That Christianity gives joy and breadth is also a thread that runs through my whole life. Ultimately someone who is always only in opposition could not endure life at all.
Distinction Matter - Subscribed Feeds
-
Site: OnePeterFive
This year marks the 800th anniversary of the definitive composition of the Canticle of Brother Sun, also known as the Canticle of the Creatures or Laudes Creaturarum, by St. Francis of Assisi († 1226). This remarkable work, one of the first texts found in the anthologies when one studies Italian literature, is distinguished by its poetic beauty and its profound spiritual message…
-
Site: OnePeterFive
From the Roman feast. ℣. Grant, Lord, a blessing. Benediction. May the Gospel’s holy lection Be our safety and protection. ℟. Amen. Reading 1 Continuation of the Holy Gospel according to Luke Luke 9:1-6 At that time: Jesus called His twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And so on. Homily by St. Ambrose…
-
Site: Mises Institute
-
Site: Real Investment Advice
The May CPI report released yesterday was considered the first inflation gauge to show how tariffs are impacting prices. We would like to see a few more months of inflation reports before claiming the coast is clear, but the May CPI is encouraging. For the fourth consecutive month, the CPI was below Wall Street estimates. Monthly CPI and Core CPI rose 0.1% versus expectations of 0.2% and 0.3%, respectively. The annualized rate of inflation based on the last three months is 1.35%, well below the Fed's 2.00% target.
Interestingly, prices for new and used cars, as well as apparel, fell in May. Some forecasters thought that those goods were likely to see higher prices due to tariffs. New car prices fell by 0.3%, and apparel and used car prices declined by 0.4%. This suggests that companies are finding ways to limit the pass-through of higher costs resulting from tariffs. Might profit margins are weaker than expected in the coming earnings reports for companies in these industries?
Shelter prices remain sticky, rising 0.3% and accounting for the total increase in CPI and then some. To wit, the graph below shows that the CPI, excluding shelter prices, was slightly negative in yesterday's report, and they are running at only 1.50% year over year.
The odds of the Fed cutting are near zero percent at next week's meeting. However, with another benign inflation report in hand, traders are inching up expectations toward two cuts for the remainder of the year.
What To Watch Today
Earnings
Economy
Market Trading Update
Yesterday, we discussed that the recent rally from the lows suggests that the bull market has returned and fears of a secondary correction are likely overblown. Sentiment Trader recently discussed another indication that such is the case
"Three of the 'Big Four' indices have come storming back. The most-followed three U.S. equity indices have recovered to within 5% of their multi-year highs. This is a notable recovery from at least a -15% drawdown for the S&P 500, Dow Industrials, and Nasdaq Composite. Only the small-cap Russell 2000, with less historical data to test, is lagging."
The table below shows how the S&P 500 has performed after all three recovered to within 5% of a 3-year high after all were at least 15% below within the past 50 sessions. On average, the current drawdown was less than -4% between the three. As noted by Sentiment Trader:
"Not many times have we witnessed such a quick recovery across all three indices. However, they were good for the S&P 500 from the available history. It continued to power higher each time over the following three to six months, though it eventually succumbed to the pandemic panic in 2020."
"Even more notable than its consistency was how little risk there was within the next six months. The S&P didn't fall more than -4.4% at any point within that time frame across any of the signals (though, again, it's a tiny sample size), while its maximum gain exceeded that in every instance."
The bottom line is that while many narratives still suggest another "shoe will drop" any moment, the underlying technical recovery, breadth, and momentum indicate that it is not likely the case. As Sentiment Trader concludes:
"The fact that three of the most widely followed and benchmarked indices have already recovered most of their modest-to-serious drawdowns is also a positive sign. There haven't been many times in the past 50 years when all three major indices recovered so quickly from such heavy selling pressure, which limits us. But the times it happened, it boded well for a further recovery. It was an especially good sign for the tech-heavy Nasdaq, reinforcing some of the other studies we've published in recent weeks."
This doesn't mean the market will not have short-term pullbacks and consolidations. However, those consolidations and pullbacks should be used to add equity exposure to portfolios. Be patient if you are underweight equities, and pick entry points opportunistically to reverse positioning.
China Exports To The US Are Collapsing: Don't Believe The Hype
The series of graphs below, courtesy of Robin Brooks from the Brookings Institution, shows how exports from Asia to the US have transformed due to tariffs. The easy, yet wrong, takeaway is that exports from China to the US are collapsing. At the same time, they are surging in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Given that these other countries also face hefty tariffs and there hasn't been enough time for US importers to find new production facilities, what we are seeing is called transshipment. Essentially, China is shipping US-bound goods to the specified countries, removing the "made in China" label, and then exporting them to the US. Simply, China is not suffering as much as the graph suggests.
Deficits And The Tradeoffs Required To Fix Them
By falling significantly short of its intended savings goals, the DOGE program underscores the substantial challenges that hinder efforts to reduce federal spending and cut the deficit. Furthermore, its failure suggests that a more expedient way to reduce the deficit might be to increase federal revenue. Thus, we pose the simple hypothetical question: What if the government were to double taxes overnight?
While we do not support larger deficits or promote them, this article provides a better understanding of how fiscal deficits are part of a bigger picture, the tradeoff between private and public sector deficits and surpluses.
Your opinion on the fiscal deficit may change after reading this article.
Tweet of the Day
“Want to achieve better long-term success in managing your portfolio? Here are our 15-trading rules for managing market risks.”
Please subscribe to the daily commentary to receive these updates every morning before the opening bell.
If you found this blog useful, please send it to someone else, share it on social media, or contact us to set up a meeting.
The post Inflation Remains Tame Despite Tariffs appeared first on RIA.
-
Site: Catholic ConclaveInterview with Alberto Bochatey: “The great challenge is for people to accept that he is Leo XIV and not Francis II”In an exclusive interview with LA NACION, the auxiliary bishop of La Plata, who has known Robert Prevost for more than 30 years, spoke about the Supreme Pontiff's career and his relationship with his predecessor.“I went in and said, ‘Can I give you a hug?’ And now what do I call youCatholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
-
Site: LES FEMMES - THE TRUTH
-
Site: Real Investment Advice
Running a successful business takes grit, vision, and no shortage of time. Between managing operations, leading teams, and scaling growth, personal financial planning often gets pushed to the back burner. When business owners do seek help, they typically turn to their CPA for advice. And while CPAs are invaluable for accounting and tax compliance, they’re not equipped to cover every financial angle you face as a business owner.
To protect your personal wealth and ensure your financial future, you need more than a CPA—you need a financial advisor who understands your unique position. This partnership is essential for long-term planning, risk mitigation, investment growth, and wealth transfer strategies that extend well beyond taxes.
The Role of a CPA: A Vital but Limited Function
CPAs are trained to focus on compliance. Their primary role is to ensure that your business and personal taxes are filed correctly, that you’re taking advantage of available deductions, and that you remain within the bounds of federal and state regulations.
For many business owners, this work is essential. But there are gaps in the support CPAs provide:
- Short-term focus: CPAs typically focus on the previous tax year or quarter.
- Limited investment advice: Most CPAs are not licensed to provide investment recommendations.
- Estate and succession planning: This is often outside a CPA’s expertise.
- No proactive financial planning: CPAs work reactively based on data you provide, rather than proactively building your financial future.
That’s where a financial advisor steps in.
Financial Advisors: Your Long-Term Strategic Partner
Financial advisors do more than balance your books—they help you build, preserve, and transfer wealth. Their job is to take a forward-looking view of your finances and align them with your personal and professional goals. When paired with your CPA, they form a powerful team that supports both sides of your financial life.
Here’s how a financial advisor can elevate your financial planning as a business owner:
1. Strategic Financial Planning and Goal Setting
You have personal goals—early retirement, buying a vacation home, sending kids to college, or leaving a legacy. A financial advisor helps map these goals to your business income, investment portfolio, and lifestyle.
They’ll also guide you on:
- Building diversified income streams outside your business
- Balancing reinvestment in the company vs. personal savings
- Setting up tax-advantaged retirement accounts tailored for business owners (e.g., SEP IRAs, Solo 401(k)s)
2. Risk Management for Business and Personal Assets
Running a business exposes you to more risk than the average person. A financial advisor will help you manage these risks with:
- Proper insurance coverage (liability, disability, life, etc.)
- Legal structure and asset protection strategies
- Emergency fund planning for both business and household
Where your CPA might identify risk exposure on paper, your advisor helps you actively plan for and address it.
3. Investment Guidance Beyond the Business
You likely invest most of your time and money into your business, but relying solely on your company’s success can be risky. A financial advisor helps diversify your wealth through:
- Tax-efficient investment portfolios
- Alternative investments (real estate, private equity, etc.)
- Retirement income planning and drawdown strategies
Unlike a CPA, your advisor can monitor market trends, rebalance portfolios, and keep your personal wealth aligned with your long-term goals.
4. Succession and Exit Planning
Eventually, every business owner faces the question: What’s next?
Whether you plan to sell, pass the business to a family member, or transition to a leadership team, your financial advisor helps you plan for:
- Business valuation and timing your exit
- Capital gains tax strategies
- Retirement planning post-sale
- Estate planning and wealth transfer
These are complex, high-stakes decisions. A CPA may handle the numbers, but an advisor ensures you walk away with the freedom, income, and legacy you envision.
5. Coordinated Tax Strategy with Your CPA
Rather than choosing between a CPA and a financial advisor, the best results come when the two work together.
- Your CPA ensures compliance and helps you file.
- Your financial advisor strategizes how to structure your finances for tax efficiency over time.
