For those who have followed the deep weeds of republican political games and schemes, the DeSantis flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard had a specific familiarity to them.

The transfer of Venezuelan migrants, illegal alien border crossers, from Texas to Massachusetts via Florida taxpayers and Ron DeSantis was/is, well, something republican strategist Lee Atwater would have come up with.  The protege’ to Atwater is a person more familiar to modern republican followers, Karl Rove.  Yes, the migrant transfer operation held all the political benefits of something very Rovian in its construct.

Take an issue like border security, central to the majority of republicans, add an element of targeted benefit and overlay an establishment playbook carried out by shadow constructs giving plausible deniability to the central planners in the backroom, and you get this type of operation.  However, there’s always a risk of taking things just too far and losing control.  An investigative article in the Miami Herald today has the elements of a looming backlash that needs to be avoided by the principle.

The Miami Herald is a notoriously left-wing super narrative machine, but when it comes to using their investigative resources to target a vulnerability in their opposition, they are akin to the New York Times in the sharpness of their attack.   If the story as outlined in the Miami Herald is even remotely accurate, the thirsty people behind DeSantis may have just set themselves up for a problem and created an ‘own goal‘ scenario.

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The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of the U.S. Dept of Justice, National Security Division, and blocked the lower court order instructing the Special Master to review the DOJ claimed, “classified documents.” [pdf Ruling Here]

Essentially the order of the appellate court is based on the DOJ calling the material “classified” and “vital to national security”, and the court’s determination they have no authority to question the decision of the executive branch when it comes to matters of national security.

The court (judicial branch) openly states they defer to the DOJ (executive branch) as to any/all claims of harm to national security that may be caused by a review of documents the DOJ-NSD determine, on their own authority, to be identified as classified (sensitive, secret or top-secret).

Therefore, if the DOJ states sharing the “classified documents” with a special master may harm national security, the court must accept that position without challenge.

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Trying to survive current price increases in housing costs, energy costs, electricity costs, food and fuel costs has forced consumers to reevaluate purchasing decisions.  As consumer demand for non-essential items has collapsed, and as Americans dig deeper into their savings just to sustain current unavoidable expenses, major retailers are now cancelling Christmas inventory orders.

On one hand the leaders of large multinationals must pretend everything is splendid; after all, the only acceptable position they can articulate is to support interest rates being raised because demand is just too darned high.  lololol…  pretending.  But on the other hand – those same retailers are furiously trying to calculate how to avoid being stuck with billions worth of unsold inventory.

RetailWire – Walmart, Target, Macy’s and Kohl’s are among retailers that have recently said they are canceling some orders to better balance inventory levels, a replay of a strategy used at the start of the pandemic.

Other steps retailers are using to clear inventories as spending has slowed on some non-discretionary categories are employing markdowns and packing away products for the following year. The elevated inventory levels also reflect intentional over-buying to mitigate shortages and the easing of supply chain constraints.

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The statistics behind the energy impact upon the German economy, the largest economy in the European Union, are almost unfathomable in scale.  There is no way for the German industrial economy to continue with this level of price pressure.  Stick a fork in the current creation of German industrial products and exports, the inflection point of feasibility for continued production has been crossed.  They are done.

According to release statistics from the German economic ministry, energy prices in August were more than double the same period last year, up 139%.  The monthly increase was more than 20.4% higher than July.  Additionally, producer prices for electricity rose 174.9% compared with August 2021 and by 26.4% in a single month.

This jaw-dropping increase in energy cost has resulted in German manufacturing prices for industrial goods jumping 7.9% in August alone, with a year-over-year increase in the cost to manufacture goods at 45.8%.  That is the highest rate of price increase since Germany began recording their statistics in 1939.

BERLIN, Sept 19 (Reuters) – German producer prices rose in August at their strongest rate since records began both in annual and monthly terms, driven mainly by soaring energy prices, raising the chances that headline inflation will surge even higher.

Producer prices of industrial products increased by 45.8% on the same month last year, the Federal Statistical Office reported on Tuesday. Compared to July 2022, prices rose 7.9%, it added.

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I was asked recently, what I considered to be the biggest problem of the current moment, and how would I describe it to my future self.  My response was, we are living in an era of great pretending, and if you elevate yourself and pause its actually quite interesting to watch.

The pretending issue goes beyond politics, it’s everywhere.  Sure, there was always an era where reality was skewed in favor of one position or another by various groups, people and leaders, where denying the obvious was always odd.  However, this current state of our national and international disposition extends far beyond politics into almost everything.

A person would ordinarily expect to see cultural or social pretending as an outcome of political correctness.  Denying the underlying social construct behind the rules of the urban society has been the norm for several years.  However, the pretending has become so pervasive it has recently extended into finance and economics; places where reality -actual outcomes- used to inoculate facts and figures against pretense.

It is no longer uncommon, heck, it’s become almost standard in this new era, to see CEO’s, CFO’s and even entire boards of directors, maintaining a standard of pretense. It is quite weird to see it happening.

Yes, this era -for a host of reasons- has made delusion somewhat of a norm.

In the social sphere, cultural norms now claim men can have babies, people can choose their gender, labels and pronouns, and everyone else bears the responsibility to conform to the delusion.  While goofy, that part is somewhat a weird cultural phenomenon of this western era.   If we were not pretending people like AOC would have no career opportunities.

In the political sphere, the axiom of politics being downstream from pop culture is perhaps the reason the infection of pretense has overwhelmed congress and the professional bureaucracies of government.  The social pretending has metastasized from the federal level to the state level, and now we see efforts to counteract “wokeism” as a social priority for state and local leaders.   It’s weird to see so much time and effort being exhausted on combatting social pretense at every level.

