Twitter Files – Matt Taibbi Sniffing Around the Senate Intel Committee Connection to Manipulation of Social Media


Posted originally on the CYH on February 20, 2023 | Sundance 

Matt Taibbi is a smart guy, he’ll get there.  I’m not sure why my gut says to trust him, but it does – and I do. Recently he’s been getting hit by the leftists who are asking why Taibbi is not looking at the Trump administration pressure on social media to control and manipulate public information [Twitter Here].

Taibbi has been hitting back against his detractors by saying, there’s no evidence of Trump doing that; yet there is massive evidence of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) contacting Twitter to do exactly that.

This is interesting to me and CTH readers because we outlined in real time what the SSCI and HPSCI were doing in order to promote the Trump-Russia conspiracy before and after the 2016 election.

What’s fascinating about this… is that the same people who are attacking Taibbi right now, are the same people who received and promoted the propaganda from the SSCI (Burr and Warner) in addition to the HPSCI (Schiff and Swalwell).

In essence, the ancillary media attack hounds are attacking Taibbi because at the end of the research trail Taibbi is following he will find the same names of the ancillary media who are attacking him.

[SEE SHORT THREAD HERE]

In my opinion, Taibbi is on the right trail in following the SSCI and HPSCI manipulation of the social media platforms, specifically Twitter.  In addition to the SSCI creating the structure that supports the intelligence weaponization by DHS and FBI, Senate Intel Chair Richard Burr and then Senate Intel Vice-Chair Mark Warner are at the epicenter of it.

I know I sound like a broken record on this, but it’s been true since the outset of my own research discoveries of the issue four years ago.  The entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative couldn’t exist without the SSCI participating in it.   This is why I have talked and written so much about it.

Factually, and I say this with no compunction for attribution, if you want to tell the public the story of the larger issue, the absolute best starting point is how SSCI Vice-Chair Mark Warner told SSCI Security Director James Wolfe to leak the Carter Page FISA application to then Politico journalist Ali Watkins.   It’s an easy story to outline because there is ample evidence to highlight it, including open admissions by the DOJ and FBI (in documented court records) that the leak event on March 17, 2017, took place.

That week in mid-March, 2017, when Mark Warner leaked the Page FISA application followed two days later by James Comey testifying to congress (March 20th), was/is the most openly documented evidence-based story that leads to everything that follows.

On March 17, 2017, Senator Mark Warner leaked the FISA in order to stimulate the media to support the demand for a Trump-Russia special counsel.  On March 20, 2017, holding the exact same motive, FBI Director James Comey first made the public admission that President Donald Trump was under FBI investigation for the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy.   Senator Warner and Director Comey held the exact same motive.

Everything done by the SSCI before and after that mid-March event, touches everything before and after the special counsel was appointed.  It’s like a fulcrum point that creates massive tentacles into the entire apparatus of the effort by the legislative branch, the executive branch, the intelligence community and the Weissmann/Mueller special counsel to cover it up.

Expose that moment on March 17, 2017, and the entire house of cards built by Weissmann/Mueller and the DC media apparatus collapses.

There is not another single moment during the entire arc of the Trump-Russia madness, that creates the inflection point as well as the March 17, 2017, leak.  EXAMPLE:

(Source)

Keep cheering on Matt Taibbi.  Keep supporting him as he follows this trail.  Yes, you know where it ends, but you are a select rare few who have followed this story.  Taibbi can blow it wide open if he continues.

Additionally, remember and understand that the entirety of the media apparatus was in on this scheme.

Every single outlet promoted the narrative that was collectively pushed by Senator Mark Warner, Director James Comey, the corrupt intelligence apparatus and the Robert Mueller special counsel.  They are all opposed to Taibbi following this trail.

Likely A Worthwhile Endeavor – Matt Taibbi Looking for Research Help


Posted originally on the CTH on February 12, 2023 | Sundance 

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi is looking for some additional research assistance [SEE HERE]. Specifically, after going a little deeper on the Twitter Files, Taibbi appears to be recognizing the visibility of the Fourth Branch of Government.  He now needs to package the truth of it, in a way his former tribe will accept.

As a consequence, Taibbi is looking for (1) a reporter or academic with experience researching government contracts, and/or the funding of NGOs or academic research institutions; and (2) an infographics designer, preferably with experience in areas like ecosystem mapping.

Taibbi is a solid and inquisitive research journalist. However, he is still averse to recognizing Chicago Jesus as the originator of the modern issues he is outlining.

