Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 25, 2022 | sundance
All things considered, a remarkably honest article from CNBC outlines the likelihood for a wave of retail bankruptcies. In part the issue is driven by COVID bailout and stimulus funds that inflated the balance sheets and hid the natural contraction that was taking place in the last half of 2021 through today. However, bar far the biggest issue is a contraction in current consumer spending due to severe cost increases in housing, food, fuel and energy.
As we have discussed at length, consumer spending patterns shifted radically in the last year.
Despite the 2021 third and fourth quarter giving the artificial impression of strong demand, inventories were climbing and productivity in the manufacturing and services dropped dramatically. In combination these two data points both indicated a contraction in demand.
The first quarter of 2022 showed a -1.5% overall GDP. The second quarter ends next week, and the government data will be released in the last week of July. I predict that Q2 data will be heavily manipulated in two ways: (1) manipulation of import data via the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles; and (2) the intentional use of a lower inflation rate than currently exists in all goods. My best guess on the fake BEA numbers is a +0.2 to +0.5% positive GDP, thereby barely avoiding the technical definition of a recession.
That said, the CNBC article outlines a very bad scenario for retailers, as the consumer spending contraction hits their profit and loss statements.
(CNBC) – […] There could be an increase in distressed retailers beginning later this year, experts say, as ballooning prices dent demand for certain goods, stores contend with bloated inventory levels and a potential recession looms.
[…] The latest retail sales data shows where consumers are pulling back the most. Advance retail and food service spending fell 0.3% in May versus the prior month, the Commerce Department reported last week. Furniture and home furnishings retailers, electronics and appliances stores, and health- and personal-care chains all saw month-over-month declines.
“Consumers aren’t just buying less stuff, they are shopping less, which means a loss of the impulse-shopping moments that are critical to retail growth,” said Marshal Cohen, chief retail industry advisor at NPD Group, a market research firm.
In the first three months of 2022, consumers bought 6% fewer items at retail than they did in the first quarter of 2021, NPD Group said in a survey issued in late May. More than 8 in 10 U.S consumers said they planned to make further changes to pull back on their spending in the next three to six months, it said.
[…] Rising inventory levels are also on bankruptcy advisors’ radar because they have the potential to lead to much bigger problems. Retailers from Gap to Abercrombie & Fitch to Kohl’s have said in recent weeks that they have too much stuff after shipments arrived late and consumers abruptly changed what they were shopping for.
And when a retailer’s profit margins shrink as its inventories are reappraised — a routine practice in the industry — those inventories won’t be worth as much, Malfitano explained. A company’s borrowing base could fall as a result, he said.
“Some retailers have been able to cancel orders to not create more of a bubble on inventory. But a lot of retailers can’t cancel those orders,” Malfitano said. “So if the retailers that can’t cancel orders don’t knock it out of the park during the holiday season, their margins are going to go way down.” (read more)
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 25, 2022 | sundance
Yesterday we noted one of the likely downstream consequences from the Supreme Court decision on Roe might be that increased federalism and state control over abortion laws would lead to national ‘red lining.’ Essentially, leftists would avoid red state abortion restrictions and self-isolate in deepening blue regions where abortion is more common and accessible.
Within hours of that prediction, Google Inc sent an internal memo to employees offering to pay relocation assistance for any worker who would want to leave an area where abortion is likely to be restricted.
VIA NBC – Google sent a companywide email Friday about the historic Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, explaining employees in affected states can apply for relocation without explaining why.
“This is a profound change for the country that deeply effects so many of us, especially women,” wrote Google Chief People officer Fiona Cicconi in an email to workers, viewed by CNBC. “Googlers can also apply for relocation without justification, and those overseeing this process will be aware of the situation.”
The note doesn’t say how many requests the company would approve and makes no promises. The company is still in the process of assigning relocations for employees who don’t want to come back into their assigned physical office due to the company’s return-to-office policy, which began in April.
Google has more than 30 locations across the U.S. Cicconi also said it will be providing “support sessions” to employees in the coming days. (read more)
Assuming Google does not want to face lawsuits; and taking them at their word about no justification being needed; it would appear the reverse scenario is also true. Google employees who work in an area of extreme leftism (deep blue), can ask for relocation to an area with a more conservative perspective (deep red). This will be interesting to keep watching.
Additionally, Variety has compiled a list of several companies that will now pay health benefits to employees to travel out of state or region and terminate their pregnancy via abortion.
