrels has brought more chaos and grief to the life of this republic than the claque that gathers darkly under the banner of “Lawfare.” Its public face is Lawfaremedia.org, run by Benjamin Wittes a Brookings senior fellow, but that gang functions only to lend a false-front of decorum to the operations of its Democratic Party activist lawyer-army led by Field Marshal Marc Elias, architect of the ballot fraud that has caused Americans to lose faith in their elections.

Marc Elias was the original expeditor of the RussiaGate hoax in 2016 from his perch at Perkins Coie, then Hillary Clinton’s campaign law firm, which laundered payments to Christopher Steele, front-man for Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS political PR shop, which concocted the fraudulent “dossier,” and set in motion a train of DC intel blob legal shenanigans aimed at defenestrating Donald Trump from the White House — the Mueller Investigation, impeachment, etc.

While all that was going on through the Trump term, and with the Covid-19 Op providing cover, Mr. Elias engineered the 2020 changes in many states’ election laws and bylaws to permit large-scale mail-in voting, organized ballot-harvesting activities, and the use of drop-boxes for receiving bundled votes. He and his George Soros-financed staff lawyers sued states that attempted to require voter-identification, and provided legal protection for Mark Zuckerberg’s $419-million-dollar assault on election precinct staffing in swing states. When the 2020 election concluded suspiciously, Mr. Elias and his gang joined lawsuits in every case where the balloting was contested and got more than sixty of them dismissed on the basis of “standing,” without the merits of the cases being heard. This is Lawfare.

This time around, 2024, Mr. Elias has done everything possible to ensure that millions of illegal aliens stuffed into swing states will have their putative identities attached to harvested mail-in ballots from addresses such as Walmart parking lots and storage units, and has filed lawsuits wherever a state threatens to require proof of citizenship for voting. He has also filed sixty peremptory lawsuits to obstruct attempts to audit any election count after November 5 — as if it is an affront to democracy to even ask questions about official misconduct.

A parallel Lawfare scam underway is the Democratic Party-sponsored 65 Project that seeks to disbar Trump-adjacent lawyers who attempt to challenge any voting irregularities in this year’s election. It’s mission statement reads:

The 65 Project is a bipartisan effort to protect democracy from these once-and-future abuses by holding accountable Big Lie Lawyers who bring fraudulent and malicious lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results, and by working with bar associations to deter future abuses by establishing clear standards for conduct that punish lies about the conduct or results of elections.

Notice the term “Big Lie” to foreclose any inquiry at all into election fraud. That half the people in this country accept such an Orwellian con tells you the vital role played by the perversion of language in the Democratic Party’s war against the citizens of this land. Exactly who is to say, in advance of the event, that any objection to a vote count is fraudulent and malicious? Answer: the people who have maliciously committed fraud. The Democrats have been grooming the public for years with that phrase, the Big Lie, in exactly the same way that pedos groom innocent pubescents who accept the authority of any grown-up, no matter what debauchery they are subjected to.

It’s a tragic turn of fate for our country that the law, and language with it, have been turned into weapons for national suicide. The net result is a nation that can’t think straight anymore and cannot construct any coherent set of rules to live by. So we find ourselves in a society where stealing is no longer a crime, where border-jumping has been downgraded to a clerical error (“undocumented”), where little children are allowed to decide whether they are male or female, where speech that disagrees with the authorities agenda is “misinformation” subject to censorship and prosecution, where candidates for the highest office get selected “democratically” without any votes cast, and where you can be run-over and ruined financially in court by the bottomless legal resources of the Deep State for just speaking your mind.

Now I will tell you something that deeply troubles me and might trouble you. Forgive me if I throw the Overton Window wide open here.

Readers may know that I am an American Jew. We have entered a new era of antisemitism. Many might say it is due to the conduct of Israel warring against its enemies. I would say it is as much due to the adoption of Jihad politics by the Marxist-Woke campaign as an instrument to promote political and social chaos in America.

Lawfare is essentially jihad waged via the courts against our own disintegrating common culture and national interests.

The lineup of the leading Lawfare attorneys are Jews: Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, Benjamin Wittes, Andrew Weissmann, Michael Bromwich, Michael Sussmann, Lawrence Tribe, Daniel Goldman, Paul Rosenzweig, the exceptionally profligate serial liar Rep. Adam Schiff, and many others. I can’t say I understand exactly what motivates them to engage these antics. (Possibly to defend their Deep State clients against many previous crimes committed since 2016, especially within the FBI and DOJ.) But it’s a really bad look on top of being a nefarious agenda.

They are disgracing the rest of us American Jews and putting us in danger. Shame on them.

They must be defeated, and their defeat must come within the arena of the very law they work so hard to pervert.