Together, they can align business cash flow, investment strategy, and tax planning in one cohesive plan.
Why Business Owners Can’t Afford to Wait
Business owners often delay personal financial planning, thinking they’ll “get to it” once the company hits a certain milestone. But without a plan, you risk:
- Overpaying taxes year after year
- Leaving your family exposed to financial risk
- Missing critical investment opportunities
- Entering retirement without a clear income plan
Wealth doesn’t just happen—it’s built with intention, strategy, and the right team behind you.
Ready to Take Control of Your Financial Future?
RIA Advisors works with business owners just like you to build personalized financial plans that support your lifestyle, protect your wealth, and prepare you for the next chapter, whatever that looks like.
Schedule your consultation with RIA Advisors today and get the financial guidance you deserve.
FAQs
What’s the difference between a financial advisor and a CPA?
A CPA focuses on taxes and compliance, often looking backward at what’s already happened. A financial advisor takes a forward-looking approach, helping you build long-term strategies around investing, retirement, and risk management.
Why do business owners need both a CPA and a financial advisor?
Each professional offers a unique skill set. Together, they create a more comprehensive plan that addresses short-term tax needs and long-term financial goals.
Can a financial advisor help with selling my business?
Yes, a financial advisor can help you plan your business exit, manage proceeds, minimize taxes, and create a strategy for your financial life after the sale.
What kinds of investment strategies work best for business owners?
Diversified investment portfolios that include tax-efficient vehicles like IRAs, real estate, and alternative investments can help reduce dependence on your business and grow personal wealth.
When should I start financial planning as a business owner?
The earlier, the better. Even in the early stages of your business, a financial advisor can help you lay a solid foundation for future growth and security.
The post Business Owners: Why Your Personal Financial Plan Needs More Than Just a CPA appeared first on RIA.
-
Site: Crisis Magazine
Although even Pope Leo XIV acknowledges that mass immigration is a “huge problem,“ a recent “Pastoral Note to Migrants” issued by Michigan’s Catholic bishops is an embarrassing combination of fallacy, contradiction, doctrinal subversion, begged questions, conflict of interest, and hypocrisy. To start, the letter from the bishops ignores the elephant in the room: the violation of immigration law…
-
Site: Crisis Magazine
What is freedom for? And why is it so important that we be allowed to exercise it? Do the choices we make really matter? Ask an atheist and he’ll tell you it’s for actualizing the self in a world without God. Of course, in a godless world why would freedom matter at all? What difference are the choices we make in a world where, as Marx predicted, “everything solid melts into thin air”? Ah…
-
Site: Mises Institute
-
Site: Mises InstituteJoshua Mawhorter joins us to talk about how the fiat-money theories of Modern Monetary Theory and chartalism aren't supported by the historical facts.
-
Site: Mises Institute
-
Site: AsiaNews.itToday's news: Vietnam approves furtheradministrative reform;The United Kingdom freezes the assets of a minister from former Prime Minister Hasina's government;In Syria, authorities force women to wear 'burkinis' on public beaches.
-
Site: AsiaNews.itOnly 42% of graduates from teacher training colleges go on to work in schools, and many teachers are leaving the profession. Disparities in pay between Moscow and the country's suburbs are a major factor, as is the increasingly ideological approach of the entire education system.
-
Site: Mises InstituteBitcoin’s power lies not in being wielded by geopolitical superpowers. Turning it into a “national strategic asset” undermines its very essence. If bitcoin is to remain a tool of freedom, it must resist becoming a tool of empire.
-
Site: Fr. Z's BlogPentecost Thursday. The Roman Station is St. Lawrence outside the walls, which is where it was in the Easter Octave on Wednesday. In the Gospel from Luke 9, Jesus sends the Apostles out with authority to heal and cast out … Read More →
-
Site: Mises InstituteOne of the most pernicious legacies of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao is that any political leader responsible for less than, say, three or four million deaths is let off the hook. This hardly seems right, and it was not always so.
-
Site: The Unz ReviewIn the never-ending urban renewal in Shanghai, technology and engineering marvels are demonstrated from time to time. In 2002, the Shanghai government undertook an engineering feat to move the Shanghai Concert Hall, originally known as the Nanking Theatre, a historic building completed in 1930. The building was in the path of a major road expansion...
-
Site: The Unz ReviewIsrael is completing its genocide. Keir Starmer says the aid blockade is ‘intolerable’. And yet day after day he tolerates Israel’s bombs, gunfire and mass starvation campaign If you imagined western politicians and media were finally showing signs of waking up to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, think again. Even the decision this week by several...
-
Site: The Unz ReviewEDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily Stormer Editorial Staff does not endorse the contents of this song or this article about it, we are simply posting it to push back against the censorship on Twitter and to start a conversation about whether the woke right would be better off if people in arguments wrote songs against each...
-
Site: The Unz ReviewTest Your Political IQ; See if you can connect the dots: Total Pro-Israel Contributions to Trump's 2024 Presidential Campaign: .... pro-Israel interest groups and individuals contributed over $230 million to efforts benefiting Trump since 2020, with the bulk tied to the 2024 cycle. This figure includes direct campaign contributions, independent expenditures, and super PAC spending,...
-
Site: The Unz ReviewI wrote a three-part piece about the trends in China’s AI development. In the piece, I predicted China will follow a different path to achieve AI superiority from the US. I predicted instead of pursuing the AGI utopian goal as American AI companies, China will pursue a three-pronged strategy to integrate AI to the real...
-
Site: Fr. Z's BlogFrom a reader… QUAERITUR … sort of… there is am implied question: It all started when I tried to go to a noon Mass today at the liberal parish you have showcased before (the old pastor retired but the new guy … Read More →
-
Site: The Unz ReviewThis interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble. Journalist A. J. Liebling famously said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Today, in a world dominated by corporate capitalism — including subservient politicians and careerists — the press’s freedom has been eroded to mere margins. Journalist and writer...
-
Site: The Unz ReviewThe Oreshnik Moment was first coined on June 1 here and then discussed in the Reason2Resist podcast on June 3. It’s a period of time – it’s not a prediction of the counter-attack which the Russian General Staff will launch against the June 1 drone attack on the bomber element of the triad of Russia’s...
-
Site: The Unz ReviewJared Taylor and Paul Kersey laugh at liberal bewilderment. They also discuss Lucy Stone, Aztlan, Lockheed Martin, and the perfect race hoax for our times.
-
Site: The Unz ReviewAfter Gay Liberation in the 1970s, the Glorious Gay Community (G.G.C.) got one big thing it didn’t want. At the same time, it didn’t get one big thing that it did want. The big thing it got but didn’t want was AIDS, which was a product of the gay genius for brewing butt-busting bugs by...
-
Site: The Unz ReviewThis video is available on Rumble, Bitchute, Odysee, Telegram, and X. I think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has caused more damage to the United States than any other law — except one. And that one — here’s a hint — was passed one year later, in 1965. The Civil Rights Act banned private-sector...
-
Site: AntiWar.comTbilisi – It was Lincoln who once said “I would like to see someone proud of the place in which they live.” The 16th president never made it to the South Caucasus, but here reside a people quite justly proud of the place in which they live. Among the most striking differences between the vision … Continue reading "Democracy in Georgia Is Under Threat by the US Congress and the Helsinki Commission"
-
Site: AntiWar.comYet another former official in the government of Viktor Yanukovvch, the pro-Russia political leader who served as Ukraine’s elected president from 2010 until his ouster in Western-backed demonstrations in 2014, has been assassinated. On May 21, 2025, multiple gunmen shot Andriy Portnov, who had been a senior aide to Yanukovych, outside his children’s school near … Continue reading "More ‘Wet Work’ From ‘Democratic’ Ukraine?"
-
Site: Zero HedgeEscobar: How To Fact-Check Techno-FeudalismTyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 23:05
Authored by Pepe Escobar,
The Global Digital Forum last week in delightful Nizhny Novgorod represented a landmark in the quest for a more equitable media landscape across the whole Global South.
Pride of place was taken by a new ambitious association, the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN). The last session of the forum was focused essentially on how to fight all the toxic declinations imposed by the post-truth anti-cultural ambiance – as in fact-checking an avalanche of fake news coming in most cases from states and official institutions.
Guest of honor was superstar Russian Foreign Minister spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, relaxed, in great spirits, who went full Deng Xiaoping by urging everyone to “fight for the truth and seek out the facts”.
By a twist of fate, the timeline left me with only two minutes to somehow wrap up our quite enlightening discussion. So I went hardcore and quoted Nietzsche: “There are no facts, only interpretations”. Later on, I was surprised at how that had struck a nerve especially among African delegates.
The key point is that in the artificially fabricated post-truth environment, not only facts are only facts if we say so; most of all, only one interpretation is allowed – be it from the Empire of Chaos, whoever may be in power, or from a Kafkaesque mechanism such as the European Union (EU)/European Commission (EC).
If you deviate from the official interpretation, they will come after you. That has led, for instance, in Europe, to journalists/EU citizens being prevented even from traveling to their own nation-states, and having their accounts frozen, or EU citizens being prevented from covering a supposedly democratic election (in Romania), and immediately deported (outside of the EU).
A startling essay on Nietzsche amplifies the diagnostic of Europe’s current cultural suicide. Nietzsche was an “untimely” outsider, a steppenwolf, pledging allegiance to no one and nothing, silently grappling with “the flat exhaustion of bourgeois modernity”, and searching, in vain, for “silhouettes among shadows”.
