Monday, March 18, 2024

CAN'T MAKE THIS UP: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘concerned’ the First Amendment is ‘hamstringing’ the government from censoring it's citizens

BUT WHERE ARE MY STATES' RIGHTS?

LUONGO: We trade against Tether. What is Tether? It's a $100 billion U.S. Treasury slush fund and it keeps rising in value.

The hosts are Jim Iuorio on the left and Bob Iaccino on the right.

4:18  The Fed doesn't care about Bitcoin.  The Fed likes Bitcoin, I think.  But the Fed was waiting, and this is something I want to talk about the next time I have Caitlin Long [who makes some interesting comments on Bitcoin below] on my podcast because she's asked me this question a couple of times, and now I can finally answer it for her now that we've seen how the Bitcoin ETFs have worked out.  The Fed wasn't ready for her Custodia Bank and stuff like that that she's doing.  They weren't ready for that because they didn't have the rest of the infrastructure in place to allow for that to happen.  She was way ahead of the curve, and rightly so she was way ahead of the curve but providing a market service that we need just not right then.  Now that we have the structure in place, it's all going to be fine.

IUORIO, 4:55  So in a short answer, do you think we're past the point of no return for the governments to crack down and eliminate Bitcoin and all that bs?

Tom says that the threats to Bitcoin are not only done, but they were never serious, citing SHA-256.

LUONGO, 5:05  I never believed that in the first place because I never believed the DoD had the keys to SHA-256.  If they did, then we have a bigger problem than f*** Bitcoin.  The entire internet runs on SHA-256.

Luongo mentioned Tether, a market crypto currency that I'd never heard of.  What caught my ear was this, 

What liquefies the Bitcoin trade?  What do we trade Bitcoin against?  Nobody trades against the dollars.  We trade against Tether.  What is Tether?  It's a $100 billion U.S. Treasury slush fund and it keeps rising in value.  As Tether . . . Tether makes perfect sense to me now that Leticia James gave it the slap on the wrist and I think the Fed controls Tether.  I think the Fed controls Tether.  I think the Fed executed all the other stablecoins in order to have control over the Bitcoin trade in that respect and know that Tether is audited; they own a little bit of Bitcoin; they own a little bit of gold; they own about 85% in short-term treasuries.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.: The economy is now no longer based on industrial production or any kind of production; it's based upon speculation.

The economy is now no longer based on industrial production or any kind of production; it's based upon speculation.  So if you look at what's happening on Wall Street, they're no longer going factory by factory and saying "What's the production?  What's the efficiency?  What's the lowest cost?  What's the future?"  They're all focusing on "What's the Fed going to do this week?"  And that's what everybody bets on, and it's financialized our economy.  It sent all of [our] industry abroad.  It's destroyed the American middle class and we do that by printing dollars.  You print $34 trillion that you don't have, why would the world even value them anymore?  And the reason that they continue to value them is because we have 800 bases abroad and that kind of anchors this whole system.  And it's already destroyed our moral authority around the world.  And it now . . . our influence around the world is this big compared to when I was a kid when we had moral suasion and we also had . . . people wanted American leadership.  Now, they consider it bullying. 

Manufacturing jobs never ever made up more than 30% of all jobs.  In fact, it was always lower than that, much lower and more into the 20%, 25%, 27% range except during WWII when they were just making bombs to blow up.  Now this didn't make anybody richer; it temporarily made the people who were unemployed . . . they got money but that was all inflation and taxation.  None of this was real.  It was the same thing Hitler did.  So apart from all the death camps and all the evil crap that Hitler did, he also sent everybody to work making bombs and stuff and then claimed he had solved unemployment.  Manufacturing never made up that large of a percentage of the population.  In other words, at its very peak, manufacturing jobs, 70% of the population was doing something else.  So I think people have this idea that Trump is going to put on tariffs, and people are going to stop importing manufactured goods and like 80% of the population is going to work in manufacturing.  No.  It was never the case at the height of American manufacturing employment, and it wouldn't be the case any time no matter how many tariffs you put on.  So it really is just completely a retarded idea.  Be that as it may, he didn't even follow through on that.  Okay?  His advisors, a few of his loyal advisors, the people who really believed in him, were saying, "Don't back away," but all the other ones, whom people call RINOs, some even call Libertarians although that's kind of a laugh that anyone in Washington DC at all is a Libertarian other than Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, two of them, two people.  His advisors tell him, "We're going to have a recession, you're going to lose the next election."  So he backed off.  

16:37  He made a deal in early 2020.  It was signed, and manufacturing immediately rebounded by the way.  So if you trace the IMS Manufacturing Index to see when it was in recession and when it came back, it locks in step completely with those tariffs and their removal.  So he didn't do that.  I keep wanting to think that his supporters are really antiwar.  I actually think Trump is sincere about not fighting at least as many wars.  And I always wondered is it just because he says that that his supporters go along with that when all they really care about is immigration and tariffs?  Or is there a critical mass of people who are sick of this crap?  If there is and if the antiwar part of his message is at all part of the reason why people want to reelect him, well, he didn't do that either.  He promised in 2018 he would be out of Afghanistan with all the troops home by Christmas, and then he sent more troops, and then he never left.  Then he made some deal, "Oh, we're going to get out, but you have to elect me again first."  No.  No, sorry, Donald.  We've heard that too many times.  The fact that it was Joe Biden that got the troops out of Afghanistan is just a travesty.  As despicable a person as Joe Biden is and as warmonger as he's shown that he is and corrupt, and everything else, to allow him to be the one to end the Afghanistan War is just inexcusable to me.

18:43  He bombed Syria twice.  Now there's some murmurings that he bombed empty buildings, and if that's true, that's good, I'm glad.  That was an intentional thing, "Look, I'm going to do this bombing to get all of these people off my back, but I'm not going to kill anybody."  I hope that's the case.  And when he refused to bomb Iran over them shooting down the drone, I give him full kudos for that too.  In fact, he came out and said, "Listen, I'm not killing 150 Iranians over an unmanned drone.  I'm just not going to do it."  I don't think I've ever heard a president say in my lifetime anything that sensible.  So that's good for him.  But we got to remember that the whole Iran thing was his high-pressure campaign that he let John Bolton run.  How'd he think that was going to turn out?  He almost got us into a war while he was saying he didn't want one.  He did that and he funded Ukraine.  Now he tried to hold up the funding pending an investigation into his chief political opponent.  Boy, that was a bad precedent to set, wasn't it, Donald?  But I think he was always going to send it.  And he still talks about Putin like a Neocon now.  A lot of the foreign policy, the positive parts, have faded away during this campaign and I don't exactly know why that is.  Now, he's still saying some