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The Real Estate Boom Creates A Temporary Illusion Of Prosperity

A weekend topic starting with the Courier Journal. “The first call came in December 2011. It was a real estate broker from Mexico offering an exciting opportunity: A buyer wanted to pay Stephen, a financial manager from the Midwest, $65,000 for his timeshare in Cancún — far more than the $47,000 he had spent on it six years earlier. He had originally bought two weeks a year so his children could spend time near the ocean. As they grew older and joined sports teams, there was less and less time for family vacations. The telemarketer’s call seemed fortuitous.”

“But there was one catch: Stephen — then 54 — would have to first cover a Mexican federal tax of $3,900 that would be held in escrow, and credited back to him when the deal closed. Looking back, that was the first sign that he was getting duped by a telemarketing scam, one that would end up costing him nearly $1.8 million as he tried time and again to sell his timeshare. ‘It’s almost like an addiction,’ said Stephen, who asked that only his first name be used because he doesn’t want his employer to know. ‘I kept thinking the next person was going to help me get out of it.'”

“The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, commonly known as CJNG, started its timeshare fraud business in Puerto Vallarta and has now largely taken over the Cancún timeshare market as well. It has expanded the fraud network to at least two dozen call centers that contact owners of property in those two cities, as well as other areas popular with North American retirees, including Acapulco. he Jalisco cartel is known for its brutality, with regular headlines across Mexico documenting beheadings, torture and deadly gun battles against Mexican military forces. And the cartel controls its employees with an iron fist. Last June, cartel leaders turned their fury on eight call center employees who local news outlets reported had tried to quit. Their remains were found in 45 black plastic bags at the bottom of a canyon outside Guadalajara.”

From McClatchy News. “Less than a week after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and catching a flight to Florida, Joseliel Montilla, his wife and their five-year-old daughter waited on a cold February morning outside the Department of Children & Families outpost in Hialeah where their family members had taken turns spending the night — not because they had nowhere else to go, but because they wanted to beat the daily rush on the office where new arrivals apply for refugee benefits with the state. Amid a historic rush on the border, the family is part of an unquantifiable group of migrants who have recently chosen to settle in this majority-Cuban city of roughly a quarter-million people in northwest Miami-Dade County. But their presence is increasingly becoming a source of division, with Hialeah’s mayor laying blame on new arrivals for some of the city’s problems, including a lack of affordable housing.”

“Mayor Esteban Bovo, Jr. has claimed that as many as 80,000 Cubans have arrived in Hialeah over the last two years, stretching the city’s resources. He says it’s a plausible estimate when considering that more than 420,000 migrants have come to the U.S. from Cuba during that time, which he likened to a ‘Mariel on steroids,’ referring to the 1980 mass-flotilla from Cuba to Florida.”

The Guardian on California. “More than 2,000 unhoused people died in Los Angeles in 2023, meaning an average of nearly six deaths a day of people living on the street or in shelters in the nation’s most populous county. The numbers reveal an escalating humanitarian emergency as the housing crisis and drug addiction epidemic collide, with victims found in tents, encampments, vehicles, parks, alleys, vacant lots, underpasses, bus stops and train stations. Deaths have consistently increased every year. In 2023, 2,033 people died, a staggering 291% increase from the 519 cases recorded in 2014 and an 8% increase from the 1,883 fatalities in 2022.”

From CBS Boston. “Concerns are growing over a homeless camp that has popped up under a Massachusetts highway. The area under Interstate 93 in Somerville is shielded in blue tarp that surrounds furniture and children’s toys. There are cars speeding in front of it, behind it, and overhead on the Southeast Expressway. ‘I just had a package opened and stolen,’ one neighbor told WBZ-TV. The woman, who did not want to be identified, owns a condominium at 60 Cross Street, a luxury building across the street from the encampment. Another resident shared a photo of someone sleeping in the building’s vestibule. ‘Entered in, fell asleep, peed in the building, and stole packages,’ the woman said.”

“‘There was somebody intoxicated, I think laying there and an ambulance came and then I saw the person try to get away,’ said Chris Elrod, who lives in the building. Jason Ferraro, who lives down the street, said the trash piles up. ‘You see the police out there, and the fire department, as well as ambulances. Those resources are being called, and most of the time it’s for people that are passed out on the side of the road,’ he told WBZ.”

The National Post in Canada. “Three days after a proposed class-action lawsuit against a Toronto supervised consumption site was all over the news , the Toronto Star published a feel-good harm-reduction story. The Star article had an intriguing headline: ‘Here’s what happened to overdose deaths in Toronto neighbourhoods with safe consumption sites.’ The story was about a study published this month in The Lancet. Unfortunately, this study does not track overdose mortalities beyond 2019. In 2021, for example, the number of confirmed overdoses in South Riverdale practically tripled to 32 (from 11 in 2019), according to the same police data. In 2022, that number grew again to 36. Last fall, we were on track for that number to be in the thirties again for 2023.”

“Obviously, the supervised injection site at South Riverdale was operational during all these years, so I’m not sure it’s accurate for the Star to report our neighbourhood has seen ‘dramatic decreases in drug fatalities’ when, in fact, it hasn’t.”

The Calgary Herald in Canada. “We all understand the meaning of a ‘tipping point’ and the implied concept that a series of events can lead to larger and more important or disruptive change. In our world today, the question is whether a tipping point inevitably moves toward a foregone conclusion, or can its effect be reversed. I recently wrote on the imposition of new zoning rules , or rather the removal of zoning rules, and the reaction from the public was loud and long. I received many calls and emails from individuals voicing their concerns and worries about the changes proposed for their communities, yet the process continues. Almost daily we can see houses being fenced for demolition to allow for council’s dream of urban density at all costs.”