VARIETY – Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony, Meta and several major media and entertainment companies said they will cover travel costs for employees seeking abortions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
In the wake of the ruling, Disney reached out to employees on Friday to stress that they recognize the “impact” of the Supreme Court’s decision and “remain committed to providing comprehensive access to quality and affordable care” for all Disney employees and their families, which includes family planning and reproductive care, “no matter where they live,” an internal source told Variety.
For Disney employees unable to access a medical service, including abortions, in one location, they have a travel benefit that allows for “affordable coverage for receiving similar levels of care in another location.” Walt Disney World, one of the company’s major theme parks is located in Orlando. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has already moved to implement abortion restrictions that limit access to the procedure.
[…] Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish and chief people officer Nancy Phillips sent a memo to staff on Friday, obtained by Variety, confirming the company’s intentions to cover travel costs for employees seeking abortions, writing, “Reproductive health care through company-sponsored health insurance, including coverage for birth control, elective abortion care, miscarriage care and certain related travel expenses if the covered health service, such as abortion, is prohibited in your area.” (read more)
Hopefully the most radical leftists will now self-isolate and stop migrating to regions where traditional American values are being retained. This would be a natural outcome if the actions of the left-wing democrats were to match their rhetoric. Unfortunately, I fear the abortion issue is not as big a political issue as the megaphones in media would like to believe. Recent polling has shown very little political benefit in/around the issue of abortion.
It would be a good outcome if overturning Roe resulted in democrats stopping their migration away from their own left-wing policy madness; however, I’m not sure the abortion issue will overcome their desire to live outside of their insanity. Leftists are ultimately the best representatives of cognitive dissonance when it comes to living up to their own ideological standards.
Democrats have long been known as “Blue Locusts” because they flee the totalitarianism and consequences they create; then seek to destroy the abundance they desire to have around them. Modern leftists are dangerous in the destructive outlooks they carry.
If the Roe decision resulted in these leftists self-isolating away from conservative states, this would be of great benefit. Alas, I doubt they are as committed to the issue as they claim.
If all the leftist democrats were to isolate themselves in geographic safe spaces, the non-breeding Moonbat population would decline and eventually disappear. Unfortunately, I doubt we could be this lucky.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 25, 2022 | sundance
In this week’s discussion monologue, Neil Oliver outlines a recent push by U.S. and U.K. authorities to vaccinate children under 5-years of age. Despite almost zero risk to their health from COVID-19 or any variant, in the U.S. the FDA has recently approved vaccinations for babies 6-months and older.
Mr. Oliver notes the risk vs- reward in this health protocol is ridiculous on its face. There is no substantive risk from COVID19 to any healthy child or young adult, yet the government institutions of healthcare are seemingly blind to the medical evidence. Oliver says, “leave our kids alone,” WATCH:
[Transcript] – In the USA they are jabbing babies with the COVID vaccine, six months old and upward. Here in Britain the NHS has been targeting children at primary school – five to 11 years old – with posters and letters depicting those youngsters who submit to the procedure as ‘Superheroes’.
Smiling cartoon characters, children in superhero outfits, surely designed to persuade children as young as five years old that they might join the ranks of superheroes if they will just line up and bare an arm to the needle.
Looking for all the world like an invitation to a party, with large writing in bright colours, child-superhero branding and headlined – “Calling All Superhero Kids” – the blatant attempt to appeal to the fantasies of innocent children is clear.
The inference to be drawn by any child looking at such a poster is that they are lesser mortals – cowards even – if they would rather not take the jab.
That the NHS is targeting our youngest and most vulnerable in this way is, I say, morally reprehensible, unforgivable. Where in this shameful play on childish imaginations and urge to please is the compliance, demanded by the laws and ethical codes for informed consent, the necessary full disclosure of risks, benefits and alternatives?
And that is before we get to Advertising Standards Agency’s rules shaped to protect children from advertisers’ tricks. Among much else, it has long been the case that advertisers are not, when targeting children directly and specifically, to take advantage of, and I quote from the ASA rules, “… their credulity, loyalty, vulnerability or lack of experience.”
Last week on this channel Mark Steyn drew attention to figures used by the JCVI – the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation – that estimated how many children would need to be jabbed in order to stop one person – just one person – being admitted to an Intensive Care Unit with Covid. That figure is two million children – each jabbed not once, but twice – to stop one admission to ICU.
The average age of death from Covid, calculated early on in the pandemic, was 82 years, the same age as national life expectancy or even older. In the last three months that figure for average age at death from Covid has risen to 85 or 86 years of age.
How many grandparents and great grandparents would countenance the injection of 5 year olds – and who knows, if we follow the lead set by the USA perhaps 6 month old babies – to protect those elders … from any disease … up to and including the Black Death? My hunch is not many.
