While Israel has over the past months and even years regularly attacked Syria – especially in Damascus and its environs – with airstrikes, it remains extremely rare for projectiles to be fired the other way, from Syria onto Israel.

But that very rare event appears to have taken place Tuesday, as an Israeli Air Force fighter jet was scrambled and shot down a “suspicious aerial target” that flew into Israeli airspace from Syria. 

Israeli media citing the IDF believes that it was a drone, however, few details were given and the military says it is unclear precisely who was behind the attack.

Israel has said that both Hezbollah and Iranian officers and troops have long been present in Syria, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strikes their positions at least on a weekly basis at this point. Syria did near the start of the Gaza war, within days after the Hamas Oct.7 attack, fire rockets into the occupied Golan Heights territory, but that was essentially a one-off.

Fears persist that the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel fighting along the southern Lebanese border could at any moment spill over into a bigger regional conflict that would certainly have immediate impact on Syria and the Golan.

As for fighting in Lebanon, Israeli media has tallied, “Hezbollah has named 232 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 37 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and at least 30 civilians, three of whom were journalists, have been killed.”

On Sunday, Arab media sources did claim a new development which suggests escalation. Hezbollah said it struck Israeli ground forces on Lebanon’s own territory, which suggests an ‘invasion’ or border breach of some kind was attempted: 

Hezbollah claimed to thwart two separate Israeli attempts to enter Lebanese territory late Sunday evening, saying it struck Israeli soldiers “directly” with rockets and artillery shells.

According to a statement by the group, two groups of Israeli forces attempted to cross into Lebanese territory from the town of Ramya along the central part of the Lebanese border and the town of Rmeish in the west.

The two infiltration attempts occurred within half an hour of one another.

If accurate, this would mark the first instance of Israeli troops attempting to enter Lebanon since that start of the conflict which began in the aftermath of Oct.7.

Fresh Hezbollah missile attacks have left towns across northern Lebanon without power…

⚡️Reports of power outages in the western Galilee after a missile strike by Hezb-Allah pic.twitter.com/uqn6Qy6DIV

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) March 4, 2024

Any potential scenario where Israel were to move ground troops into southern Lebanon would likely spark a bigger war with Hezbollah, which could engulf all of Lebanon. Already Israel has launched airstrikes deep into Lebanese territory, including all the way up to the Bekaa Valley. 

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Gearing Up for ‘Biden’ Versus Trump: Not If, But When and How to Replace Biden

President Joe Biden is declining at a geometric, not an arithmetic, rate.

His cognitive challenges are multifaceted.

His gait is shaky. His daily use of stairs now risks the chance of a tenure-ending fall. Even when he sticks to the teleprompter, he so slurs his speech, mispronounces words, and glides his syntax that at times he becomes as incomprehensible at the podium as he is unsteady in his step.

He now speaks a strange language foreign and untranslatable to most Americans. White House transcribers leave hiatuses in their written texts of his remarks to reflect that they either have no idea what he said, do not wish to publicize their guesses at what he said, or do not wish the public to know what he was trying to say.

Despite the circling-the-wagons media and the passive-aggressive sycophants like the opportunistic Gov. Gavin Newsom in waiting, the left understands that Biden will be lucky to get to the August convention. This spring and early summer, he will not campaign as a normal presidential candidate, and this time around, there is no pretense of the COVID epidemic to excuse his absence.

The people have already polled numerous times that their president is unfit to serve now and, in the future, should not run. So the 2020 Faustian bargain is in shambles. Remember its quid pro quos: all the major Democratic presidential candidates of 2020 nearly simultaneously pulled out the primaries to coronate Biden—but only on the condition that Biden would play to the hilt his “ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton” schtick that would offer a veneer to the otherwise unpopular hard left agenda of the new Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/the Obamas/Squad Democratic Party.

The people voted for a “return to normalcy,” all while the left destroyed the southern border, unleashed a critical legal theory/George-Soros crime wave, dismantled hard-won deterrence abroad, and printed money to spur hyperinflation.

Moreover, it is increasingly clear that the entire Biden family consortium is compromised and corrupt. Neither Hunter nor Jim nor Frank Biden had any consulting skills, business expertise, or corporate experience to warrant leveraging over $25 million from foreign interests. Their only commodity was to sell corrupt parties the appearance that Joe Biden would be quite willing to help their various causes if they enriched his family. Everyone knows that to be true, and only now, as Biden sinks into incoherence, are his protectors shrugging about the obvious money-making schemes that revolved around a corrupt senator, vice president, and private citizen, Joe Biden.

None of Biden’s record is popular. His policies on the border, economy, energy, foreign policy, and crime poll below 50 percent. And this trifecta of Biden’s mental deterioration, family corruption, and failed presidential record will only grow worse.

Then there is the Kamala Harris issue—the Spiro Agnew insurance policy of our age that so far has protected Biden from overt efforts to replace him. She is as unpopular as Biden and often as incomprehensible, but without the excuse of age or mental diminishment. Of all the major Beltway elected officials, only Sen. Mitch McConnell polls worse.

By August, Democratic donors and politicos may well conclude that the only way to rid the party of both is to release Biden’s delegates, open up the convention, and let candidates fight over the now-free delegates. Harris then will not be nominated, but not through a backroom, Machiavellian removal of a black woman. Instead, she will “fairly” lose an “open” and “transparent” free-for-all of various Democratic want-to-be replacements and recede into a sober and judicious Mike Pence-like retirement.

The problem with this scenario, of course, is that late-season convention or post-convention machinations in the modern era don’t work out too well. In 1976, Ronald Reagan, after losing a series of early primaries and being declared nearly inert, suddenly caught fire and entered the August 1976 Republican convention in Kansas City within striking distance of incumbent Gerald Ford. President Ford, remember, had never been elected either president or vice president.

