AMERICANS ARE PRETTY SHARP: A Shockingly Low Percentage of Americans Think Old Joe Biden Is Really Running Things.

YA THINK? Fed may need to accelerate rate hikes, Jerome Powell says.

Powell’s comments raise the possibility that the Fed will increase its key interest rate by a half-percentage point at its next meeting March 21-22, after having carried out a quarter-point hike in early February. Over the past year, the central bank has raised its key rate — which affects many consumer and business loans — eight times.

“This statement opens the door to a return to 50bp hikes at the March meeting and potentially beyond if the data flow confirms the re-acceleration in both the labor market and inflation, which both surprised to the upside in January,” noted Morgan Stanley analysts in a Tuesday research note.

The prospect of bigger-than-expected interest rate hikes caused U.S. markets to tumble on Tuesday, with the Dow slumping 0.9% to 33,120 and the S&P 500 shedding 1% in late morning trading.

It’s going to be painful, but we have a dismal 1981 inflation rate (properly figured) and a good-times 1995 Federal funds rate. Something’s gotta give.

WHOSE BOOKS ARE THEY, ANYWAY? ‘Goosebumps’ Author Says Publisher Snuck In ‘Woke’ Edits Without His Permission. “Among many other changes, references to a character’s weight and to Anna Karenina being ‘girl’s stuff’ have been altered to height and the Tolstoy book being ‘not interesting.'”

GABE KAMINSKY: FBI worked secretly with hospitals to strip citizens’ gun rights, documents show. “New documents shared with the Washington Examiner, which Gun Owners of America obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shed light on how facilities in New Hampshire, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma, used the gun forms and supplied signatory records to the FBI. The forms are from 2011 and 2019, the year the FBI has said it discontinued their usage.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Mitch McConnell Reminds Regular Republicans That He Hates Them. “I firmly believe the McConnell doesn’t mind being in the minority forever. He’s fat and comfortable just kicking around the Senate, adding new chins every year. As long as his comfort zone isn’t disturbed, Mitch doesn’t give a damn about what the Republican rubes in the hinterlands need or want.”

PRIVACY: ‘Geofence’ Warrants Threaten Every Phone User’s Privacy.

Last month, the federal district court in DC issued an opinion in the case of one of the many defendants who stands accused of sacking the Capitol in the wake of the 2020 election.

And with it, Judge Rudolph Contreras became the first federal district judge to approve a “Geofence” warrant, endorsing a recent police innovation: searching the cell phone history of every American to check who happened to be in the area of some potential crime.

The “Geofence” in this context refers to cell phone location data collected by Google from users of its Android operating system, as well as iPhone users who use apps such as Google Maps. Location tracking can be turned off, but most users allow it for the convenience of getting directions, tracking their daily jog, or finding the nearest Chipotle. The Government’s warrant demanded location history for every Google account holder within a range of longitude and latitude roughly corresponding to the Capitol building on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, along with similar data from that morning and evening (to filter out Hill staff and security guards).

It’s not clear this information was even needed: This defendant was apprehended within the building that day, carrying knives and pepper spray, and features on various security cameras — his whereabouts are not in question. Many of his coreligionists were considerate enough to live stream their antics themselves. While tracking down every participant in what was dubbed the Beer Belly Putsch is impractical, prosecutors have not lacked for defendants, or for evidence against them. But the government nonetheless decided to resort to a level of mass surveillance without precedent in history or criminal law.

Of course they did. A higher court needs to slap down Judge Rudolph Contreras, hard.

I DON’T KNOW ART BUT I KNOW WHAT I DON’T LIKE: ChatGPT Pens an Ode to Biden.

GRADUALLY THEN SUDDENLY: Consumers Hit A Brick Wall: January Credit Growth Craters As Interest Rates Soar.

Bottom line is simple: while US savings (especially excess covid savings) were spent long ago and flatlined near record lows in recent months, it was all up to credit cards and other sources of (repurposed) credit – like pretending one’s student loans are actually going to, you know, studying when instead they were used to buy iPhones, TVs, booze and onlyfans subs – to drive consumers.

However, the recent surge in rates has meant that even the indomitable US addiction to credit is finally coming to an end, and the result is a sharp slowdown in credit-funded purchases, alongside an upward inflection in savings as US consumers are realizing the good old stimmy days are gone and more money has to be set side, and thus not spent.

As the wise man said, anything that can’t go on forever will stop.

YOU ONLY NEED CENSORS WHEN YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE: Chuck Schumer Calls for Censoring Tucker Carlson Over J6 Coverage.

Related (From Ed): Was it over when the Germans and the Soviets bombed Pearl Harbor?

