Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council John Kirby suggested in a Fox News interview Thursday that Ukraine could received US F-16 fighter jets way ahead of schedule. 

“Most likely, the F-16s will arrive in Ukraine before the end of the year. However, we do not believe that F-16s alone can alter the situation on the battlefield,” Kirby said.

Very likely, training for Ukrainian pilots—which hasn’t even begun yet (at least officially) given NATO press statements have indicated the Denmark-bases training program is set to begin in August—won’t be complete by then.

Top Zelensky officials, including the Ukrainian president himself, have pleaded for more advanced weaponry to arrive on the battlefield sooner. Amid what’s increasingly acknowledged in mainstream press as a failing counteroffensive, Ukraine’s military leaders have urged ‘superiority of the skies’. 

But it’s clear that Kirby has downplayed that even Western fighter jets will be a major game-changer. He also emphasized in the interview that the most immediate need remains greater amounts of artillery ammunition, given especially the superior supplies which the Russians possess.

Kirby listed out what he called the “four A’s”… as “artillery, ammunition, air defense and armor—tanks.”

Ukrainian media too has begun to acknowledge that Western fighters may have little impact on the overall negative course of the counteroffensive:

A week ago, Lieutenant General Douglas Sims said that conditions for a transfer of F-16s are not “ideal.” He stressed that Russians still have air defense capability, hinting that the number of jets that can arrive will not change the course of the counteroffensive.

President Putin and Kremlin officials have said West-supplied jets will “burn” just like other foreign equipment. They’ve also warned that NATO is “playing with fire” in approving them for the Ukrainians.

“The US may transfer F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine already this year. But we believe that the F-16 alone will not be able to turn the tide,” John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications said. pic.twitter.com/2gdtG2Cc0V

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) July 21, 2023

Initially, F-16s are expected to be sent “likely from European countries that have excess F-16 supplies” – according to the prior words of Jake Sullivan from the NATO summit in Vilnius last week.

Russian foreign minister Lavrov has in the meantime underscored that the F-16s are capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons, and so will be treated by Russian forces as such.

“We have informed the nuclear powers – the US, UK and France – that Russia can’t ignore the ability of these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons,” the foreign minister said earlier this month. “No assurances [by the West] will help here,” he warned. In the midst of fighting, the Russian military isn’t going to investigate whether any specific jet is equipped to deliver nuclear weapons or not,” he added.

Lavrov said yesterday that U.S.-built F-16 fighter jets can “accommodate” nuclear weapons and warned that supplying Kyiv with them will escalate the conflict further.

John Kirby also had a message for Lavrov: “If you’re worried about Ukrainian military capabilities, then you… pic.twitter.com/CzNYcJf6Fe

— Yasmina (@yasminalombaert) June 6, 2023

“The very fact of the appearance of such systems within the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be considered by us as a threat from the West in the nuclear domain,” Lavrov warned. 

Authored by T.J. Muscaro via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Angel Studios’ anti-people trafficking movie, “Sound of Freedom,” has earned nearly seven times its original budget after only two weeks at the box office.

Shedding a light on a dark, shadowy world—especially child sex trafficking—the film’s commercial success comes years after its production, surviving a corporate merger, the COVID-19 pandemic, and reports of several screenings gone awry.

The picture owes a lot to two men who wanted everyone to see it—the producer and co-star Eduardo Verastagui and president of Goya Foods, Bob Unanue.

Opening on July 4, “Sound of Freedom” just surpassed $100 million at the box office, $85 million of which came from domestic theaters. It was made on a $14.5 million budget.

Starring Jim Caviezel (“The Passion of the Christ”) as former Homeland Security Agent and Operation Underground Railroad founder Tim Ballard, the movie is a call-to-action that tells the true story of how hundreds of people were rescued from human trafficking.

It saw an increase of more than 30 percent in audience attendance in its second week, and more than 10,000 verified audience members have contributed to its 100 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

It also continues to compete with mainstream movies with much lighter and more entertainment-focused subject matters and much higher budgets.

But this successful movie might not have ever seen the inside of a theater without the help of food giant Goya Foods.

“Sound of Freedom” had originally been ordered by 20th Century Fox with Mr. Verastagui already on as its producer and supporting role.