In the end, in one of the most acrimonious Republican conventions in memory, a wounded Ford won the nomination by only 117 delegate votes out of some 2,257 cast. In some sense, Ford never recovered and lost the election to Jimmy Carter, even as the tumult gave Reagan the exposure and his team the experience needed to win the nomination in 1980.

About two weeks after the 1972 Democratic convention, a desperate George McGovern and the Democratic hierarchy removed Vice President running mate Sen. Thomas Eagleton from the ticket due to revelations of little-known past electric shock treatments given to combat depression. After futile efforts, the Democrats settled on the Kennedy clan’s Sargent Shriver, who had never run for office. McGovern would have lost anyway to an incumbent Nixon. But the margin of defeat in one of the greatest landslides in presidential history was often attributable to the sheer chaos of changing a vice presidential candidate so late in the campaign.

In sum, the Democrats can—and may have to—replace Joe Biden, and they can ensure that Kamala Harris is not the nominee, but the means of doing so will be chaotic and messy and will wound the winner for the rest of the campaign.

Trump’s Circuitous Path to Victory

Donald Trump challenges have now been discussed ad nauseam, and they are threefold: he must either beat or postpone campaign-season court trials – and find perhaps $800 million to $1 billion to post bonds, pay interests on them, and meet gargantuan legal fees – without turning off donors and supporters and by avoiding the diversion of Republican National Committee and various campaign funds to his own personal defense.

As in the past, Trump will be vastly outspent, perhaps by 3-1 or 4-1. Molly Ball’s infamous Time 2022 essay outlined the left-wing scheming that ensured a mail-in/early balloting election by aggregating the deep state, the corporate boardroom, the social media monopolies, and the 2020 riotous street thugs of Antifa and BLM. What she called a “cabal” and “conspiracy” was designed not so much as a one-off to defeat Trump as to create a permanent system by which a Trump-like candidate could never win a presidential election, both in 2020 and afterward.

Given changes in the 2020 state voting laws that saw 60-70 percent of the ballots in many swing states not cast on Election Day, while the rejection rate of faulty ballots counter-intuitively plunged despite such an influx, Trump will have to win by 3–4 points. Otherwise, in the swing states, we will again stare at the late-evening televised wizardry in which his huge leads mysteriously melt on the screen as drop boxes and mail sacks are tallied.

To achieve a 51-plus majority in the popular vote—no Republican has achieved such a national ballot margin in 36 years since George H.W. Bush beat Mike Dukakis in 1988—Trump will have to win, or win back, more Independents, apostate Democrats, and RINO Never-Trumpers.

He can do that in only two ways:

• One, he must hammer away at Joe Biden’s disastrous record on the border, energy, race, foreign affairs, the economy, and social issues that scare moderates and fence-sitters, especially when comparisons are made to the achievements of 2017-2020. Inner-city residents are being tag-teamed by both the influx of thousands of illegal aliens who apparently have first claims on stretched social services and street criminals who loot, assault, and carjack mostly their law-abiding neighbors with impunity.

• Two, Trump needs to model his remarks after his Iowa Primary victory speech or his recent Fox Townhall event with Fox’s Laura Ingram. Translated, that means there is no reason to reference Nikki Haley’s deployed husband, to refer to her as a “birdbrain,” or to say much of anything other than she will lose, and in the process, she is needlessly hurting more than half of America by draining resources away from the only real chance to repeal the current socialist agenda.

Haley is imploding without any need for a Trump push. Magnanimity, rather than salt in her self-inflicted wounds, is the better strategy to unite the party. Trump has cemented his base. He will increase his share of minority voters who have been hurt the worst by the Biden socialist agenda. But to ensure victory and a Republican Congress, he cannot give swing voters a reason not to vote for policies and initiatives that they overwhelmingly prefer over those of the now hard-left Democratic Party.

In sum, after Super Tuesday, when Haley will either quit the race or become inert, Trump needs to call her, politely remind her of her promise to support the nominee, and welcome her back into the fold.

If she is wise, she will likely agree to disagree, let bygones be bygones, and thus pledge to support the assured nominee, Trump.

Two of her three choices are in her own interest:

1) She endorses him, and Trump wins, and she is vibrant in 2028;

2) she endorses him, and Trump loses, and she is still viable;

3) she opposes him, and Trump either wins—and she is persona non grata—or he loses, and she is blamed for splitting the party and his defeat. Breaking her public promise to support the nominee will bleed what support she retains, and would prove a suicidal blunder.

Trump has achieved the greatest political comeback since Richard Nixon arose from the ashes of defeat in California in 1962 to win the nomination and presidency in 1968. Trump’s Phoenix-like rebirth from January 2021 to the present was achieved by Biden’s failure, the natural empathy accruing from the weaponization of the law by partisan or corrupt prosecutors against him, and Trump’s greater success in giving independents fewer reasons to vote against him.

If he can praise those he defeats, call for unity, and campaign in 50 states in non-Republican strongholds, then he can win—even despite the hatred of the left, the corruption of the media, the weaponization of the bureaucracy, and the eroding trust in the way we vote.

We can’t help but notice them: car washes seem to be everywhere nowadays. 

Everywhere you go, new ones are popping up and, with that, they’re usually packed. We were gifted some insight as to why this is happening last week, when Bloomberg revealed that the models are “fueled by private equity” and “subscription based”. In other words, catnip to investors. 