So far only nine percent of youngsters in the UK aged between 5 and 11 have taken the jab – so that all is not lost – not yet at least. Remember anyway that it’s estimated three quarters of British children have had Covid already, and so have natural immunity.
And that much is before we come to contemplate the increasing certainty that the vaccines are, anyway, causing deaths and harms of all kinds, and in huge numbers. Long behind us now are the days when anyone could say any of the jabs prevent infection with Covid or transmission of Covid.
Last gasp claims that the vaccines reduce the risk of severe symptoms and therefore hospitalisation are similarly undermined.
But the Internet is still awash with people – from the president of the US on down – saying that if you take the jabs you won’t catch Covid, that you won’t transmit Covid, that you won’t die of Covid.
By any sane person’s assessment, that is Covid misinformation, and yet the so-called fact checkers, paid for by billionaire technocrats, and the media platforms themselves leave those erroneous, nonsense statements untouched while continuing to censor and delete reports of death and harm.
Health secretary Sajid Javid bragged last week that those vaccines we’ve had forced upon us so far are just the start. He tweeted that NHS patients would benefit from the “next generation” of vaccines thanks to a new deal with Moderna.
A state of the art mRNA manufacturing and global Research & Development centre will be built here in the UK. According to Javid, it will cement our “science superpower status” – so it’s not just five year olds who are supposed to swoon at the prospect of super powers.
While our Health Secretary celebrates a new deal with Big Pharma, let us consider the latest figures from the VAERS – Voluntary Adverse Event Reporting System – in the US. The latest data, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showed 1,301,356 reports of adverse events experienced by all age groups after vaccination.
Remember too that it is a crime in the US to log false claims on the VAERS system, so that medics put their reputations on the line with every posting and are highly unlikely, to say the very least, to report nuisance or other likely erroneous claims of hurt. Among that figure are 28,859 reports of deaths and 238,412 of serious injuries between December 14, 2020 and June 10, 2022.
And yet now, while the figures rise concerning the risks associated with the present vaccines … while compensation is beginning to be paid out to victims’ families here in Britain, and while so much still remains unknown about the safety of mRNA vaccines, we are already invited by our Health Secretary to look forward to more of the same.
I said on this channel months ago that they should leave the children alone – but in my heart I knew they wouldn’t, and they haven’t.
These two years past have not been about taking care of people’s health. They have been about and continue to be about seizing and exploiting the control of the people themselves. Covid was used as a key, and it unlocked a door.
We have been isolated, divided and placed under house arrest. Many have had their livelihoods destroyed. We have been made to watch the economy driven off a cliff. We had our travel privileges revoked.
We have had our physical and mental health pushed to breaking point and beyond. Just as Covid ran out of steam, war broke out in Europe – a war with no end anywhere in sight. Now they’re telling us to once and for all bid farewell to coal, gas and oil to heat our homes and power our cars.
Everything everywhere is divisive, frightening, enraging or a mix of all three.
Apparently unstoppable illegal immigration on the southern coastline; fuel shortages, price hikes of hundreds of percent at a time.
The prospect of a summer of industrial action; travel chaos for millions. Most recently the overturning of Roe v Wade in the US and more riots in response. Division, division, division.
Take a breath and look at all of it: the fury and the hopeless impotence felt by millions of people is setting us at each other’s throats in every way imaginable. Like water flowing into cracks and fissures in rock, the fear must one day create so much pressure that the rock shatters. The more divided we become, the better it suits the agenda of those that would have us forget the world of before and just bend over ready to take it from the new world to come.
I say it will only get worse. Covid might as well be viewed as a dry run – or perhaps more accurately as an opportunity to probe defences in the minds of the public and so gauge reactions in preparation for the next, more determined assault. Isolated, frightened and angry people … cut off from work and social lives, trapped in their homes for weeks and months, turned to the Internet as a means to reach out to others, to find information different from the paid-for propaganda pumped out by the government and servile media outlets.
And what do we see now? – an Online Safety Bill. This, we are told, will clear out all that pesky misinformation and disinformation – which is to say information the government doesn’t like people seeing and hearing because it runs counter to official stories.
How very, very convenient. As one door closes, another one is slammed in our faces.
All over the world, under the cover of Covid darkness, new laws were passed in one country after another to limit the possibility of protest and dissent.
President Biden is already warning about the next pandemic. There’s Monkeypox – or whatever they decide to call it next – and most recently the discovery of Polio in a British sewer.