But the movie became one of the many Fox projects shelved after the merger with The Walt Disney Company.

“We helped him buy [“Sound of Freedom”] from Disney [and] became executive producers on that,” Mr. Unanue told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. “It just so happened that several years later trying to get it distributed that Angel Studios appeared on the scene.”

Goya did not disclose the amount of money it contributed to the project.

The film was completed before the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite Disney releasing the rights, that theater-closing event would require its producers to wait a little bit longer.

Angel Studios acquired the distribution rights in 2023. He said Angel Studios was “a godsend” in turning around the movie for theatrical release in “just a few months.” Now, he said, they are in talks with Mel Gibson to do a series on human trafficking.

Caring About Victims

Tied to the completion and distribution of “Sound of Freedom” is the creation of Goya Cares, Mr. Unanue’s own program, which provides support to several nonprofits fighting child and human trafficking.

Working primarily on the homefront, it supports several charities already entrenched in the fight to end trafficking and provide safe houses for victims, such as Catholic Charities and the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC).

It also works with the Monique Burr Foundation to provide lesson plans and educational awareness in schools.

“At the center of Goya Cares is a heart, and our heart reaches out to these victims of child trafficking and children who are suffering from mental illness so that they may have hope to live in a world where their life is valued, their freedom is a reality and their mind is at peace,” Mr. Unanue’s mission statement for the program states.

“They need to be reminded that they are precious gifts from God.”

Read more here…

During the regional bank failures in March, we directed our readership to focus on the next potential crisis: “CRE Nuke Goes Off With Small Banks Accounting For 70% Of Commercial Real Estate Loans.” By late March, Morgan Stanley warned clients of an upcoming maturity wall in commercial real estate, which amounts to $500 billion of loans in 2024, and a total of $2.5 trillion in debt that comes due over the next five years. 

In a recent Bloomberg interview, Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group warned that the CRE space is in a “Category 5 hurricane.” He said, “It’s sort of a blackout hovering over the entire industry until we get some relief or some understanding of what the Fed’s going to do over the longer term.”

The current downturn in CRE could persist for years, if not through the end of this decade. Jan Mischke, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, along with Olivia White, a senior partner at McKinsey, and Aditya Sanghvi, a senior partner and leader of McKinsey’s real estate special initiative, published a note in Fortune, warning “$800 billion of office space in just nine cities could become obsolete by 2030.” 

The authors of the report blame the CRE downturn on the “shift to remote and hybrid work prompted two further shifts in people’s behavior”: 

First, many residents, untethered from their offices and therefore less fearful of long commutes, moved away from urban cores. New York City’s urban core (that is, the dozen densest counties in the metropolitan area) lost 5% of its population from mid-2020 to mid-2022. San Francisco’s urban core (San Francisco County, Alameda County, and San Mateo County) lost 6%.

Second, consumers began shopping less at brick-and-mortar stores–and far less at stores in urban cores, where people were now less likely either to work or to live. Foot traffic near stores in metropolitan areas remains 10 to 20% below pre-pandemic levels, but the differences between urban and suburban traffic recovery are substantial. For example, in late 2022, foot traffic near New York’s suburban stores was 16% lower than it had been in January 2020, while foot traffic near stores in the urban core was 36% lower.

As fewer employees work in the office, demand for office space will fall. By 2030, such demand will be as much as 20% lower, depending on the city–even in a moderate scenario in which office attendance goes up but remains lower than it was before the pandemic.

And as fewer consumers shop at brick-and-mortar stores, demand for retail space will fall as well, according to our model. In the urban core of London, the hardest-hit city, demand for retail space will be 22% lower in 2030 than it was in 2019 in a moderate scenario.

Some of the most significant declines in office and retail space demand through 2030 will be in major US cities such as San Francisco and New York City.

The authors note that the demand for “residential space will suffer less”… Well, according to their forecasting model. 

“The reduced demand will have major impacts on urban stakeholders. For example, in just nine cities that we studied especially closely, $800 billion of office space could become obsolete by 2030. And macroeconomic complications could make matters even worse,” the authors continued. Without office workers in downtown areas, economic recoveries in major cities will be a “U” shape or, in some cases, an “L.” 