They’re so popular that the town of Streetsboro, Ohio, had to put a moratorium on them, the article noted. Similar bans have happened in places like Buffalo, New Jersey and Alaska. 

Mayor Glenn Broska told Bloomberg: “A car wash does not provide a lot of jobs for the community, and they take up a lot of space. If you want to invest your dollars into a car wash, then God bless you. But at the same time, I’m responsible for 17,500 people and have to be cognizant of their wishes.”

Despite the disruptions caused by Covid-19, Americans have continued frequenting car washes, maintaining strong retail fundamentals, according to Bloomberg. The industry has seen significant investment, with around 50 groups actively consolidating or expanding car wash businesses, investing over $750 million in expansion efforts last fall.

Although 2023 faced financial challenges, slowing mergers and acquisitions, the outlook remains optimistic with potential for high revenues.

The American car wash industry, with a history dating back to the early 1900s, has evolved significantly from manual washes to automated systems. This evolution reflects not only technological advancements but also the cultural significance of cars. The industry, once characterized by small, family-owned operations, has grown into a scalable business model emphasizing efficiency and sustainability, with leading companies focusing on reducing water usage and improving recycling methods.

Ian Rickwood, CEO and founder of Henley Investment Management said: “We think this is the coffee market in the early ’90s, when Starbucks got going. One came to town, and people said, ‘$5 for a coffee, surely nobody will buy more than one cup a day.’ And of course, another one opened and another one opened and the category expanded because people began to change their habits.”

Bloomberg writes that decades ago, car wash businesses relied heavily on manual labor, requiring up to 50 employees, and were significantly affected by weather conditions, impacting profits.

Nowadays, technological advancements have streamlined the washing process to as little as 90 seconds, reduced labor costs through automation, and introduced stable income through membership models, mitigating weather-related risks. The 2017 tax reforms under Donald Trump provided a boost by allowing full depreciation on new equipment, an incentive Congress is considering reinstating.

Emil Khodorkovsky of real estate firm Forbix commented: “If private equity thinks it’s sexy, they’re gonna throw money at it, right?”

The sector stands out for its potential, with locations earning up to 80% of their revenue from subscriptions and boasting a 50% margin before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. The move towards membership models not only increases usage and revenue but also presents a significant growth opportunity, potentially increasing annual washes in the U.S. from 2 billion to 3 billion.

“This is America; people are going to make money. And they figured out how to make money with a car wash,” Broska concluded. 

You can read Bloomberg’s full feature here.

Authored by Jeff Louderbeck via The Epoch Times,

A super PAC aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not disclose $10 million in loans, according to a complaint that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) filed on March 4 with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

It marks the second time in the last month that the DNC has accused American Values 2024 of violating federal finance campaign law.

According to the March 4 action, the DNC accused the super PAC of not disclosing a $10 million loan and $9.65 million in loan repayments from Gavin de Becker, whose private security firm provides protection for the independent presidential candidate.

“This is yet another example of AV24 playing fast and loose with election law,” DNC senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said following the FEC complaint. “It’s clear that they, along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his campaign, don’t believe that the rules apply to them.”

Timothy Mellon, who is President Donald Trump’s “largest financial supporter this cycle,” has given financial support to American Values 2024. Combined with Mr. de Becker’s loans, that amount represents 80 percent of the super PAC’s fundraising totals, according to the complaint.

“This unprecedented loan arrangement has allowed them to not only inflate their fundraising numbers, but also to conceal the extent to which AV24 is almost single-handedly funded by Tim Mellon, Donald Trump’s largest donor this cycle,” Ms. Cahill added.

On Feb. 9, the DNC also filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) over the contribution made by Mr. Mellon to American Values 2024.

Campaign finance records indicate that Mr. Mellon gave American Values 2024 $15 million in 2023. Mr. Mellon also contributed $10 million to pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., last year, according to FEC filings. In 2020, he donated $20 million to America First Action Inc., a group that supported President Trump’s reelection.

DNC legal counsel Bob Lenhard called the recent donation “unlawful.”

The Kennedy campaign is “in the process of accepting a $15 million unlawful in-kind contribution by coordinating their efforts to get him on the ballot,” Mr. Lenhard said in a Feb. 9 call detailing the FEC complaint.

Mr. Kennedy’s campaign “is taking a shortcut outsourcing what is otherwise a core campaign function to a super PAC,” Mr. Lenhard said, referring to the expense of a third-party candidate getting on the ballot.

American Values 2024 said late last year that it plans to spend as much as $15 million to help get Mr. Kennedy on the ballot in multiple states deemed important to winning the election.

The Feb. 9 complaint also alleges that American Values 2024 is ignoring federal law.

“The law does allow the super PAC to raise unlimited amounts of money from wealthy individuals, corporations, and unions for independent expenditures. But it remains illegal for a super PAC to provide goods and services directly to a campaign,” Mr. Lenhard said.

Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes a campaign announcement at a press conference in Philadelphia, Pa., on Oct. 9, 2023. (Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)

Attempts to Destabilize RFK Jr.

The FEC complaints illustrate the DNC’s attempts to destabilize Mr. Kennedy’s campaign as President Joe Biden faces a plummeting job approval rating and mounting questions about his mental fitness.

The DNC and President Biden supporters are accusing Mr. Kennedy of being propped up by the Trump movement; as well as highlighting similar Trump–Kennedy policy stances in the areas of border security, U.S. funding for Ukraine, and vaccine mandates.

On multiple occasions, DNC officials have called Mr. Kennedy “a stalking horse” for President Trump.

When asked during the Feb. 9 call if the DNC is concerned that Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy is a threat to President Biden’s reelection bid, DNC spokesperson Ramsey Reid called the alleged FEC violation a “scheme.”

