Dow Tanks; Looks Like All Out War In ME

[Kathianne]

Interesting times indeed. Where will we be in a week? November? Any guesses?

No links now, though I'm sure we will find plenty.

[Kathianne]

Some folks will be paying attention today, after Friday and 401s took a hit, today it's looking worse. Then there is the whole ME thing, with all the costs involved in any attempt to protect, much less being ready for escalation and perhaps war.

With all the drama, the election is just over 3 months away. Will Trump blow it by going all personal vendettas or will he follow the people and focus on the issues?

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2024/08/05/a-harris-basement-honeymoon-n3792705


A Harris Basement Honeymoon in New CBS Poll?Ed Morrissey 9:25 AM | August 05, 2024



AP Photo
It's now been two weeks since Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 Democrat nomination. Kamala Harris has yet to take a question from a reporter in that period of time, let alone hold a presser or sit down for an interview with any major media outlet. Normally a new candidate would rush to fill that space, but Harris appears to have adopted the Biden Basement Campaign Playbook, at least in the first fortnight.


Is that strategy working? To some extent. perhaps. A new CBS/YouGov poll out yesterday shows Harris taking a narrow 50/49 lead over Donald Trump, for instance, largely because of new enthusiasm from Democrat voters:


Boosted by Democrats, younger and Black voters becoming more engaged and likely to vote, and by women decidedly thinking she'd favor their interests more, Vice President Kamala Harris has reset the 2024 presidential race.


She has a 1-point edge nationally — something President Biden never had (he was down by 5 points when he left the race) — and Harris and former President Donald Trump are tied across the collective battleground states.


That's an interesting way to phrase this finding: the collective battleground states. Harris has definitely narrowed the race in the seven swing states that CBS polled, but she hasn't taken a lead in any of them except Nevada, 50/48. Trump leads in North Carolina and Georgia by three, Wisconsin by one, and the other three states -- including Blue Wall Pennsylvania and Michigan -- are ties. And these results are apparently not from a full-sample poll, but are "derived from CBS News' statistical model," which uses other unspecified data.


As for the the issues, the most important are immigration and the economy in most other polls, but this poll doesn't attempt to quantify or rank them. They do test against them in the presidential vote, however, and Trump bests Harris on both. Oddly, CBS doesn't provide a slide with those numbers in its poll report, but they come in questions 39-40 and 45-46, and the results aren't even close:


If the Trump campaign can keep the focus on these issues -- rather than, say, trying to settle scores with Brian Kemp -- even a basement campaign won't help Harris keep her honeymoon going. Looking at the crosstabs (embedded at the bottom of the linked CBS News report), Harris' performance on the economy is abysmal in almost every demo. Only 53% of Democrats think Harris will make them better off financially, and that's the only demo reporting a majority for that answer. Only 41% of blacks and 29% of Hispanics think Harris will benefit their finances. In every demo except Democrats, blacks, and liberals, pluralities or majorities say Harris will make them worse off financially.


What about Trump? Except for the above demos and Hispanics, and a tie at 41% among women, all other demos have a plurality or majority believing they'll do better with Trump. The better/worse-off differences are quite striking:


Men: 50/35 Trump, 24/49 Harris
Women: 41/41 Trump, 25/40 Harris
Indies: 43/37 Trump, 16/47 Harris
College graduates (!): 44/39 Trump, 26/43 Harris
You can see why CBS preferred not to graph these results. If this election follows The Carville Rule, then Harris' boost will be short-lived indeed.


The demos are even worse for Harris on immigration. Almost every demo but Democrats and black voters have either clear pluralities or majorities believing that Harris will make the border crisis worse. In contrast, Trump has a majority in every demo -- including Democrats (53/11) and liberals (51/10) -- believing he will decrease the number of migrants crossing the border. In most demos, those numbers are in the 70s. Trump has strong credibility on border issues, even more than on the economy.


The strategy should be clear for Trump. Focus on the economy and the border and to a certain extent ancillary issues tied to both -- crime, inflation, wage erosion. Don't provide any distractions from the message, and force Harris to respond to these. The more distractions provided, the longer Harris can hide from the media and voter scrutiny.


What about the honeymoon? Harris has managed to get Democrats enthusiastic, but really only Democrats. The crosstabs on this question about Harris replacing Biden don't show any significant enthusiasm, perhaps in part because Harris hasn't done much to seize the moment. Only 52% describe themselves as enthusiastic (31%) or satisfied (21%) overall. The only demos where the enthusiasm number gets over 35% are among Democrats (67%), liberals (64%), and blacks (50%), the latter a surprisingly low number considering Harris' black identity. Only 34% of women are enthusiastic about Harris' anointment. These numbers suggest that the honeymoon period is not likely to last long.