The unraveling of downtowns is already underway. We shared a video this week of scenes of San Francisco’s downtown transformed into a ‘ghost town.’ Building owners in the crime-ridden metro area are already giving up and defaulting as vacancies rise, crime surges, and refinancing is near impossible in today’s climate as the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates sky-high to tame the worst inflation in a generation. 

We shift our attention to Baltimore City, where office towers are being dumped in an apparent firesale. 

• Beginning Of CRE Firesale? Baltimore Office Tower Dumped At 63% Discount
• CRE Panic Hits Baltimore As Second Office Tower Dumped At 69% Discount

The authors failed to report that the sliding demand for office towers isn’t just because of “remote and hybrid work” but also due to an exodus of companies fleeing crime-ridden progressive cities that fail to enforce law and order. 

If McKinsey’s predictions are correct, certain segments of the CRE market are expected to experience prolonged turmoil for years. Some US mayors have proposed an immediate solution to convert office towers into multi-family units. However, this transformation could take years due to the time-consuming processes of obtaining permits and construction.  

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Amid a historic wave of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully, an overwhelming majority of Americans polled say that illegal immigration is a crisis or—at best—a “major problem.”

A recent poll by Gallup found that 39 percent of Americans believe the border situation is a full-blown “crisis.” Another 33 percent think it’s a “major problem,” meaning that a whopping 72 percent believe the situation on the border is bad enough to be considered seriously problematic.

Views on illegal immigration held by Republicans – who have long opposed open borders – have remained mostly unchanged from 2019, when a similar poll was conducted by Gallup during the administration of then President Donald Trump.

The relatively stable share (88 percent in 2019 vs. 91 percent in 2023) of Republican respondents saying illegal immigration is at least a “major problem” suggests that porous borders are less of a partisan issue than a matter of deep conviction for those aligned with the GOP.

Democrats, on the other hand, have sharply raised their tolerance for illegal immigration between the Trump-era days and those of the administration of President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat.

In 2019, 68 percent of Democrats said it was a crisis or major problem, with that dropping to just 56 percent at the present time, suggesting Democrat views on the issue shift based on politics.

Republicans in Congress have blamed the Biden administration for policies they say encourage people to undertake the perilous trek north and cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

The Biden administration has blamed factors outside its control—like crime, corruption, and poverty in countries of origin—while blaming Mr. Trump for undermining the country’s asylum system, which the current administration says it’s trying to fix.

Illegal immigrants wait to be taken by Border Patrol to a processing facility to begin their asylum-seeking process in Eagle Pass, Texas, on June 25, 2023. (Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images)

June Numbers

Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported this week that 144,607 encounters happened in June along the Southwest border, the lowest number since February 2021.

CBP officials credited the decline in part to the Biden administration’s expansion of legal pathways and processes for entry into the United States.

“Our sustained efforts to enforce consequences under our longstanding Title 8 authorities, combined with expanding access to lawful pathways and processes, have driven the number of migrant encounters along the Southwest border to their lowest levels in more than two years. We will remain vigilant,” Troy A. Miler, CBP Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner, said in a statement.

June marked the first full month since Title 42 restrictions expired on May 11 and were replaced with a new policy that, in many ways, resembled the one that ended.

Title 42 was a regulation designed to prevent the introduction of contagious diseases in the United States. The rule was issued by the Trump administration in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and was used over 2.5 million times to block asylum claims.

When Title 42 ended, the Biden administration rolled out a new rule (pdf), which essentially reinstates a Trump-era travel policy, stipulating that illegal immigrants would be disqualified from applying for asylum in the United States if they didn’t first seek protection in countries that they traveled through on their way to the United States, with limited exceptions.

The regulation is meant to decrease human smuggling activities at the southern border by encouraging asylum-seekers to use “lawful, safe, and orderly” pathways, such as seeking refuge in a country that they’ve passed through.

Department of Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas (2nd-L) speaks at a press conference on May 5, 2023, in Brownsville, Texas. (Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images)

Hours before Title 42 was set to expire, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that smugglers had been spreading the word that the border would be open after Title 42 expired.

“I want to be very clear: our borders are not open,” he said at the time. “People who cross our border unlawfully and without a legal basis to remain will be promptly processed and removed.”