“There is little doubt that our city council has come to the conclusion that the time will come when we will all just accept the abandonment of zoning as inevitable, throw up our hands and stop complaining. Perhaps they are applying the same philosophy to their incredible spending on the Green Line LRT project without confirming just how much it is likely to go over budget. What will be the tipping point for that project? Our climate-obsessed government in Ottawa may have reached its tipping point if recent polls are any indication. It sounds as if Canadians have finally said ‘enough’ to the imposed taxes, regulations and ideology that have overtaken our lives.”

The Telegraph. “How do we make housing in Britain even more expensive? How do we ruin the dreams of even more aspiring homeowners? If these aren’t the questions that have been going round Whitehall the past few months, they might as well be, considering the policy answers that are being offered up. The Government has been considering plans for a 99pc mortgage scheme that could be announced ahead of the March Budget. It is broadly agreed that the Conservative Party needs a big idea to address the UK’s chronic housing crisis. Let’s hope, for the sake of would-be homeowners everywhere, that this isn’t it. In other words, it’s a scheme designed to water down the financial requirements for first-time buyers to secure a mortgage. What could possibly go wrong?”

The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. “People in Sydney now need to save over $100,000 extra for a deposit on a house compared to 2018, and Melburnians need an additional $38,000 according to an article in this masthead this week. While we are on comparisons, I heard this week of a medical science graduate earning a little bit over $50,000 for a full-time laboratory job. I was paid $47,000 plus very generous super as a lecturer in psychology at UNSW in 1995. My colleague who started at UNSW in 1972 said he needed only three times his then salary to purchase a terraced-house in Glebe. There is one for sale now with a guide of $2.2 million. In 1972 terms, three times a salary of $700,000.”

From Mises.org. “Big corporations and global leaders adhere to and assume the growing interventionism and the advance of socialism because, for politicians, it is an excellent way of perpetuating their power and control over citizens, while multinationals tolerate it because they have enough financial muscle and size to absorb the pernicious effects of the massive rise in public debt and monetary imbalances, public spending, taxes, barriers to trade, and progress.”

“They all know that the burden of interventionism falls entirely on small businesses and families, destroying the middle class in the process. The wealthy can escape the negative impact of monetary debasement and confiscatory taxes. People with salaries and small entrepreneurs cannot. Whitewashing Marxist collectivism does not stop it. It is no surprise to see how this neocommunism disguised as social justice attacks with even greater cruelty those companies and leaders who embrace their false messages. Just like wokeism often cancels and destroys its most staunch defenders, Neomarxism does the same with corporations and business owners because its objective is full control.”

Market Watch. “Ten years ago, when a then–newly appointed president, Xi Jinping, first used the phrase ‘new normal’ to refer to a slowing Chinese economy that would be reconfigured into a healthier model, Xi was both prescient and flatly wrong. While the failure of China’s economy to rebound after the coronavirus pandemic and its continued lethargy are shocking to experts and laypeople alike, the slowdown is actually longer in the making. Xi’s vision of reshaping the economy away from exports and infrastructure, and of taming a perilous property market while pivoting toward domestic consumption, has been an unequivocal failure.”

“The economy is still manufacturing-focused, billions in stimulus funds are being poured into the most overinfrastructured country in the world, and the property crisis is as bad as ever. But it is flaccid domestic demand that is most glaring in an economy Xi thought would be reignited by the pocketbooks of a billion consumers, experts said. When asked if China’s economy was now in its ‘new normal’ of slow growth, 50-year-old Li Jian, who runs a 3D printing company in Beijing, said, ‘Absolutely.’ ‘I’m old enough to have seen a gradual economic slowdown. But things were always still humming. Now, we’ve reached some kind of tipping point. Things have stalled. And people can feel it.'”

The Daily Times. “Across Pakistan, billboards and newspaper ads blare promises of luxurious living in meticulously planned housing schemes. Images of glittering skyscrapers and manicured lawns evoke visions of Dubai or Paris, a stark contrast to the dust-choked, overcrowded reality of many Pakistani cities. Yet, beneath the glossy veneer lies a harsh truth: this surge in land development schemes is not just fueling urban sprawl, it’s exacerbating economic woes and widening the gap between rich and poor.”

“Pakistan’s high savings rate (14 percent, compared to the regional average of 29 percent) is often celebrated. However, a lack of trust in formal financial institutions leads many to hoard cash, gold, and real estate. This, combined with government policies favouring real estate over productive sectors, has created a dangerous trend: capital flight from crucial activities like manufacturing and exports.”

“This skewed investment pattern has dire consequences. The country becomes increasingly reliant on imports, draining foreign reserves and widening the current account deficit. The real estate boom creates a temporary illusion of prosperity for a select few while neglecting the need for sustainable economic growth based on exports and job creation. The wealth gap widens as ‘rent-seekers’ (those benefiting from land-related activities) amass riches, while the majority struggles with inflation and a lack of opportunities.”

“Breaking this vicious cycle requires bold and decisive action. Redirecting investments from speculative real estate towards export-oriented enterprises is crucial to generating jobs and foreign exchange. Formalizing the economy by encouraging savings in official channels, reducing tax evasion, and incentivizing entrepreneurship beyond real estate is essential. Finally, strengthening regulations by implementing stricter land ownership laws, enforcing environmental regulations, and cracking down on corruption is imperative for sustainable development.”

“These changes may ruffle feathers and upset vested interests, but they are not optional. They are the foundation upon which a brighter future for Pakistan can be built, a future where prosperity reaches all 220 million Pakistanis, not just a privileged few. This may upset a few thousand rent seekers, and upset many of those at the helm as well. Effectively, the decision is whether we want a country that catalyzes prosperity for 220 million plus people, or a country that exists for a few thousand rent seekers and their cronies. The time for action is now.”

