Twitter Naturally Suspended Me Before Musk


Armstrong Economics Blog/Opinion Re-Posted Nov 28, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Of course, Twitter naturally suspended my account for having the audacity to say that the COVID response was destroying the world economy by locking everyone down. That brain-dead decision created the disruption to the supply chain thereby creating the shortages that have set inflation in motion.

The central banks cannot possibly control inflation of this nature being shortages only amplified by the Russian sanctions. Raising rates will only add to the inflationary crisis further increasing the cost of capital reducing production even further.

I was suspended for political speech under the pretense of COVID.

It took at most 10 minutes for Musk’s team to UNLOCK my account. I just have to find the time now to start using it again – LOL.

New COVID Variant Drama, Anthony Fauci “Not Sure” if States Will Need to Lockdown Schools Again


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 27, 2022 | Sundance 

The Joe Biden administration have extended the COVID-19 ‘National Emergency’ through the end of 2023, next year.  This permits all of the government control mechanisms to remain in place; however, the COVID national emergency declaration runs counter to their legal justification for open borders.

In Washington DC the Biden administration is declaring a national health emergency still exists; meanwhile in Texas, the same Biden administration is arguing in court that no national health emergency exists.  To reconcile the conflict U.S. media and White House officials just pretend not to notice, and bizarro world continues accordingly.

Into this blend of COVID propaganda, the White House is now promoting the latest COVID fear variant to stimulate greater population acceptance of booster shots.  Ignoring any adverse health outcomes, western governments are heavily invested in the continued promotion of the COVID vaccine.  Stepping in with the assist for COVID alarm is CBS and Margaret Brennan who asks Dr. Anthony Fauci [Full Transcript Here] if another winter of severe illness and death will lead to a need for more lockdowns. WATCH:

Transcript – MARGARET BRENNAN: More than 100,000 parents last month had to stay home from work to care for kids, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And we’ve seen schools in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, cancel classes because of these large numbers, so coming out of the holidays, should parents expect schools to shut down?

DR. FAUCI: I don’t know. Margaret, I’m not sure. When- when you talk about shutting down schools, there’s always the–

MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s also radioactive.

DR. FAUCI: Exactly. There’s always the collateral issue. So you have to balance, and you do it in real time depending upon the viral load of disease in your region. Whether you know, the upper northeast may be quite different from the southwest, from the- from the- from the Pacific coast, from the upper Northwest. So you have to have the local authorities evaluate on a situation by situation basis, the potential collateral deleterious effects, with the effects of what might happen if you have so many kids getting infected–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Some of these places just didn’t even have teachers–

DR. FAUCI: Exactly. Well, that’s the local decision you’re gonna have to make. It’s a local issue. That’s the thing that gets lost in the discussion. (more)

Leftism is driven by committee advice; it’s how the echo-chambering communal groupthink works.

After the White House COVID “Winter of Death” 2021 messaging was ridiculed and ignored by almost everyone in the general public, the communications team quickly went back to the drawing board.  You can almost hear Ron Klain instructing the team to find ways to avoid the ‘Grinch team‘ labeling.

However, the ordinary emotional disposition of leftists and Democrats, writ large, is depressing, angry and negative, the result from a lifetime of blame casting.  The most valued skillset advancing the career of any professional leftist, is their ability to project victimhood.  If you do this long enough, it becomes the only thing you know how to do.  ‘Hang around a one-legged man long enough, and you will walk with a limp’.

As a direct result, the political left genuinely does not understand or experience joy, nor do they have a connection to the emotion of happiness. So, when the political left gets together in a focus group to discuss the urgent need to shift messaging from pessimism, which turns everyone off, they end up with recommendations like this:

Yes, White House Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, hired dancing nurses in December 2021 to come into the East Room to deliver a performance for the First Lady.  The group sang about the joy of covid, the “winter of death”, and needing to spread a little Christmas cheer.

You might have found the entire performance cringeworthy, because it was.

The messaging was ridiculous, odd and, well, just plain weird.  However, this is what happens when the narrative pendulum swings wildly amid the communications team.  The base of Biden supporters, ideological leftists, do not see the cringe, instead they see COVID-19 as a cute opportunity to express their collective attachment – but that’s also because they have no connection to the emotion of Christmas joy.

CBS’s Margaret Brennan is a performance artist on CBS, much like the dancing nurses pictured above.

Neil Oliver asks “I Wonder What Would Happen If”…


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 26, 2022 | Sundance

Jumpin’ ju-ju bones, Neil Oliver is going to that place publicly and loudly, that many of us have contemplated and discussed quietly with hushed tones and knowing nods.