Mr. Mellon gave American Values 2024 “the exact $15 million paycheck they said that they would need for ballot access,” Mr. Reid said.

Mr. Reid called the move “an effort to subvert our election laws” and “prop up” Mr. Kennedy.

“It’s pretty clear that Trump and his mega-donors are propping up RFK Jr. as a stalking horse,” Mr. Reid said.

Lis Smith, a former adviser to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, was hired by the DNC in January to combat third-party candidates running for president in 2024.

She made the same accusations. “It’s clear that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being propped up and funded by Donald Trump and his allies because they believe that he is a useful stalking horse who could throw the election Trump’s way. We need to sound that alarm every day between now and the election,” Ms. Smith said.

American Values 2024 and Mr. Kennedy’s campaign have yet to comment about the March 4 FEC complaint but they did issue statements about the Feb. 9 action.

Anthony Lyons, co-chair of American Values 2024, said in a statement that the super PAC “has been working independently from the campaign in accordance with FEC precedent to get Bobby Kennedy on the ballot in 12 states.”

“The Biden administration and the DNC clearly find democracy inconvenient, want to stifle any dissenting opinions, and don’t believe that their candidate can win a free, open, and fair election. I don’t know if all of this amounts to election fraud,” Mr. Lyons said.

“This FEC complaint is just another desperate DNC tactic to defame Kennedy, vilify him, and drain his campaign funds. The American people are too smart to be fooled by these political games.”

Mr. Kennedy responded to the FEC complaint in a post on X.

“The DNC is accusing my campaign of FEC violations in the form of secretive activity—activity that’s so secretive it’s on the Ballot Access HQ of my website,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on X.

“After the day they had yesterday, it’s understandable they’d want to put the focus on someone else. The DNC is in no position to assert morality over anyone—they refused to have a primary and have worked against the will of the people in the past few elections. It’s sad to see the party my family built crash and burn.”

Robert Hur’s Report

Mr. Kennedy’s comments referred to a 388-page report released by the Justice Department that detailed the findings of special counsel Robert Hur’s 13-month investigation, which concluded that President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”

Mr. Hur declined to pursue charges against the president, citing a lack of sufficient evidence to establish his guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” and how he would appear to a jury.

“At trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the special counsel wrote.

During his 2023 interview with the special counsel’s office, President Biden “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended … and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began,” according to the report.

Mr. Kennedy had refrained from focusing on President Biden’s mental fitness until Mr. Hur’s report was released.

“I think we’ve reached a time where it’s no longer character assassination to ask legitimate questions about the president’s competency. There are so many decisions that require nuance, that require complex levels of thinking, and those kinds of issues are coming at you many times a day. The American people have a right to know whether their president is capable of making those decisions,” Mr. Kennedy said at a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, earlier last month.

“We have a right to know that our president is actually leading the country and somebody else is not. We need to have a president who is able to make judgments, and particularly the judgment about war,” Mr. Kennedy said.

While he was in Grand Rapids hosting a voter rally to collect signatures for ballot access in Michigan, Mr. Kennedy was greeted with billboards launched by the DNC claiming that he is “powered by MAGA/Trump.”

The billboards show a picture of Mr. Kennedy on the left side, and President Trump and President Biden on the right. In the middle, referring to Mr. Mellon, the text reads, “RFK Jr.” and “Let the best man win, Tim.”

The billboards debuted shortly after American Values 2024 aired a TV ad promoting Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy by incorporating elements of an ad from President John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign.

DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd said in a statement after the ad aired, “It’s fitting that the first national ad promoting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy was bought and paid for by Donald Trump’s largest donor this cycle.”

Mr. Kennedy announced in April 2023 his intent to challenge President Biden for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. He has generated wide-ranging support from conservatives, moderates, independents, and Libertarians throughout his campaign, although he hasn’t gained the same favor from many Democrats.

For months, Mr. Kennedy was confronted with roadblocks from the Democratic National Committee, which he accused of “rigging” the primary process to favor President Joe Biden.

During an interview with The Epoch Times in Columbia, South Carolina, in August 2023, Mr. Kennedy was asked if he would serve as former President Donald Trump’s running mate or run as an independent or a third-party candidate.

“I’m a Democrat. The Democrat party has lost its way, and I want to return it to its traditional ideals,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“I’m hoping to run in the Democratic Party. If it’s possible to have a fair election in the Democratic Party, I will run in the Democratic Party, and I haven’t made any kind of plans other than that.”

But, earlier this year, the organization voted to give President Biden its full support.

At the same time, the DNC voted to replace New Hampshire with South Carolina as the first-in-the-nation primary state. The organization warned New Hampshire that it would face potential penalties if its Democrat primary didn’t comply with new primary calendar plans. The DNC also discouraged any candidate other than President Biden from entering the New Hampshire primary.

Mr. Kennedy’s request to debate President Biden was denied.

“They’re trying to make sure that I can’t participate at all in the political process, and so I’m going to keep all my options open,” Mr. Kennedy said earlier in October 2023 at a town hall in South Carolina.

“It’s pretty clear that the DNC does not want a primary. Essentially, they are fixing the process so that it makes it almost impossible to have democracy function,” he added. “They’re effectively disenfranchising the Democratic voters from having any choice in who becomes president, the Democrat nominee.”

On Oct. 9, 2023, he declared his candidacy for president as an independent.

As the 2024 election approaches, the Biden administration has gone into overdrive to try and convince the general public that inflation isn’t his fault – and instead, a scourge of corporate greed washed over the country like a plague.

It certainly wasn’t Biden’s extended-innings of pandemic stimmies, sanctions on Russia, and rates being too low for too long.