If they don’t seek to curtail yet more of our freedoms in response to a disease, they will surely try to have us submit to restrictions designed to save the planet, or stop the war in Ukraine, or whatever cause they can drum up next.
And now, as was always inevitable, and that could be seen from outer space if you had your eyes open, it comes down to our children. Adults have had some time to work things out for themselves, to take advantage of understanding and experience spread over years.
The brains of children are much more malleable, however, ready for imprinting and indoctrination. I have long wondered just how safe British schools are for our children anymore.
This latest scam by the NHS – calling all superhero kids – is only another glimpse among too many to mention of the enthusiasm for abandoning the need to teach children how to think and telling them what to think instead, what to do. [VIDEO ENDS]
Look closely now and you can see another escape route for the uncooperative, the independently minded, being prepared for closure. For those uncomfortable with the education their children are receiving from their schools, home schooling has been an option. Away from an agenda pushed by the state, home schooling parents and guardians were free to nurture and encourage young minds in other ways.
Last month the government announced a new Bill to, and I quote, “level up education”. One way or another, I suspect there will be more control exerted over home schoolers, tendrils of control tightening, because this is about control, pure and simple.
It is about frightening people and keeping them frightened, and so infinitely more likely to take their medicine, real medicine or perhaps the cure for climate crisis, however bitter, who knows.
More and more it will be about our children. Their hearts and minds. The final obstacle to any totalitarian is always the family, and the protection afforded to children by their families.
They were always going to try and reach the children in the end. Whatever happens next – or indeed does not and must not happen next – is up to every one of us. (link)
This brief soundbite from last week is somewhat of a precursor to the points raised by Neil Oliver this week. The financial interests of the Big Rx corporations are directly tied to government. This is the origin of the biggest issue behind government mandating the forced vaccination program for SARS-CoV-2 and any COVID-19 variant.
The adverse medical consequences from the COVID-19 vaccination program are only just now starting to surface while the government and Rx corporations continue to hide data showing adverse impacts. At the same time as this massive conflict of interest and general health controversy is being debated, Pfizer CEO Albert Poula says he is “almost certain” that mandatory vaccine boosters will be part of the requirement by government each year. WATCH (1 minute):
There is something very disturbing about these people.
Armstrong Economics Blog/Rule of Law Re-Posted Jun 24, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
Roe v Wade is correctly overruled not because abortion itself for the court did not overrule that superficially, but instead, it held:
“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
The entire decision rested on a right to privacy which was created in Griswold v Connecticut whereby they tried to outlaw contraceptives. The question turned on the inability of the state to enforce such a law because it would have required a state official to observe a sexual act and that you complied with not using a condom. It was a real stretch to extend that right to abortion.
The defense of Roe v Wade is actually hypocritical for the Democrats. The main support comes from Gates and Rockefeller Foundations and it is covertly supported by the United Nations. This is all about the Planned Parenthood agenda to provide abortions to minorities to reduce their population. Now you may think I am being a conspiracy theorist. However, back in 2009, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg bluntly told the truth, when she was for equal rights for women.
“Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” She spoke bluntly in an interview published in the New York Times Magazine which was an article on women on the court. So it was not simply a woman’s rights agenda. That was the cover story to hide the real agenda which has always existed – eugenics and to reduce the population of the minorities.
There is NOTHING in the Constitution that guarantees any right to an abortion. There is a huge difference between STATUTORY law and CONSTITUTIONAL law. The former is acceptable as long as it does NOT violate the latter. This decision is throwing it back to the States BECAUSE this is a matter for STATUTORY law – not CONSTITUTIONAL any more than putting up a stop sign by the local municipality.
This is a MAJOR victory because it is striking down the entire program of Planned Parenthood that Gates’s father was the head of and the offices were strategically placed in poor, minority regions, for the very purpose of promoting abortions to reduce the population.
It is hard to comprehend how some women because brainwashed into thinking they had some Constitutional right to abort a child whenever they felt like it which was a clever sales job of Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation. This is like Schwab now saying you will own nothing and be happy pretending again this is all for you when in fact it is to hide the agenda of the government defaulting on their debts. It is the same trick of insurance companies. They sell you fire, earthquake, flood, theft, and accident insurance but they could NOT sell DEATH insurance for people who felt it was bad luck so they flipped the name and called it LIFE insurance. Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation convinced women it was their RIGHT to abort a child and how dare anyone say otherwise – so go ahead and assert your womanhood! Great mind game to say the least.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 24, 2022 | Sundance
Ms. Harmeet Dhillon appears on the Tucker Carlson show to discuss the Supreme Court ruling that sends the issue of abortion back to the individual states for determinations of legal issue by the legislative bodies closest to the people. {Direct Rumble Link} Dhillon provides a clear-eyed and pragmatic review of the Roe -vs- Wade case nuance overall. WATCH:
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 24, 2022 | Sundance
Quite a remarkably telling situation when the foreign leaders of France and Canada begin to think they have some political responsibility to deliver their opinions on decisions within the United States government.