The issue of not accepting the Obama network as the structure that underpins the modern political surveillance state is common, even amid the tribe of walkaways from the progressive system.

Give him time, he’ll find see it.

From his current mission as expressed: […] “For decades, our government at least loosely complied with legislation like the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits aiming at the domestic population any official propaganda “intended for foreign audiences.” However, gloves came off in recent years.

In a remarkably short time since the end of the Obama presidency, the U.S. government has funded an elaborate network of NGOs and think-tanks whose researchers call themselves independent “disinformation experts.” They describe their posture as defensive — merely “tracking” or “countering” foreign disinformation — but in truth they aggressively court both the domestic news media and platforms like Twitter, often becoming both the sources for news stories and/or the referring authorities for censorship requests.

The end result has been relentless censorship of, and mountains of (often deceptive) state-sponsored propaganda about, legitimate American political activity. In the Twitter Files we see correspondence from state agencies and state-sponsored research entities describing everything from support of the Free Palestine movement to opposition to vaccine passports as illicit foreign propaganda. Some of this messaging devolves into outright smear campaigns, with efforts to denounce the organic #WalkAway hashtag as a Russian “psychological operation” serving as a particularly lurid example. The Hamilton 68 story (about which more is coming) hints at this dynamic.

The irony is the entire field of “disinformation studies” itself has the features of an inorganic astroturfing operation. Disinformation “labs” cast themselves as independent, objective, politically neutral resources, but in a shocking number of cases, their funding comes at least in part from government agencies like the Department of Defense. Far from being neutral, they often have clear mandates to play up foreign and domestic threats while arguing for digital censorship, de-platforming, and other forms of information control.

Worse, messages from these institutions are parroted more or less automatically by our corporate press, which has decided that instead of a network of independent/adversarial newspapers and TV stations, what the country needs is one giant Voice of America, bleating endlessly about “threats to democracy.” I’ve come to believe a sizable percentage of reporters don’t know that their sources are funded by the government, or that they’re repeating government messaging not just occasionally but all the time. The ones who don’t know this truth need to hear it, and the ones who knew all along need to be exposed. This project is about both of those things, too.

Foreign state media is labeled on platforms like Twitter.

I want to put labels on our own propaganda, and need your help to do it.” 

Matt Taibbi

If he keeps going…. he will see it.

[Understand Modern Fourth Branch of Govt Here]

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; that system was created by President George W Bush and VP Dick Cheney.  Instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum.

The intelligence apparatus does not want their public-private partnership, between government and big tech social media, interfered with.  President Obama steps forth in April 2022 to put an exclamation point in place, saying the public-private partnership he created must control the information.  WATCH:

I cannot emphasize strongly enough; how close this collective demand is to a similar construct in Orwell’s 1984 prediction of “The Ministry of Truth.”  Indeed, if you follow the need for government control of information its logical conclusion, these demands by the U.S. deep state architects are identical.

I also hope readers can see this speech for what it is.  THIS is exactly what we were warning about when the shadows were moving feverously in the past several weeks {GO DEEP}.   The catchphrases “disinformation”, “misinformation” and “malinformation” are being cited by President Obama in that speech.   Where did that lingo come from?  THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY {SEE HERE}

At the top of all critical issues we must understand, share and keep focus on, the issue surrounding the free flow of information is the most critical.

Free speech, social media platforming, user bans, censorship, demonetization, financial targeting of Canadian truckers, Elon Musk purchasing Twitter then reveals the Twitter files, our ability to communicate, the culture war, the digital identity issue, heck, even your ability to read this, all of it, surrounds the central component of information.

This is the big war.  Controlling, labeling, emphasizing, downplaying, removing, information; everything else is downstream from this fight.

While President Obama talked about the dangers of misinformation and disinformation, it was only a week prior when the White House officially admitted to creating misinformation, disinformation and malinformation as part of their strategic campaign against Russia in Ukraine.  NBC news gleefully embraced the strategy {SEE HERE}.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has an official agency mission {SEE HERE} to “help the American people understand the scope and scale of Mal, Dis, and Misinformation activities,” and Google/DuckDuckGo/Big Tech have officially aligned with both U.S. government interests promising to target, remove and penalize any entity engaged in Mal, Dis and Misinformation activities.

Putting aside the creation of lies to advance a strategic geopolitical objective, the bigger admission in the U.S. government is that much of the information coming to the American public – from them – is manufactured, false, fabricated and wrong.