Nope, corporate greed.

Except, these companies apparently really suck at being greedy, as margins have been dropping at the same time!

Of course their central premise fails to account for why corporations simply weren’t ‘greedy’ in the Trump-era.

During the superbowl, Biden hammered the concept of “shrinkflation” – essentially, less food in the same package from snack food corporations. There are “fewer chips” in your bag, while companies are “still charging you just as much,” Biden said.

According to Politico, recent polling circulated in the White House shows this ‘corporate greed’ narrative is working.

“It’s about framing this for the American people,” said an anonymous official, adding that Biden’s open frustration with shrinkflation “speaks to what they feel in a way that’s useful for us both in terms of messaging and making sure they understand that the president sees what’s going on.”

The White House in recent weeks has sought new ways to neutralize concerns over grocery costs, a major factor dragging down voters’ otherwise improving views of the economy. Officials are keen to push back on the GOP emphasis on high food prices, and Biden has personally taken issue with the practice of shrinkflation — though some officials still question how much attention the president should devote to food inflation, specifically. -Politico

And so, to further legitimize the corporate greed narrative, the Biden administration has thrown the full weight of the US government behind a new “FTC-DOJ task force” which has been ‘tasked’ with cracking down on “unfair and illegal pricing” by said greedy corporations.

The task force will be jointly led by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, two agencies at the forefront of the Biden administration’s aggressive regulatory agenda over the past three years. –CNBC

“We’re excited to be co-chairing the president’s new Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing, which builds on the FTC’s far-reaching work to promote competition and tackle unlawful business practices that are inflating costs for Americans,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan in a Monday call with reporters.

The ‘strike force’ (lol) will be co-chaired by Jonathan Kanter, assistant AG for the DOJ’s antitrust division.

“Here at the Justice Department, we are confronting some of the world’s most powerful corporations so that we can improve the lives of American families,” Kanter said on the call.

On Tuesday afternoon, Biden will convene the sixth formal meeting of the White House Competition Council – a group of top officials throughout the administration who will ‘root out anti-competitive practices across a wide range of industries.’

In short, definitely don’t blame the Biden administration for all the inflation.

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

Now that the Supreme Court has unanimously destroyed the dreams of Davos to use January 6th as a means to keep him off the ballot, Donald Trump has passed the easiest of the hurdles in front of his returning to the White House.

Some things, politically, in the US still function.

This ruling was a lay-up.

The SCOTUS had to rule decisively here.

Trump was never convicted of ‘insurrection.’ He was impeached and character-assassinated, sure, but none of that carries any weight of law. But, even if you somehow believe he was guilty of the crimes the Democrats accused him of, the facts of January 6th are so murky from that perspective, there was no way the SCOTUS could concoct a justification for his ballot disqualification.

At stake itself was the SCOTUS’ own validity as an institution. And if there is one thing I believe about organizations it is they always move to defend themselves if their leadership is honest.

Like it or not, the SCOTUS does not exist to enforce anyone’s opinion on reality. They exist to conclude whether an action is or is not constitutional.

Did Trump ever lead an armed insurrection against the government? No.

Did he question a questionable election? Yes.

Is that unconstitutional? No.

Case closed.

But this case was an important first step to shut off the Nikki Haley insurgent strategy of handing delegates to her by default:

Take Trump off the ballot.

She’s now the only “Repuglican” left to vote for.

She gets to go to the convention with a bunch of unearned delegates to steal the election before November.

Oops. Now she gets further embarrassed on Super Tuesday.

Now the strategy backfires completely and he’s now Obi-Don Kenobi.

Unless somehow Jack Smith or the Fulton County Gang that Can’t Lie Straight put him in jail Trump is the GOP nominee.

So, now, how does Trump take this political resurrection and change the game completely?

With Biden’s disapproval rating reaching historic lows of 59% (6 out of 10 US votes HATE JOAH! Biii-Den!), the path to the White House for Trump goes through Vice-President Kamala Harris.

While conversations abound about subbing in Big Mike and/or Gavin Gruesome, the more likely threat from the DNC is Hillary, who is clearly angling back into the conversation as Biden falters.

But whoever Trump winds up running against, there is one person who Trump can leverage to drive even more people who hate him bat-shit crazy than he does.

And he knows who that is. So, as Primary Trump morphs, just like in 2016, into Candidate Trump, he will look to shore up his weaknesses.

Candidate Trump became a guy who preached bringing the US back from a dark place.

He ran on a populist platform that incorporated the Bernie Bros (remember them) as well as the tradesmen.

He broke the Democrats’ Trinity of Victimhood – Unions, Minorities, young people — that was their base and squeaked to victory over The Hildabeast.

If you think it’s Trump’s team or even US ‘white hats’ pushing out this stuff about Biden, you may be missing the obvious player, Hillary.

If there is one thing I know for certain about Trump it is that he’s a master of media. He knows exactly how and when to push everyone’s buttons.

For that reason (and many others) Trump’s only real choice for running mate is Tulsi Gabbard.

At a minimum, right now, Trump is using Gabbard, bringing her into the VP conversation. She’s okay with this. She’s allowing herself to be used by him. It’s mutually beneficial.

I’m well on the record as being a Gabbard fan (some would say simp… whatever). It doesn’t matter whether you trust her or not. It’s not about you. It’s about perception. And, for better or worse, Gabbard has a now long track record of service to the country that is honest.

She was someone targeted from the beginning as someone the DNC could groom into shape. Young, attractive, woman of color, veteran. Boxes are ticking off left and right. And those are all attributes that she still has which Trump doesn’t.