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This Post Has 68 Comments

  1. ‘documenting beheadings, torture and deadly gun battles against Mexican military forces. And the cartel controls its employees with an iron fist. Last June, cartel leaders turned their fury on eight call center employees who local news outlets reported had tried to quit. Their remains were found in 45 black plastic bags at the bottom of a canyon outside Guadalajara’

    Illegal immigration is the biggest story of the day. How often as you read these countless stories are the cartels mentioned? Damn near not at all. Yet they are behind every single illegal coming out of Mexico. It’s been over a month that a report came out they were using tic tok to recruit people in Africa, China, everywhere. And who is showing up in the US, UK and Canada? People all over the world have suddenly found a way to the US/Mexico border.

    These cartel people are some of the worst to ever exist. That’s who is making the most money off this globalist scum plan.

  2. ‘I just had a package opened and stolen…Entered in, fell asleep, peed in the building, and stole packages…There was somebody intoxicated, I think laying there and an ambulance came and then I saw the person try to get away…You see the police out there, and the fire department, as well as ambulances. Those resources are being called, and most of the time it’s for people that are passed out on the side of the road’

    They want to condition us to believe this is normal. It’s straight out of communist playbook. Demoralization.

    ‘A former KGB agent named Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov claimed in 1984 that Russia has a long-term goal of ideologically subverting the U.S. He described the process as “a great brainwashing” that has four basic stages. The first stage, he said, is called “demoralization,” which would take about 20 years to achieve. ‘

    ‘Bezmenov made the point that the work of the KGB mainly does not involve espionage, despite what our popular culture may tell us. Most of the work, 85% of it, was “a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare.”

    ‘What does that mean? Bezmenov explained that the most striking thing about ideological subversion is that it happens in the open as a legitimate process. “You can see it with your own eyes,” he said. The American media would be able to see it, if it just focused on it.’

    ‘Here’s how he further defined ideological subversion: “What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”

    ‘Bezmenov described this process as “a great brainwashing” that has four basic stages. The first stage is called “demoralization” which takes from 15 to 20 years to achieve. According to the former KGB agent, that is the minimum number of years it takes to re-educate one generation of students that is normally exposed to the ideology of its country — in other words, the time it takes to change what the people are thinking.’

    ‘“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

    “As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore,” said Bezmenov. “A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom. When a military boot crashes his balls then he will understand. But not before that. That’s the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization.”

    “Most of the American politicians, media, and educational system trains another generation of people who think they are living at the peacetime,” said the former KGB agent. “False. United States is in a state of war: undeclared, total war against the basic principles and foundations of this system.”

    https://bigthink.com/the-present/yuri-bezmenov/

    1. +1

      “the advance of socialism” is the greatest existential threat to the United States’ sovereignty and the rights of its citizens.

    2. “They want to condition us to believe this is normal”

      That’s been the New Normal in Denver for the last four years.

      Add 40,000 Venezuelans to the homeless American population in the last year and that’s the New New Normal.

      1. The four steps of the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

        1. Overload and Break the Welfare System
        2. Have Chaos Ensue
        3. Take Control in the Chaos
        4. Implement Socialism and Communism through Government Force

        Overburden the bureaucracy to break the system, create controlled chaos, usurp power as civil unrest peaks, and offer government aid as the only solution. Cloward and Piven wanted to overburden the welfare system at the state level to eliminate state rights. …under this theory, government is encouraged to market a crisis, antagonize the people, and offer a solution. The only solution being to replace capitalism with socialism or communism by which the people would be entirely dependent on government. You will own nothing and be happy.

        1. It’s even worse than this. All of this to flip six purple states blue so Democrats can control complete control of congress and the presidency for the next seven generations. That’s why the border is open. So these people and their children will vote so that the 40,000 votes in 6 swing states giving Trump the presidency will never happen again.

    3. ‘A former KGB agent named Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov claimed in 1984 that Russia has a long-term goal of ideologically subverting the U.S. He described the process as “a great brainwashing” that has four basic stages. The first stage, he said, is called “demoralization,” which would take about 20 years to achieve. ‘

      \\

      – This. 👆 A country of brainwashed, useful idiots, with what’s left of the middle class buying and selling shacks to each other in order to survive the otherwise hollowed-out economy. Few understand this, as per the plan. Add panem et circenses, and there are even fewer who care. America needs a spiritual awakening, or we’re freaking doomed.

      \\

      “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.” – Alexander Fraser Tytler

      – May God help this once great and Christian nation.

      \\

      https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2024/02/19/the-morning-briefing-a-little-dutch-wisdom-for-trump-weary-republican-voters-n4926548

      The Morning Briefing: A Little Dutch Wisdom for Trump-Weary Republican Voters
      Stephen Kruiser | 2:53 AM on February 19, 2024

      As we have discussed many times, the 2024 United States presidential election isn’t a normal election. The Democrats have mounted a full assault on the Constitution and are doing everything they can to remake the Republic in a more Soviet image.

      Conventional election-year wisdom doesn’t apply. Petty concerns and feelings have no place whatsoever in this contest.

      A vote for Joe Biden or whichever commie ends up on the ballot in November is a vote for the imminent demise of the United States. That’s not hyperbole. This country is reeling from just three years of the Joe Biden fiasco, and he hasn’t even had much of a Congress to work with. The cabal running his brain is a wrecking ball. The United States as we know it will not survive until 2028 with the Democrats in control of the White House. It may still be called the United States of America, but it’s not going to be the same country.

      \\

      https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-concerned-that-biden-may-be-too-old-to-complete-the-total-destruction-of-the-country

      Democrats Concerned Biden May Be Too Old To Finish Destroying Country
      Politics · Feb 19, 2024 · BabylonBee.com

      WASHINGTON, D.C. — At a secret meeting of high-ranking party leadership, Democrats expressed grave concern that President Joe Biden may be too old to complete their party’s mission of the utter destruction of the country.