Nietzsche, in the late 19th century, was already a symbol of Resistance. Resistance as we see it today – from the Axis of Resistance in West Asia to Orthodox Christian military batallions fighting for the freedom of Novorossiya. No ceremony ever greeted Nitzsche: he was always alone. He shattered illusion after illusion as his solitude “became liturgy” and “his body turned into protest.” He impersonated “the ghost of nobility”. A species in extinction – indeed.
Tech visionaries want it all
That crystal clear Nietzsche intuition – arguably the best definition of truth in the history of philosophy – may be our guide in the labyrinth of post-truth where, to quote post-modernist masterpiece Twin Peaks, “the owls are not what they seem”.
Errol Musk, Elon’s father, showed up early this week in Moscow for the Future 2050 forum. Daddy Musk effusively showered praise on Russia as Ancient Rome 2.0 and Moscow itself as the “capital of the world”. Quite on point – in both cases.
But what really matters is why Daddy Musk is in Russia. That may align with a strategy of luring powerful sectors of Silicon Valley into doing business with Russia. Main actors/participants would be tech visionaries which used to be part of the notorious PayPal Mafia: Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.
That may pose a series of serious problems. Martin Armstrong has been instrumental in portraying this band of tech visionaries as a ubiquitous new oligarchy: active in social media, biotech, space, the surveillance industry, engineering policies and influencing monetary systems with their hardcore brand of venture capitalism, and not to mention shaping worldwide-interfering narratives.
The new tech elite shines brightly via the Trump-Musk love affair turned staged catfight. But its tentacles reach much further. J.D. Vance is Peter Thiel’s perfectly positioned candidate to become the next POTUS. Palantir, controlled by Thiel and totalitarian Alex Karp, have been awarded a massive contract to design a U.S. federally centralized database using very sophisticated AI models.
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is heavy on AI – including a 10-year moratorium during which any U.S. state and local government cannot regulate AI. This will allow free reign for deepfakes and Big Tech doing whatever they feel like to manipulate unsuspecting consumers.
So that’s the key question. How to fact-check the tech elite? How to counterpunch multiple instances of techno-feudalism – when tech companies feed intel to governments, commit unlimited funds to political operations, and set up censorship platforms disguised as “democracy”, drenched in AI-generated fake news?
Go East, to Siberia, young man
At least there are auspicious signs on the other side of dystopia. And right here in Russia. This is a mesmerizing interview by Nora Hoppe and Tariq Marzbaan with legendary Prof. Sergey Karaganov, Honorary Chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy (Russia’s leading public foreign policy organisation) and academic supervisor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
Welcome to a magic carpet ride through the really deep origins of Russia’s heritage. Starting with the Scythians: “Now we are rediscovering within ourselves these roots that unites us with the peoples of Eurasia.”
All the way to Byzantium: “The Russian princes, who baptized Russia, chose Byzantium ― at that time the richest, the most developed and intellectually flourishing country in Central Eurasia, much more developed than Europe was (…) The Russian princes’ astute choice of Byzantium largely predetermined Russian culture, Russian architecture, and, of course, Russian religion, that is, our Orthodoxy.”
And then reaching Pax Mongolica: “The Mongol Empire left a deep mark on Russian history also, because it was multicultural and very tolerant religiously, and this is where I think (although there is no complete agreement amongst historians on this matter) the Russians ― the dominant people in the former Russian Empire and the USSR ― inherited their unique cultural, religious, and national openness.”
Karaganov forcefully proposes that everything positive about Pax Mongolica should be re-examined to “substantiate the unity of Eurasia.” And “we must rely just as much on the heritage of the Scythians, who were the forefathers of so many peoples in Greater Central Eurasia.”
This is the essence of a true multipolar Russia in action – leading to the fascinating concept of “Siberianization”: a “spiritual, cultural, political, and economic development of Russia in the eastern direction to the Urals and Siberia. The western direction of our policy and economic ties has bleak prospects.”
Karaganov, whose analyses are deeply appreciated by President Putin, is adamant: it all amounts to a “civilizational struggle against techno-barbarism and techno-paganism”, and “against dehumanization”. Against, essentially, techno-feudalism.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
-
Site: Zero HedgeOklo Shares Surge 29% After DOD Contract To Power Air Force BaseTyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 22:40
Oklo is starting to develop a real knack for catching short sellers offsides...
In what is one of what we believe will be many similar announcements, Oklo shares surged 29% on Wednesday after the company was named the intended awardee for a Department of Defense project to deliver clean energy to Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska.
The Defense Logistics Agency Energy issued a Notice of Intent to Award (NOITA), designating Oklo as the preferred provider following a competitive evaluation process.
Under the proposed agreement, Oklo will design, build, own, and operate an Aurora powerhouse—a microreactor that provides both electricity and heat—at the remote military base.
The project is part of the Department of the Air Force’s microreactor pilot aimed at improving energy resilience and reliability at national security facilities. The Aurora reactor uses fast reactor technology and is designed to operate independently from the grid, which is critical for remote sites like Eielson.
CEO Jacob DeWitte said the NOITA demonstrates continued confidence in Oklo’s ability to deliver reliable energy solutions for mission-critical infrastructure. The deal represents a major step forward in commercializing Oklo’s technology and highlights growing federal support for next-generation nuclear systems.
Investor response was swift, with the stock seeing its biggest one-day gain since the company went public, driven by optimism about Oklo’s ability to secure long-term revenue through government-backed deployments.
Recall, as we noted back in May, Oklo is positioning itself for a potentially favorable regulatory environment. The company is in a pre-application readiness process with the NRC and plans to submit a formal license for its expanded 75-MW design by Q4 2025. It’s targeting late 2027 or early 2028 for initial operations at its Idaho National Laboratory site.
Oklo is one of eight companies eligible for the Pentagon’s Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations program and is investing in fuel recycling capabilities.
The company also holds about 14 GW of nonbinding agreements with data centers and industrial users. The recent departure of Sam Altman from the board, due to a potential conflict of interest with OpenAI, clears the way for future commercial partnerships.
Oklo maintains close ties to the Department of Defense, primarily through CEO Jacob DeWitte, who has participated in high-level government events related to nuclear policy alongside defense officials.
The company’s board has also included retired Lieutenant General John Jansen, further reflecting its alignment with national security interests as it pursues military microreactor deployments.
Short sellers had targeted Oklo earlier this year, citing it as an overvalued "story stock" with no regulatory-approved design, no current revenue, and underestimated timelines and costs—labeling the company’s projections “beyond optimistic” and estimating it needs billions in additional capital.
Oklo has used the surge in its stock price to raise hundreds of millions in additional capital. This could easily give the company the better part of a decade in cash to operate at its current burn rate. Meanwhile, about 12–15 million shares are still currently short—roughly 10–12% of the float.
-
Site: Zero HedgeHow Much Higher Can Platinum Go: "It Feels Like Someone Is Loading Up On A Flat Price Position"Tyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 22:09
Yesterday, in "What's Behind The Recent Surge In Platinum, And Will It Continue", we not only explained in detail what is going on both at the technical and fundamental level, but also answered in the affiramtive and why - yes, it the surge will continue. One day later the surge has indeed continued, and having decisively broken $1200 earlier this week, platinum spiked another $100, touching a session high of $1285, and is now just dollars away from the post-covid high above $1300.
For some perspective on what comes next, we go to Goldman materials specialist James McGeoch who writes today that having cut through $1200 like a hot knife through butter, Platinum is now clearly targeting $1300, and even though the precious metal is overbought here, it is going to test some resolve to go against the flow.
As McGeoch adds, "I'd say look at the chart, but it will make you cry, as it starts the move comes from Asian hours and we know they cannot get enough precious" and furthermore, it "feels like someone loading up on a flat price position."
Ultimately, to the Goldman trader, it feels like the price of platinum is determined by fundamentals vs momo, but that is markets in a nutshell. To James, his mind "always says has to be a long duration hand, tactical guy cannot buy that shape, but have been wrong before, ask these guys what they think - "Gold, Platinum and Why Everyone Has it Wrong."
In a nutshell, "the issue for most is how does it move the needle, small wins yes, bigger ones harder to capture."
Unless, of course, the Chinese buyers - who have historicall been very price discriminate no longer are - and this time the melt up momentum only brings with it even more momentum, blasting the metal to parity with gold, if not higher.
A more sketpical view was published today by Goldman's precious metal analyst Lina Thomas, who notes that the platinum breakout began on May 20, coinciding with the start of Platinum Week (May 20-21) and a bullish World Platinum Investment Council (WPIC) report published on the day prior. However, as we subsequently reported and as Goldman also writes today, it was speculative and ETF demand that fueled the rally to $1,280/toz.
We agree with Goldman on this, where we disagree with the bank is its claim that "a sustained breakout is unlikely for three reasons." Goldman's three reasons to be bearish are the following:
#1 Price-Sensitive Chinese Demand
Chinese buying, which corresponds to about 60% of new annual platinum production, appears highly price sensitive, with increased buying when prices are low but reduced buying when prices are high.
Goldman believes that this strategic buying has likely contributed to platinum’s range-bound trading over the past decade. Nearly 50% of China’s imports are driven by price-sensitive jewelry and investment demand. For instance, lower prices post-the ‘Liberation Day’ US tariff announcement contributed to higher platinum withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), a proxy for Chinese jewelry and, to a lesser extent, investment demand, in April and consequently high Chinese platinum imports that month. But - the bank argues - the rally that started in mid-May appears to have already curtailed Chinese jewelry (and investment) demand for platinum. Which however is irrelevant if speculators have enough firepower to keep pushing the ascent higher, in which case Chinese jewelers will eventually be forced to chase the price again, only this time much higher.
