The Burning Platform’s Jim Quinn unloads a truck-full of uncomfortable realities in this brief comment:

The entire world is nothing but a racket.

Just call it a war and the funding is never ending.

Why would any politician or general ever want peace?

Their funding would stop.

Why would Big Pharma and their media co-conspirators ever want to cure cancer or any disease created by other mega-corporations?

Their riches would evaporate.

The war on terror must never be won, because the Department of Homeland Security and all the parasites that live off that bloated cow need your money.

Joe Rogan points out the same narrative when it comes to homelessness. 

Joe Rogan On The Homelessness Problem In California 🚨🚨🚨

🔊

“The people managing these homeless programs for the state are making $250,000 per year and have no incentive to solve it. If they solve it, they are out of a job. So they just manage it and ask for more funding.… pic.twitter.com/9HqPvHkjei

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) August 24, 2023

Bureaucrats and departments in all these Democrat shitholes don’t want to solve the homelessness problem. They would be out of jobs.

Everything is a racket.

On Thursday, Biden’s DOJ slapped SpaceX with a lawsuit for not hiring refugees and asylum seekers, one day after Musk announced he was suing organizations funded by George Soros for lying about ‘hate incidents’ on X (formerly known as Twitter).

And while there’s no obvious link between the two, the timing couldn’t be more suspicious.

Anyhoo, following the absurd shot at SpaceX – which is bound by the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which regulates the export of regulated technologies, such as rocket parts – curious internet denizens discovered that the Assistant Attorney General spearheading the case, Kristen Clarke, appears to be a total black supremacist.

On Thursday night, venture capitalist Max Meyer tweeted: “FLASHBACK: Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who is suing @elonmusk  and @SpaceX  for “discriminating against asylum seekers” was an avowed black supremacist while at Harvard University,” referring to a 1994 letter to the Harvard Crimson claiming that blacks are genetically superior to whites for various reasons. The letter was a response to “Defending The Bell Curve,” which argues that human intelligence is a combination of both inherited and environmental factors.

Included is a quote from the Black Students Association, which Clarke was president of at the time, which reads: “Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities.“

FLASHBACK:

Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who is suing @elonmusk and @SpaceX for “discriminating against asylum seekers” was an avowed black supremacist while at Harvard University

“Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities”

🧐 pic.twitter.com/raEsZ8N6kL

— Max Meyer (@mualphaxi) August 25, 2023

The letter is attributed to “no writer,” however it ends with “Kristen Clarke ’97′” and “Victoria Kennedy ’97,” with a note reading “Clarke is president of the Black Students Association.” Clark clearly wrote, co-wrote, or at minimum endorsed, its message.

The entire letter is reproduced below in its entirety (emphasis ours)

Of course…

Ah, the Tucker Carlson Rule.

“Whatever they accuse you of, they have already done.”

— Joshua Lisec | The Ghostwriter (@JoshuaLisec) August 25, 2023

About time “Black supremacist” became an acceptable term in race relations discourse.

— Amit Schandillia (@Schandillia) August 25, 2023

It does look that way.

— babcia1 (@wieslawawy) August 25, 2023

Any racism is racism.
Now imagine ANY white person saying it?

So equally treated racism must be whoever it comes from!

— NeutrinoInlovetweet (@NeutrinoInlove) August 25, 2023

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Saudi Arabia is considering a bid from a Chinese state firm to build a nuclear power plant, which could give the Kingdom leverage in possible talks for U.S. assistance for establishing a civil nuclear industry, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, quoting Saudi officials with knowledge of the matter.

Saudi Arabia has been actively seeking help with expertise in nuclear energy to develop its own civil nuclear generation capacity. The U.S. has been an obvious first choice among potential partners, but Washington has taken a cautious approach. The United States has made it clear that it would only help Riyadh develop nuclear generation capabilities if any agreement includes preventing the enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of plutonium from the reactors, to prevent the weaponization of nuclear power.

Now Saudi Arabia is evaluating a bid from China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) to build a nuclear power plant in an Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, close to the border with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Saudi officials told the Journal.

Those officials also admitted to the WSJ that the idea to consider the Chinese bid was an attempt to gain leverage in talks with the U.S. about its help for Saudi Arabia’s civil nuclear program, and potentially extract some compromise on the non-proliferation issues.

The Middle East is not known for its nuclear power generation capabilities. With all its oil wealth, the region has traditionally relied on fossil fuels to meet its electricity needs.

