Later today, Fed chairman Kevin Warsh(mallow) will pontificate on interest rates. He’s expected to decree a 25 basis point increase in those rates as an offering to the inflation gods.
I’ve bought some puts on my silver position to cushion the anticipated blow.
This rate-increase talk comes despite rational arguments that raising interest rates will have zero impact on high oil prices, the main cause of persistent inflation.
It is yet another example of optics vs. reality, and that leads us to an installment of News and Views.
NEWS: Leftists are gobsmacked that the lone holdout juror refusing to give admitted child-killer Lindsay Clancy a free pass at her trial was a black man.
VIEWS: TV talking head Gayle King typified the angst. Informed by another juror that the lone holdout was, indeed, a black man, a stunned King blurted out, “Whoa, I have to sit with that for a second.” You may remember King as one of the women who spent a second or so in space with the likes of Katy Perry, and who just a few months back felt compelled to announce on a podcast that she and Oprah Winfrey are not a lesbian couple, despite years of speculation to that effect. Like many of her ilk, King would have preferred the holdout juror had been a white man, giving the screaming left carte blanche to howl away. Reality once again is a female dog.
NEWS: AI has been identified by hyperventilating Democrats as the latest existential threat to humanity.
VIEWS: When are those in the child-like public going to get wise to these never-ending doses of hyperbole? Perhaps you recall prominent Democrats like Al Gore predicting we’d all be underwater from melting polar ice since, oh, 2006, or merely burning up from global warming. They also were not above employing a foreign child with her mental woes and Prince Valiant haircut to preach climate doom. Along the way, COVID-19 was going to do us in, President Trump was going to get us into World War III, and now AI and data centers are going to deliver a digital one-two punch sure to wipe humans from the face of this blue marble. It’s a convenient mid-term election ploy designed to divert attention from the slate of full-out crazies, from raging Muslims to gender-uncertain types, that Democrats are running for national office. Pocahontas Warren, as usual, is on the warpath as part of this latest political ruse. These people have become caricatures of themselves, yet the porky, blue-haired, overly-pierced members of their flock keep on drinking the Kool-Aid.
NEWS: Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace has called for the public execution of Clancy.
VIEWS: Mace is no stranger to speaking her mind, from preferring not to use the women’s restroom facilities in the U.S. Capitol with a man in drag, to discussing her intimate relations with a mate during a prayer breakfast, Mace operates with little or no filter. Were she a raging leftist, this would be fine with LameStream media. But, since Mace aligns with conservatives, it’s an outrage. I just wish Mace, upon images and videos of many of the other Clancy jurors having been released, would have noted these “women” look like aging construction workers, or late-night help at a greasy spoon diner.
NEWS: The Pirates once again will miss Major League Baseball’s postseason and the Steelers once again have one of the easiest schedules in the NFL.
VIEWS: As predicted here long ago, even as the Pirates were making a run at a wild-card playoff berth, this season will end once again with the Pirates absent from the postseason. What amazes me is that some of my former Pittsburgh sports colleagues just a week ago were breathlessly outlining on a YouTube podcast what the Pirates needed to do to make that playoff field. It’s not over mathematically for the Pirates, but the fangraphs site has their chances at zero percent. Meanwhile, the Steelers opened regular-season play by getting past a mediocre Atlanta team further handicapped by playing without its starting quarterback. Various sites differ on the outright ease of the Steelers’ schedule, but most agree it’s in the bottom half of the NFL in terms of strength and perhaps as low as the eighth easiest in the league. This sort of thing produces winning records, but, as evidenced by the Steelers having failed to get past the first playoff round in the past decade, is more mirage than legitimate contention for a title.
Sam Ross Jr's site 