      Though Democratic Party power-brokers agree that Biden has served his purpose well in helping to push the United States closer to the brink of collapse, they agree that his advanced age may make it impossible for him to finish the job.

      “It’s a shame he’s so old because he’s done such a tremendous job of being awful,” said one party official. “We’ve never seen a leader with such an innate, natural gift for steering the country toward utter annihilation. It’s been truly impressive to see the horrific results he has achieved in just a few years. Unfortunately, he may not last long enough to finish it off.”

      \\

      https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/under_the_democrats_rule_america_has_become_a_failed_state.html

      https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/under_the_democrats_rule_america_has_become_a_failed_state.html

      The first thing that tells us that the nation has failed is children and families. In theory, citizens do not exist for the state; rather, the state exists for the citizens and, especially, for families, which are a nation’s heart and future. It should work in tandem with parents, whose biological imperative is to protect their young.

      So, our government is essentially crippling our economy, sending inflation through the roof, and introducing a level of energy instability Americans haven’t seen in half a decade to solve a problem that simply doesn’t exist. The governments of serious nations don’t do that.

      Finally, there is the open border and the flood of illegal immigration. Since Joe Biden has been president, almost 10 million people, mostly military-aged males, have poured across our border. American taxpayers must support virtually every one of them.

      \\

      https://twitter.com/MartyBent/status/1760152229212819681

      Marty Bent
      @MartyBent
      I think it’s time to have a serious conversation about whether or not the people controlling Biden are employing a Cloward-Piven strategy against the country.

      [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy ]
      [ Cloward–Piven strategy ]
      [ The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. It is the strategy of forcing political change leading to societal collapse through orchestrated crises. The “Cloward–Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, amassing massive unpayable national debt, and other methods such as unfettered immigration thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse by overwhelming the United States.]

      8:59 PM · Feb 20, 2024 · 556.1K Views

  3. The former director of Panama’s border patrol told The Epoch Times that the United Nations’ migration agenda is behind the chaos at the U.S. southern border and that U.N. partners are making things worse instead of better.
    image-5593282

    Oriel Ortega, now a security and defense consultant to Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo, said during a Feb. 22 interview that he saw a jump in migration in 2016, at the same time that more nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) moved into Panama.
    That increase corresponded with the U.N.’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration meeting in 2016. Two years later, 152 nations—including Panama—voted in favor of the compact to manage global migration. The United States voted against it.

    But under the U.N., the migration process has been anything but orderly, Mr. Ortega said. “It’s completely opposite right now,” he said through an interpreter.

    Documents show that in 2023, a record 500,000 migrants traveled through the dense jungle known as the Darien Gap from Colombia into Panama. Migrants from around the world are flying into South and Central America to start their journey because countries such as Suriname and Ecuador don’t require a visa to enter. Their final destination is the United States.

    Joseph Humire is the executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society and an expert on unconventional warfare. He told The Epoch Times that he believes that’s what Americans are seeing at the U.S. southern border now.

    “This isn’t a conspiracy theory,” he said; the “invasion” at the U.S. southern border is “strategic engineered migration.”

    Mr. Ortega agreed that the NGOs have “exacerbated” mass migration problems. “Instead of helping, they’re being part of the problem,” he said. “It’s not the migrants themselves that are creating a national threat; it is the organized crime, and it is these international organizations.”

    At the Lajas Blancas camp in Panama, migrants have access to a number of large maps provided by NGOs that display detailed migration routes heading to the United States. One map is from HIAS, an NGO founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which recently received $11 million from the United States in two grants awarded for Latin American migrants.

    The HIAS map shows the migration route from Colombia to Costa Rica, including detailed bus stops, temperatures, altitudes, and “migration kiosk” locations.

    The Epoch Times visited all four migrant camps in the Darien Gap this week, speaking with migrants from China, Somalia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and others who hiked out of the treacherous jungle leading from Colombia into Panama.

    Many suffered from infections and injuries such as trench foot and broken limbs. Several complained that the water was untreated at the camps and that they lacked basic items such as diapers.
    Migrants also told The Epoch Times that the NGO staff, several of which are funded by U.S. taxpayer money, only visited the camps for several hours each day.

    While the U.N. has aided migrants for decades, the scope of its operation has dramatically expanded, with the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States surging.

    Nearly $1.3 billion of U.S. taxpayer money was given to the U.N. and other agencies assisting migrants in 2023, according to a government spending database.

    Panama has tried, to no avail, to get governments in South America to provide personal information on migrants who are moving across different countries, he said.

    “We don’t have collaboration because the Global Compact does not work,” Mr. Ortega said.

    The migrants are fleeing because of issues within their countries, such as unstable governments or cartel activity, he said.

    “There’s a triangle of things that are happening in the central parts of the continent that pushes people out of their countries so they can migrate to the United States,” he said.

    He noted that mass migration has already caused problems in many countries, including the United States. “As we have seen in New York, bad people are arriving in New York,” he said. “And they are causing a lot of damage and a lot of disturbances to the government of the United States of America.”

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/former-panama-border-chief-un-is-behind-the-chaos-at-u-s-mexico-border-5593034

    1. “This isn’t a conspiracy theory,” he said; the “invasion” at the U.S. southern border is “strategic engineered migration.”

      Open borders is TREASON.

      “I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. [So help me God.]”

      If you were sworn into office with that oath, and you will not defend this nation’s border and its citizens, you are guilty of TREASON.

      1. “If you were sworn into office with that oath, and you will not defend this nation’s border and its citizens, you are guilty of TREASON.”

        – Heads on pikes and the guillotine worked in the past. Just saying.