Simultaneous to this admission of manufactured lies, the platforms of Big Tech and social media are saying they will target, remove and block any content that contradicts the official government position.  The govt boldly admits they lie, and social media states they will block anyone who refutes those lies.

In the case of Google, the dominating search engine for information over the internet, they state it is an infraction against their policy to espouse a claim “that contradicts official government records.”  Yet, the U.S. government is officially admitting the information they are creating for the government records, is self-admittedly false….. and now in comes DuckDuckGo with the assist.

Not wanting to overinflate the CTH position, but this admitted reality is exactly why we have taken the following position.

…”There is no such thing as “disinformation” or “misinformation”.  There is only information you accept and information you do not accept.  You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.”… 

There are only two elements within the public discussion of information, truth and not truth.

In an era filled with “fact-checkers” and institutional guardians at the gates of Big Tech, let me explain exactly why it is important not to accept the speech rules of the guards.

When you accept the terms “disinformation”, “misinformation” or the newest lingo, “malinformation,” you are beginning to categorize truth and lies in various shades.  You are merging black and white, right and wrong, into various shades of grey.

When your mind works in the grey zone, you are, by direct and factual consequence, saying there is a problem.  You are correct; however, this is where people may make a mistake. That problem is supposed to be there.

It is not a solution to the problem to try and remove the grey simply because it takes too much work to separate the white pixels from the black ones.

You were born with a gift, the greatest gift a loving God could provide.  You were born with a brain and set of natural instincts that are tools to do this pixel separation, use them.

If you define the grey work as a problem you cannot solve on your own, you open the door for others to solve that problem for you.  You begin to abdicate the work, and that’s when trouble can enter.  The sliding scale of Pinocchios is one of the most familiar yet goofy outcomes.

Put more clearly, when you accept the terminology “disinformation”, you accept a problem.  The problem is then the tool by which authorities will step in to make judgements.  Speech, in its most consequential form, is then qualified by others to whom you have sub-contracted your thinking.

When you willingly sub-contract information filters to others, you have lost connection with the raw information.   CTH was founded upon the belief that truth has no agenda, nor does it care about you, your feelings, or your opinion of it.  It just sits there, empirically existing as evidence of information in its most pure form.

The search for truth, in all things, is the mission objective of this assembly.  Often, we don’t like the truth; often, the truth is bitter, cold, challenging and even painful to accept.  However, the truth doesn’t care.  Information in its most raw form is ambivalent to your opinion.  If you struggle to accept these things, that’s when you need grey.  The New York Times is not called the “grey lady” accidentally.

Personally, I am an absorber of information – perhaps on a scale that is unusual.  But I do not discount information from any form until I can put context to it and see if the information makes sense given all the variables present.  When something doesn’t feel right, it’s almost always because it isn’t right.

Often, I find myself struggling in the grey and complex.  It is not unusual to spend days researching, digging, clarifying a situation, only to discover the path to finding the truth is in another direction entirely.   Erasing everything and starting over is frustrating, but it is genuinely the only approach that works; and often finding truth is supposed to be difficult, that’s why it is rewarding.

In the digital information age, we are bombarded with information.  It is easy to be overwhelmed and need to find something or someone who has better skills at separating the black grains from the white ones.  All opinions in this quest should be considered; thus, it is important to allow the free flow of information.

I am not necessarily a speech absolutist.  There is some language that needs to be constrained if we are to participate in a respectful society, with grandma’s rules and knowing the audience.  The CTH has guidelines for comments for this exact reason.  However, those constraints need to be based on a set of inherent values.   When it comes to information it is important to draw a distinction from speech.

There needs to be an open venue for all information. Unfortunately, when we begin to apply labels or categorization to information, there’s an opportunity for information to be manipulated – even weaponized.  Saul Alinsky spent decades pondering the best techniques to weaponize information and speech.  Alinsky’s intentions, in the endeavor to change society by changing how language and information was used, were not good. He devoted his completed rulebook book to Lucifer.

Be careful about anyone saying we need to label or categorize information in order to control or remove speech from the discussion.

You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a God-given brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.

Unfortunately, the collectively aligned group of U.S. Govt, the Intelligence Community and now Big Tech, are saying they will put every roadblock they can muster in your way as you attempt to navigate through the misinformation they control.

Team Obama built the system, and now Team Obama are defending the system.

This also happened in April, 2022, the day before Obama’s speech….

….These are NOT coincidences.