Issuing a warning to those considering making the trek to the border, he stressed:

“Smugglers care only about profits, not people. Do not risk your life and life savings only to be removed from the United States if and when you arrive here.”

Since Mr. Biden took office, over 5 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border into the United States.

Scheduled Arrivals

Meanwhile, DHS said at the end of June that more would-be illegal immigrants would be able to schedule their entry into the United States.

The department’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will allow up to 1,450 appointments per day, an increase of 200 from the current number and 450 from the number available in May.

“CBP is expanding the number of available appointments at ports of entry for the second time in less than two months, through scheduling enhancements and operational efficiencies,” Troy Miller, the top CBP official, said in a statement.

The appointments, made through an application called CBP One, are “providing for safe and efficient processes at ports of entry,” he added.

The would-be immigrants can schedule an appointment at a port of entry, or an official border crossing, through the application.

The appointment scheduling was part of a January Biden administration announcement on steps that would be taken to deal with the spike in illegal immigration that has occurred since Mr. Biden took office.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“If it weren’t for double standards, the Democrats would have no standards at all.”

– Jeff Childers of the Coffee and Covid blog

You might not know it these lazy, hazy, muggy days of midsummer, but things are getting pretty wildly out-of-hand in our republic. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. blew up the Democratic Party yesterday in the House Subcommittee on Weaponization of Government hearing, acting like a normal human while being set upon by a flock of harpies desperately screeching “Russia, Russia, Russia,” as if that means anything anymore.

He branded them as worse than the McCarthyites of the 1950s, rebuked their insane scurrilities supporting censorship, and left them in a state of exhausted disgrace.

It happens that he is running for the nomination of that very party knocking itself out to destroy him. To win that prize he would have to put a thousand top Democrats through some grueling act of repentance and contrition — and then you’ve got to ask yourself: who would even want to win the support of such vile creatures as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jerrold Nadler, and Adam Schiff, let alone be associated with them in the same club?

Elsewhere around the scene this week, we have the ever more degenerate antics of the FBI on view as whistleblowers pour out of the woodwork disclosing the rot behind Director Chris Wray and his boss AG Merrick Garland. This Deep State Blob of turpitude has been growing and festering with so many overlapping cover-ups that they’ve run out of rugs to sweep their crimes under. The massive moneygrubbing misdeeds of Hillary Clinton from Skolkovo and Uranium One beat a direct path through the Ukraine coup of 2014, to RussiaGate, to the Biden Family’s global influence-peddling operation and every mendacious act in-between including the FISA falsehoods, the J-6 entrapment caper, hundreds of malicious and deceitful prosecutions, the Covid-19 fraud, the censorship and medical tyranny, and God-knows how many ensuing deaths from a poisonous vaccine… and now, a brain-dead government trifling with nuclear war.

And whose brilliant idea was it, anyway, to install this disgusting and incompetent grifter, “Joe Biden,” as our head-of-state? They surely knew well before 2019 that his bag-man son was rooting out bribes in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere, at the same time he was consorting with whores and trafficked children while destroying his brain with crack and downing a fifth of vodka a day. And you’re telling me that the CIA and FBI did not know about any of this, even before October 2019 when Hunter’s laptop stuffed with graphic evidence fell into their hands? If they didn’t know any of this, then what’s the point of having an intel community?

My guess is that it was Barack Obama’s idea to stick “Joe Biden” in the White House in the vain effort to use this captive criminal to stave off any accounting for the aforesaid villainies that occurred during Mr. Obama’s two terms. The mission was originally Hillary Clinton’s — she had plenty at stake herself — but she botched the job in 2016 and allowed the Golden Golem of Greatness to slip into power. It is amazing to look back and see how the mighty Blob congealed after that election — like a giant rogue macrophage — to surround and eliminate Mr. Trump, who apparently did not know for many months what he was up against: the entire permanent bureaucracy. Obviously, the Blob only partly succeeded in deactivating Mr. Trump, who has worked sedulously since 2021 to marshal about half the country militantly against the Blob and Blobism, while he still suffers one rear-guard legal affront after another.

Trouble is, the Blob itself has become an immune disorder for the polity known as the USA, and now threatens to destroy everything the country stands for and all the stuff deployed on the landscape from sea to shining sea, if the hypersonic nukes fly. These are dangerous weeks ahead. The pedal’s on the metal… the rubber’s meeting the road, and we seem to be watching a Thelma and Louise type denouement writ large.