Yes, their pronouncements are fraught with stupidity considering their own national laws on abortion were/are much more stringent than the United States, but that belies the point of their insufferable arrogance. The globalist outlook is structured around their own sense of importance.
The protestations from Macron are particularly ridiculous since France has a legal limit of 14 weeks for abortion [LINK].
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the same man who forced all women in Canada to undergo a vaccine requirement or remove themselves from society, took the hypocrisy of his own “women’s health” policy one step further than Macron.
It is worth noting, “there are currently no Canadian laws that explicitly guarantee access to abortion as a right,” [LINK] putting the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the exact same place as the Canadian government position on the issue.
However, Canadians more than 23 weeks into their pregnancy cannot get abortions in Canada. Instead, according to CTV they travel into the United States to get the procedure.
“According to a study published by Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights in 2019, no providers in Canada offer abortion services more than 23 weeks and six days into a pregnancy. Those who are this far into their pregnancy and looking for an abortion often travel to the United States for the procedure instead, which would be in jeopardy should Roe v. Wade be overturned.” (more)
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 24, 2022 | Sundance
The same representative who advocated for violence against President Trump cabinet members, appeared in front of the Supreme Court today to advocate for defiance against the constitutional limitations on government power.
Maxine Waters (California CD-43) represents the outlook of the radical leftists in her emotional reaction to the Supreme Court ruling that lets states decide what laws should be in place to limit the killing of unborn babies. Ms Waters specifically cited and called for the defiance of “black women” in opposition to the ruling. Her proclamations make evil and twisted sense from the perspective of the abortion industry, as unborn black babies are disproportionately killed by abortion providers. WATCH:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documented in its Abortion Surveillance report for 2015 – released on Nov. 23, 2018 – that while black Americans comprise 13.4% of the U.S. population, they accounted for 36.0% of the abortions in 2015. Black women have three times the rate of abortion as white women, and that higher abortion rate is consistent even after you filter the control data to remove income from the issue {link}.
The number one customer for abortion services are young pregnant black women. This was also the target audience identified by Margaret Sanger the founder of Planned Parenthood and an avowed racist. The racial roots of Planned Parenthood go back to the founding.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 24, 2022 | Sundance
With the advanced leak of the Supreme Court abortion ruling, the White House had two months to prepare for the political use of the issue. Today, the installed occupant of the oval office, was immediately thrust to the microphones to read the prepared remarks. [Transcript Here]
Within seconds of his script an angry and cognitively unstable Biden declared, “with Roe gone, let’s be very clear: The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk.” The pre-scripted hyperbole continued, “the Court’s decision to do so will have real and immediate consequences. State laws banning abortion are automatically taking effect today, jeopardizing the health of millions of women, some without exceptions. So extreme that women could be punished for protecting their health,” he exclaims. WATCH:
[…] “This fall, we must elect more senators and representatives who will codify a woman’s right to choose into federal law once again, elect more state leaders to protect this right at the local level. We need to restore the protections of Roe as law of the land. We need to elect officials who will do that. This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality, they’re all on the ballot. ” (read more)
In addition to the Supreme Court affirming federalism and the rights of individual states to make their own decisions on abortion, there is another downstream benefit to the Roe decision. Leftists are less likely to migrate to Red states.
Hopefully the most radical leftists will now self-isolate and stop migrating to regions where traditional American values are being retained. This would be a natural outcome if the actions of the left-wing democrats were to match their rhetoric. Unfortunately, I fear the abortion issue is not as big a political issue as the megaphones in media would like to believe. Recent polling has shown very little political benefit in/around the issue of abortion.
It would be a good outcome if overturning Roe resulted in democrats stopping their migration away from their own left-wing policy madness; however, I’m not sure the abortion issue will overcome their desire to live outside of their insanity. Leftists are ultimately the best representatives of cognitive dissonance when it comes to living up to their own ideological standards.
Democrats have long been known as “Blue Locusts” because they flee the totalitarianism and consequences they create; then seek to destroy the abundance they desire to have around them. Modern leftists are dangerous in the destructive outlooks they carry.
If the Roe decision resulted in these leftists self-isolating away from conservative states, this would be of great benefit. Alas, I doubt they are as committed to the issue as they claim.
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