#2 Downside Pressures on Auto Sector’s Demand for Platinum
Here, Goldman repeats the trite and familiar "fundamental" case why platinum demand is evaporating because very soon nobody will be driving ICE cars, and yada, yada. To wit: China’s rapid shift towards EVs is eroding long-term autocatalyst demand for platinum (which depends on ICE and hybrid car sales) while simultaneously increasing scrap availability as ICE vehicles are retired. Which is a lovely, if categorically false thesis, because China is already facing a resistance threshold in its power grid, beyond which it will no longer be able to support all the EVs on the road. What happens then? And what happens when Chinese EV subsidies finally run out.
Meanwhile, in the West, Goldman's autos equity analysts expect the ICE and hybrid vehicle fleet to remain relatively stable, with no large impact on the platinum balance
#3 Stable-to-Moderately Higher Global Supply
In an attempt to re-engage at the fundamental level, Goldman expects stable-to-moderately higher global platinum supply... unless South African power constraints re-emerge, which they will. Platinum production is highly geographically concentrated, with South Africa accounting for 70% of primary platinum production, with most of the remainder coming from Russia.
In South Africa, which is a country that has rolling blackouts for half the day, guidance from the major PGM miners points to moderate increases in PGM supply (12% year-over-year in 2025). The supply resilience is most likely fabricated as it defies the impact of years of low platinum prices and compressed margins, and so expect declining South African production in the coming years.
Platinum production is primarily a byproduct of other metals, such as copper, and is co-mined with other Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) such as palladium and rhodium. Consequently, the PGM basket price (denominated in ZAR) and revenue derived from associated metals — rather than just the platinum price — heavily influence the overall profitability of these mining operations. Periods of high prices for byproduct metals, such as the near-record chrome prices in 2024, can provide financial relief and offset downward profit pressure from lower platinum prices
Here Goldman admits that PGM production cannot be easily increased due to capacity constraints, which is bullish for the price; alternatively, significant curtailments are also rare due to a high proportion of fixed costs inherent in these operations, particularly energy and labor. The heavily unionized nature of South Africa’s mining sector makes layoffs "politically sensitive" and doing so could increase the risk of strikes, social unrest and reputational damage. These socialist factors support a strategy in which mines operate at a high capacity utilization without materially increasing output; in other words just churning. Lower capex guidance - similar to the US shale patch - suggests producers are focused on extracting more from existing assets
Goldman's optimistic view notwithstanding, the main risk to production remains operational disruptions and thus South African power outages and labor strikes represent the most significant threats to supply. Such events can halt production entirely and lead to substantial, albeit often temporary, supply deficits.
More in the full Goldman note available to pro subscribers.
d
d
-
Site: Public Discourse
During the COVID lockdowns in 2020, I found myself spending more time with my son (then one-and-a-half) than I had before. One day, as I collected my notes for a reading group on Anna Karenina, I suddenly noticed two things. First, the most significant thing in my life—the thing that gave the most but also required the most from me—was my relationship with my son. Second, I had never been invited to reflect on that relationship in a theological or philosophical way. I had written papers on friendship and read books on sexual ethics. But at no point in twelve years of higher education had I been asked to give serious thought to fatherhood and what it would mean for me, and now it had become the dominant force of my world. In honor of Father’s Day, I want to offer some reflections on what I’ve come to learn that fatherhood is about. First, fatherhood is about generation. Second, fatherhood is about priesthood.
In the Summa Theologiae I q. 33, in his treatise on the Trinity, Thomas Aquinas considers the Father and the particular properties of the Father. In a. 2, Thomas writes:
The proper name of any person signifies that whereby the person is distinguished from all other persons. For as body and soul belong to the nature of man, so to the concept of this particular man belong this particular soul and this particular body; and by these is this particular man distinguished from all other men. Now it is paternity which distinguishes the person of the Father from all other persons. Hence this name ‘Father,’ whereby paternity is signified, is the proper name of the person of the Father.
And the heart of that paternity is the Father being a principle for or generating the other persons of the Trinity, the Son and the Spirit.
Aquinas goes on to argue that because the Father and Son are ontologically one, they manifest perfectly the idea of paternity and filiation. Here he is echoing Ephesians 3:14–15: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.” In the Latin Vulgate, the word here translated as family is paternitas, fatherhood, and in Greek it is patria, which can mean both family and fatherhood. Thus, our fatherhood has a share in God’s fatherhood, and God’s fatherhood is grounded in giving the other persons of the Trinity their being.
We see God’s fatherhood in Genesis 1 as well, where it is exercised in creation. The great Dominican preacher Meister Eckhart writes of creation as an ebullitio, a boiling over or a bubbling over of the love of God. This eternal generation of the Son and Spirit and the love and relationship they share “boils over” into the generation of other beings that can participate in but be distinct from the divine being. We human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, and God’s first words to Adam and Eve are “be fruitful and multiply.” Part of our being in the image and likeness of God is our capacity for generation, and for generation out of a union of love. To put it more succinctly, God made men to beget new life and thereby share in his fatherhood.
I want to underscore this because it is radically different from our dominant culture. I vividly remember a poster for Planned Parenthood that I saw in college on an acquaintance’s dorm room wall. Rows of condoms in all the colors of the rainbow cascaded down, and underneath it said, “Life is sexually transmitted.” The implication was clear: human life was like a STD, at least potentially. In stark contrast to that, Scripture and Christian faith teach us that our capacity for generating new life is good and a gift—yes, a gift to handle with care and prudence, but part of our being like God. It is constitutive of our humanity, not a mistake or a disease or something we can simply thwart, unplug, or ignore without consequence.
Hence in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, St. John Paul II writes:
According to the plan of God, marriage is the foundation of the wider community of the family, since the very institution of marriage and conjugal love are ordained to the procreation and education of children, in whom they find their crowning. In its most profound reality, love is essentially a gift; and conjugal love, while leading the spouses to the reciprocal “knowledge” which makes them “one flesh,” does not end with the couple, because it makes them capable of the greatest possible gift, the gift by which they become cooperators with God for giving life to a new human person. Thus the couple, while giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the reality of children, who are a living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and a mother. When they become parents, spouses receive from God the gift of a new responsibility. Their parental love is called to become for the children the visible sign of the very love of God, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”
Here John Paul II underscores another important aspect of fatherhood: since your fatherhood takes its name from God’s fatherhood, the love of parents—especially the love of a father—becomes a visible sign of the love of God. In other words, a good father shows his wife and his children what God’s love looks like. As John Paul II puts it later, a father reveals and relives on earth “the very fatherhood of God.”
This brings me to the second characteristic of fatherhood: fatherhood is about priesthood. I mean this in the sense that we are all called and empowered to participate in the priesthood of Christ by our baptism, and those of us in the lay life have been called to sanctify the world through our acts of charity and preaching of the gospel. In the Catholic Church, emphasizing this work of the laity is one of the great contributions of Vatican II. But already in the Summa contra Gentiles, we find Thomas Aquinas reflecting on how mothers and fathers are called to participate in the priestly work of Christ.
At the beginning of his discussion of the sacraments in Book IV, he writes:
For some propagate and conserve the spiritual life in an only spiritual ministry, and this belongs to the sacrament of orders; and some in a ministry that is simultaneously bodily and spiritual, which takes place in the sacrament of matrimony where a man and woman come together to beget offspring and to rear them in divine worship.
Here Thomas clearly distinguishes between the work of a spiritual father and the work of a natural father, while clearly identifying both as priestly work: work that sanctifies the world, offers it to God, and brings souls to him. Again, fatherhood is not just about generating children but forming them so that their lives are directed to the worship of God.
In this regard, John Paul II underlines the importance of family prayer:
The concrete example and living witness of parents is fundamental and irreplaceable in educating their children to pray. Only by praying together with their children can a father and mother—exercising their royal priesthood—penetrate the innermost depths of their children’s hearts and leave an impression that the future events in their lives will not be able to efface.
This sounds beautiful in practice and, as most parents know, can be messy in everyday life. Our weekly family rosary involves clutching for moments of recollection between endless questions about what bead we are on and constant exhortations to stop swinging or stretching the rosary, to sit down, to behave like we’re praying, etc. For reasons unknown to both my wife and me, I seem constitutionally incapable of knowing what mystery comes next. When we discussed this once with our pastor, he reminded us of that valuable maxim of both the athletic life and the spiritual life: a messy win is still a win. Prayer—like so many other aspects of family life—requires taking those messy wins whenever we can, in the hope that a foundation of real love and piety is nonetheless being laid down.
As you know, one of the defining characteristics of a priest in most religions is that he offers sacrifices. And the priesthood of a father entails offering sacrifices constantly, for the sake of your wife and the sake of your children. The journalist Jonathan Last writes that
the primary effect of children is to take things from you. It begins with sleep, time, and dignity and then expands over the years to include serenity, sanity, and a great deal of money. I am making an observation here, not complaining. It’s just what they do. In that way, children are like the aging process itself: an exercise in letting go of the ancillary parts of your existence until you are stripped bare, and what remains is your elemental center. Your soul. I’m told Jews see something of this in the Suffering Servant songs in Isaiah. Christians know it as the Way of the Cross. A consultant from McKinsey would call it addition by subtraction.
The vocation of fatherhood, when lived well, is an ascetic one in which you learn to put the needs of others before your own, to choose for their good instead of your pleasure or benefit. Reflecting on this same theme, John Paul II writes: “Spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross; they are for one another and for the children witnesses to the salvation in which the sacrament makes them sharers.”