        – The current assault on the sovereignty of this nation is rapidly approaching the crisis phase. Either its citizens stand against the dark forces attacking it, or we’re freaking doomed. The 2024 election will be the watershed moment. Mail in ballots and (rigged) election machines must be eliminated. The votes are there for DJT. Even D voters are starting to wake up to the horrible, terrible Brandon presidency, but the system is against Trump at every level. If no change in political party in 2024, then in my view the next step is civil war, or collapse.

        “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.” – Abraham Lincoln

        “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.” – John F. Kennedy

        – Interesting times indeed.

          1. CBS seizes confidential files of fired reporter pursuing Hunter Biden laptop story in ‘unprecedented’ move: sources

            By Alexandra Steigrad
            Published Feb. 22, 2024

            The acclaimed CBS reporter who was investigating the Hunter Biden laptop scandal before she was fired last week had her personal files seized by the network in an “unprecedented” move, sources told The Post on Thursday.

            Catherine Herridge — who is the middle of a First Amendment case being closely watched by journalists nationwide — was among 20 CBS News staffers let go as part of a larger purge of hundreds of employees at parent company Paramount Global.

            Her firing had stunned co-workers, but the network’s decision to hold on to her personal materials, along with her work laptop where she may have other confidential info, has left many staffers shaken, according to insiders.

            “It’s so extraordinary,” a source familiar with the situation told The Post, noting that the files — which are presumptively now the property of CBS News — most likely contain confidential material from Herridge’s stints at both Fox and CBS.

            https://nypost.com/2024/02/22/business/cbs-seizes-confidential-files-of-fired-reporter-pursuing-hunter-biden-laptop-story-in-unprecedented/

  4. “a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare”

    On this subject, Russia Today — Russia protects family values and children – Tara Reade (2/22/2024):

    “Russia places more importance on protecting children and family values than waging a culture war, former US Senate aide Tara Reade told RT on Thursday, explaining that many in the West are poorly informed about what life is really like in the country.

    The West has “weaponized culture wars…against some of the more conservatives in the United States,” Reade, now a commentator with RT, told her colleague. Russia, “watching that from the outside,” has rightly prioritized the “values of [its] vast population” over the interests of a tiny fraction of people – a stance that is often misunderstood, she said.

    “In Russia there is a protection of family and a protection of children,” she stressed, attributing this to the strong religious values of the population.

    The West’s obsessive focus on LGBT issues is underscored by an effort to “distract from the fact in the United States that the economy and infrastructure are falling apart,” Reade said. “Lifting up .01% of the population” serves as a diversion “from what’s really going on”; it’s a wedge issue for dividing society.

    The presidential administration of Joe Biden, whom Reade accused of sexual assault when she worked for him in Washington in 1993 while he was a senator, is “a very strange kind of totalitarian government, kind of moving toward fascism,” she argued. She highlighted the FBI’s surveillance of Catholics as part of what she framed as a nationwide “attack on religion.”

    Reade drew a further contrast between her birthplace and her adopted home, comparing Moscow’s Gorky Park, full of “families walking together,” with the parks in American cities. “Right now in the United States, when you walk through a park, you’re seeing people laying on a bench, homeless, or on drugs, or begging for money or drugs.”

    In 2022, the Russian government pledged in its official policy “to preserve and strengthen traditional Russian spiritual and moral values,” including the embrace of life, dignity, human rights and freedoms, patriotism, a strong family, prioritizing the spiritual over the material, historical memory, and the unity of Russian peoples.

    https://www.rt.com/news/592979-tara-reade-russia-family-values/

  5. The Boston area is a MESS.

    People are still deluded into thinking their ancient homes that require massive upkeep will just keep going up forever – even with all the homeless- drugs and violence all around. –

    1. with all the homeless- drugs and violence all around

      This seems to be the story of every major metro in the country, and the downtown areas are devolving into no go zones. There is a story every few days in the Dumver Post about another long established downtown business that is closing its doors,.

  6. SW Florida’s Market SHIFT Continues
    Ben Grieco
    14 hours ago

    The Florida Housing Market Season is now in full swing and this year feels different for everyone involved. New construction is booming, incentives are flowing, and some prices are being slashed, but will it help with affordability? Additionally, as taxes skyrocket with property values, perhaps its time to re-evaluate the Homestead Property Tax Exemptions?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgtDovmGif8

    15:20.

  7. New York Post — Migrant ‘influencer’ calls for all Venezuelans to beg for money, ‘unite’ to support teen Times Square shooter (2/24/2024):

    “A brash Venezuelan migrant with nearly 300,000 social media followers is urging his comrades to “unite” in support of the 15-year-old from his home country who allegedly fired at cops after blasting a tourist in the leg in Times Square.

    Leonel Moreno, who goes by @leitooficial_25 on TikTok and Instagram and appears to live in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio with his partner and their three-month-old daughter, has also posted videos bragging about earning money by begging on the streets, and collecting government handouts.

    “We are going to unite forces so that this child is free and has an opportunity,” Moreno captioned the one-and-a-half-minute long video, which is in Spanish.

    Moreno’s brazen plea ignores that a Manhattan judge ordered Rivas-Figueroa held without bail.

    In another video, the so-called influencer, who has been in the United States since September, claims he made $275 from “three hours [of] asking for money at traffic lights.”

    “The return is to ask for money, boy,” he says in the Nov. 8 video posted to Instagram.

    “[In the USA] everything is given away [if] you know how to look,” Moreno says in a Jan. 7 Instagram clip, in which he brandishes a card labeled “MIC Ohio,” which he says affords “nine pots of milk” at the grocery store.

    Moreno, and his message, are everything wrong with America’s broken immigration system, said Daniel Di Martino, a Manhattan Institute fellow and a Venezuelan native.