But the more stunning development comes in the sphere of economics, where factual outcomes of transactions are matters of simple accounting.  A ledger of sales and profits would normally dictate whether a business was successful or failing, and in the bigger picture would show empirical evidence of the financial health of the community of customers who purchase goods and services.

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Joe Biden’s economic policies, mainly driven by excessive spending and the Green New Deal climate change agenda, are the origins of massive inflation.

In an attempt to diminish the outcomes of his energy policy, the Biden administration has been releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in an effort to curb gasoline prices.  However, that process is about to end as the SPR is becoming dangerously low and will need to be replaced (more spending).

When asked about the current status of inflation during a CBS interview, Biden responds by saying it could be worse, citing the last two months where the SPR spigot has been running at maximum release.  WATCH (48 seconds):

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An unusual article in The Intercept is noted with the following headline: “House Republicans Planning to Investigate The Chamber of Commerce if They Take Majority.”  The article is framed around the statements of an unnamed congressman, who appears –from the sourcing inference– to come from the House Judiciary Committee.

If you have followed the deep political weeds, you know the CoC is the anti-MAGA element within the America-First economic battle.  However, it is also true the CoC and the Washington DC UniParty members they feed with lobbying dollars are peas and carrots, this includes the entire republican establishment apparatus.

The republican party investigating the CoC is never going to happen.  It would be a move akin to Adam Schiff investigating the origin of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

The CoC is not only an organization made up of lobbyists for Wall Street, but the members within it are also the close personal friends of just about every influential GOP politician.

The framework for the investigation, as written in the article, surrounds the leftist Environmental Social Governance (ESG) outlook of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is factually accurate.  The CoC is indeed an organization that is ‘all-in’ to position themselves for the benefits of climate change in the corporate sphere.  If there is money to be made from ESG economics, the CoC is the lobbying firm shaping legislation toward that benefit.

However, the CoC is too entrenched with republican party apparatus to ever have their agenda challenged by the “republican” politicians in DC.  So, what exactly is going on here?  A MAGA-minded republican within the House Judiciary Committee wants to investigate the CoC?

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According to The Boston Globe, officials in Martha’s Vineyard are holding an emergency meeting to deal with the crisis of 43 illegal alien arrivals, including one four-year-old child.  The group arrived via a chartered flight dispatched by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

According to state representative Dylan Fernandes, “when you look at the limited housing options on Martha’s Vineyard, as I’m sure many of the folks here are aware, it’s likely we’re going to need an off island location.”  As noted by the Globe …”a Zoom meeting has been scheduled for emergency management officials from the island along with people from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency to discuss the next step for the immigrants.”

(Boston Globe) […] Fernandes also strongly condemned DeSantis and Governor Greg Abbott of Texas for sending the migrants to the Vineyard.

“To use women and children as political pawns is cowardice. Governor DeSantis is a coward,” Fernandes said. “Their communication on this, Governor DeSantis’s on this, was to jump on Fox News and beat his chest about how tough he is on immigration. It’s inhumane. It’s depraved.”

DeSantis defended the move in remarks to reporters on Thursday during a briefing at Northwest Florida State College.  

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It is good to see at least one energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, speaking commonsense.  In an article by Clark Williams-Derry for Barron Magazine [SEE HERE], the author accurately outlines how significant U.S. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exports are driving up natural gas prices for American consumers.

The author accurately refutes the notion that exports do not drive-up domestic prices, by walking through the example of how natural gas prices dropped for U.S. consumers when the liquefied natural gas plant in Quintana, Texas [Freeport LNG] was temporarily shut down, blocking a portion of the export capacity.  However, that facility is about to come back on-line and with increased exports from other facilities domestic U.S. prices have already doubled.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Association (IEA), U.S. storage of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) is 12% below the five-year average (LINK).  Additionally, the IEA is expecting the U.S. to export 11.7 billion cubic feet of LNG per day during the fourth quarter of 2022 — up 17% from the third quarter. The destination of that export is Europe.

Consider that 43% of U.S. households use natural gas for home heating, and power suppliers use natural gas to create electricity.  With the massive 2022 exports of LNG to Europe (+17% in fourth quarter alone), that means lower domestic supplies and increased prices here in the United States for electricity and home heating.  We are seeing and feeling these massive price increases right now.

Barrons – […]  If you need more evidence of the impact of natural gas exports on prices, just compare supply and demand fundamentals for the year leading up to February 2020 (the last pre-pandemic month) versus the year leading up to this May (the most recent month with full federal data). Annualized production rose over the period, while domestic consumption remained roughly flat. Yet LNG exports almost doubled—a surge that tightened U.S. gas markets and doubled the price that U.S. consumers pay for the fuel. 

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War is an outcome of ideology and economics, and the latter is perhaps the most powerful weapon.  As the harsh reality of Europe’s insufferable decades-long efforts to embrace the virtues of climate change begin to settle in, the reasonable adults in the conversation are able to see how their weakness is being exploited by their adversary.

On Sept 7, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen held a press conference in Brussels, announcing five initiatives to contain the expensive EU energy crisis: “The goal is clear. We must cut the revenues of Russia that Putin uses to finance this atrocious war against Ukraine.” {Go Deep}

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin made it very clear that any further efforts to weaken his economy, via western sanctions and interventionist efforts against his economy, would be met with retaliation in the form of cutting off all oil and gas supplies to Europe.  It appears the Europeans now understand the nature of their vulnerability.

(Via Reuters) – The EU has dropped plans to cap the price it pays for Russian gas.

Energy ministers from the bloc met Friday (September 9) in Brussels. They scrapped plans for the cap after the idea failed to win broad support.

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