And this is just one poll, too. The overall RCP average still shows Trump ahead and largely holding his voters in place over the last two weeks:


Worth noting, too: In actual polling in RCP's aggregation, Trump still leads in most of the battleground states in the post-Anointment period:


Arizona: Trump +2.8
Wisconsin: Trump +0.2
Michigan: Harris +2.0
Pennsylvania: Trump +1.8
North Carolina: Trump +5.5
Georgia: Trump +0.8
These are thin margins and the polls could still shift. But there is neither an explosion of enthusiasm for Harris evident yet, nor any momentum except for Harris catching up to Biden's pre-debate levels. The race hasn't actually changed much since that status quo ante, and if Trump can remain relentlessly on message on the economy and immigration, the data shows a clear path to victory.


But of course, that's a mighty big if.

[Gunny]

Some folks will be paying attention today, after Friday and 401s took a hit, today it's looking worse. Then there is the whole ME thing, with all the costs involved in any attempt to protect, much less being ready for escalation and perhaps war.

With all the drama, the election is just over 3 months away. Will Trump blow it by going all personal vendettas or will he follow the people and focus on the issues?

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2024/08/05/a-harris-basement-honeymoon-n3792705Somebody needs to grab hold of Trump and give him a serious case of shaken baby syndrome. Not that he was impressive before, but he appears to have become completely unhinged since Harris was anointed. His tirade in Georgia presenting his conspiracy theories as facts isn't going to get him anywhere.

[Gunny]

Interesting times indeed. Where will we be in a week? November? Any guesses?

No links now, though I'm sure we will find plenty.

If war does break out in the ME, I'm more concerned with the idiots on our home front and our jellyfish politicians that cater to the rabid, drooling at the mouth crazies.

Netayahu stated yesterday Iran and Israel are already at war. Technically, I'd say that's been true since 1979. The US has already diverted manpower and materiel to the region. Meanwhile, State Department is trying to bring back from the dead the coalition that defended against Iran's last strike.

Last but not least ... my grandson needs a haircut and I have to find a new barber shop since we moved out here to Perdition:rolleyes:

[Kathianne]

Somebody needs to grab hold of Trump and give him a serious case of shaken baby syndrome. Not that he was impressive before, but he appears to have become completely unhinged since Harris was anointed. His tirade in Georgia presenting his conspiracy theories as facts isn't going to get him anywhere.

https://www.businessinsider.com/axelrod-trump-ahead-harris-his-race-to-lose-right-now-2024-8


A key Obama-era strategist says Kamala Harris may be riding the hype wave, but it's still Trump's race to loseKwan Wei Kevin Tan Aug 5, 2024, 1:18 AM MST

Former President Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Minnesota; Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at a campaign event in Texas.
"Now people feel like there's a chance. But it's absolutely Trump's race to lose right now," former Obama advisor David Axelrod said of Vice President Kamala Harris' electoral chances. Stephen Maturen via
Swapping Biden for Harris doesn't mean the Democratic Party is guaranteed a win this November.
Former Obama advisor David Axelrod says, "it's absolutely Trump's race to lose right now."
"Everybody should be sober about that on the Democratic side," Axelrod told CNN.

Vice President Kamala Harris is still in for a tough fight if she wants to beat former President Donald Trump this November, says former Obama advisor David Axelrod.


Axelrod told CNN's Jessica Dean in an interview on Saturday that Democratic supporters may be getting ahead of themselves if they think Harris is a shoo-in this November.


"There's a lot of irrational exuberance on the Democratic side of the aisle right now because there was despair for some period of time about what November was gonna look like," Axelrod said.


Harris' ascension as presumptive Democratic nominee on Tuesday capped off weeks of uncertainty in the Democratic Party after party leaders began to question Biden's ability to win given his age.


The president had faced growing calls from party leaders and donors to step down after giving a disastrous performance in a debate with Trump in late June. Biden eventually dropped out of the race on July 21 and endorsed Harris as his successor.


But replacing Biden with Harris doesn't mean Trump's defeat is now certain, says Axelrod, who served as the key strategist behind President Barack Obama's victories in the 2008 and 2012 elections.


Related stories


JD Vance admitted in private that Biden getting swapped out for Harris was like a 'political sucker punch'




The Trump-Vance campaign says they won't agree to a VP debate date until Kamala Harris picks 'her running mate'


"Now people feel like there's a chance. But it's absolutely Trump's race to lose right now. He is ahead, and he is ahead in most battleground states," Axelrod said.


"I think it's a wide-open race but Trump had the advantage right now and everybody should be sober about that on the Democratic side," he added.