The Blob itself, with the Democratic Party at its nucleus, and evil organelles Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and their like floating in the endoplasmic reticulum, has gone insane trying to protect its Precious, liberalism’s sacred bowling trophy, Barack Obama, from scrutiny. To call Mr. Obama to account, of course, would be viewed as the ultimate act of American “racism,” a place too many will not go. So, he may evade responsibility until he (and the rest of us) are gone and history catches up with him.

But is there any doubt now that “Joe Biden” must go, and as soon as possible? Surely there is enough evidence to mount an impeachment in the House, and rev it up as expeditiously as the Democrats revved up their two Trump impeachments. An impeachment would, of course, force a trial in the Senate. It is probably the one news event that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN can’t run and hide from — as they have been hiding from this week’s whistleblower hearings and Mr. Kennedy’s sturdy performance against the House censorship activists. In a Senate trial, the rot will finally be laid out before the people to judge, whether the Senate can bring itself to convict “JB” or not. Anyway, it will end this president’s pretense of running for reelection, and on the off-chance he’s convicted, his pardon powers do not extend to that particular extraordinary Senate proceeding. And then we can see about Ms. Harris.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

Ever so quietly under the covers of a quiet summer week, US Macro data surprised to the downside, with the biggest weekly drop since Feb 2019…

Source: Bloomberg

But that didn’t disturb the equity market melt-up (except for Nasdaq but more on that later). This was The Dow’s best week in 4 months (best 2-weeks since Oct ’22), Nasdaq’s 3rd weekly loss in last 5 weeks.

The Dow is up 10 days in a row (managing to hold on with a 0.01% gain on the day!!) – its longest winning streak since Feb 2017…

With the Nasdaq rebalance taking place, we look back at the performance of our ups-versus-downs basket pairs trade with the up-weights outperforming the down-weights (dominated by the Magnificent 7 stocks) by around 5ppts…

Source: Bloomberg

It was quite a week for ‘most shorted’ stocks with the opening 30 mins every day either a pukefest or buying-panic…

Source: Bloomberg

Some of the lipstick came off the un-profitable tech stocks pig this week…

Source: Bloomberg

Bank earnings dominated the early week with MS outperforming and Citi not so much…

Source: Bloomberg

Tough week for some of the big-tech firms…

Treasuries were mixed this week with the short-end underperforming (2Y +8bps, 30Y -2bps)…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve flattened (deeper inversion) this week, having reversed from the pre-FOMC levels…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar bounced back to its best weekly gain since Feb ’23…

Source: Bloomberg

Crypto was basically flat on the week with Ripple the only standout…

Source: Bloomberg

In commodity-land, crude managed gains, but copper was ugly; gold was slightly higher and silver down…

Source: Bloomberg

NatGas ripped higher to its first positive week in over a month…

Finally, as Goldman points out, there is an increasing bifurcation between optimism on main street (AAIIBULL) and optimism on wall street (GS sentiment score)…

While the two were on relatively the “same page” over the last four years, retail is much more positive than professional traders.

And the decoupling between the decade-old regime of global liquidity and US equities continues to widen…

Source: Bloomberg

Probably nothing, right?

Authored by Michael Cantrell via PJMedia.com,

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has issued instructions for the State Board of Administration, otherwise known as the SBA, to launch a full-blown investigation into the assets of woke Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Bud Light, in the aftermath of the whole partnership debacle with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender activist who is a biological male claiming to be a female. Which, of course, is nonsense, but that’s a topic for another time, right?

According to a new report from the Daily Wire, DeSantis sent a letter to Lamar Taylor, the interim executive director of the SBA, shining a big, bright spotlight on the massive 30 percent loss in sales the company suffered during the month of June. You’re probably wondering what the SBA does exactly. Allow me to explain briefly. The organization is involved in asset management and is responsible for helping to invest both state and local government assets.

“As sales of Anheuser-Busch InBev products within the U.S. continue to precipitously decline, reports are now emerging that large American mainstays like Costco will be pulling Bud Light from the shelves,” the 44-year-old Republican presidential candidate and current Florida governor stated in the letter.

