A quagmire in this instance is a difficult, precarious, and entrapping position. So, what is the Federal Reserve's quagmire? Let’s take a look. In March of 2020, the Federal Reserve announced a reduction of reserve requirements for U.S. banks to zero. (1) [Source: Federal Reserve.gov, reserve requirements.] In March of 2023, the Federal Open Market Committee minutes removed the language “The U.S. banking system is sound and resilient.” (2) [Source: Federal Reserve minutes March, ’23.] On March 10, 2023, Silicon Valley Bank failed, followed by Signature Bank on March 12, and First Republic's failure on May 1, 2023, representing combined assets of more than $500 billion. (3) [Source: Michael Wilkerson, Stormwall.com.] This was followed by the collapse of Credit Suisse with over $600 billion in assets.

This material largely comes from Peter Schweizer’s just-released book, Blood Money. It should be alarming to every American. Lee Ann and I lost our only son, Brian, to an overdose and had to pick up his electrical engineering degree from the University of Virginia posthumously. To the leadership of America, this must stop.

Our immigrant was a man who is a great example of so many who emigrate to America. He survived the Christian holocaust in Turkey as a child from 1917 through 1923. He suffered religious persecution for more than a decade after the holocaust. He hailed from a Greek island off the coast of Turkey. His father told him, “Go to America.” He left home for Istanbul at the age of 13 in 1930. He became a waiter at the Pera Palace in 1937. He would send money home when he could. In 1941, as a Christian, he was conscripted into Inonu’s work camps and sent to the Russian border for forced labor, and he survived by serving his enemy. Years later, in 1945, at the age of 27, one of the people he waited on was selected to be Ambassador to the United States and asked Chris to come to America as his butler. His response was, “You know I’m a Christian.” The Ambassador said, “I can take whoever I want.” His dream had come true. I tell this story as a context for suggesting needed changes to our immigration system today and because it is similar to so many stories of so many immigrants.

Thucydides, an ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War (approximately 460 BCE to 404 BCE), famously said, “The secret to happiness is freedom... And the secret to freedom is courage.”

Among other contributions, he is credited with introducing the concept of the “Thucydides Trap,” which posits that "when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the rule, not the exception.”

A few weeks ago, we did a show on the Maternal Instinct and talked about the “love hormone,” oxytocin, and how it was released not only by a birthing mother to care for her newborn but also by the father, grandparents, and even foster parents who had no biological connection with the infant. Although we did not find evidence of a maternal instinct, the release of oxytocin sustained dutiful parenting. The euphoric feelings when oxytocin is released, although self-fulfilling, propel selfless acts always directed toward other humans, even when released during sex.

At a time when the United States is being pulled to the left, when the meanings of words are being changed by our leaders, and events of history are being erased, we should pay attention. Yes, now is a time in America when traditional values are being abandoned in the face of a barrage of conditional gifts, platitudes, coupled with future bribes and promises of a better life, by none other than our federal government. What is true? Can our government deliver? For these reasons, it might behoove us to look at what has happened in Chile over the last few years.

"The CIA was created after World War II with an overriding primary mission: to prevent a recurrence of what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941... In the future, we would be forewarned and forearmed," stated Charles S. Faddis, Chief at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and Chief of Libya Station in the Mideast during his career.

Is mothering instinctive? Is it part of our nature, or is it a learned behavior? In the seventies and eighties, women performed 80% of childcare. Since 2000, women have reduced their childcare to 65%, with men now taking on 35% (Bureau of Labor Statistics). For newborns, early personality development is crucial for later intellectual growth. During the first six years of a child’s life, 80% of their personality is formed (McKenna, W&M).

 Liberty is not simply a state of mind. To enjoy liberty, people must be free to act. Coercion is the enemy of liberty. We create governments to protect our liberty from being impinged on by others. Exercising freedom requires personal acceptance of responsibilities and consequences. Freedom only exists when individuals can act on choices to incur a perceived benefit at a perceived cost.