For their part, the Trump campaign had long been preparing to battle a Biden-led Democratic ticket.


"I don't think Joe Biden has a ton of advantages. But I do think Democrats do," Trump's campaign advisor Susie Wiles told The Atlantic's Tim Alberta in March.


In fact, Biden's sudden departure seems to have caught them off guard, with Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, even telling donors last month that the last-minute switch to Harris felt like a "political sucker punch."


"The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did," Vance said, per a recording obtained by The Washington Post.


Representatives for the Harris and Trump campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

[Black Diamond]

Yeah trump needs to get on point. There is an element of honeymoon phase with Harris and this is still winnable. And i don't think the craziness of the summer is over. Just a feeling I've had. A lot can happen in three months, as illustrated by the last month and a half and i think it will.
Who cares what color Willie Browns side piece is. She will make Biden look like Reagan and the *world * can't afford her.

[Gunny]

Yeah trump needs to get on point. There is an element of honeymoon phase with Harris and this is still winnable. And i don't think the craziness of the summer is over. Just a feeling I've had. A lot can happen in three months, as illustrated by the last month and a half and i think it will.
Who cares what color Willie Browns side piece is. She will make Biden look like Reagan and the *world * can't afford her.Nobody cares about Willie Brown and nobody cares what color Harris is except those that make a living exploiting anything anyone says or does to someone of "color". Which, Trump stupidly had to open mouth, insert foot first opportunity that came along. Talk about pointing out someone who is out of touch with the people. Who DOESN'T know better than that? Yes she has played her race to her advantage and we all know it. Still not okay to say it.

She's an idiot. Her record sucks. She covered for the current boob occupying the WH being braindead. She's part and parcel to his entire administration. Go after THAT. Not her damned suntan.

[fj1200]

Define all-out war. Egypt won't. Jordan won't. Syria and Lebanon can't sustain. Iran is too far away and missiles won't take any appreciable toll. Only Israel has the ability to cross borders to effectively counter offenses.

[Black Diamond]

Define all-out war. Egypt won't. Jordan won't. Syria and Lebanon can't sustain. Iran is too far away and missiles won't take any appreciable toll. Only Israel has the ability to cross borders to effectively counter offenses.

Off the top of my head... More terrorist attacks possibly ordered by Iran, not sure if Hamas and hezbollah would follow Iran orders, turkey supposedly getting involved

[Kathianne]

Define all-out war. Egypt won't. Jordan won't. Syria and Lebanon can't sustain. Iran is too far away and missiles won't take any appreciable toll. Only Israel has the ability to cross borders to effectively counter offenses.

Israel being attacked on multiple fronts, very likely to go beyond the proxies to Iran itself. Will that cause the Russians and others to jump in? Remains to be seen.

[Kathianne]

https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2024/08/05/looking-more-like-war-in-iran-n3792706


Looking More Like War in IranJazz Shaw 10:40 AM | August 05, 2024



Iranian Presidency Office via AP
The situation in the Middle East is not cooling down at all. In fact, tensions appear to be escalating further and none of the players in the region are paying any attention to calls from the Biden administration to deescalate and move closer to a ceasefire in Gaza. Two of the latest flashpoints, both figuratively and literally, were an Israeli rocket strike in Tehran that killed senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and a second strike in the capital of Lebanon that took out a top Hezbollah commander. Iran's leaders have vowed to retaliate, telling a meeting of Arab diplomats that they "don't care if their response triggers a war." The Biden administration already warned Iran to "temper its response," but it's obvious that both Israel and the Iranians are ignoring anything Biden has to say and are moving ahead with their own plans. It would appear that simply saying "don't" still doesn't have any impact on the situation when Joe Biden is the one saying it. (Wall Street Journal, subscription required)


Iran rejected U.S. and Arab efforts to temper its response to the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s top political leader, as authorities were investigating the security breaches that led to the attack.


Iranian prosecutors said Saturday that they had opened a formal investigation into the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, which came hours after an Israeli strike killed a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut. The two attacks, following a rocket strike on a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, escalated a recent cycle of violence and threatened to push the region to the brink of war.


Iranian leaders have vowed to retaliate. On Saturday, Iran told Arab diplomats that it didn’t care if the response triggered a war, according to people familiar with the conversations.


The White House reportedly sent word through back channels to Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian saying that his chances of "improving relations with the West" would be enhanced if he exercised restraint. That approach relies on the assumption that Iran has any interest in improving relations with the Great Satan instead of working to destroy us. That was obviously a faulty assumption from the beginning.