Let me close with one more reflection. There are two troubling voices that young men can find very attractive at present. One says that family is an unjust burden, a commitment and responsibility that keeps you from having fun, living your best life, and having endless brunches. This side can also see family as an unjust structure ruled over by dominating men, inherently connected to patriarchy. Another voice, perhaps in reaction to this, says that real masculinity is a matter of exchanging weakness and pleasure-seeking for strength and domination—that real manhood involves a kind of hypermasculinity or embracing an uncompromising and rigorous view of gender roles as an antidote to modernity. Both of these are assertions of pride and not humility. They are vicious extremes and actually not life-giving.
Catholic men are called to follow the Lord Jesus, to live not lives of domination that demand submission from others but lives where their strength and talent are offered in self-sacrifice for those God has given them to serve. The virtuous mean between those extremes is the Way of the Cross, the path by which you find your life in losing it, the way by which you enter into joys you didn’t know existed on the far side of burdens you didn’t know you could bear. That is the path of holiness to which Sts. Thomas and John Paul II call us, the path by which Christ calls us to share in his fatherhood and in his priesthood for the salvation of our own souls and those of our wives and children.
An earlier version of this article was given as a retreat talk for the Thomistic Institute at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC.
Image licensed via Adobe Stock.
-
Site: Rorate CaeliSaginaw Bishop allows TLM to continue in parish, overturning previous decision to end it -- "Bishop Gruss has said the Latin Mass can continue at Holy Family in Saginaw every Sunday at 3pm" New Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04118576661605931910noreply@blogger.com
-
Site: Ron Paul Institute for Peace And Prosperity
RPI Director Daniel McAdams joins RPI Board Member Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Judging Freedom” program to discuss how Congress skirts its Constitutional obligations while exceeding its Constitutional authority. They also discuss the riots in Los Angeles and the use of the National Guard and Marines. Will Trump attack Iran? The signs are worrying:
-
Site: Zero HedgeHuawei CEO Accuses U.S. Over Overstating Its Chipmaking CapabilitiesTyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 19:20
In an interview with China’s state-run People’s Daily, Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, downplayed his company’s chip technology and accused the US of overstating its capabilities as trade talks between Washington and Beijing continue, according to FT.
Ren said Huawei’s Ascend chip, China’s main alternative to Nvidia, “still lags behind the US by one generation” and added: “The US has exaggerated Huawei’s capabilities — we’re not that strong yet.”
His comments follow Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s recent concerns about Huawei’s advances in AI chips, claiming that US export restrictions have fueled a “formidable” competitor challenging America’s AI leadership.
FT writes that trade discussions between the US and China began Monday in London, with export controls on key tech now on the table. During the first round in Geneva, these controls weren’t discussed, but Beijing’s export curbs on rare earths essential for car manufacturing have since drawn attention.
Huawei has benefited from the US ban on Nvidia chip shipments, as Chinese tech giants now buy more Ascend chips. However, most Chinese AI firms, including DeepSeek, still prefer Nvidia chips for training large language models.
Analysts and Huawei engineers have previously noted technical challenges with Ascend chips, especially in distributing workloads for AI training. On Tuesday, Ren suggested Huawei was improving, saying cluster computing could help offset performance issues: “Using clustering and stacking, our computing results are comparable to the world’s best,” he said.
Huawei’s new CloudMatrix 384 AI server aims to rival Nvidia by linking 384 AI processors with Huawei’s optical tech. Some customers are already testing the server, though challenges remain with heat and weight, said a source involved in testing. One key challenge is building “an ecosystem” of developers, since Nvidia’s Cuda software is widely preferred.
Ren said Huawei spends Rmb180bn ($25bn) annually on R&D, with Rmb60bn on basic research. He noted China’s strengths in infrastructure: “AI depends on abundant electricity and advanced network infrastructure,” he said. “China’s power generation and grid systems are world-class. Our telecoms infrastructure is the most advanced in the world.”
-
Site: Zero HedgeForeign Nationals Charged With Intent To Distribute $5.5 Million In MethamphetamineTyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 18:55
Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Federal authorities in Southern California filed a complaint charging three foreign nationals with conspiring to distribute nearly four tons of methamphetamine, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a June 5 statement.
Suspected methamphetamine allegedly discovered in San Diego County, California, on June 2, 2025. Courtesy of San Diego County Sheriff’s Office
Erick Arriola, 27, from El Salvador, and Mexican nationals Baltazar Rodriguez Reyes, 49, and Eugenio Lizama, 35, were charged with possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. They face a minimum of 10 years in prison.
According to federal prosecutors, Arriola is a felon convicted of DUI, battery of a spouse, and false imprisonment.
In the complaint, federal authorities allege that on June 2 at about 7 p.m., the men were moving bundles from a large semi-truck into two white panel vans and a white Ford F150 truck as they were parked in a parking lot on Otay Mesa Road in San Diego County, approximately three miles north of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry on the U.S.–Mexico border.
Once the loading was complete, the three defendants allegedly drove in separate directions before Border Patrol agents apprehended them. Two of the vehicles drove to a motel in San Ysidro. The third drove to a motel in Chula Vista, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities seized a total of 61 bundles of suspected methamphetamine weighing more than 7,700 pounds and valued at about $5.5 million.
Attorneys for Arriola, Reyes, and Lizama could not be reached.
The seizure is the largest so far by the new Homeland Security Task Force San Diego, which was established by President Donald Trump’s executive order signed on his first day in office.
The executive order, “Protecting The American People Against Invasion,” requires the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department to establish Homeland Security Task Forces in every state to eliminate cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and drug and human trafficking.
The Homeland Security Task Force San Diego identifies and targets transnational criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, weapons trafficking, human trafficking and smuggling, homicide, extortion, and kidnapping.
“As a founding member of HSTF in San Diego, I’m thrilled to be working alongside our partners who have also committed resources to combatting transnational crime,” Shawn Gibson, special agent in charge for the task force, said in a statement. “Cases under the HSTF will be a priority for me and staff as we all will continue to work together to secure our border and keep our communities safe.”
The case was investigated as part of Operation Take Back America, a federal initiative by the Justice Department that will, in part, support Homeland Security Task Forces.
“The recent formation of Homeland Security Task Force San Diego is an essential step to fulfilling the promises of Operation Take Back America,” U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a statement. “Our Office will fully support these enhanced law enforcement partnerships to ensure the safety of our community.”
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle Martin from the U.S. attorney’s recently created Narcoterrorism Unit.
-
Site: Zero HedgeCalifornia Public Schools Are Losing Kids While Special Interests ProfitTyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 18:30
New numbers from the California Department of Education show a continued drop in public school enrollment in the 2024–2025 school year. Despite fewer students, TK-12 education spending continues to increase, begging the question of whether taxpayers are getting value for money.
The 5.8 million students counted for the just-concluded school year represents a reduction of 31,000 from 2023–2024 and 380,000 (or 6 percent) from before the pandemic. But the drop in traditional public school enrollment is even worse than these headline numbers suggest. The totals include charter schools which added 75,000 students since the 2018–19 school year.
Netting out charters yields an enrollment drop of 8 percent, and this is despite the fact that a new grade, Transitional Kindergarten, was added during the period.
However, as Marc Joffe reports for The Epoch Times, the declining student population required much more taxpayer money. According to state budgets, total K-12 educational funding rose from $97.2 billion in 2018–19 to $133.8 billion in 2024–25. That represents a 10 percent increase even after adjusting for inflation. And that only represents operating costs. Voters approved over $40 billion in local K-12 school bonds last year as well as a state school bond which will provide matching funds for school construction.
While some capital expenditure is needed to renovate older school buildings, we should rarely need to add new buildings in this time of declining enrollment. Yet California continues to build new schools, sometimes at staggering cost. In Los Angeles County, a new 31-acre facility replacing Compton High was recently completed at a cost of $225 million to accommodate about 1,400 students. In Alameda County, Dublin Unified’s new Emerald High School is costing $374 million. Although the school has a capacity of 2,500 students, it remains to be seen how much of that capacity will be used.
To save money, districts suffering declining enrollment should consolidate low-attendance schools, but school closures often meet heavy stakeholder resistance. In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) alone, three dozen schools saw enrollment fall below 200 between 2018–19 and 2024–25, making them good candidates for consolidation.
But when asked about school consolidation, LAUSD’s Board President said, “I’m kind of fearing talking about it, because people are just going to go berserk,” according to education news website The 74.
That’s unfortunate, because low enrollment schools cannot spread their fixed costs such as administrator salaries and utilities across a large number of students, and because they lack the critical mass to offer sports and other extracurricular activities.
California’s high education spending does not produce strong learning outcomes. Despite per pupil expenditures well above the national average, California fourth and eighth graders perform below the national average on standardized math and reading exams. Utah outperforms California on all national comparisons even though its per pupil spending is 45 percent lower, and even Mississippi, America’s poorest state, is outperforming California on some of the tests.
Instead of helping students, California’s extra education spending seems to mostly benefit special interests such as unions, contractors, election consultants, and financial intermediaries.
While we normally hear about teacher unions, other categories of school employees have their own unions. At LAUSD, administrators, financial analysts, and even playground aides all bargain collectively and pay union dues. Unions have an incentive to maximize their membership (and thus their dues revenue), so they naturally oppose reforms that might lower headcounts or constrain employee compensation.
As a result, California’s overinvestment in school infrastructure is actively supported by a complex of service providers seeking to improve their bottom lines. Election consultants poll voters and craft ballot language to maximize the odds of school bonds. Financial advisors, bond underwriters, and construction contractors often contribute to school bond campaigns, thereby increasing their chances of getting new business.
Indeed, the California school construction industry has its own lobbying group in Sacramento, ironically named CASH, short for the Coalition for Adequate School Housing, which was involved in passing last year’s state school facilities bond measure, Proposition 2.