In 2020, the first nuclear power plant in the Arab world began operating in the UAE. Plans are to expand it to a facility that would meet a quarter of the country’s electricity demand.

However, observers warn any expansion of nuclear capabilities in the sensitive Middle Eastern region could lead to a nuclear arms race that could end in disaster.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“Georgia could determine who is our next president. A TEAM of lawyers needs to watch them count every single vote. They can start in Fulton County where we are having water leaks.”

– Fulton County DA Fani Willis, Nov. 4, 2020

What to make of this mugshot? Serious as a heart attack? I’d hate to be you on that fateful day? Table turner? Energy shift? Game on? Daddy’s in da house? Good career move? You can run but you can’t hide? Please, Br’er Fox, don’t fling me in that-there briar patch…

Good luck trying this case, DA Fani Willis. And by all means roll the TV cameras in the courtroom. You are about to supplant the Scopes trial of 1925 as the most notoriously ridiculous piece of legal work in US history. That one, over in Tennessee, was called “the Monkey Trial” when a high school teacher named John Scopes was charged with teaching the theory of evolution in his biology class. It got the national news spotlight for the duration. The state enlisted three-time Democratic presidential nominee Williams Jennings Bryan as a special prosecutor. Poor Bryan, famously sweating in the southern July heat, was made a fool of by Chicago lawyer for the defense Clarence Darrow. Bryan died of a stroke days after the conclusion of the trial. It also killed what remained of his reputation.

This week, DA Willis staged the circus parade of bookings, forcing the large cast of indictees – most of them attorneys for Mr. Trump – to submit to the finger-printing and mugshot ceremony in the county jail, in case any of them had thoughts of decamping to Uruguay. The cable news peanut gallery went berserk with glee at the humiliation of election denial celebrities Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell especially. On Thursday, attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who advised Georgia GOP officials on the process of assembling alternate electors in the case of election fraud under Georgia law, demanded a speedy trial.

Under Georgia’s speedy trial law, Mr. Chesebro’s trial would have to take place this fall. (Such are the guiles of the law.) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper called it, “an aggressive filing.” Ms. Willis had hoped to try all 19 defendants together during the 2024 presidential primary season, to support her RICO charges. Meanwhile, three other defendants, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, filed to have their cases removed to the federal court, in so far as the actions they are accused of taking happened while they worked in the service of the US government. Mr. Meadows is accused of seeking by email to get the phone number of a Pennsylvania election official.

Ms. Willis’s case hinges on a number of novel propositions. First, that it is somehow against the law to object to the outcome of an election. And second, that the process for relief in such a case, as provided in Georgia’s election contest law and the US Electoral Count Act of 1887, does not apply to Mr. Trump and his lawyers. Anyone who intends to challenge the outcome must necessarily assemble a panel of alternate electors if state officials cannot certify the election properly and in good faith. Ms. Willis refers to these erroneously as “fake electors.” Mr. Trump and his co-defendants will necessarily have to present evidence that the Georgia presidential election of 2020 was not certified properly or in good faith.

Will the defendants be allowed to present evidence of serious irregularities in the 2020 Georgia election results? If not, would that not be grounds for dismissal. So far, Democrats in charge of the machinery of law all over the country have skated on mere assertions that the 2020 election was fair. In Georgia, none of the principals involved in the dispute have been subject to cross-examination, the best instrument for truth-finding in the American legal system. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Sec’y of State Brad Raffensperger may not be so hot for an airing of what actually went on Nov 3, 2020 and the days after, especially the validity of over 100,000 mail-in ballots in a state where “Joe Biden’s” margin of victory was a mere 11,799 votes.

Mr. Trump seems to be thriving under the tribulation of four court cases brought against him as he runs for election in 2024. Each new set of charges boosts his poll numbers. It helps him hugely that the cases are transparently idiotic and mendacious. If he is initially convicted in any of them, he can still run for president and be elected, even if he’s jailed — as Eugene Debs did in 1920 getting 913,693 votes running on the Socialist Party from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was jailed under the 1917 Espionage Act for speaking out against America’s entry into the First World War.

The Party of Chaos is running scared. Everybody knows that “Joe Biden” can’t possibly run for another term and yet the public debate is so grotesquely disabled that nobody will talk about it. Most particularly, they will not talk about who might take his place.