Let's keep in mind who was clearly in the wrong over there. Israel didn't just launch those strikes out of the blue without provocation. Hezbollah launched strikes on a soccer field in the Golan Heights which killed roughly a dozen Israeli children. The rockets were clearly manufactured and supplied by Iran. Israel launched precision strikes that took out two terrorist leaders. This is asymmetrical warfare by definition. Israel is eliminating military targets. Iran's proxies are trying to conduct a reign of terror against Israel's civilian population.


Yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu laid his cards on the table and identified the source of all these issues. He described the current conflict as "a multifront war against the Iranian axis of evil." Up until now, Iran has traditionally attempted to deflect blame away from itself and toward its proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah, claiming that they were simply helping supply their neighbors with aid so they could fend off the aggressions of Israel. Now, however, Iran is threatening a direct response even though no attacks have recently been launched against targets inside of their country. The mask is slipping.


Masoud Pezeshkian should probably be careful what he wishes for lest he wind up getting it. The exchange of rockets and missiles that took place in April proved to be highly instructional. A massive barrage was launched at Israel and the Iron Dome took out nearly all of them. Shortly thereafter, Israel was able to strike strategic targets inside of Iran because that nation's own missile defense systems proved to be wholly inadequate. We should also remember that during the attacks in April, Jordan shot down Iranian missiles that crossed into their airspace on the way to Israel. Jordan's Foreign Minister said this weekend that they are prepared to do so again if the situation escalates in a similar fashion. If Iran really wants to take this to the next level, they could easily wind up on the losing side of the battle and they may wind up more isolated in the region than they believe. If the pot truly begins to boil over, the Biden administration will have a very big decision to make and should be forced to pick a side. Based on Biden's track record, I have no confidence that Scranton Joe will come down on the side of our Israeli allies.

[fj1200]

Off the top of my head... More terrorist attacks possibly ordered by Iran, not sure if Hamas and hezbollah would follow Iran orders, turkey supposedly getting involved

Terror attacks are always possible.


Israel being attacked on multiple fronts, very likely to go beyond the proxies to Iran itself. Will that cause the Russians and others to jump in? Remains to be seen.

Yup. I've been wrong before. Just yesterday even. :eek:

[Gunny]

Define all-out war. Egypt won't. Jordan won't. Syria and Lebanon can't sustain. Iran is too far away and missiles won't take any appreciable toll. Only Israel has the ability to cross borders to effectively counter offenses.

Iran has Hezbollah, Hamas (what's left of) and the Houti's. Iran can bottle up the Arabian Gulf. None of the Gulf States can sustain against that and the price of oil will skyrocket. That will bring in bigger players either directly for jockeying for position behind the scene.

Not to mention all the aforementioned shitheads appear to have international PR on their side thanks mostly to US MSM.

Israel cannot sustain constant terror attacks from all of the above. Israel will have to go to war and go ate them to neutralize them. That's the only way Israel has ever prevailed.

[Kathianne]

Iran has Hezbollah, Hamas (what's left of) and the Houti's. Iran can bottle up the Arabian Gulf. None of the Gulf States can sustain against that and the price of oil will skyrocket. That will bring in bigger players either directly for jockeying for position behind the scene.

Not to mention all the aforementioned shitheads appear to have international PR on their side thanks mostly to US MSM.

Israel cannot sustain constant terror attacks from all of the above. Israel will have to go to war and go ate them to neutralize them. That's the only way Israel has ever prevailed.
It's not just the US media, look at Britain with the Taylor Swift knifings of little kids:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/03/after-southport-the-rage-against-the-throng/


After Southport: the rage against the throngFear and loathing of the white working class is palpable in the elite’s response to the unrest.


Brendan O'Neill
Brendan O'Neill
chief political writer
3rd August 2024




Something extraordinary happened in the UK this week: the murder of three working-class girls was turned into a moral panic about working-class communities. Ruthlessly, with something approaching relish, the media elites dragged the public gaze from the frenzied stabbing of girls in a seaside town to the supposed frothing bigotries of the seaside town itself. In elite circles, angst over the evil visited on the children of Southport gave way to a foreboding over what lurks within Southport. In those terraced houses, with their white working-class inhabitants, so susceptible to online lies, so given to racial animus. These people want us to fear not the wicked individuals who terrorise our towns, but the towns themselves.


It has been a chilling spectacle. I am struggling to recall the last time the moral narrative around a horrific event was so mercilessly rewritten by those with cultural power. The week started with the grim news that a young man had invaded a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport in north-west England and used a curved kitchen knife to assault its attendees, leaving three girls dead and others seriously injured. And it ends with the elites focussing their fury and energy almost exclusively on the civil unrest that followed that act of barbarism. On the ‘moral deviance’ less of the killer who laid waste to three precious lives, than of those small sections of working-class society that erupted in fury at his killing. The establishment is back in its comfort zone – fretting over the alien morality and unwieldy energy of the white working class.