When Hillary stole the 2016 primary from Bernie Sanders she resigned from the DNC.

This is a woman who crossed Hillary Clinton and, so far, has lived to tell the tale. No mean feat in the 21st century.

Long story short, Gabbard has stones. Some would call them principles, but that’s a stretch to ascribe those to any politician. She told Davos to go scratch. She told Hillary to slag-off.

And in 2024, she’s an ex-Democrat ,on Fox News, headlining at CPAC etc. Is she a stalking horse for the establishment? I don’t think so. Is she a grifter who just wants to trade up from the collection of dead-enders that are the current Democrats? Maybe.

Again, I don’t care about these things, because here’s the real story.

Trump needs to run as a real Unity candidate. He’s destroyed the GOPe’s (GOP establishment) gaggle of neocons. Now, he needs to seal the deal with the emerging Radical Center I discussed in a recent article.

That {being for something better rather than against what is} becomes a decision point for a lot of people. It’s the moment when the established idea, brand, etc. wakes up to the threat and fights back. This is what the 16% chasm represents, that gulf between opposition and affirmation.

This is also what Davos and their ilk are truly exceptional at managing. They keep the Overton Window framed over irrelevant side issues to ensure that a new majority doesn’t “cross the 16% chasm,” by uniting over that better solution that doesn’t include them.

I’m calling this group they are afraid of, “The Radical Center.”

And every time I bring Gabbard up in the VP conversation I hear a whole lot of side issues discussed without actually addressing the core goals of how to save the country from collapsing into conflict.

So, allow me to make one of my lists of reasons why Trump has only one real choice for VP:

• Former Democrat Congresswoman, veteran, former Trump critic.

• Loudly rejected the Democrats for becoming something unrecognizable

• Stood up to Hillary Clinton

• She destroyed Kamala Harris in a DNC debate

• Is fundamentally populist in most of her positions

• Is NOT dogmatic about key issues, having shifted off previous positions on guns, abortion, etc.

• Is not a warhawk, but rather supports Trump’s views on foreign policy

• She’s a negotiator and a moderate.

• She’s a patriot with a strong sense of honor and duty.

• Ran a pure grassroots campaign for President in 2020, no outside donor support.

If you look at the totality of Gabbard’s record you see someone who is the opposite of Trump, but who winds up in the same place he did.

Politically, she is someone who neuters all of the Democrats’ screeching about Trump hating women, being a Nahtsi, and dog whistling for the alt-Right.

If he picks Gabbard as his running mate he neuters all of those narratives with normies, softens Trump’s bombast, while leaving the media and Davos with nothing but “he’s pandering” as their fall back position.

That will backfire on them hard and they will take the bait, hook, line, and sinker.

And, like her or not, Gabbard is no Sarah Palin for them to pick apart. She’s seasoned at this level of the game.

Lastly, she is Globalist/Neocon Insurance as Trump is more compromised on this front than she is. And when you run through the Senate right now, who can you point to that doesn’t have huge stalking-horse-for-globalist vibes? Rubio? Scott? Rick or Tim?

Go through the Senate of possible people to succeed Trump and give me a good name you can trust to survive even the transition period between November and January.

If you could then some of them would have already tried for the job during the primaries. None of them wanted the Ron DeSantis treatment.

Of all the options for Trump only Gabbard is the person who can reach out to voters that matter, the ones in swing states/counties who are looking for our politics to focus on country first and ideology second.

The fundamental problem with all of this is that Trump is not a hard-ass. He’s a deal-maker. Gabbard is a consensus-builder. We need a hard-ass. You go to war with the Generals you have and the army you’ve built, not the ones you want.

Trump isn’t the General for this war I want, he’s the one I’ve got. And if my alternative is Harris, Gruesome, or Hitlary, then I want Trump to have the best possible VP for the job. I don’t want Mike Pence 2.0, which is how I see any of the mannequins in the Senate.

Will Trump do this? I have no idea. Should he do it? I honestly don’t think he has a real choice.

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Ukraine is claiming another major successful operation in the Black Sea, with its military intelligence agency announcing that the large Russian patrol ship Sergey Kotov was sunk overnight after it was hit by high-tech sea drones.

While Russia has not confirmed the claim, Ukraine’s military said “a special operations unit destroyed the large patrol ship Sergey Kotov overnight with Magura V5 uncrewed vessels that are designed and built in Ukraine and laden with explosives.” 

The attack allegedly happened near the Kerch Strait, and would be a significant operational ‘win’ given the Sergey Kotov can carry cruise missiles and some 60 crew members.

Ukraine subsequently published video appearing to show the nighttime attack which left the ship severely damaged. The ship may have also had a helicopter on board at the time. “Right now this ship is on the seabed,” Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said.

The BBC has concluded that the video looks authentic:

Ukraine said the cost of the sunken Sergei Kotov ship was $65m (£51.2m), adding that it was hit near the Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea from Russia.

A video posted on social media appears to show the moment when the ship was hit. BBC Verify has looked at the video, released by Ukraine, said to be of the attack.

The vessel has similar structural features to a patrol ship of the same class as the Sergei Kotov. However, no number is visible on its side, so the footage does not make clear if it is the same ship.

The private security firm Ambrey has also said the attack happened at the port of Feodosia in Crimea. Typically the Kremlin doesn’t confirm such covert attacks or sinkings of its ships, but Russian military bloggers have acknowledged the incident.

Despite Ukraine forces being currently in retreat outside of Avdiivka, and suffering serious manpower and artillery shortages, they had some recent successes in attacks on Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet. Drone attacks on Crimea have also ramped up in the past days.