Ukraine will Used the Weapons to Attack Moscow – They Lied


Armstrong Economics Blog/Ukraine Re-Posted Feb 5, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

To get the weapons for massive destruction, Zelensky lied and promised that the weapons would not be used to target Moscow. Kiev’s forces will not hold back when it comes to hitting locations inside Russia, according to Fyodor Venislavsky, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s National Security, Defense, and Intelligence Committee. Speaking to Germany’s Bild tabloid on Saturday, he also described Moscow as a “legitimate military target.” The West is arming Ukraine for long-range missile attacks on Moscow. Putin and the hardliner will now have NO CHOICE and will be fully justified in nuking Ukraine to end the war the same way the United States nuked Japan.

The corruption in the Western media is astonishing. This is not being reported in the USA or Europe. It is being reported in the Middle East and in Russia. The international fake news organization, Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a consortium to control all the mainstream Western Media, is promoting World War III and we are to be told Russia is evil and we must go to war to destroy every individual Russian on the planet. There is no longer any independent journalism left. I had learned in grade school history class that the media created the Spanish American War. Pulitzer later felt guilty and donated his assets to Columbia University to hand out awards for journalists when Pulitzer was the father of yellow journalism and sheer corruption.

This is ABSOLUTELY what our world leaders want to take place. In their view, Gates has convinced them that there are just too damn many of us and they cannot pay for all the pensions. It’s time to thin the herd. They need war to reduce the population and eliminate the debt crisis.

For all of those who support Zelensky and hate all Russians or at least buy the bullshit propaganda about Putin, take a last look at your children and grandchildren You are condemning them to a future that may not even exist. Your stubbornness and refusal to look at the truth have emboldened our World leaders to steer us directly into world war III. I have had Ukrainian employees on both sides from Kiev (Its original Russian spelling) and Donetsk. I have had experience with Ukraine and they are DESPISED by all their neighbors for they are the remnant of Hitler’s Nazis. The wheel of fortune has completed its revolution. We are now supporting the Ukrainian Nazis Ethnic cleansing operation of the Donbas.

Now, former President of France Hollande has come out and confirmed that they negotiated in bad faith to create the Minsk Agreement ONLY to buy time for Ukraine to build its army to start World War III. Hollande has come out and also confirmed there is no interest in peace, this is to destroy Russia – plain and simple. This will end ONLY when Russia fails. There absolutely no reason for China or Russia to negotiate with Europe or the United States when they NEVER keep their word. Treaties mean absolutely nothing anymore and that necessitates World War III for there is no other solution.

I warned before, Zelensky was put in place to start World War III. I publish that Zelensky was intent on creating World War III in February 2022.

China Floats High Altitude “Spy Balloon” Over U.S. Airspace


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on February 2, 2023

This is a little goofy, and likely another expression of the Beijing dragon doing the propaganda dance.  According to multiple media sources a high altitude “spy balloon” is drifting over U.S. airspace and the Pentagon has discussed options for shooting it down yet they didn’t.

It’s goofy because the balloon is floating well above commercial airline routes and, well, what could China capture via balloon that they are not already capturing via satellite surveillance.  It’s just odd.  {Direct Rumble Link}

I can understand not shooting it down – after all, that approach would likely then involve bits of the thing falling to the ground, which then would pose both a hazard and a need to collect all the debris.  It seems more like a Beijing propaganda effort than an actual risk to any U.S. military interests.

Tucker Carlson questions why the Pentagon decided not to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon.

.

Washington DC – House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday night called for a briefing of the “Gang of Eight” — the group of lawmakers charged with reviewing the nation’s most sensitive intelligence information — following reports of a Chinese spy balloon flying over Montana.

“China’s brazen disregard for U.S. sovereignty is a destabilizing action that must be addressed, and President Biden cannot be silent,” McCarthy tweeted. “I am requesting a Gang of Eight briefing.” (read more)

Have no fear, the Pentagon is investigating with their best men, whoops – I mean people, or people-kind, or non-binary persons who are within what we previously called the U.S. military, or defense dept.  Whatever all that is now….

Gallup Poll – Gov’t is Our Greatest Problem


Armstrong Economics Blog/Uncategorized Re-Posted Feb 1, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Gallup has just confirmed what our computer has been forecasting especially since 2011. The majority of Americans now say that a lack of leadership from President Biden and Congress is the country’s biggest problem and that means the entire world. Perhaps aliens should have a right to vote for the decisions of the Biden Administration are destroying lives around the world.