As this awful week draws to a close, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are ruled by people who fear the anger of the masses following acts of inhumanity more than they do the acts of inhumanity themselves. You can deplore the riotous disorder that followed the Southport massacre, as I do, and still ask why that disorder elicited a more zealous reaction from the opinion-forming classes than did the slaughter that provoked it. To my mind, the street violence in Southport, Hartlepool, Sunderland, Manchester and central London was wholly destructive. Groups of men hurled projectiles at cops and, most despicabably, threw bricks at mosques. This was a betrayal of the quiet dignity the good people of Southport have shown following the horror that befell their community. And yet it is curious, concerning in fact, that this criminal behaviour seems to be occupying Britain’s moral guardians and policymakers more than the murderous nihilism inflicted on Southport’s girls.


Peruse the media and you will be left with the distinct impression that the true deviants of 21st-century Britain, the greatest threat to our way of life, are angry working-class men. The press is in the grip of an all-out hooligan panic, the likes of which we’ve not seen since the 1980s. The slain girls of Southport risk being forgotten in the media rush to denounce the ‘thugs’, the ‘far-right hooligans’ and the ‘fascists’ who they say swarmed the streets of Southport and other towns in the aftermath of the killings. Some even fear that the rioters were stooges of Russia – unwitting stooges, of course, given how dim they are. We’re told that those baseless claims spread by the far right, that the Southport suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker, came from a ‘fake news website’ with ‘links to Russia’, helping to give rise to those ‘violent riots throughout the UK’. This vision of Britain’s great unwashed being marshalled by Russia to spread mayhem across our isles is peak liberal hysteria.


Starmer’s one-party state
Video
Starmer’s one-party state
spiked
That the elites’ anxiety over the Southport unrest is fuelled by prejudicial dread of the white working class is clear from how differently they respond to riots that don’t involve the white working class. Consider the riot in Harehills, Leeds in July, when largely immigrant communities rose up following the state’s attempt to remove four Roma kids from their family. There was a palpable streak of empathy in the media coverage of that outburst of street violence. There was condemnation from the political class, of course, but it felt perfunctory, nervous even. Our new PM Keir Starmer called the Harehills riot ‘shocking’, which feels positively complimentary in comparison with the seething rage with which he responded to the post-Southport disorder. For those riots, with their low-class white ruffians, he held a special press conference where he denounced the ‘mindless’ brutes and promised to set up a ‘national violent disorder unit’ to smash them. Why didn’t he do that after Harehills?


The disparity in the liberal media’s coverage of the Harehills disorder and the post-Southport disorder has been glaring. Prospect, every rich liberal’s favourite magazine, got all sad-eyed over the Harehills riot. Maybe it was down to the ‘economic pressures’ felt in such communities, it said. After all, when people are ‘stretched to breaking point… something has to give’. Prospect reminded us of the MLK line about a riot being ‘the language of the unheard’ and said: ‘Last week, Harehills spoke. But did anyone listen?’


Guess what it said about the post-Southport unrest? None of that, that’s for sure. Instead it had its editor, Alan Rusbridger, formerly of the Guardian, raging in Oxfordian tones about the ‘horrifying’ unrest, the ‘ugly riots’, the mayhem that was triggered by the ‘foul virus’ of lies and misinformation on X. Got that? When ethnic-minority people riot over the removal of children, it’s the understandable cry of the unheard; when white men in tracksuits riot over the murder of children, it’s basically fascism. How to explain this strikingly differential treatment of two riots, just a fortnight apart, other than as an expression of class hatred?


The more radical wing of bourgeois Britain has been even worse. There are leftists on social media who said nothing about Southport until the ‘gammon’ took to the streets. The sight of these ill-educated oafs seems to have offended their moral sensibilities more than the news of the slaughter of the girls on Monday. Or look at Counterfire, an online outlet of Britain’s radical left. On the Harehills riot, it said ‘a community ravaged by austerity fights back’. On Southport, it wailed over a ‘racist riot by a drunken far-right mob’, these ‘fascists’ who ‘rampaged through the community’. Rioting minorities are revolutionaries against austerity – the rioting white working classes are little Hitlers. Rarely has the boiling animus of the modern left for the oiks of Britain’s provincial towns been so starkly exposed.