Last night, near Kerch, Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukrainian forces conducted a USV attack on the Russian Project 22160 patrol ship Sergey Kotov, scoring multiple hits, causing catastrophic damage.

Russian channels and the Ukrainian GUR report the vessel sank. pic.twitter.com/rLTQMxKKPB

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) March 5, 2024

Moscow believes these attacks utilizing both aerial and sea drones are assisted by Western intelligence, and the weapons themselves could be sourced to external backers as well, hence the Ukraine military’s emphasis that these drones were domestically produced (an attempt to preempt and deny suspicions that Western weaponry was used).

By Michael Every of Rabobank

The End/Beginning of a Golden Age

The Fed’s Bostic, an FOMC voter, just said rate cuts “could” reignite inflation, and one Q3 cut is possible, followed by a pause and another in Q4. The pushback, and push out, continues.

However, a broader set of voters should be on market minds today given it’s US Super Tuesday, which will bring the 2024 election into even sharper focus. That’s after the Supreme Court gave a 9-0 thrashing to Colorado’s idea of taking Trump off their state ballot: only Congress can do that, regardless of the ‘expert’ legal punditry which had claimed otherwise.

I repeat I was once told by an economist, “We don’t do politics.” But they all do without realizing it via their assumptions. Yet this is one of the rare occasions when it’s going to be impossible to deny that you do.

Our US strategist, Philip Marey, just took the logical step of basing his forecasts on the polls, which, for now, say a Trump win. This may displease some, and polls can be wrong. However, it’s a transparent basis from which to proceed, and assuming otherwise is also political. As Philip notes, a Trump win then implies a 10% tariff on all goods going into the US, and 60%+ on China. At which point things get even more political.

If the US forcibly narrows its trade deficit, it has huge implications for itself and those running trade surpluses with it. Yet modelling these outcomes via economic tools won’t work as they are static, not dynamic, and have an inherent bias that presumes we always return to equilibrium rather a different state. In reality, if the US abandons its dual role as global goods importer and exporter of the global reserve currency, ‘equilibrium’ is not a word to be using. Bifurcation might be.

Economists who “don’t do politics” should note if your conceptual foundations are wrong, your predictions will be too. Yet they deliberately edit out what Smith and Ricardo warn on how neoliberal systems break down: @BrankoMilan shows Smith was left-wing; Arrighi underlines he argued a strong state is needed to enforce competition to push prices lower; Ricardo said comparative advantage-based free trade won’t work without capital controls. So, how much should we really be shocked about “sellers’ inflation” and rising global protectionism? Even Austrian Schumpeter recanted his belief in free markets towards the end of his life when he admitted that freedom of action needs the invisible hand of morality as its logical underpinning.

There are, however, other ways of seeing. The implications of new, huge US tariffs can also be examined via lenses such as the Godley framework, as here by Michael Pettis, with its intersecting balance sheets and stock/flow approach. 20 years ago, I used it to logically deduce that US households were borrowing heavily to invest in housing, with the rest of the world’s capital neck deep too, with a ticking time of mortgage rate resets looming that would bring down the entire structure. This sounds painfully obvious today, but back then everyone ignored me to sell RMBS and say all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Such optimism is understandably not as prevalent today, even as risk-on trades and AI echo what we saw pre-GFC. Most of us get lots of things are wrong, just not how it plays out. On that front, Trump tariffs vs. market myopia deserves its own “An Un-Godley Mess” report. For now, however, the implication is there will be higher US inflation. Moreover, there are other political forces at play that suggest the same.

China’s National People’s Congress dropped the traditional press conference by the Premier for the first time since 1993, while announcing a 5% GDP target for 2024 – which I can report they already met.

Russian Minister Glazyev continues to talk about a BRICS commodity-based digital FX alongside settlement in national currencies: that’s bifurcation in a nutshell, if so.

Argentina is appealing to the US to overturn a $16bn court ruling against it that undoes its attempts to balance the budget and achieve macro stability: these geopolitics echo far and wide.   

The New Zealand Treasury just modelled an oil-price shock, the large-scale adoption of synthetic milk, and a trade shock where an unnamed Asian country, that isn’t Japan or South Korea, places 25% tariffs on Kiwi goods, which are “not realistic predictions of future events.” (All hurt a lot, but the oil shock is actually the largest.)

The EU is today to announce they will “shift to a war economy mode” to supply what Ukraine needs, as well as for their own security, according to an EU Commissioner. How will this be organised? Unclear. How much will this cost? A vast amount, if it is to mean anything. How will this be paid for? That’s the question to markets and economists who are ignoring this ‘politics’ despite funding and fighting war being the largest common thread through all of global economic, financial, and central-banking history.

The UK Budget tomorrow comes after a by-election win for a new left-wing Workers Party, which to show its class has no apostrophe and, yes, Leninist language. Its 10-point policy platform opposes NATO and imperialism, and proposes massive public spending. Is it going to win the next UK election? No. But it shows the British left is as split as the right; an appetite for real populism; and that a much-needed Western military build-up must surely be matched with social spending. In short, the fiscal bill ahead is huge. Which Godley frameworks have something to say about.  

Lastly on politics, and related to the UK byelection, The Atlantic claims ‘The Golden Age of the Jews in America is Ending’, as “Anti-Semitism on the right and the left threatens to bring to a close an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans – and demolish the liberal order they helped establish.” Of course, The Atlantic is home to many ‘expert’ pundits, and could be wrong. Yet the implications of a demolished liberal order may matter in time to markets; and the correlation between societies turning antisemitic, and then failing economically, is another of the largest common threads through global economic and financial history. Sadly, this headline is also not a shock if you removed false assumptions from your predictions: in 2019, I was warning of an illiberal ‘Age of Rage’ from both the left and right that would sweep institutions and norms before it, concluding, “Markets need to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead.” They still do.