“Clearly, the Board’s mismanagement — as well as its failure to remediate the problem and repair its relationship with millions of disaffected American consumers — has led to this impasse and will continue to financially harm the SBA and other shareholders.”

The Florida Republican then remarked that it was incredibly important for the SBA to stay committed to its legal obligations to “prudently manage the funds of Florida’s hardworking law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters, and first responders in a manner that focuses on growing returns, not subsidizing an ideological agenda through woke virtue signaling.”

“I therefore request that you immediately initiate a review to examine how Anheuser-Busch InBev’s conduct has impacted and continues to impact the value of SBA’s AB InBev holdings,” the governor’s letter continued.

“It appears to me that Anheuser-Busch InBev may have breached legal duties owed to its shareholders, and that a shareholder action may be both appropriate and necessary. To protect SBA and the retirees of Florida from losses attributable to AB InBev’s disregard of those duties, all options are on the table.”

We’ve kneecapped ESG in Florida.

So I’m calling for an investigation into AB InBev’s actions regarding their Bud Light marketing campaign and falling stock prices.

All options are on the table and woke corporations that put ideology ahead of returns should be on notice. pic.twitter.com/B3frLY4f30

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) July 21, 2023

On Thursday, DeSantis made an appearance on Jesse Watters’ Fox News program, where he made the announcement about the letter and the SBA request it contained. During the interview, the governor stated that the pension had $50 million invested in Anheuser-Busch stock and that the recent plummet of the company’s value dealt a significant blow to Florida’s teachers and other pensioners.

“We believe that when you take your eye off the ball like that, you’re not following your fiduciary duty to do the best you can for your shareholders,” he explained during the program.

“So we’re going to be launching an inquiry about Bud Light and InBev. And it could be something that leads to a derivative lawsuit filed on behalf of the shareholders of the Florida pension fund. Because at the end of the day, there’s gotta be penalties for when you put business aside to focus on your social agenda at the expense of hard working people.”

pic.twitter.com/8ALlcNRUgK

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) July 21, 2023

This is a good move on DeSantis’ part. It shows that he is the kind of leader who cares about the average, hard-working Americans in his state, and as such, will carry that kind of leadership into the White House if he should win the primary and then the general election next year.

Also, this reveals that the decisions that are made by big corporations do indeed have a big impact in people’s lives, so we should most definitely care a bit more about what they choose to do.

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClear Wire,

Maybe President Biden and his aides didn’t want to elevate an opponent, or maybe they were saving their criticism for later, but either way, the White House has found a pitch-perfect foil in Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Biden wants the country to hear what the Georgia Republican has to say.

The Biden campaign posted a clip of Greene Tuesday from a recent conservative conference where the congresswoman blasted the president for his infrastructure and environmental spending, arguing that he “is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on.”

Greene replied by posting a video of her more complete remarks, which included the exact quotes that Biden enjoyed but also less flattering condemnation about the state of the country. The zealous conservative, whose office did not respond to repeated requests for comment, tweeted, “Be honest Joe.”

For a president who began his time in office by huddling with New Deal historians, her condemnation was his highest exultation. Biden once told historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in the East Room, “I’m no FDR” before trailing off midsentence. The ambition, now explicitly confirmed, is that he’d like to be.

He spends like an old-school, big-government Democrat but holds new progressive priorities, a temperament perhaps best demonstrated by the Inflation Reduction Act, a $1.9 trillion bill Biden signed into law last summer chock-full of green energy tax credits. Historians may quibble that Biden’s massive spending spree is hardly on par with transformative change on the scale of Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security Act of 1935 or Lyndon B. Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964.

That kind of debate is for the classroom, though. As a political question, Greene, better known as MTG, handed Biden exactly what he wanted: a comparison with beloved heroes. Not long ago, he and his advisers believed that even responding to comments made by the Georgia firebrand was beneath the office of the presidency.

When asked if the administration had a response to Rep. Greene in January of 2021, newly minted White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki deferred. “We don’t,” Psaki said. “And I’m not going to speak further about her, I think, in this briefing room.”