How Southport exposed a broken Britain
Podcast
How Southport exposed a broken Britain
spiked
As to Starmer – his press-conference pique over the post-Southport rioting might have been more convincing if he hadn’t taken the knee to Black Lives Matter in June 2020 when BLM riots were ravaging the United States. Both Starmer and Angela Rayner, then leaders of the opposition, genuflected in the fashion of BLM at the height of the fiery, riotous destruction that followed the killing of George Floyd. The idea that we should take lectures on social disorder from a politician who bowed to an ideology whose street violence caused 25 deaths and a billion dollars’ worth of damage is laughably absurd.


British prime minister Keir Starmer arrives with a floral tribute to the child victims of a knife attack on 30 July 2024 in Southport, England.
British prime minister Keir Starmer arrives with a floral tribute to the child victims of a knife attack on 30 July 2024 in Southport, England.
It seems that in the eyes of the new elite, some riots are okay, maybe even good, while others are vile acts of fascist lunacy. Angry African-Americans and their white ‘allies’ among the Ivy League left getting violent over the killing of a black man? Good. We bow down. Immigrant communities in Leeds setting fires in response to social workers coming for Roma kids? Fine. The language of the unheard. White working-class men kicking off in the aftermath of the murder of three girls? Evil. Unconscionable. Crush them.


It seems unarguable to me that it wasn’t the grievances behind these various riots that caused the elites to judge them so differently. After all, everyone agrees that the killing of George Floyd was awful, and that the removal of children from the family home can cause deep distress, and that the mass murder in Southport was an act of unspeakable evil. No, it is the identity of the rioters that determines whether they receive sympathy or hatred, pity or bile, Starmer’s slavish genuflection or Starmer’s promise of a savage law-and-order clampdown. The reason the post-Southport rioting so horrified the cultural establishment is not because of what was done but because of who did it. Them. The white lower orders. The people we never want to hear from. Ever.


The existence of a two-tier system of policing is undeniable now. Cops ran away from the Harehills riot, yet they stayed put in Southport and Hartlepool and cracked heads. They used kid gloves on ‘pro-Palestine’ protesters who waved brazenly anti-Semitic placards, yet they declared war on the anti-Islam agitators of Southport, Hartlepool and London. The police do not operate in a vacuum. They get their cues from the establishment. And the cue here is that white working-class men are the lowest of the low, the most morally corrupt of identity groups, and thus deserve everything they get.


All of this raises a pressing question about the authoritarian measures Starmer has promised to introduce in response to the post-Southport riots. Why these riots? What is it about this street violence that offended Starmer so much more than the Harehills street violence, to the extent that he now feels he must build a ‘national violent disorder unit’ to counter it? His proposed panoply of tyrannical measures is frightening. He says facial-recognition technology will be used to track the movement of certain activists. He says ‘surge teams’ of police officers will be sent to smash ‘far-right’ agitation. And he has ‘warned social media’ to keep a check on misinformation – like the misinformation that swirled around the identity of the Southport stabber – or else face consequences. In short, he’ll deploy AI, censorship and new armies of cops.


That it has suddenly become a priority to police misinformation on social media – despite these platforms having been awash for years with bullshit about everything from masks protecting us from Covid to Israel bombing the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza – suggests it isn’t lies per se Starmer wants to obliterate, but certain ideas, too. Certain opinions. Certain forms of anger. Anyone who thinks a new regime of online censorship would only be wielded against misinformation is, I’m afraid to say, a fool. Or at least unfamiliar with the history of social control. Views the Starmerites don’t like, especially on immigration, integration and multiculturalism, would very likely be swept up in any new crusade against words on the internet.


It strikes me that Starmer has made it his priority to protect society less from the kind of violence we saw last Monday than from people’s anger to such violence – an anger that is felt by many decent ordinary citizens who would never dream of rioting. His statements and policy proposals seem aimed far more at forcefielding the moral order from the masses’ feelings than from certain individuals’ brutality. Yes, he has made a few noises about tackling ‘knife crime’. But his fiercest commentary, his firmest policy promises, have been targeted less at addressing the nihilism that stalked Southport on Monday than at the riotous fallout from that foul event. I guess interrogating the rise of new forms of apocalyptic violence is hard, while knocking together a few ‘chav’ heads is easy.


Starmer with his counter-riot proposals and the media with their one-eyed handwringing over the post-Southport unrest are sending a message, consciously or otherwise. They’re saying that the worst thing of the past week, the thing that most clearly demands moral condemnation and authoritarian reply, is the aftermath of the massacre. They are devoting themselves to the control and curtailment of mass anger rather than to the far tougher task of doing something about acts of mass violence. And the dark irony is that it was precisely this warped obsession with policing the public’s angst about social decay, this elite fixation on the destabilising consequences of working-class feeling, that has given so much space to the agitators responsible for the street outbursts we’ve seen over the past week.