Indeed, as one golden age may be ending, the linked political and geopolitical breakdowns are seeing more talk about the revival of a monetary golden age, or a digital one. Make of that what you will.

A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has revealed that the Biden administration has flown at least 320,000 migrants into the United States in an effort to reduce the number of crossings at the southern border, according to Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“The program at the center of the FOIA litigation is perhaps the most enigmatic and least-known of the Biden administration’s uses of the CBP One cellphone scheduling app, even though it is responsible for almost invisibly importing by air 320,000 aliens with no legal right to enter the United States since it got underway in late 2022,” wrote Bensman.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had initially refused to disclose information about the flights, which use a cell phone app, CBP One, to arrange.

“Under these legally dubious parole programs, aliens who cannot legally enter the country use the CBP One app to apply for travel authorization and temporary humanitarian release from those airports. The parole program allows for two-year periods of legal status during which adults are eligible for work authorization,” Bensman continues.

The flights resulted in illegal immigrants being placed in at least 43 American cities from January through December 2023.

Under the terms of their release, migrants are able to remain in the US for two years without obtaining legal status, and are meanwhile eligible for work authorization.

The Biden administration initially refused to disclose which airports undocumented aliens were being flown into, citing a ‘law enforcement exception,’ new information reveals that the government thought ‘bad actors’ might pose a safety risk or create law enforcement opportunities – with CBP lawyers writing that revealing the specific airports would “reveal information about the relative number of individuals arriving, and thus resources expended at particular airports.”

Treason indeed!

In response to the CIS report, Elon Musk wrote on X: “Treason indeed! Ushering in vast numbers of illegals is why Secretary Mayorkas was impeached by the House,” adding “They are importing voters. This is why groups on the far left fight so hard to stop voter ID requirements, under the absurd guise of protecting the right to vote.”

Treason indeed! Ushering in vast numbers of illegals is why Secretary Mayorkas was impeached by the House.

They are importing voters. This is why groups on the far left fight so hard to stop voter ID requirements, under the absurd guise of protecting the right to vote. https://t.co/WhtVFyS6sa

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2024

 Musk also suggested that the national security threat posed by the program makes it “highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11.”

This administration is both importing voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants.

It is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11. Just a matter of time. pic.twitter.com/kuilPxAvv3

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2024

Meanwhile, in 2022 it was revealed that the Biden administration was flying illegal immigrants all over the US on redeye flights, according to the NY Post (and noted by modernity.news)

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Oily GMO tortilla chip brand Doritos is facing widespread backlash after some genius within the Spanish arm of the company decided to hire a non-binary transgender person who appears to have previously endorsed pedophilia to sell its snacks.

Yes, really.

The ‘transgender artist’ Samantha Hudson, formally known as Iván González Ranedo, has been given the role of brand ambassador for Doritos, and featured in a sponsored program called “Crunch Talks.”

A clip was posted showing the person previously advocating for “the destruction and for the annihilation of the traditional family.”

“I advocate for the destruction and for the annihilation of the traditional family.”
Brand ambassador for Doritos and self-described pedophiIe Samantha Hudson pic.twitter.com/j4hPgmoaxi

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 4, 2024

Lovely stuff. But it gets worse.

A Newsweek report points to charges that ‘Hudson’ allegedly previously posted the statement “quiero hacer cosas gamberras como meterme a una nina de 12 anos por el ojete,” to social media.

It translates as “I want to do thuggish things like stick a 12 year old girl up her asshole.”

Doritos just picked Samantha Hudson as their brand ambassador in Spain

Samantha Hudson:
-Admitted to being a pedophiIe
-Identifies as a non-binary trans girl
-Openly mocked victims of child r*pe
-An advocate for “annihiIating, completely destroying, and abolishing the… pic.twitter.com/4t66fE17cN

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 4, 2024

Another tweet from 2014 is said to read “In the middle of the street in Mallorca in panties and screaming that I’m a nymphomaniac in front of a super beautiful 8-year-old girl.”

Lo primero es preguntarse si es verdad que @doritosES va a promocionar algo de la cosa esa llamada @badbixsamantha
Y luego plantearse seriamente hacerles un buen boicot a ambos: la marca y el macho ♂. pic.twitter.com/sqoHy52IfB

— 🅹🅰🆁🆃🅾 🅳🅴 🆁🅾🅹🅾🆂 (@jartoderojos) March 3, 2024

The ‘artist’ reportedly claimed it was a ‘joke’, but not that many are convinced that child rape is funny.

.@Doritos why do y’all have pedophiles as brand ambassadors? https://t.co/iduXwB5JJW

— Hodgetwins (@hodgetwins) March 4, 2024

Samantha Hudson. New brand ambassador for Doritos in Spain. Because Satan wasn’t available. pic.twitter.com/teC5DlqgkS

— Shenandoah Writer (@ShenandoahWrit1) March 4, 2024

Other past tweets from ‘Hudson’ appear to mock women who have been victims of sexual abuse, saying they should be spat at.

Doritos is doubling down on wokeness by hiring Samantha Hudson, a transgender “woman” and self-admitted p*do as its brand ambassador in Spain, resulting in calls for the boycott of the company’s products.

He has expressed a desire to be with 12 year old girls. In addition to… pic.twitter.com/XdNSf3WLZI

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 4, 2024

Doritos are produced by Frito-Lay, a wholly owned subsidiary of PepsiCo. The company has not yet commented on the situation.

This makes Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney backfire look positively wholesome.

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