    “Americans should be outraged to see how someone can come…and abuse the laws and benefits of America. Sadly, he’s just one of many who are ripping off the taxpayer because of our own badly written laws that allow them to collect some welfare and take years to decide asylum cases that likely will be denied,” Di Martino said.

    https://nypost.com/2024/02/24/us-news/migrant-calls-for-all-venezuelans-to-beg-for-money-unite-to-support-teen-times-square-shooter-video/

  8. A buyer wanted to pay Stephen, a financial manager from the Midwest, $65,000 for his timeshare in Cancún — far more than the $47,000 he had spent on it six years earlier.

    Stephen the Mark doesn’t sound like much of a financial manager.

  10. Those resources are being called, and most of the time it’s for people that are passed out on the side of the road,’ he told WBZ.”

    Let he who has never passed out on the side of the road cast the first stone.

    1. Saw this, figured it was a partial lien, most news stories just repeat the “25% payment reduction!” propagdana

  16. The Return of Weimar, American Style–great book on it in pdf:

    When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse

    (Spoiler Alert: We’re in Chapter 4)

  17. A reader sent these in:

    Total number of temp helps is in free fall but importing 4 million migrants a year in a softening labor market is a good idea #Idiocy

    In Canada there’s thousands of them showing up at every public job fair. That’s next for here.

    https://twitter.com/DonMiami3/status/1761055314244255863

    Perspective: It took $AAPL 42 years to reach $1 trillion in market cap for the 1st time.
    It took $NVDA a mere 9 months to run from $1 trillion to $2 trillion in market cap.
    We’re witnessing the largest market capitalization increases in the shortest period of time in history.

    https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1761120468864475416

    AI is bigger than the Industrial Revolution and the internet, that’s why.

    https://twitter.com/CarnivoreTradrZ/status/1761130571965620647

    Bezos, Zuck, Dimon selling shares. Retail yolo’ing calls.

    https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1761092279723241548

    Yesterday 7 stocks added over half a trillion dollars in market cap in total. In just one day. $549B. Ponder that.

    https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1760947807899242572

    Live in the pod, eat the bugs, pet the rat

    https://twitter.com/AdamSinger/status/1761207902453260549

    🇨🇦’s wild rn.

    https://twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1761212529445892121

    When I’m speaking with someone and they start citing ‘capitalism’ as the reason for our problems I just assume they’re a fool. Whatever disaster we’ve got going on is the furthest thing from capitalism since communism.

    https://twitter.com/DonMiami3/status/1761203125501714648

    National Association of Realtors caused this

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1761185072361984278

    It’s already happening in Florida I’ve been seeing many many real estate brokers going under and it’s because the housing market is frozen solid no buyers want to accept what sellers want and vice versa

    https://twitter.com/BryanDu40529739/status/1761059496737038396

    About f@cking time

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1761184882485788940

    Nobody is actually bearish.

    https://twitter.com/RJRCapital/status/1761169380828696903

    Imagine if the US government offered 30yr loans on cars backed by US taxpayers.

    All of a sudden your 2007 Honda is worth $378,000.
    Then telling everyone how smart you are and that young people can’t afford it because they’re lazy. That’s housing for 40 years.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1761150622580212169

    Great analysis. Again I go back to watching the market implode in real time, in the Sun Belt. 2007 was a bad year for existing home sales in Columbia, SC, and new sales flatlined. By mid-2008 people who were investors were panicking, while sitting on houses they were renting.

    https://twitter.com/SCulperJr1776/status/1761149698931372281

    #BREAKING: Canada has been acquired by a consortium of money launderers.

    https://twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1761145631073075684

    Holy sh$t Austin is at 17% vacancy! Nationally its like 7-8%

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1761140204956704799

    I saw one where someone bought a house in July 2022 at 1.99M and now putting it on the market for 2.18M. At that purchase price and current listing price, the owner is basically taking a 100k loss (if not more)

    https://twitter.com/js7976/status/1761139258977653201

    Who’s going to explain to morons that if you can’t get $2900 for a property in rent, you aren’t getting $5100 in mtg pmts

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1761126415267987596

    “im never giving up this low interest rate”

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1761121875651146033

    $929 billion of the $4.7 trillion outstanding commercial mortgages held by lenders and investors will come due this year, per the Mortgage Bankers Association.

    https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1761047512264114214

    Distress in CRE CLO Loans Surged 480% in Last Year, Report Says
    About 8.6% of commercial real estate loans bundled into collateralized loan obligation were distressed by one measure in January, a huge surge over the prior year’s proportion

    https://twitter.com/danjmcnamara/status/1761092946231750890

    So why haven’t home prices collapsed yet? Because they never do quickly.

    As you can see on the chart, prices have been flat for around a year and a half, mimicking 05-07. Existing owners trade houses at inflated prices at collapsed volume, while sellers sit on the sideline waiting for it to “get better.” It does not “get better” from here.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1761063347884364174

    Nothing says “housing shortage” quite like “the most investor/2nd home purchases in US history.”

    I dunno man, sounds like a speculative mania to me.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1760739170191069384

    Months of Supply (all home types) in Phoenix is the highest since 2016 for this time of year.

    https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1749103316985118806

    An economy that relies on asset price manipulation vs production/innovation is a bullshit economy.

    It was the “easy button” for almost ever major country and the ruling elite.

    Instead of the rich being forced to risk capital to create products on services (req many employees)….

    They buy politicians to inflate the prices of things they already own with little to no risk (req few employees).

    Then any time there is a chance asset prices may fall, they threaten the jobs of the few employees.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1761058153368821892

    Old enough to remember when it was considered very poor form for politicians to pressure the Bank of Canada on rates–>

    Trudeau Hopes Bank of Canada Rate Cuts Will Come ‘Sooner’

    https://twitter.com/BenRabidoux/status/1760422784994251132

    “The scale of money laundering in Canada is staggering, and impacts Canada by laundering proceeds of illicit activities and driving up real estate prices for all Canadians,” a statement from MP Adam Chambers on the bill said. His bill would make lying about foreign income illegal

    https://twitter.com/scoopercooper/status/1760411935651041695

    city government worker here in CA, we literally can’t hire 50% of our positions bc our pay doesn’t allow them to live in the city they are serving. our new econ dev director is living in an ADU in our city managers backyard while she finds housing (6 months now)

    https://twitter.com/I0II0II0II0I0II/status/1760717873029501192

    1. Thanks to the HBB stalwart who sends these in. Please disseminate these links far & wide.

      We’re witnessing the largest market capitalization increases in the shortest period of time in history.