That the cultural elites’ greatest fear post-Southport has been the reaction of the throng is not actually surprising. We live under officials who seem maniacally obsessed with observing, checking and deflating the views and emotions of working-class society. Bereft of solutions to knife crime, too cowardly to confront the rise of radical Islam, clueless in the face of a new culture of nihilism, our rulers focus instead on controlling the public response to such horrors. They erect a vast edifice of political correctness to police what can and cannot be said on these matters, in the hope that if peace cannot be maintained through tackling violent behaviours, it might at least be propped up through shooting down any passionate public reaction to such behaviours. Their obsession is with maintaining a phoney social calm by silencing people’s concerns rather than addressing the things that concern us.


You see it on so many issues. On Islamist terrorism, the familiar call is ‘Don’t look back in anger’. Don’t get too het up. Don’t ask awkward questions. After every terror attack of recent years, the cry has gone out: if you get too angry about this horror, you might stir up ‘Islamophobia’. You might embolden those who wish to ‘[seize] this atrocity to advance their hatred’. Even using the word ‘Islamist’ has become a risky business. Counter-terror police once considered changing the language around terrorism, by replacing ‘Islamist terrorism’ with ‘faith-claimed terrorism’, and ‘jihadis’ with ‘terrorists abusing religious motivations’. Why? To bring about ‘a change in culture’, they said; to break the ‘link’ in some people’s minds between Islam and terrorism. Can’t stop terrorism? Stop the discussion about it instead. Curb people’s thoughts, defuse their feelings.


Members of the public look at tributes left in St Ann's Square for the people who died in the Manchester Arena Bombing, May 2017.
Members of the public look at tributes left in St Ann's Square for the people who died in the Manchester Arena Bombing, May 2017.
Political correctness strangles the discussion of knife crime, too. Your knife chatter is nurturing racist visions of ‘violently nihilist, feral, often black or ethnic-minority teen gangs’, warns the Institute of Race Relations. So watch yourself. Perhaps say nothing at all, to be safe. And we are well used to public concern about mass immigration being written off by the educated classes as simmering xenophobia, a disease of the Little Englander mind.


Perhaps the worst case of public discussion being ruthlessly sidelined by an elite that outright distrusts us was in relation to grooming gangs. For years, local councils and police forces around England failed to be open about these largely Pakistani-Muslim gangs that were targeting white-working class girls for sexual exploitation and abuse. In some cases they even failed to investigate them properly. All because they feared our response. They presumed, with spectacular prejudice, that ordinary people would rise up in an orgy of ‘Islamophobic’ violence if they discovered the truth about grooming gangs. So they hid it. Their dread of pleb feeling, of working-class concern, had become so great, so overpowering, that they ended up more content to let girls be raped than to let the public know the rapes were happening.


When you force people into a straitjacket of political correctness, they will soon try to struggle out of it. When you treat people’s anger over terrorism, crime and general social decay as an equally destabilising force, possibly as a more destabilising force, they will start to take offence. Grave offence. People are sick of being shut up. Of being called racist for questioning immigration policy, fascist for voting for Brexit, Islamophobic for opposing radical Islam, fearful for discussing knife crime.


The post-Southport rioters should feel the full force of the law. Some were far-right grifters milking people’s concerns for their own cynical, hateful ends. Others will have been opportunists seeking the cheap thrill of street violence. And some, perhaps, were genuinely concerned people who foolishly let themselves be swept up in these grim scenes of anti-working-class, anti-democratic violence. Beyond these riotous fools, however, there are many people out there, good, law-abiding people, who have tired of being told to pipe down, of being told that their beliefs are as threatening to the social order as violence itself. They won’t keep quiet for long. After Southport, the rage of the dispossessed is likely to grow.

[Kathianne]

No real good news on war, but this on the markets might help! Blame Japan:

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/stocks-are-crashingthats-a-great-reason-to-sit-tight-c48e5dee?st=6hn5wxctonqx6fy&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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Stocks Are Crashing—That’s a Great Reason to Sit TightThe sudden selloff in Japanese equities and a surge in the Vix suggest the current rout is being exaggerated by trend chasers
By
Jon Sindreu
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Aug. 5, 2024 9:58 am ET

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The Bank of Japan raising interest rates has triggered a selloff across global stock markets. Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News
The red numbers in your 401(k) today might appear to vindicate warnings about an artificial-intelligence bubble and infirm economy. But don’t start tilting your portfolio toward full pessimism just yet.


