Eric (2:42)
for healing, learn more and sign the pledge@workingwithcancerpledge.com. All right, 4:00 clock in the East coast and it's 1:00pm on the west coast and there's where those folks are right now on the West Coast. They're in San Francisco ringing a closing bell for whatever reason. No idea why, but the market is closed nonetheless. Let me just tell you something. Very quickly this morning, inflation number came out. It was high, it was elevated. And all of the inflation came from just the energy market. So food was flat, everything else, rents were flat. Everything was even from the prior month. Energy was triple inflationary and that's because it encompassed March. Remember, February 28th is when we started the campaign against Iran. Oil prices jumped up. February 28, March 1 was the first number in this, in this reading, it's a higher oil price. It also started to move up throughout the month. So gasoline prices, inflation to the consumer. Gasoline prices moved up from a $3.25 a gallon on March 2, the first day, first business day of the year, all the way up to of the month, all the way up to where it sits right now, $4.19. That's a massive move throughout the month. So inflation will continue to go higher as we go forward, unfortunately. And that's what you saw most of today. Traders are waiting, wait and see kind of attitude right now. Dow came off, but the other ones were flat to up a little. S and P was down just a touch 8. Nasdaq up 80 points, a couple of stocks, a couple of tech stocks doing well. Nvidia as it was, had a good day over in the oil markets. 90, the oil market ended the day at 98 a barrel. The trading day, it's come off a little bit since then. Trading around 98. That's a very elevated price. All eyes are in Islamabad, Pakistan right now to see if they're going to get a deal done. John Solomon is going to come on in a few minutes and he's going to tell us something I've never heard before. It's a new strategy, a new plan. He's like I saw, he's tapped in to the administration like nobody's business. So what, wait till you hear this. And, and I, I think this is a fascinating idea. Stick around for John Solomon. So when the dollar's convertibility into gold ended in 1971. Gold was fixed at $35 an ounce. Fast forward to today and the US dollar has lost 85% of its purchasing power. The value of that dollar has dropped all that time, just going straight down. Gold, on the other hand, has increased in value by over 12,000%. That's why Central banks around the world really, just not just here around the world, are buying gold in record fashion at record levels. That's why major firms like Vanguard and BlackRock hold significant positions in gold physical gold. And that's why I encourage you to consider diversifying your savings with physical gold from the Birch Gold Group. But it starts with education. Birch Gold just announced their Learn and Earn Precious Metals event. This free online event rewards you for learning the basics of investing in precious metals. Sign up to get free silver. Free actual silver on your next purchase. Get even larger incentives as you go. The more you learn, the more you can earn. But you must act now as a special event. This is a very special event. Only runs through the end of April. April 30th. The dollar lost its anchor in 1971. You don't have to lose yours. Text the word America to the number 989-898 to join Birch Gold's Learn and Earn Precious Metals event. And a giveaway. We'll give you some silver by April 30th as you purchase. Text that word again, America to 989-898 today. All right folks, free speech. First Amendment to Constitution. Kanye west now knows himself as yay y e yay. He said some really, really awful things. Offensive, ugly things. In some cases. Indefensible. In early 2025, yay. Publicly declared I'm a Nazi. He made anti Semitic mark remarks about people he claimed as friends and even used the super bowl ad to drive viewers to a site briefly selling a twenty dollar swastika T shirt. That's very, very offensive. Indefensible. In fact, Kanye west posted a long apology a few weeks ago. Still, those previous comments are undefensable. Indefensible. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's decide. It's decided. No debate here. But the debate is what happens when the government decides to step in and determine who's allowed to speak, who's allowed to perform, or even enter a country not based on criminal acts, mind you, but based on speech. Because that's what just happened. After a run of massive shows drawing tens of thousands, Kanye west was set to headline Wireless Festival. It's called Wireless Festival in London. Instead, the UK government denied him entry. The Festival collapsed without their headliner, and politicians, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, lined up to declare that he should never have been invited in the first place. Cue the applause. But before joining in, it's worth asking a very uncomfortable question. What exactly are you celebrating? If this were just about Kanye west, this would be easy. He's controversial. He's erratic, offensive. This guy's a walking PR crisis. Fine. Don't buy a ticket. Don't stream his music. Ignore him. That's how a free society handles bad speech. What it doesn't do or it should not do is empower the state, the government, Decide what. Which artists, which artists, voices, or worse, what kind of thinking are acceptable enough to be allowed in. Because once that line is crossed, it doesn't stay neatly contained in the most obvious villains like Kanye. It never does stay neatly contained. There's a reason this moment feels like a test, and that's because it is a test. Kanye west is the earliest possible person to ban. Easiest. Also, he's offensive. He's offensive enough that politicians can do their little grandstanding show. He's famous enough that the move to ban him gets headlines, and it most certainly has. And it's controversial enough that many people will cheer. Banning him. Well, chew that activity on by the government. Can you imagine that? That makes him useful. Useful for setting a precedent. Because the real question isn't whether Kanye west deserves a visa. The question is this. Who's next? Once the government establishes that speech, past speech, controversial speech, offensive speech, Kanye. But once they determine that that's grounds for exclusion, then the category expands. And it always expands. Maybe next time it's not someone ranting about Jews. Maybe it's a comedian who made a joke about religion 10 years ago. Maybe it's a writer who posted something politically incorrect about immigration. Or maybe it's a musician who said something offensive about another rock group or another group of people. Lbgtq. Take your pick. The issue is this. That point is no longer about protecting people. It's about policing opinion and words. And that line is a lot easier to cross than people may think. Even though we have the First Amendment to our Constitution. Supporters of the ban will argue about this, preventing harm. But where? Where exactly is the evidence of that? Kanye west has performed elsewhere. Recently. He performed to a massive stadium in Los Angeles just last week. Large venues, massive crowds. No riots, no violence, no public disorder tied to his presence. So what are we actually preventing? Well, as it turns out, we're not preventing violence. We're just preventing speech. Speech. They don't like not even current speech, but past speech filtered through political judgment. And that's a very, very different standard. On its face, it may sound reasonable. Then again, who decides what offensive speech is or what's extreme? Sounds very, very dangerous. Slight slippery slope, as they say. And it is dangerous. That's why it sounds dangerous. Because once governments start treating speech, however offensive, as grounds for denying entry into the country, the standard starts to evolve. It becomes subjective. And what starts as a measure aimed at the most extreme cases, it doesn't stay there. It never does. It creeps and widens. This is a full scale political response to a music festival lineup. Some may call it leadership. The truth is that this is low risk virtue signaling dressed up as a moral clarity. People love to dismiss slippery slope arguments as alarmist, or until they're not. History shows that once government claims authority over speech in one so called exceptional case, Kanye, then magically those exceptions start to multiply, to widen slowly, quietly, and then all at once. The boiling frog analogy isn't dramatic, it's descriptive. Look it up and it's a fact. We saw it in action for four years under Joe Biden about COVID measures and vaccines, about the grooming of children, about Joe Biden's corrupt family. We can't ever forget what those, those on the left did, wanted to do and still propose doing to any dissenting voices. I frankly think that based on this and all we've seen him do before, including attacking members of Congress, that he frankly should be. His Twitter account should be suspended. If the platforms, whether it's Facebook or Twitter X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don't moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.