      Zimbabwe had the world’s best-performing stock market in 2017, as the currency and economy were in a state of hyperinflationary collapse. The Fed & Biden regime are hurtling us down the same road.

    2. “city government worker here in CA, we literally can’t hire 50% of our positions bc our pay doesn’t allow them to live in the city they are serving.”

      Just saw Gavin Newsom pimping his bullet points, e.g., Unemployment is low. What he doesn’t say is that these jobs don’t pay enough to provide both food and shelter.

    3. Darth Powell aka @GRomePow is a never trumper, has a horrible case of TDS, he’s the worst. posts a lot of conservative positions, then goes off on rants about Trump. It’s a mental illness, the guy can’t get Trump out of his head in a bad way, even though they agree policy wise on most things.

  18. “When I’m speaking with someone and they start citing ‘capitalism’ as the reason for our problems I just assume they’re a fool. Whatever disaster we’ve got going on is the furthest thing from capitalism since communism.”

    +1

    And whoever is sending these in please keep sending them.

  19. Does it seem like the bulls on Wall Street are blithely ignoring the early warning signs of an incipient crash?

    1. A trusted indicator is fueling recession warnings from Jeremy Grantham and other gurus. What you should know about the Leading Economic Index.
      Theron Mohamed
      Feb 21, 2024, 7:26 AM ET
      Recession
      MJgraphics / Shutterstock

      – The Leading Economic Index brings together data on stocks, housing, credit, jobs, and sentiment.

      – The trusted recession indicator has declined for 22 consecutive months through January.

      – Jeremy Grantham, Jeffrey Gundlach, David Rosenberg, and Gary Shilling have all warned about the trend.
      …

    2. The Motley Fool
      The Bond Market Is Doing Something Not Seen in Decades. It Could Signal Trouble in the Stock Market.
      By Trevor Jennewine – Feb 24, 2024 at 4:50AM

      Key Points

      – The 10-year and 3-month Treasury yields have inverted before every recession since 1969.

      – That portion of the yield curve is more steeply inverted today than it has been since 1981.

      – The S&P 500 declined by an average of 31% during the last 10 recessions, but the index tends to rebound sharply before recessions end.

      The U.S. economy is seemingly on solid ground, but the Treasury bond market is sounding its most severe recession alarm in decades.

      Many economists expected the U.S. to suffer a recession last year. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal in late 2022 put the odds of a recession at 63%. The prevailing logic was that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates too much, causing a substantial decline in spending that would snowball into higher unemployment and an economic downturn.

      Instead, the economy remained rock-solid in 2023 despite aggressive rate hikes and elevated inflation. Economic growth actually accelerated last year, supported by strong (albeit slower) increases in consumer spending and business investments. The economy is currently projected to expand at an annualized 2.9% in the first quarter of 2024, above the 10-year average of 2.5%.

      In short, recession fears have melted away. Many economists now believe the Federal Reserve will thread the needle and achieve a soft landing, meaning policymakers will tame inflation without triggering a recession. To quote Morgan Stanley analysts, “The U.S. economy is humming along, with nearly all data validating the soft landing.”

      However, the Treasury bond market — a recession forecasting tool with a near-perfect track record — continues to sound its most severe alarm in decades. Recessions have typically coincided with a substantial decline in the S&P 500. Here’s what investors should know.

      Treasury bonds have predicted past recessions with near-perfect accuracy
      …
      https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/02/24/bond-market-signal-trouble-in-the-stock-market/

    3. Why stock market records aren’t always a great sign for the economy
      Phil Rosen
      Feb 24, 2024, 5:31 AM PST
      The stock market.
      Angela Weiss/Getty Images

      – The chief economist for UBS Global Wealth Management said soaring stocks may suggest capital is misallocated in the economy.

      – Politicians often incorrectly point to a stock market rally as a sign of a healthy economy, he said.

      – Meanwhile, US stock investors are the most bullish they’ve been in two years.
      …
      https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-records-crash-bubble-economy-investors-ubs-economy-investing-2024-2

    4. Are Stocks About to Plunge? A Recession Indicator That’s Never Been Wrong Weighs In.
      By Sean Williams – Feb 25, 2024 at 4:06AM

      Key Points

      – A recession-forecasting tool that hasn’t been wrong in 65 years offers an ominous warning for Wall Street.

      – Additionally, a widely followed valuation indicator with a perfect track record of its own portends a possible wild ride for Wall Street.

      – On the other hand, patience and perspective have a way of making long-term-minded investors richer.
      …
      https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/02/25/are-stocks-about-to-plunge-a-recession-indicator/

    5. A 32-year market vet warns the US economy is hurtling toward a recession as inflation flares back up — and shares 2 technical indicators that show stocks could be on the verge of a significant decline
      William Edwards
      Feb 24, 2024, 2:00 AM PST
      Stock market trader
      JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty

      – Jon Wolfenbarger, the founder of BullAndBearProfits.com, is calling for a recession.

      – He said inflation could flare up again, leading the Fed to leave rates higher.

      – Wolfenbarger believes stocks could fall to new lows — representing about 30% downside.
      …
      https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-market-crash-recession-inflation-bubble-sp500-interest-rates-wolfenbarger-2024-2

  20. Gov. Newsom Praises Nikki Haley: One of The Democrat Party’s ‘Better Surrogates’

    Infowars.com

    February 24th 2024, 12:36 pm

    “I have no problem with her continuing for as long as she wishes, because I think she’s making a good case against Trump,” says Democrat governor.