All they are really demonstrating with this barrage of prosecutions against their chief adversary is how broken, craven, and degenerate the party is, and what a menace it is, as they like to say, to our democracy.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

From a macro perspective, “bad data” dominated the week with the Citi macro surprise index tumbling most since April…

Source: Bloomberg

From a micro perspective, it was all about retailers (consumer credit challenges and shrink) and NVDA (keeping the dream alive for the AI bubble). Retail stock ended the week lower and while NVDA exploded higher on the earnings news, it collapsed back in the last two days, down over 10% from its highs…

Source: Bloomberg

Of course, Fed Chair Powell’s address today was a key event, but as Bloomberg’s Cameron Crise notes, while it was tilted hawkish, it really said nothing new…

The “TL;DR” summary of Jerome Powell’s speech more or less boils down to “we’ll hike again if we need to but won’t if we don’t.”

That’s not exactly ground-breaking stuff, which is one reason that the market response has been fairly muted relative to the anticipation of this speech.

Interestingly, despite the bad data, anticipation of Powell’s speech – and his actual speech – sent a hawkish shiver through short-term rate expectations (with a 25% chance now of a Sept hike and a 45% chance of a Nov hike)…

Source: Bloomberg

This is what that looks like for the curve…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasuries were very mixed this week with the long-end dramatically outperforming (2Y +10bps, 30Y -10bps)…

Source: Bloomberg

Which means the yield curve flattened dramatically, inverting deeper (back towards the July FOMC meeting reversal)…

Source: Bloomberg

The 2Y Yield surged back above 5.00%, rising to the July highs and reversing modestly…

Source: Bloomberg

Equities were also mixed with Nasdaq outperforming (along with the S&P) while The Dow was the ugliest horse in the glue factory, ending lower on the week with Small Caps down on the week…

The dollar ended the week marginally higher, bouncing back from Wednesdays plunge…

Source: Bloomberg

Crypto was volatile and mixed but while Ripple rallied and Solana sold off, Bitcoin and Ethereum ended the week practically unchanged…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin glued around $26,000…

Source: Bloomberg

Spot Gold scrambled back above $1900, and held it even with today’s post-Powell puke…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil dropped on Powell’s speech (demand fears) and then accelerated lower on a Tansim tweet detailing the US-Iran deal (supply fears)… and then ripped bck into the green as everyone realized this is not new news.

Oil sliding as algos price in for the 19th time that Biden is about to make a deal with Iran to allow oil exports, even though Iran already exports most of its oil in violation of US sanctions.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 25, 2023

And this is probably nothing…

As of August the implied crude shortfall has really accelerated with the latest 4-week average showing draws of close to 5mbd. About 2mbd come from onshore tanks, with China having shifted from a stockbuilding to a stockdrawing pattern. And an even bigger figure is emerging for… https://t.co/P9fZxEnWho pic.twitter.com/Zv6FTo4oUn

— Giovanni Staunovo🛢 (@staunovo) August 25, 2023

However, overall, WTI was lower on the week, but managed to get back above $80 by today’s close…

Finally, what happens next?

Source: Bloomberg

Could it really?

Via The Cradle,

General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Jordanian TV on Thursday that US forces illegally occupying oil fields in Syria’s northeast will remain there for the foreseeable future to “fight ISIS.”

“The ideology is not yet dead, and there are some ISIS terrorists that are still roaming the deserts of Syria and somewhat into Iraq, so that presents a threat,” Milley told Jordan’s Al-Mamlaka TV.

“There are still fighters in small groups in and around Syria and around Iraq… and if we were to somehow suddenly withdraw, those forces could reconstruct themselves. So the situation is much, much better than it was. But it still requires a level of commitment. So we’ve got some modest amount of forces in Syria, and we’ve got forces in Iraq,” he added.

The US military chief also said that the decision to leave Syria falls on President Joe Biden. “I can’t imagine that the United States would ever walk away from [West Asia]. I think we’ll remain committed for many, many years and decades to come,” he stressed.

He said this a day after the US envoy to Iraq confirmed that large-scale troop movements in Iraq are “part of the exchange of existing forces.” Iraqi officials previously said that hundreds of US troops moving inside Iraq were on their way to Syria.

While the White House claims its troops are present in Syria to confront ISIS, Russian intelligence and Syrian locals say Washington’s forces house and train extremist militants in the 55-kilometer-zone surrounding the Al-Tanf occupation base in southeast Syria.

An in-depth investigation by The Cradle shows that the US Army was aware ISIS was gaining ground in Syria a decade ago and did nothing to stop them, particularly when the group crossed the Syrian into Iraq border in 2014 and launched an assault to capture the city of Mosul.