Early shamanic beliefs, in powers greater than man, and an afterlife were presented in a cave drawing in present-day Czech Republic dating back to 30,000 BC (Bradshaw Foundation). Recently published on June 5, 2023, by paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, Homo Naledi, a predecessor to Homo Sapiens with a brain one-third the size, was discovered in a cave in Johannesburg, South Africa, burying its members dating back to 335,000 BC to 241,000 BC. Two other known paleontologists, Chris Stringer and John Hawks, supported Berger's burial theory by Homo Naledi, a practice until now only thought to be practiced by Homo Sapiens—an early awareness of burial as the proper way to dispose of human remains.

The general consensus today is that the economy is in for "a soft landing," which means economic activity will slow but not turn negative. If economic activity were to be negative for two consecutive quarters, it would be viewed as a recession. Although a few economists think we still may go into a recession, they are saying it will be mild and expect a strong comeback later in the year. Is this majority view correct?

Our culture was built on laws and their equal enforcement for all citizens. Laws, when enforced equally, are the bedrock that defines fairness in our culture. Like almost everything in life, too much of anything is not good, including an excess of laws. Too many laws, ordinances, sanctions, and rules diminish the clarity between right and wrong. Even more importantly, it reduces our ability to enforce laws equally. Unequal enforcement violates the most basic right that governance by law is dependent on — striving toward equality under the law.

Throughout history, the inequality between haves and have-nots has been the dry tinder of many wars, resulting in the deaths of both perpetrators and innocents. The inherent biological inequalities, tethered to environmental disparities, have presented ongoing challenges. Moral and cultural norms have yielded to a panoply of economic and political systems to address these inherent economic inequalities. This paper does not intend to solve the differences in nature and heredity but rather to expose the Census Bureau’s statistical inaccuracies about the state of poverty in America and raise the question of why and at what expense.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are being broadly adopted in our communities and educational systems. Across the nation, public educational bureaucracies (K-12), colleges, universities, many communities, and large businesses are embracing DEI. Why?

Although not exhaustive, we should make the effort to look at DEI and answer some of the questions that surround it. A generation of children is being exposed to DEI in public education, and we are paying for it.

Although governance by written rules and laws is better than authoritarian rule, the rule of law is not immutable. Laws can change. So, to underscore the unique value of a human being, our American Democracy grants all citizens rights. Although, like a law, there is also a process to change a right, but our rights have never been changed and therefore can be referred to as immutable. They are enumerated in our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights. On rare occasions, a right has been added to our Bill of Rights, yet never has a right been deleted. Rights acknowledge the extraordinary value and uniqueness of a human life. They are the foundational blocks our rule of law is based on.

From July 4, 1776, the date when we issued our Declaration and severed our relationship with England, until 1965, for 189 years, the American family was the strongest political and economic unit in our republic. A mom and dad, as a team, provided for their children and had control over their lives.

The interest rate is the price of money. When the interest rate is above the rate of inflation, our money has a positive cost and value. When the interest rate is below the rate of inflation, the cost of money is said to be negative. Money is never priced negatively on its own; it takes much manipulation by our Federal Reserve. When our money is negatively priced for too long, it reduces its value, causing the prices of goods and services to go up, or inflation.

The eruption of war in the Middle East caused the yield on the US ten-year bond to decline for two days from almost 4.8% to 4.55%, as there was a flight to safety. However, it has gone up to over 4.6% today. While the two-year bond hovers above 5%. What is that telling us? The inversion will continue to flatten out.

On April 6, 2023, a 91-page Circular was issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), quietly phasing out all consideration of opportunity cost when determining how to allocate our funds. This Circular, known as Circular A-4, serves as a clear example of how we are no longer governed by laws, but rather by obfuscation.

Let me explain the problem this way. The law requires that the House go over the cost of each of the 12 government departments annually and agree on spending limits by September 30. Not only have our politicians failed to consider each of the departments separately, but the House of Representatives has not completed any budget timely by September 30 this century.