    Newsom told CNN that Haley has been doing a good job attacking Trump over his 91+ indictments by Joe Biden and Democrat A

    I think she’s one of our better surrogates, so I hope she stays in [the GOP primary race],” Newsom told CNN host Jake Tapper.

    News Nomad 🗞

    @The_Nomad_News🚨🚨NEWSOM calls @NikkiHaley a [DEM]
    SURROGATE 😮

    “She’s one of our better surrogates.“

    Haley’s “spot on 99%” of the time… “She’s making a good case against Trump.” @GavinNewsom

    He just said the quiet part out loud.

    7:44 AM · Feb 24, 2024
    ·
    https://x.com/The_Nomad_News/status/1761371487825801446?s=20

    1. Fake valuations for EV, Nvidia AI, etc., but Trump’s RE valuations, for a loan that was paid in full, drag him into court and find him guilty of fraud with fines in the tens of millions. WTF?

      1. NVidia doesn’t even do AI, they just sell Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) which are used in AI applications. It’s not like they are the only company that sells GPUs, theirs just happen to be the best ones at the moment.

        1. I’m not entirely convinced AI is going to be much more than an advanced search engine, but I fear looking like a complete fool, like that famous economist who said that the internet was a fad, wasn’t going to do anything. I think the promise of AI is in the future in a way we don’t understand yet, but we are getting glimpses of it. It might be able to automate routine tasks very well with prompts, and seems to have promise in medical imaging, but it won’t be doing corporate tax returns or writing legal briefs anytime soon.

  26. Laken Riley murder suspect Jose Ibarra lived it up in NYC after reportedly entering US illegally, social media posts appear to show

    By Olivia Land
    Published Feb. 24, 2024

    Social media accounts appear to show the suspect in the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley exploring New York City and posing with friends and family more than a year before the alleged killing.

    Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was arrested on Friday in connection with the death of Riley, whose body was found near a lake on the University of Georgia’s campus the day before.

    In September 2022, however, the Venezuelan native looked carefree, smiling in Times Square and Rockefeller Center in New York City, posts on a Facebook account linked to his name showed.

    He allegedly entered the US via El Paso, Texas, that month, and was released from a detention center due to overcrowding, reports said Saturday.

    Police sources in New York confirmed to NewsNation that a suspect matching Ibarra’s name and age was arrested in the Big Apple for endangering a 5-year-old child last year.

    More recently, Ibarra appeared to share photos of himself with a handful of others — including a few romantic posts with an unidentified woman.

    His last TikTok post was a soundless selfie video posted just two days before his arrest — and one day before Riley vanished during her morning jog.

    Ibarra is now staring down a slew of charges — including malice murder — related to Riley’s killing, police announced Friday night.

    He was snapped being arrested outside the Argo Apartments complex in Athens that afternoon, according to Atlanta News First.

    https://nypost.com/2024/02/24/us-news/laken-riley-murder-suspect-jose-ibarra-seen-in-nyc-after-illegally-entering-us-social-media/

  28. Fani Willis Demands Judge Reject Cellphone Evidence Suggesting Relationship With Fellow Prosecutor

    By Tom Ozimek
    2/24/2024

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has called on Judge Scott McAfee to disallow as evidence cellphone records submitted by Trump lawyers suggesting she and special prosecutor Nathan Wade may have lied about when their romantic relationship began.

    Ms. Willis’s objection to the new evidence, which Trump attorneys say adds weight to their argument she hired her then-boyfriend for mutual financial gain in a corrupt bargain and should be disqualified, came in a Feb. 23 court filing.

    Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys, Steve Sadow and Jennifer Little, filed a court affidavit on Friday from a private investigator hired to obtain Mr. Wade’s and Ms. Willis’s text and voice call history.

    The investigator, Charles Mittelstadt, said in the affidavit he found the pair made over 2,000 calls and exchanged 12,000 text messages in 2021, many months before they say their relationship began.

    Some of the data, which Ms. Willis argues in her filing is inadmissible for technical or procedural reasons, purports to show that Mr. Wade was at the condominium where Ms. Willis was living late at night and well into the morning on multiple occasions in September and November 2021.

    Both Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have claimed their relationship began in early 2022, only after she hired him to serve as special prosecutor on the Trump case, which accuses the former president of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

      1. “God’s country.”

        Indeed. It’s not California because there would be a cyclone fence around it to prevent campers from getting burned, a fire hydrant nearby to extinguish it and a Prop65 cancer/pregnancy warning sign. 🙂

  31. ‘Obviously, the supervised injection site at South Riverdale was operational during all these years, so I’m not sure it’s accurate for the Star to report our neighbourhood has seen ‘dramatic decreases in drug fatalities’ when, in fact, it hasn’t’

    Fooking K-dns can’t call a lying dog what they are.

  32. ‘There is little doubt that our city council has come to the conclusion that the time will come when we will all just accept the abandonment of zoning as inevitable, throw up our hands and stop complaining. Perhaps they are applying the same philosophy to their incredible spending on the Green Line LRT project without confirming just how much it is likely to go over budget. What will be the tipping point for that project? Our climate-obsessed government in Ottawa may have reached its tipping point if recent polls are any indication’

    Remember when no zoning was in a few libertarian cities? Yes, everything is on it’s head now.

  33. Nikki Haley
    Cleveland Browns
    Detroit Lions
    Houston Texans
    Jacksonville Jaguars
    Arizona Cardinals
    Los Angeles Chargers
    Tennessee Titans
    Atlanta Falcons
    Colorado Rockies
    Milwaukee Brewers
    San Diego Padres
    Seattle Mariners
    Tampa Bay Rays

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