The US military also ignored ISIS’ advance on the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra in 2015, which by 2017 had been liberated twice by Syrian and Russian forces.

ISIS is currently seeing a resurgence in Syria, carrying out multiple terror attacks against civilians and army personnel, with some reports saying the militants are operating from US-controlled areas in Deir Ezzor.

According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), Syria is witnessing the “most violent” escalation in ISIS activities since it was “eliminated geographically” in 2019.

.@WhatTheHekmat crashed the meeting of a lobbying front that ended the life-saving US sanctions exemption for post-earthquake Syria.

An ex-State Dept. official revealed their goal: partition Syria and create a de facto Caliphate for rebranded Al Qaeda.https://t.co/fGtyYddvNy

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) August 22, 2023

Earlier this month, Damascus accused Washington of “sponsoring terrorist organizations, foremost of which is ISIS” and said that using Sunni Muslim and Kurdish militias is a “tool to implement its plans towards Syria and the region.”

Previous US support for ISIS was illustrated by a 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document that indicated a Salafist principality like the one established by ISIS in 2014 would emerge in western Iraq and eastern Syria. The document indicated that this would be a positive outcome in the view of the US and its regional partners as part of their covert war against the Syrian government, which began in 2011.

The UPS and the Teamsters Union deal has likely emboldened unionized workers nationwide to threaten companies with strikes for higher wages and better benefits. The latest is United Auto Workers members voted in favor of union leaders reserving the right to strike if no labor contract is agreed upon with the Detroit Three automakers (Stellantis NV, General Motors Co., and Ford Motor Co) in mid-September. 

On Friday, UAW President Shawn Fain told members, “97% of you voted to authorize a strike because you know that we do have the power, that we are united and we’re not afraid. And we’re gonna win. The Big Three’s race to the bottom ends on Sept. 14.”

The votes are in, and the results are astounding: 97% of Big Three members voted YES to authorize a strike if the automakers don’t give us a fair deal.

Get strike ready: https://t.co/gbtJCcQMwN pic.twitter.com/ZZ6IwbHUqs

— UAW (@UAW) August 25, 2023

“Our goal is not to strike. I want to make that very clear. Our goal is to bargain good agreements for our members,” Fain said during the Facebook Live event. “But all we’ve tried to do with this is prepare everybody in the event that we have to take action to get a fair and just contract.”

UAW President Shawn Fain Announcing Strike Authorization Vote 8/25/23 https://t.co/1WDQKbDstd

— UAW (@UAW) August 25, 2023

Fain dismissed extending the existing contract, drawing a hard line in the sand for Detroit Three’s auto executives. While contract extensions generally serve as a lifeline during union and company negotiations, he effectively shut that down. 

“We have a lot of options that we’re looking at but extensions on the contract is not one of them,” Fain continued. 

He said, “We’ve been clear” to Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis about “what our priorities are,” such as a 46% wage increase, reinstating traditional pensions, and trimming the workweek down from 40 to 32 hours. 

Union members practiced picketing earlier this week. One member warned: “We’re ready to strike. We’re tired.” 

Harris described a grueling pace (on the assembly line) that left her legs injured and required hospitalization at one point. She said the line moves constantly.

“We’re ready to strike. We’re tired,” she said.https://t.co/7xDX0vNeAd

— UAW (@UAW) August 25, 2023

“‘None of us want to go on a strike it’s a scary place to be. But if we don’t fight now we’re not gonna have another opportunity to fight this for generations.’ Region 9 Director Dan Vicente said.”

“‘None of us want to go on a strike it’s a scary place to be. But if we don’t fight now we’re not gonna have another opportunity to fight this for generations.’ Region 9 Director Dan Vicente said.”https://t.co/Iv9dQmzCFN

— UAW (@UAW) August 25, 2023

… and this.

Almost time to rage against the Big Three Machine ⏰️ https://t.co/YXUKj66tm3

— UAW (@UAW) August 25, 2023

The Detroit-based union has 150,000 workers, and we noted weeks ago, “Automakers have historically resisted significant pay increases, especially this unusually large one.” 

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com,

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has asked a judge to approve a plan to distribute to investors the $40 million Tesla and Elon Musk have agreed to pay to settle a case over Musk’s infamous tweet from 2018 that he had secured funding to take the EV car manufacturer private.

The SEC filed a request with a judge this week to pay out $41.5 million to 3,350 eligible claimants who had sued Musk for the “funding secured” tweet. That’s around $12,400 per investor, on average.  