The Gallup Poll shows that it is the collapse of confidence in a government that is now viewed as the greatest threat even more so than inflation, ​the immigration crisis, and the state of the economy. Despite Americans suffering economically with higher taxes and inflation reducing the standard of living, they have cited that “the government/poor leadership” is now in the No. 1 spot taking that place from inflation over the past year. Gallup has reported that 21% of Americans name our incompetent government as the “most important problem facing this country today​” compared to the 15% who said so last year, a Gallup Poll found.

​Inflation and the economy ​came in last year as the top two issues — tied at 16% each — followed by the government (15%), immigration (8%), and unifying the country (6%). ​However, over the past year, Americans’ concerns with the economy fell 6% to 10%, with ​inflation falling one point to 15%, and immigration rose 3 points to 11%.

Just wait until they realize that the Biden Administration is so incompetent, it has allowed the Neocons to wage World War III on two fronts – China and Russia. These people will destroy Western Civilization and that is what 2032 is all about.

Twitter Downsizing Data Center in Atlanta GA (Near GA Tech), and Shutting Down Data Center in Sacramento


Posted originally on the CTH on January 18, 2023 | Sundance

Curious news about Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop, aka ‘The Twitter’, surfaces as the social media company announces that to save money, they will shut down the Sacramento data center and substantially downsize the Atlanta data center.

Oddly enough, the Atlanta data center is in the same regional complex as Georgia Tech University, which is the same university under U.S. government contract (think Rodney Joffe and the Trump-Russia Alfa Bank hoax) for cybersecurity research efforts.

[NOTE: Shortly after Twitter expanded its data center in Atlanta, on Nov 29, 2016, Georgia Tech received a $17.3 million contract from the U.S. Dept of Defense for “cybersecurity” research.  Three days later, Georgia Tech announced new collaboration with China’s Tianjin U, which hosts the APT hacker groups and is a partner of China Telecom and Huawei. Funny that, and you already know my suspicions, so I digress.]

(Data Center Dynamics) – Twitter is shutting down its data center in Sacramento, and will downsize its facility in Atlanta, Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer reports. The decision was previously rumored in November.

The company operates three main facilities in the US, with its remaining site in Portland, Oregon, expected to take the increased load. It is not clear if Twitter has done an analysis of the migration and whether the remaining servers can handle the load – when the Sacramento data center collapsed in September it caused a system outage. The move is expected to happen as soon as early January.

Twitter also has cloud contracts with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, but new owner Elon Musk is believed to be trying to renegotiate the contracts and cut expenses.

At the same time, he said that he plans to release new services that will require more storage and compute, including long-form high resolution video.

Former Twitter employee Sasha Solomon, who was fired after tweeting “sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” about Musk’s acquisition, responded to the data center closure report with: “Omfg like good luck when a failover needs to happen. So excited to see what 1-ish data center can do with all of Twitter’s traffic.” (read more)

This downsizing and reorganization of the background data-processing is happening at the same time the Daily Mail is discussing the financial viability of Twitter [SEE HERE].

Now, I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole again, but if Elon Musk was notified the US Govt was no longer going to subsidize the extreme data processing costs (coffee making), due to a lessening of the ‘national security partnership‘ per se’, then wouldn’t it make sense to start shutting down and downsizing costly data centers.

Just sayin’.

#Jack’sMagicCoffeeShop

December Retail Sales Drop -1.1%, November Sales Data Revised Lower to -1.0%


Posted originally on the CTH on January 18, 2023 | Sundance 

There is something predictable about Main Street economics, eventually what you see around you overwhelms the great pretending.  CTH has been outlining the state of the consumer economy in great detail for quite a while, and though it is difficult to note when the outcomes will surface, eventually they do surface. [Reminder Here]

CONTEXT. CTH outlined the moment when the purchasing power of the U.S. middle class actually began contracting.  It was March and April of 2021 when that Rubicon was crossed.  We saw it in the second and third quarter data from 2021, but few were willing to admit.

What changed in those two months back in ’21 was a dramatic drop in the “unit sales” of stuff within the consumer economy.  The drop in unit sales was hidden because it happened simultaneously with the first wave of massive spike in prices.  Prices rose so fast the sales data was giving an artificial impression of sales growth, but in the background the actual unit sales dropped.   Those analysts correcting and adjusting historic data to ‘inflation adjusted terms’ are now noticing.

Additionally, and not coincidentally – because the metrics are connected, you will note this line from the Wall Street Journal review of the producer price index. “The producer-price index, which generally reflects supply conditions in the economy, rose 6.2% in December from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday, the slowest annual pace since March 2021.”  In essence, the current rate of wholesale price increase on materials is now returning to the rate of price increase that happened in the period when prices spiked.  Again, this is predictable.