While unions and construction advocates couch their advocacy in terms of what’s good for pupils, the facts are clear: California is spending a lot of money to provide a middling education to a dwindling number of public school students.
-
Site: LifeNews
Dr. Theresa Burke was a graduate student in psychology in the 1980s when, leading a support group for women with eating disorders, she made a discovery that would change her life – and the lives of millions of others:
Most of the women in the group had an abortion in their past.
This discovery prompted Dr. Burke to look for resources to help these women deal with the trauma left behind by their abortions but she found there were no resources for post-abortion healing.
Rachel’s Vineyard was born. Now the world’s largest ministry for healing after abortion, Dr. Burke and her husband, Kevin Burke, a licensed social worker, developed the weekend retreat program that has spread to 49 states and 70 countries, is offered by numerous Catholic dioceses and has a retreat manual translated into dozens of languages.
In 2019 the Peruvian Rachel’s Vineyard team met with then-Monsignor Robert Prevost to ask for his blessing and support for their new Rachel’s Vineyard (El Viñedo de Raquel) site in the Diocese of Lima. Now we know him as Pope Leo XIV.
Click Like if you are pro-life to like the LifeNews Facebook page!
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
Rachel’s Vineyard became a ministry of Priests for Life in 2004, and both of the Burkes are full-time members of our Pastoral Team.
In 2006, Dr. Burke discovered something startling about those who attend and lead Rachel’s Vineyard retreats: A majority of them have experienced sexual abuse. Grief to Grace: Healing the Wounds of Abuse was born.
Grief to Grace offers a five-day retreat program to women and men who have suffered any kind of abuse – physical, emotional, sexual or even neglect.
“It’s a beautiful journey that Jesus travels alongside us as a fellow abuse survivor,” Dr. Burke said. “We know from the Passion that Jesus was terribly abused. We know he understands what abuse survivors have gone through probably better than anyone.”
Through rituals that will be particularly meaningful to Christians, licensed counselors and compassionate volunteers help participants recall the circumstances of their abuse and help them recognize the coping mechanisms that have allowed them to survive but kept them from living fully.
“Many abuse victims have been conditioned to blame themselves,” she said. “Our goal is ending the isolation and the fear that something is inherently wrong with you that you can’t move on. We help them rearrange their relationship with their trauma.”
The program has spread solely through word of mouth and is now in 25 countries and several states. Grief to Grace has attracted many Rachel’s Vineyard leaders who have not had abortions themselves but have other trauma, or abuse, in their lives. Dr. Burke said the program frequently has Roman Catholic priests and nuns as participants.
“The language for their beliefs we have not seen in other therapy,” Dr. Burkes said. “When we can unite our suffering to Christ, we are on our way because he does the heavy lifting.”
Some attendees will use the program as a springboard to deeper healing but some others, she said, “feel so free that they don’t want to waste another minute of their lives,” being controlled by the past abuse.
While working on Grief to Grace, several personal experiences converged that prompted Dr. Burke to develop another retreat. Duty to Heal helps military veterans and law enforcement professionals reconcile – and grieve – the moral injuries suffered in war and violence.
For information on any of the healing programs – Rachel’s Vineyard, Grief to Grace and Duty to Heal, go to LivingScriptureInstitute.org
“You really can heal,” Dr. Burke said. “We have seen the miracles.”
LifeNews.com Note: Frank Pavone is the national director for Priests for Life.
The post Abortion and Abuse Keep People From Relationships With God, But Help is Here appeared first on LifeNews.com.
-
Site: LifeNews
I’m thrilled to share that the House Judiciary Committee has voted H.R. 589, the FACE Act Repeal Act, sponsored by Congressman Chip Roy, out of Committee with a 13-10 vote.
This critical step toward ending the abuse and discriminatory enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act reflects years of our tireless advocacy, hard-hitting litigation, and your unwavering support through it all.
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act has long been weaponized to target pro-life advocates, used especially aggressively by Biden’s Department of Justice as a cudgel to punish pro-life speech and peaceful expression with felony charges carrying crippling penalties.
As Thomas More Society Executive Vice President & General Counsel, yesterday I was in meetings all day and on the committee floor monitoring the vote—answering any last-minute legal questions lawmakers had, after having briefed their staff, arming them with the best legal arguments backing the repeal of the FACE Act.
Click Like if you are pro-life to like the LifeNews Facebook page!
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
This monumental vote is a culmination of years of Thomas More Society advocacy efforts, from directly working with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to providing detailed legal analyses and briefing senators, members of congress, and their staffers exposing the FACE Act as being unconstitutional and far too susceptible of being weaponized and rally support for its repeal.
This committee vote is a significant milestone, but we need your urgent help to keep the momentum going, because our opposition won’t let FACE be repealed without a fight.
Our defense of pro-life heroes targeted under the FACE Act across the country was the spark that lit the fire behind this repeal battle—but we haven’t let up outside of the courtroom either.
All the while, I’ve been in constant contact with lawmakers and their staff, providing them with hundreds of pages of legal arguments in favor of repealing the FACE Act, meeting with them repeatedly.
In May 2023, our client and pro-life dad, Mark Houck, testified before a congressional subcommittee, sharing his chilling experience of the early morning SWAT-style FBI raid on his home and weaponized prosecution by the Biden DOJ—sparked by baseless FACE Act charges. His story laid bare the law’s abuse.
In December 2024, TMS Senior Counsel Steve Crampton and our client Paul Vaughn, another pro-life dad targeted under the FACE Act, testified before the same congressional subcommittee in a watershed hearing, exposing another egregious abuse of government power by telling the harrowing story of his early morning SWAT-style arrest and prosecution.
This January, our team of attorneys submitted to the incoming Trump Administration a formal pardon request package for the pro-lifers unjustly convicted after being hauled into federal court by Biden’s DOJ, calling on President Trump to deliver on his campaign promise of restoring justice.
Backed with our sound legal arguments, unshakeable evidence, and our pro-life clients’ full testimonials, President Trump pardoned 23 of our pro-life heroes.
Then in February, we were back on Capitol Hill, where TMS Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation Peter Breen presented powerful arguments before another house subcommittee, highlighting the FACE Act’s abuse, selective enforcement, and urgent need for repeal.
We are forging the momentum behind yesterday’s vote by the House Judiciary Committee to send the FACE Act repeal bill to the floor of the House.
LifeNews Note: Andrew Bath is Executive Vice President & General Counsel of the Thomas More Society.
The post The FBI Raided Mark Houck’s Home Because He’s Pro-Life. That Must Never Happen Again appeared first on LifeNews.com.
-
Site: Zero HedgeHouse Passes Bill To Remove Noncitizen Voting In District Of ColumbiaTyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 18:05
Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times,
The House of Representatives passed two bills on June 10 to repeal District of Columbia laws on policing and noncitizen voting.
The first would prohibit noncitizens from voting in local District of Columbia elections.
It passed with 266 members voting in favor of it, 148 voting against, and one member voting “present.”
The second would give Washington police officers collective bargaining rights and restore the statute of limitations for police disciplinary cases.
It passed with 235 votes in favor, 178 against, and one “present.”
Under the “home rule,” Congress has ultimate authority to review laws made by the District of Columbia’s local government.
The voting-related bill would repeal the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022, which allowed noncitizens to cast their ballots in local elections in the nation’s capital.
Introduced by Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), 56 Democrats voted for it. All Republicans voted for it.
“It’s common sense: Only American citizens should be able to vote in U.S. elections!” Pfluger wrote on X.
However, Rep. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said that the bill is misguided.
“Republicans introduced 26 bills or amendments to change local D.C. voting laws, including 14 to prohibit noncitizens from voting in D.C. or to repeal, nullify or prohibit the carrying out of the local D.C. law that allows residents who are not citizens to vote in local elections last Congress,” she said in a statement.
“Yet Republicans refuse to make the only election law change D.C. has requested: making D.C. a state so that it can hold elections for voting members of the House and Senate.”
Meanwhile, 30 Democrats voted in favor of the police bill. Four Republicans—Reps. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), and Chip Roy (R-Texas)—voted against it.
“The Metropolitan Police Department is facing a public safety crisis brought on by reckless policies that have stripped officers of basic protections and left the force dangerously understaffed,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), said in a statement.
“This legislation helps right that wrong by giving MPD the tools and support they need to recruit, retain, and protect.
“Congress has a duty to ensure our nation’s capital is safe, and today’s vote sends a clear message: we back the badge, and we refuse to let violent crime take over D.C.”
Norton said in a statement that the bill “overrides the longstanding wishes of the D.C. police department” as “for at least a quarter century, the D.C. police department had requested increased authority to discipline officers for misconduct.”
On June 11, the House will vote on another D.C.-related bill, the District of Columbia Federal Immigration Compliance Act, which would eliminate the district’s status as a sanctuary city and therefore require it to comply with federal immigration officials when it comes to dealing with those in the United States illegally.
An exception is made for illegal immigrants who come forward as victims of, or witnesses to, criminal offenses or report someone to the Department of Homeland Security who is in the country illegally.
-
Site: Catholic ConclaveScroll down for today'sSaint of the Day/ FeastReading of the MartyrologyDedication of the MonthDedication of the DayRosaryFive Wounds Rosary in LatinSeven Sorrows Rosary in EnglishLatin Monastic OfficeReading of the Rule of Saint BenedictCelebration of MassReading from the School of Jesus CrucifiedFeast of Pope Saint Leo III - seen here crowning Blessed CharlemagneCharlemagne's father, Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
-
Site: Zero HedgeZelensky's Refusal To Compromise Will Lead To More Territorial Losses: Russian NegotiatorTyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 17:40
While this should come as no surprise to observers of the Russia-Ukraine war, the Kremlin has put Kiev on notice that its continued unwillingness to compromise at the negotiating table will only lead to more and permanent territorial losses.