A senior Biden adviser told RealClearPolitics the president didn’t want to inadvertently boost a critic’s profile when offering a rebuttal. Two years later, though, Psaki has left the White House to join MSNBC as a pundit, and the administration now loves to publicly excoriate MTG. The adviser told RCP that they aren’t boosting Greene so much as they are addressing an emerging voice in the GOP.

Biden’s team takes her influence on the political right seriously, though. After Speaker Kevin McCarthy rewarded her for her loyalty with choice committee assignments, sources say Biden felt he had no choice but to begin responding more frequently, particularly when they could portray her as offering tacit approval for political violence.

When Greene said last December that if she led the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol, “We would have won” and “It would’ve been armed,” the White House condemned her remarks as “dangerous” and “abhorrent.” MTG insisted she had been joking, saying Biden needed “to learn how sarcasm works.”

Other times, Democrats merely see an opportunity they can’t resist. Biden plans to make the most of Greene’s LBJ and FDR comparison by traveling to Georgia to tout the agenda she rejects. His administration, meanwhile, sees in MTG a wedge to goad more centrist Republicans to their side.

“President Biden knows what his values are: he will never apologize for delivering life-changing economic opportunity to rural areas, and he will never apologize for strengthening our military and supporting military families,” said Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates.

“Unfortunately, mainstream Republicans in Congress haven’t yet found the guts to stand up to either member in a real way, even as Marjorie Taylor Greene tries to kill high-paying Bidenomics jobs coming to her district,” he added, before calling on Republicans to “find their voice: are they with the President and military families and rural economic growth, or will they keep caving to the most radical elements of their party?”

Greene, a favorite of the conservative base, has forged strong alliances within Republican leadership, particularly in the speaker’s office. McCarthy reportedly gushed to a friend that the two had become close, promising, “I’ll never leave that woman.” In the time since, MTG has gone from outspoken gadfly to the GOP’s one-woman trial balloon, leading the still-nascent charge to impeach Biden and regularly railing that the president’s son, Hunter Biden, should be drug tested.

“Should we be displaying this in committee?” Democratic Rep. Democrat Jamie Raskin protested on Wednesday in the House Oversight Committee when Greene held up several graphic photos of the president’s son taken from his infamous laptop. They showed Hunter Biden “making pornography,” she said, with prostitutes, and how he had flouted the law without consequence.

Stunts to prove a point are not out of the ordinary for Greene. At the State of the Union, it was MTG who interrupted Biden by shouting “liar.” And while some of her colleagues are more muted about their opponents across the aisle, Greene often slams Democrats as “communists.” Occasionally, she wins headlines without comment, like when she tied a white balloon to her wrist before Biden’s speech to draw attention to the Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the continent a week earlier. 

Those kinds of barbs have gotten the president’s attention. The White House has moved on from rolling their eyes at MTG’s attacks to keeping her quotes on file. In the last five months, as NBC News recently noted, Biden has gone out of his way to reference Greene by name or simply as the “gentlelady from Greene.” At a dinner hosted by the White House Correspondents Association earlier this summer, he went a step further.  “I want everybody to have fun tonight, but please be safe. If you find yourself disoriented or confused,” he joked, “it’s either you’re drunk – or Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

If the White House was hesitant before, Biden World now sees in Greene a target of opportunity, especially as the election looms and as the president touts his economic agenda across the country.

“We knew her feelings about Medicare and Social Security since the Republican Study Committee she belongs to just proposed even more cuts to earned benefits,” a senior Biden adviser explained. “Attacking us for trying to end ‘rural poverty’ was more of a surprise.”

“Then again, she has been trying to deprive her constituents of the high-paying Bidenomics jobs that just arrived,” the adviser continued. “So, I guess we should have seen that coming. Maybe next week, she’ll be coming after our insulin price cap.”

“Wait, she already is,” the adviser added.

In the most significant threat and escalation thus far following the Monday expiration and collapse of the UN-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allowed Ukrainian food exports to reach global markets, Russia announced Friday its forces are conducing live-fire exercises in the region of Black Sea shipping routes.

“Russia’s Defense Ministry [MoD] said on Friday that its Black Sea Fleet had practiced firing rockets at surface targets in a live fire exercise, two days after it warned that ships heading to Ukraine’s Black Sea ports could be considered military targets,” Reuters reports based on the fresh MoD statements.