Inflation is the measure of the ‘rate’ of price increase over time.  March and April of 2021 were the beginning of the first inflationary spike.

Driven almost entirely by the supply side shock from Biden energy policy, in the subsequent 20 months the rate of price increase skyrocketed, peaked August 2022, and now the rate of increase starts returning.  This does not mean price declines; this means the rate of growth in the price increase is lessening.

This is a cyclical outcome.

After 20 months of dropping unit sales, a result of massive price increases; and as the rate of inflation now starts to moderate created by the cyclical nature of it; what we now see is the inability of the price increases to continue hiding the drop in unit sales.   [Background pdf Data] Total retail sales data is now exposed and that’s why we will see this increasing story about negative sales data as the inflation cycle plateaus.

(Via Wall Street Journal) – Retail spending fell in December at the sharpest pace of 2022, marking a dismal end to the holiday shopping season as rising interest rates, still-high inflation and concerns about a slowing economy pinched American consumers.

Purchases at stores, restaurants and online, declined a seasonally adjusted 1.1% in December from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Sales were also revised lower in November and have fallen three of the past four months.

The decline in retail spending late last year adds to signs that the U.S. economy is slowing. Hiring and wage growth eased in December, U.S. commerce with the rest of the world declined significantly in November, and existing-home sales have fallen for 10 straight months. The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that industrial production slumped in December, led by weakness in the manufacturing industry.

S&P Global downgraded its estimate for fourth-quarter economic growth by a half percentage point to a 2.3% annual rate after Wednesday’s data releases. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal this month expect higher interest rates to tip the U.S. economy into a recession in the coming year.

“The lag impact of elevated inflation weighs heavily on U.S. households, it’s very clear that the median American consumer is still reeling from the loss of wages in inflation-adjusted terms,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US LLP. “We’re moving towards what I would expect to be a mild recession in 2023,” he added. (read more)

When the Baghdad Bob economic pretenders say, “mild recession,” anticipate something more akin to a mild nuclear meltdown, something with breadlines and soup kitchens.

Now, you must keep in mind that almost every financial media outlet used the same Retail Federation talking point about anticipating an 8% increase in holiday sales last year.  [Reminder] Apparently, collective pretenses must be maintained.  Meanwhile, news crews and camera crews were having a desperate time finding any holiday shopping to use as background footage for the claims that sales were strong.  Here we are in January and the pretending has hit reality.

Negative retail sales in November and December when prices are roughly +10% over the prior year, means the unit sales collapse was far more dramatic…. Far more.

Trying to survive policy driven price increases in housing costs, energy costs, electricity costs, home heating, food and fuel costs has forced consumers to reevaluate purchasing decisions.  Consumer demand for non-essential items has collapsed, and Americans are dig deep into their savings just to sustain unavoidable expenses.  Eventually, pretending this is not happening is going to run into the wall of reality.

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….  pretending.  But on the other hand – those same suppliers and multinationals are furiously trying to calculate how to avoid being stuck with billions worth of unsold inventory and idle industrial equipment.

Tucker Carlson Outlines How the National Security State is Superseding Elections by Controlling Politicians


Posted originally on the CTH on January 17, 2023 | sundance 

During his opening monologue last night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson hit on an important aspect to the classified document saga. The professional bureaucracy within Washington DC is now the superseding agency controlling the outcomes of elections.

Unnamed and opaque officials within the DHS and FBI manipulated the 2020 election by controlling the public conversation. Then, after the election takes place, the similarly mined administrative state employees, then begin using their control systems to manipulate the policy outcomes of the politicians. In essence, the desires of the voters are irrelevant to the permanent bureaucratic state in Washington DC. WATCH:

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White House Says No Visitor Logs Available for Biden’s Classified Document Stash House


Posted originally on the CTH on January 16, 2023 | sundance 

According to the White House, there are no visitor logs for the Biden stash house in Wilmington, Delaware where three sets of classified documents were discovered.

The Delaware residence is considered Biden’s private residence and no logs of visitors are maintained.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -No visitor logs exist for President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, where classified documents from his vice presidential days were found, as it is a private residence, the White House Counsel and Secret Service said on Monday.

“Like every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” the White House Counsel’s office said in a statement.

The Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting current and past presidents and their families, does not “independently maintain our own visitor logs because it’s a private residence,” agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

The Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, James Comer, on Sunday demanded visitor logs for Democrat Biden’s house in Wilmington after classified documents were found in his office and garage there. (read more)