This was the latest warning conveyed by Russian Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky, who has been leading the Russian delegation in Istanbul talks.
Vladimir Medinsky, via TASS
He actually spoke to The Wall Street Journal, conveying the warning, while making clear that Russia will never relent until Putin's war aims are achieved, and defense of Russia's sovereignty and stability can be assured.
The WSJ interview began as follows:
Now, Vladimir Medinsky is drawing on his view of history again as he tries to convince Ukraine that it would be better off unwinding its integration with the West and embracing Moscow’s terms for peace.
“With Russia, it’s impossible to fight a long war,” Medinsky said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, citing Russia’s 21-year war with Sweden in the 18th century as evidence that the country prevails in protracted fights.
"We want peace," he continued. "But if Ukraine keeps being driven by the national interests of others, then we will be simply forced to respond," he added.
That's when Medinsky also "warned that a lack of compromise from Kiev would only lead to more territorial losses," WSJ wrote.
As yet, Ukraine's President Zelensky hasn't so much as offered recognition of Crimea as Russian territory, and certainly he's far away from saying the same of the annexed territories in the Donbass, where some fighting still exists.
This week it's become clear that Russian forces are advancing into Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, which is a first in the three-year-plus long war, marking a significant territorial escalation amid stalled peace talks.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the advance serves as a warning to the Zelensky government to accept "realities on the ground." Medinsky's words given to a major American publication are clearly another major warning along the same lines.
-
Site: LifeNews
In a recent editorial in The New York Times entitled, “The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness,” Christine Emba challenged the dogma that suggests anything goes in the bedroom as long as everybody consents. Emba, the author of the book Rethinking Sex, goes on to slam the feminist Left for being unable to admit that pornography has been terrible for society and promotes objectification and violence against women. All this, in fact, even when everybody involved technically consents.
And yet, many feminists and progressives still indulge the fantasy that porn can be made and imbibed “ethically.” Emba thinks that’s because they are deeply afraid of sounding like religious killjoys:
HELP LIFENEWS SAVE BABIES FROM ABORTION! Please help LifeNews.com with a donation!
Criticizing porn goes against the norm of nonjudgmentalism for people who like to consider themselves forward-thinking, thoughtful and open-minded. There’s a dread of seeming prudish, boring, uncool. … Most recently, the only people who seem willing to openly criticize the widespread availability of pornography tend to be right-leaning or religious, and so are instantly discounted—often by being disparaged as such. But cracks are beginning to appear in the wall.
Emba’s critique of the sexual revolution is one of those cracks. Because she writes for a secular, left-leaning audience, her work has been a necessary challenge to our cultural delusions, including the myth that “porn can be harmless.”
In fact, a growing chorus of mainstream, non-religious voices, such as Nicholas Kristof and Louise Perry, are now arguing that much of what was called “sexual liberation” victimized the vulnerable and degraded our society. These critics are right as far as they go. However, they don’t go far enough.
Even the harshest critics of porn and sexual “freedom” seem unable or unwilling to say that sex belongs exclusively within marriage and that honoring this Divinely blessed union is the one and only healthy sexual ethic. In her book, Emba proposed that partners should refuse to objectify each other and instead “will the good” of the other, drawing on Thomas Aquinas’ definition of love. Aquinas, of course, believed monogamous marriage is exclusively where this kind of love happens. As my Breakpoint This Week co-host Maria Baer observed in her review of Emba’s book, “Before we can will the good of another, we’ll have to know what ‘good’ means. … We don’t need a new sexual ethic. We need to recover a really, really old one.”
That recovery requires not only a clear and stable definition of “good,” but it also will require a new definition of “freedom.” After all, the rallying cry that brought us infinitely accessible and increasingly dangerous pornography, not to mention hookup culture, rampant unwed births, the spread of STDs, the normalization of divorce and abortion, Harvey Weinstein, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and a generation burned out from all of it was the promise of “sexual freedom.”
Specifically, it was a cry that reduced freedom to only freedom from rules, responsibilities, and constraints. It was never a call to freedom for our purpose or anyone’s good. This is a deeply impoverished view of what freedom is, and one that dismisses the most important questions about sex: What is sex for? What are our bodies for? What are we for? We were told that the only answer to these questions is, “to do or be whatever I want!” But that type of freedom has proven to be profoundly dehumanizing and enslaving and has left uncountable victims.
Christians should never be embarrassed to speak to what is true about human nature and God’s design for us. We absolutely should stop listening to the many voices, especially the ones claiming to be Christian, who tell us to be less “obsessed” with sex and focus on social justice issues. Even secular writers are beginning to recognize that justice and sexual ethics are connected and rooted in our culture’s lies about sexual freedom.
We have every reason to be confident in our “really old” sexual ethics. The Bible was ahead of the curve on this, and the revolution was wrong. The only sexual ethic capable of protecting and enhancing the good of all involved is the covenantal view of marriage. In other words, we do not need an adjustment to our culture’s idea of sexual freedom. We need to be liberated from it.
LifeNews Note: John Stonestreet writes for BreakPoint.org. This article was originally posted here. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.
The post “Sexual Freedom” is Hurting Relationships, Porn and Abortion are Destroying Society appeared first on LifeNews.com.
-
Site: Ron Paul Institute for Peace And Prosperity
Four months after her resignation as chairman of the United States Libertarian Party, Angela McArdle has been singled out for ostracism by the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) that oversees the party.
“Whereas the Special Investigatory Committee finds that former Chair Angela McArdle violated her fiduciary duty to the Libertarian Party by concealing conflicts of interest and misusing donor funds, be it hereby resolved that the Libertarian National Committee deems Angela McArdle unfit to serve on the Libertarian National Committee, as an affiliate leader or as a candidate representing the Libertarian Party,” read a resolution the LNC approved at its Monday meeting.
The report referenced in the LNC resolution was made public by the LNC at the meeting as well. The report can be read here.
For a short description of some of relevant details from the report, check out here a Tuesday article by Jordan Willow Evans at Independent Political Report.
-
Site: Zero HedgeTribalism, Neo-Feudalism And The Vise Of Technology In The Age Of Hyper-AccelerationTyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 17:15
Authored by Mark E. Jeftovic via bombthrower.com,
“In the future there will be only one occupation: managing one’s wealth.
…and most people are going to be unemployed.”
— Mark E. Jeftovic, ‘The Great Bifurcation’It’s been a minute since I last wrote anything here, owing to a combination of a slightly heavier than usual travel schedule, and frankly, burnout, after that last Canadian election.
I’ve truly underestimated the gullibility of the Canadian public – after being predictably on-track for a massive pendulum swing to a Conservative super-majority from 10 years of Liberal policies demolishing Canada, the entire dynamic reversed and was nullified within a few short weeks by the entire “Elbows Up” mind-fuck.
The irony behind all this is that the public largely switched their vote for the candidate Donald Trump wanted to win because of their own Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Watching it from the outside was demoralizing.
(Steve Bannon told me before the election that Trump’s “51st State” riffs were done on purpose to get the libs re-elected and Trump himself took a victory lap afterwards – Canadians were had. Why? Because the Americans want Alberta, and they think they’ll get it through de facto economic or political integration within a few years after #WEXIT happens).
We’ll see how long this administration lasts – nominally a minority, but functioning as a quasi-majority, and already introducing truly horrific legislation like Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act – which is more of a mass surveillance and war on cash bill than anything else.
The number of Canadians who now feel politically homeless is at an all-time high. The rapidly waning productive class of society watches, unable to intervene – as insular technocrats implement overtly destructive policies (i.e 865,000 new immigrants admitted YTD into an economy that squeaked out 8,800 new jobs) and seem to be intentionally cultivating divisiveness and polarization.
Why am I surprised?
When I look back on my own writings, and my overall theory that the era of nation state primacy is coming to an end, that the single most impactful phenomenon driving the world today is the accelerating rate of change, it was naive of me to expect anything different.
We’re moving from the top-down, centralized model of a hierarchical Industrial Age and transitioning into an amorphous and mercurial, rapidly shifting, network topology that blurs the lines between sovereigns and systems, crowns and corporations, that serves as a super-conductor for data, information, and memetic constructs – not to mention: disinfo, bad news and mass formation psychosis.
Add to this mix, AI – the third major technological disruption of this century after the internet (decentralized non-state communications) and Bitcoin (decentralized non-state money).
Via Tamarack.ai blog
Now we have decentralized, non-state intelligence and I mean intelligence in a number of ways, including:
- access to the sum total of human knowledge, instantly and at effectively zero marginal cost.
- each individual possessing the means, motive and opportunity to create their own personal think-tanks, advisory boards and even “spycraft”-style intelligence services using osint and agentic AI that can act strategically and agentically on anybody’s behalf (servitor swarms, if you will).
- every node, device, piece of software and network connected “thing” having the ability to access and act on information from everything else.
There’s a sub-cult of Bitcoin maxis who actually welcome outcomes like the aforementioned Canadian election because they think having nations run by the most out-of-touch, behind the curve technocrats will hasten the collapse of the fiat money era and bring about a Bitcoin Standard. They are awaiting a kind of monetary eschaton – and they are called accelerationists.