Ken Burns compares Tucker to both Soviets & Nazis for releasing new J6 video:

"The way the Nazis would build a Potemkin village, Tucker Carlson is doing the same thing with the footage from 1/6. It's a rewriting of history at the most dangerous level." pic.twitter.com/CZxLgHhPef

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 7, 2023

FAKING: Texas A&M’s DEI: Ditching or Faking? “Those infected with social justice never give up pushing their radical ideology, administration directive or no administration directive.”

OH, GROW UP: Michelle Obama Sobbed Uncontrollably After Trump Inauguration.

HMM: China’s Xi Jinping Takes Rare Direct Aim at U.S. in Speech.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why Are Asian Americans Voting Republican in Large Numbers?

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Meet the Anti-Semitic Spiritual Guru on Cori Bush’s Payroll. “He claims he can summon tornadoes at will, cause earthquakes with his hate, and conduct blood rituals to bring ruin upon his enemies. An intergalactic master of psychic self-defense born 109 trillion years ago, his days, he says, are now spent tending to his crops and spreading anti-Semitic conspiracies.”

IRAN: New Wave of Protests in Iran After Hundreds of Schoolgirls Poisoned.

BECAUSE WE’RE INCENTIVIZING MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES: Why trans kids are now ‘coming out’ as animals. “You’re xenogender if you feel more akin to animals or plants or foods than humans. It’s funny, but it’s also frightening. There’s a girl on TikTok who explains very seriously that her gender is bird – a cardinal specifically, ey/em pronouns. And several people I’ve found identify as cake. Cake is actually just one of a smorgasbord of available gastro-genders. There is some disagreement in the community about how it feels to be cake, but in general I gather it’s a sort of sweet, fluffy feeling; a lightness. No one who’s cake-gender can have tasted a cake I’ve baked.”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: ‘Lynching the Deplorables.’ “‘Lynching the Deplorables’ is a stark warning about the Jan6 prosecutions, and it’s from a former New York Times foreign correspondent who pretty much hates you deplorables.”

Plus:

• Hands up, masks down?
• Antifa terrorist plays stupid games, wins powerful tasing
• “It barely works, let’s do it more.”

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

WHISTLEBLOWER: FBI’s D.C. Office Tried To Sic Local Agents On Innocents After Bank Of America Volunteered Gun Records. “Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base.”

PROJECT FEAR: Leaked Texts Reveal British Government’s COVID Terror Campaign.

JOANNE JACOBS: Learning math matters.

Math scores are way down: The Education Recovery Scorecard estimates students lost half a year. But Boaler believes it doesn’t matter. It’s “quite clear” the students gained “knowledge and insights about the world, health challenges, global upheaval, exponential growth, technology, and ways to help their families and navigate complex social situations,” she writes.

This is not clear to me at all. If anything, it’s quite clear that many lost the ability to navigate complex — or even simple — social situations, and I’m dubious about their knowledge and insights too. Screen time soared. That doesn’t mean they’re masters of technology. Physical and mental health declined.

Learning math matters, responds Fordham’s Nathaniel Grossman. Two decades of growth was “wiped out in just three years,” NAEP scores revealed.

America’s math scores weren’t very good three years ago.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Tucker Carlson Begins Nuking False J6 Narrative From Orbit. “Unfortunately, the real criminals here are all backed by a corrupt Dept. of Justice and won’t be facing any consequences in the near future.”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: SPLC Lawyer Arrested in Atlanta Molotov Cocktail Riot, Faces Terrorism Charges.

A staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning civil rights group notorious for branding mainstream conservative and Christians nonprofits “hate groups,” was arrested Sunday on terrorism charges, with police saying he took part in a violent riot where agitators threw rocks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police at a training center near Atlanta.

According to DeKalb County Jail records, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation on Sunday arrested Thomas Webb Jurgens, describing him as a 6-foot male with brown hair and brown eyes. Jurgens faces one charge of “domestic terrorism.”

This is from Tyler O’Neil, who has been reporting the SPLC’s antics before hardly anyone else knew it was a story.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: The Biden Admin Lost 20,000 Migrant Children, and That’s Not the Worst Part. “They have no plans to look for them.”

CORN, POPPED: Jim Jordan Subpoenas Former Disinformation Czar Nina Jankowicz to Testify Before Congress.

“We have repeatedly sought information from you concerning your official actions and duties as a DHS employee and former Executive Director of the Board,” Jordan wrote, listing out numerous dates on which he had attempted to contact Jankowicz and ask her to meet with the committee.

Jordan wrote that his committee’s investigation includes “how the Board intended to define disinformation, how it planned to collect information and from what sources, how it anticipated countering disinformation, and how it proposed to protect First Amendment rights.”

Jankowicz’s job, of course, was to circumvent the First Amendment.

IT DOESN’T REQUIRE MUCH KNOWLEDGE TO SUPPORT SOCIALISM; QUITE THE OPPOSITE, IN FACT: America’s Leading Socialist Unable to Explain Socialism’s Fundamental Tenet.