“In accordance with the combat training plan of the Black Sea Fleet forces, the crew of the Ivanovets missile boat carried out live firing of anti-ship cruise missiles at a target vessel…” the Russian MoD specified.

“Telemetry data and video monitoring from unmanned aerial vehicles confirmed the success of the exercise, and the target vessel was destroyed as a result of the rocket strike,” it added.

Watch footage released by the Kremlin Friday…

While the statement didn’t reveal precise locations, at least some of the drills appear to be taking place in Black Sea shipping route areas previously safeguarded under the UN-backed grain deal.

According to more from the defense ministry statement: 

It said its fleet had also rehearsed closing off areas temporarily ruled off limits to shipping and had practiced “apprehending an offending vessel”.

Both Russia and Ukraine have in the last days issued threats and counter-threats, with Kiev saying it is working with Romania on establishing an alternative temporary shipping route to get its grain out of Black Sea ports and through the vital Bosporus Strait.

Moscow has warned that any international ships seeking to enter Ukraine’s Black Sea ports would be seen as potentially carrying military cargo, making them a target. Ukraine then responded with a similar warning to ships coming from Russia. Moscow has also accused the Ukrainians of mining vital areas. 

Turkey, a key mediator which got the grain deal up and running when it first went into effect last year, now says it won’t get involved in guaranteeing the safety of any grain shipments with the deal over.

#Navy The Ivanovets missile boat of the🇷🇺BSF carried out live firing of anti-ship cruise missiles at a target ship at a training area in the NW part of the Black Sea.The target was a decommissioned Grisha-Class ASW corvette,and it was probably one of the former ships of the🇺🇦Navy pic.twitter.com/se8ZVNYi8E

— Capt(N) (@Capt_Navy) July 21, 2023

Russia has said it remains open to reentering the deal once’s its demands are met; however, the latest major attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge has not helped matters, as Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin highlighted in new remarks captured in regional media: 

Ukraine has denied using the corridor for military purposes, but Vershinin alleged, without providing evidence, that there had been several instances of this.

He accused Ukraine of using the grain export corridor to launch “terrorist attacks” against Russian interests, including one this week on the Crimean Bridge.

“It was used – as we know, and we have also talked about it – to organise terrorist attacks,” he said.

“It was the Crimean Bridge, twice already; it was Sevastopol, remember last October.”

Meanwhile, harsh words from Medvedev directed at EU leadership…

Borrell is suffering from harsh verbal diarrhea on the grain deal. Like, it’s all our fault, we’re starving the world, and deprive the peaceful ukrobanderovtsy of their legitimate earnings.
He’d better decide: it’s either Europe finally fulfils our fair demands concerning…

— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) July 21, 2023

And similarly Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cited Ukraine’s “unpredictable actions” which make the region unsafe for commercial shipping and civilian traffic.

“Unpredictable actions and, moreover, the involvement of the Kyiv regime in terrorist acts certainly potentially create a threat in this area,” he emphasized.

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

The likelihood stocks are in a bear-market rally is receding as the current upturn exceeds historical precedents.

I posted a chart on Wednesday showing that the Nasdaq’s net move from the high reached in November 2021 at the start of the bear market is – despite the hype over the current rally – historically unremarkable.

But if the current move off the recent low (reached in October) is a bear-market rally, how would it look versus previous similar episodes?

In this case, the current rally has already exceeded all historical analogs.

As the chart above shows, the Nasdaq rose above the low-to-high historical range, as reflected in the brown region, in late April and has carried on steadily rising.

 If this is a bear-market rally for the Nasdaq, it has no historical precedent (using the definition here that we are in a bear market until the old highs are breached).

The S&P’s net move from the highs is more impressive than the Nasdaq’s (with the proviso that the data history is longer for the S&P). The S&P is currently well above its historical median, unlike the Nasdaq.

But, despite being within 6% of its highs, the S&P is still in historical bear-market territory.

It could of course fail and significantly correct before new highs are reached, and so could the Nasdaq, which is even closer to its all-time high (the Nasdaq hit some resistance on Thursday, dropping 2.3%).

However, that does not look too likely at the moment.

Although both indexes are short-term overbought, and sentiment is on the contrarian over-bullish side, the broader picture from long-term technicals, excess liquidity, and a less negative economic backdrop is constructive.