The judge in the case has said he would endorse the SEC proposal for payments to the investor claimants on September 1 if Musk or Tesla do not object to the plan.

Investors in Tesla have sued Musk for misleading and defrauding them after the Tesla founder tweeted in August 2018, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.”

The tweet sparked wide speculation and wild swings in the share price of Tesla, while a deal never happened, although Musk has claimed he had a handshake deal with investors from Saudi Arabia to help fund taking Tesla private.  

Musk backtracked on the idea to take Tesla private two weeks later. Tesla will stay public, Musk said on August 24, 2018, ending more than two weeks of speculation and calculation about how much a go-private deal would cost and who could be involved in it.  

A month later, the SEC charged Musk in September 2018 with securities fraud for the infamous tweets about taking Tesla private at $420 per share and for claiming “funding secured” for a potential deal. A few days later, Musk agreed to settle the securities fraud charge by the SEC in a settlement that included removing Musk as chairman at Tesla, and Musk and Tesla paying fines of $20 million each.

China’s problems are growing… and their ability to ‘fix’ it seems to be fading fast.

Having strong-armed funds into ‘not selling’ stock last week, then strongly-suggesting that companies escalate their share buyback programs (and then bullying banks into buying yuan to support the currency against the green back), and then clearly stepping with a ‘National Team’ panic bid (that didn’t work) Beijing was faced with the reality that nothing was working with Chinese stocks tumbling still.

Most problematically, the half-lifes of these interventions is shrinking rapidly…

And as Bloomberg reports, overnight saw the shortest duration of post-stimulus gains yet…

The Friday afternoon unveiling of property stimulus measures sparked an initial flurry of buying, with China’s benchmark CSI 300 Index reversing losses to climb as much as 0.3%.

But the gauge resumed declines after about 10 minutes, and within 30 minutes, CSI 300 had hit fresh session lows…

“The market is less sensitive to news at this current stage,” said Li Fuwen, a fund manager at Guangdong Value Forest Private Securities Investment Management.

“What’s key right now is letting that downward momentum run out organically as polices have already turned supportive but it will take time for the shorts to be exhausted.”

Overseas funds, which have been fleeing the mainland market, were sellers again on Friday.

They offloaded the equivalent of $10.7 billion in a 13-day run of withdrawals through Wednesday, the longest stretch since Bloomberg began tracking the data in 2016.

So, China has already resorted to its ‘plunge protectors’ and failed and now sees its ‘targeted’ stimulus measures doing nothing. With capital outflows soaring, one wonders just how far and fast Beijing is willing to go.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Thousands of illegal immigrants are simply walking over the border into the U.S. after the federal government decided to leave the gates wide open, saying that there is a risk of floods and resulting environmental hazards.

The New York Post reports “The US Border Patrol has now admitted it’s responsible for the decision to leave giant flood gates in the border wall wide open — giving thousands of illegal immigrants an easy opportunity to stream into Arizona.”

The report notes that “Border Patrol agents, acting on superiors’ orders, welded some 114 gates open to stop anyone from closing them — which the agents had repeatedly been doing in a bid to stop people from being able to cross the border.”

The CBP claims that “High water flow combined with excessive sediment and debris buildup can stress or comprise the design integrity of the barrier,” and therefore they have literally left the border wide open.

As a result, cartels are taking migrants by the busload and just dropping them off so they can walk into the country:

Brandon Judd, the president of the national Border Patrol union is enraged, stating that “Those gates should never be open,” adding “In my opinion and in the Border Patrol agent’s opinion, those gates should never come open.”

“We thought the agents were going to tell us something,” one Ecuadorean migrant said. “But we just walked in.”

Said another from Cuba: “It was so easy to get into the U.S.”

“Nothing like our journey through Mexico. That part was hard,” she added. “I thought there was going to be more security.”

NEWSNATION: “The floodgates are literally open here in the Tucson [border] sector,” where illegal immigrants are “coming through an open door.”

“There are a 141 different gates along the southern border … and the majority of those are open by the federal government.” pic.twitter.com/ILqXAvQzZW

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 24, 2023

Journalist Bill Melugin has been documenting the fallout of the gates being wide open for days now:

Top Border Patrol 3 sectors yesterday:
1) Rio Grande Valley – 1,700+
2) Tucson, AZ – 1,500+ (this is where the federal government has welded open border gates and masses of migrants are coming through daily, see attached article.)
3) Del Rio – 1,300+ https://t.co/Wm75v39ElA

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) August 24, 2023

*  *  *

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