I am not an accelerationist, but you may have noticed I have been writing a lot about this but find the word itself being inadequate to the task – what’s happening now is beyond acceleration. In physics, there is a derivative order and their ascension forms a kind of kinematic spectrum:
I’ve been trying to come up with a word that captures this accelerating acceleration that’s a bit sexier than “jerk” – and this exponentially intensifying derivative expansion beyond “snap”, “crackle” and “pop” (oh those nerd physicists) – so far I can really only make something up (actually, it was the best chatGPT could think of): tachyosis (tachy- = fast, -osis = condition/process), to wit:
Tachyosis (n.)
A state of recursively compounding acceleration — where systems evolve faster than they can stabilize, perception fragments, and causality begins to blur. Considered the experiential threshold of the kinematic continuum.“Civilizations in tachyosis cease to distinguish between signal and noise — they become pure velocity.”
This seems to fit the bill, and I like it because the word is reminiscent of “psychosis”, which is what a society undergoing this induces at a mass level.
What tachyosis does to society
While we know what happens during hyper-inflations, technological quantum leaps or breakdowns in the social contract – as separate phenomenons. If you follow Ray Dalio, he’ll tell you that the USA is following a template outlined his own research putting squarely on the path to Civil War –
“That template led me to believe that there was a high chance of a convergent breakdown of the monetary order, the domestic political order, and the international geopolitical order. Unfortunately, events are transpiring consistent with that template. “
But with all due respect to Mr. Dali, his framework only covers two of the three drivers we’re looking at here: it’s missing compounding affects of technological overclocking, and there are no history books to describe all three of these forces hitting an inflection point at the same time and all over the world.
The Rise of Tribalism
As societal institutions break down the economy enters a state of perpetual disruption, people start forming associations with like-minded individuals and families, both in their own communities and remotely.
Tribes may overlap with geopolitical boundaries but their center of gravity is what it stands for, not the political unit they may (for a moment) intersect with.
Woke, MAGA, AnCaps, BLM, Proud Boys, MS-13, Bitcoin, and Scientology are all examples of tribes now, regardless of what they started out as. Some with more staying power than others. But they will all acquire more relevance and gravitas in their members’ lives than their nation state citizenship. Why? Because no nation state can keep up with the process of tachyosis, while tribes are informed by it.
(To that end, there’s a new tribe forming for politically homeless Canadians over at Ready.ca)
Neo-Feudalism & The Vise of Technology
By this, I mean the effect this technological hyper-acceleration is having at both ends of your own personal lifespan.
If you have kids under the age of 30, especially if they’re under the age of 20 – their path forward will be very different from all those who came before.
Put bluntly: they probably won’t have jobs, much less careers. The time for each generation accumulating their own wealth and building personal fortunes will be – for most participants – over.
Your kids, your grandchildren and beyond, (hold that thought) would do better to be raised in preparation for maintaining the wealth and managing any assets you leave to them. Anybody who doesn’t inherit anything faces a real risk of being permanently priced out of the asset acquisition game in perpetuity.
Especially if they follow the path laid out in Industrial Age textbooks: go to school, then university, then go find a job with a big company and parlay that into a series of mid-management posts that culminate in a career and a payday. Most of those positions will have been automated away and the majority of younger generations are looking at UBI and endless leisure – so long as they spend most of their time confined to a metaverse-connected pod stacked somewhere in a 15-minute city and take up as little space and oxygen in the real world as possible.
Meanwhile, if you have managed to amass assets and a non-negative net worth, be prepared to live longer – a lot longer. 150, 160 will probably be normal for anybody under 60 or so now. That’s how fast biotech – and soon nanotech – is moving.
A number of my peer group – mostly technology and business operators in their mid-50’s to late-60’s are looking to take their chips off the table, sell the businesses they founded and retire, assuming they’ll need to clear enough money to last them another 20 or 30 years.
That could be a huge mistake because there’s a real possibility they find themselves facing the prospect of heading into their 90’s and early 100’s having outlived their retirement funds.
The old model was (again, bluntly), “Die before your money runs out.” Now, it’s not just about planning for 30 years post-retirement. Plan for a century.
Meanwhile, you’re kids won’t have careers, neither will theirs – and you’ll still probably be around to see your great- and great-great-grandchildren be born into the same post-bifurcation world.
This is the neo-Feudal aspect. Your fortune will have to be subdivided across each generation, like the fiefdoms of yore – and the only way to keep everybody living in the real world (instead of being tucked away in those pods, being intravenously fed liquid crickets and soy protein) will be to leave them with a vastly larger fortune than the one you thought was enough to get just you through retirement.
I wish I had better news than this, because the world we’re headed into – while technologically fantastic – will also be economically bleak for too many people. It’s not fair, it’s not egalitarian and there is no stopping it – short of a Tower of Babel 2.0 type event, which will be a total buzzkill in even less preferable ways.
I’ve called this scenario “The Great Bifurcation” – where the world’s middle class disintegrates and we head into a hellscape of mind-boggling wealth disparity.
Lately I’ve come to suspect that this will play out beyond the economic sphere and also occur at the level of mental abstraction (see my earlier notes about W R Clemens) – and by this I don’t mean that the “haves” will have brain chips and poors won’t (probably the other way around, if anything) – but that the underclass will be operating at a cognitive disadvantage that resembles a different species entirely.
More on that in the next piece. Jump on The Bombthrower mailing list to catch that when it drops.
One of the things we endeavour to do here at the Bitcoin Capitalist is to help you build the generational wealth that can last the rest of your own life and setup your descendants – take a one month trial today »
Mark E. Jeftovic is the founder of Bombthrower Media and CEO of easyDNS.com, a company he co-founded in 1998 which has been operating along the lines described within these pages.
-
Site: Zero HedgeInflation Highest In Democrat States, Lowest In Republican Deep SouthTyler Durden Wed, 06/11/2025 - 17:15
For much of 2025 we have been mocking the University of Michigan survey, and especially its short and long-term inflation expectation question, for the simple reason that the divergence between republican and democrat respondents is no longer merely grotesque but is a caricature of Goebbelsian propaganda, meant to spark fear that runaway inflation is coming and crash markets (even as today's CPI showed - again - it isn't).
But maybe we were wrong all along, and Democrats - who by definition live mostly in Democratic states - are indeed experiencing higher inflation.
According to a geographic analysis of price trends from Bloomberg, while the overall US inflation rate rose 2.4% in May from a year earlier, sharp geographic divergences remain. Indeed, bicoastal inflation in the predominantly Democratic states along the East and the West coasts of the country were generally above the US average, and far above Republicans strongholds like flyover states and the deep south.
The inflation rate in West Coast states was at 2.8% in May: in the illegal-alien bastion of Los Angeles metro area the rate was 3%, and it was even higher, at 3.8%, in San Diego. The rate fell to 3.4% in the Democratic stronghold that is New York City from 3.9% in April but is still among the highest by metro area.
Meanwhile, in mid-Atlantic states along with New England states, inflation was at 2.8% in May. East Coast prices are being driven largely by housing and rent. Meanwhile, the lowest rate in the country - by a relatively wide margin at 1.4% - was in the West South Central region, which includes Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Inflation between the regions with the highest inflation is twice as high as the parts of the country with the lowest price growth, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.
In other words, another fringe benefit of voting in Democrats every election is having to pay much higher prices for, well, everything.
-
Site: Catholic ConclaveChurch in Baden-Württemberg celebrates "Headbangers' Services""Heavy metal makes me burst with life"At the "Headbangers' Church," music fans celebrate worship in robes and to loud metal music. Matthias Fuchs, pastoral assistant of the Catholic parish of Bruchsal-Michaelsberg, believes this fulfills the message of Jesus.DOMRADIO.DE: Shrill guitars, heavy metal, and rock in church - that'sCatholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
-
Site: Zero Hedge'All US Bases Within Our Reach': Iran Responds To Threats From Washington
Iran’s Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said Wednesday that Tehran will strike US military bases in the region if nuclear talks fail and Washington decides to launch an attack on the Islamic Republic.
"Some officials on the other side threaten conflict if negotiations don't come to fruition. If a conflict is imposed on us... all US bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries," Nasirzadeh said during a press conference, warning the US to "leave the region" in the "case of any conflict."
NurPhoto via Getty Images
"We have made very good progress in defense affairs. Our operational forces are fully equipped," the defense minister added, revealing that Iran recently tested a missile with a two-ton warhead. "[If] a conflict is imposed on us, the casualties of the other party will definitely be much heavier than ours," he went on to say.
The comments came in response to escalating threats from Washington, coinciding with increased tension in nuclear talks between Iran and the US.
When asked at a hearing of the House of Representatives on Tuesday if Washington is prepared to “respond with overwhelming force to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran,” the chief of US Central Command (CENTCOM) said he has “provided the secretary of defense and the president a wide range of options.”
US President Donald Trump said on the same day in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier that Iran has become “much more aggressive” in nuclear talks. “They’re just asking for things you can’t do. They don’t want to give up what they have to give up,” adding that it is “disappointing” because “the alternative is a very, very dire one.”
Trump said on Monday that he was “less confident” in the ability to reach a deal. Iran has rejected a new US proposal that would significantly constrain its ability to enrich uranium, and has said it will soon put forward a counteroffer. A new round of talks is set to take place in the coming days.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran if the negotiations fail. Israel has also drawn up plans for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
In a phone call between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, the US president said he is still pushing for a deal, adding that an Israeli attack on Iran would be unhelpful and is “off limits” at the moment, according to Hebrew reports.
However, Trump has previously signaled that Israel would play a key role in any attack in the event that nuclear negotiations fail.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry announced recently that it has obtained thousands of sensitive documents on Israel’s nuclear program. The chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, said the intel will provide Iran with an advantage if it is forced to respond to an Israeli attack.
Pages