The S&P 500 opened down about 4% Monday, with the Nasdaq falling a larger 6%. Investors have been selling the year’s best performers, concerned that disappointing second-quarter results from big technology companies such as Alphabet, Tesla and Intel are a sign that the AI frenzy is a fad. Also, consumer discretionary stocks have become the worst-performing sector in the S&P 500, as lackluster labor-market reports have raised worries that the Federal Reserve made a mistake by waiting until September to cut interest rates.


Overseas, the Stoxx Europe 600 is more than 5% below where it was a week ago, whereas the Swiss franc, a common haven asset, is up roughly 5%. The most eye-popping moves happened in Asia, though, where the Nikkei 225 plunged 12.4% Monday in the worst trading session since Oct. 20, 1987—the day that followed Wall Street’s infamous Black Monday.


Yet it is precisely the breakneck speed with which Japanese equities tumbled that should give most investors a reason to remain calm.


As a guideline, sudden market selloffs are less dangerous than those that unfold progressively over time. This is because investors who rationally price in bad economic data often do so slowly, as it trickles in. Flash crashes, conversely, are often a sign that some tidbit of bad news made speculative bets go awry, triggering a cascade of trades, many of them automated.


Japan is particularly prone to such reversals because interest rates there are so low that many investors use them to fund higher-yielding investments in other currencies. Whenever markets get jittery, these “carry trades” tend to unravel, pushing up the yen and hitting Japanese stocks, many of which are diversified exporters that do better when global growth accelerates. Amplifying this tendency, Japanese stocks had this year become extremely popular among global investors.


The timing of the rout also points a finger at the Bank of Japan, which last week decided to tighten monetary policy for the first time in 17 years with the explicit goal of boosting the yen. This may have triggered market undercurrents within the U.S.


One of the most striking features of the S&P 500 for most of this year has been its extremely low volatility. Until July, the Cboe Volatility Index, or Vix, was at 2019 levels, and kept sliding lower even as investors made big changes to their monetary-policy forecasts.


While the Vix is often dubbed Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” the options contracts it is based on often themselves influence volatility. Whenever investors make bets against market swings, as they have recently been doing in the U.S. by buying loads of structured products, the banks that sell those options are forced to take the other side. These hedges then suppress volatility in the stock market.


The flip side is that whenever a panic breaks through this feedback loop, volatility skyrockets. As the stock market opened Monday, the Vix hovered above 50, making it the highest weekly jump since the onset of the pandemic.


This suggests the selloff is disproportionate: Investors who bought the S&P 500 when the Vix was at 50 or higher have never lost money looking one year ahead.


The second-quarter reporting season has brought mostly good news, with 78% of the S&P 500 firms that have reported so far beating analysts’ earnings estimates—compared with a 74% 10-year average. Both AI-related companies and the rest are reporting net income above what was forecast a month ago. Overall, the U.S. economy still looks robust: The unemployment rate has gone up because the labor force has expanded.


Also, looking at S&P 500 returns since 1994 shows that selling based on the previous day’s falls is a bad strategy. Electing to move into cash after large monthly declines fared better, but still less well than sitting tight.


This isn’t to say that concerns about an economic slowdown or high tech valuations aren’t warranted. Investors have reasons to diversify away from the AI trend or swap more cyclically exposed stocks for more “defensive” names. Indeed, the historical record shows that selling out of stocks after particularly exuberant months has tended to be a winning move. But hindsight is a terrible guide to investing your savings.

[Gunny]

It's not just the US media, look at Britain with the Taylor Swift knifings of little kids:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/03/after-southport-the-rage-against-the-throng/I predict Starmer isn't going to last any longer than recent predecessors.

This:


You can deplore the riotous disorder that followed the Southport massacre, as I do, and still ask why that disorder elicited a more zealous reaction from the opinion-forming classes than did the slaughter that provoked it.


Same as with Israel. Same as it goes here.

[Black Diamond]

There's that, buffett selling half his apple shares, Nvidia chip delay, Amazon ceos sour outlook for the next quarter (i think this is being overlooked, it's retail), and iran.

[fj1200]

No real good news on war, but this on the markets might help! Blame Japan:


There's that, buffett selling half his apple shares, Nvidia chip delay, Amazon ceos sour outlook for the next quarter (i think this is being overlooked, it's retail), and iran.

I'm still going with trump's buffoonery leading to harris uptick. Politics > the economy > the markets.

[Kathianne]

Hmmm, it seems to be intensifying:

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/global-stocks-markets-dow-news-08-05-2024-35da4a74?st=0uvz0578evo9vrr&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

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[Kathianne]

Upnote: Japan gains almost 10%:

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp500-nasdaq-global-selloff-08-06-2024

Live, not gifted.