What Oliver outlines in this monologue does not need much discussion amid the audience awaiting its arrival.  After all, he is basically discussing the logical consequence to the current state of political affairs not only in the U.K but also in the United States.  However, that said, it is rather remarkable in the era of government sponsored fear of rebellion, complete with labels of domestic extremism attached, to see Oliver’s voice bravely citing the outcome.

With 87,000 new IRS agents authorized by the regime quietly assembling for their assault, as Oliver notes, “there is nothing to fear if we have each other” and are willing to stand the gap as an ally for our fellow man.  What Oliver is saying is profound, true and could – in the most significant of ways, lead to a new beginning.  Yes, it is talk of a united rebellion, and that’s exactly what we need.  WATCH: 

[Transcript] – People write to me every day to tell me they fear the future. People from all over the world, all ages, all walks of life. I say this: we should not be afraid. If anyone should be afraid it is our government, the whole of parliament, the State and the Establishment. They should be afraid because they are in the wrong – doing wrong things and behaving unforgivably.

You can tell they are afraid by the way they keep doing more and more, faster and faster, to make the people poor, cold and hungry – also demoralised, anxious and fearful about the present, never mind the future. The fear felt by people around the world is the deliberate consequence of the actions of so-called leaders all across the West and beyond.

I say again, we should not be afraid. Those plotting and working against us, against our interests both as individuals and as sovereign states, have no power and no money other than that which we, the people grant them. They are supposed to use that power and money to protect us, to keep us free and to provide opportunities for those hard working, free people to make happy and successful lives for themselves. Instead, they are working night and day to have us welcome a state of being that is nothing less than digital enslavement.

Many of the people who contact me ask:

What should we do? How can we fight back?

I think about the answers to those questions all the time. Right now, I wonder what would happen if those who are cold in their homes – millions of people – just turned on their heating and turned off their direct debits and standing orders. What would happen if, when the bills came, we all just agreed to toss them on the fire? All of us together? What would happen, if millions of us, peacefully acting as one just stood together in quiet defiance? I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s enough cells in the prisons, enough judges to hear the cases. If the system wasn’t already broken – by them – such actions would break it.

What would happen if we all withdrew our money from the banks on the same day? What would happen if we all asked, as we are entitled to, for the cash? The banks don’t have the money to meet all those demands and so presumably they would close their doors. Then what? Would their inability to pay out all that cash be evidence of the fraud that is fiat money? I wonder.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the social contract – that notion by which we surrender power to the state in return for services and safety – is broken beyond repair. They broke it, not us. Successive governments – not just the present bunch of cardboard cut-outs … have, over decades, knowingly and deliberately betrayed every aspect of that contract. It is null and void and we, the blameless party, are no longer bound by its conditions.

We the people – the sovereign people of this country – don’t just hold the power: we ARE the power. We loan some of it – a short-term loan – to governments. And those governments are supposed to serve us, do our bidding. NEVER the other way round. We tell them what to do.

Hundreds of years’ worth of governments has quietly and secretively presided over a financial system that is no more than state-sanctioned fraud. Power to create money out of thin air was put in the hands of an entirely private, unelected, unaccountable business and this power has been abused to make a tiny group unimaginably rich by enslaving all of US with debt. That system is now on the point of collapse. The West is bankrupt, and governments and bankers are scrambling to solve a problem: how to subtract every last shekel from the people while still having a handful of wealthy bankers, and their enablers, left over.

Britain has no functioning border against the rest of the world. Hundreds are arriving in this country every day and night, many ferried across the Channel by agencies paid for by British taxpayers. British people have to wait longer for health and social care and accommodation – to make way for economic migrants with their eyes on a soft touch, who have paid illegal gangs thousands of pounds a head to get here. They send their luggage on ahead and collect it at their hotels. We are at the back of the queue while anyone else, from anywhere else, is looked after hand and foot. And always the loudest calls are not for stopping it, but for more money and faster processing. I wonder if the illegal immigration isn’t just convenient for the State … softening up the citizens for a supposed solution … like digital ID perhaps? And then borders open once and for all. I wonder.

The British people are no longer kept safe by the police force they pay for. Burglaries of properties and assaults on the person are barely investigated, while officers prioritise thought crimes on social media. Uncounted thousands of little girls are abandoned to organised gangs of rapists up and down the country, because the State turned a blind eye to the relentless raping of children rather than ruffle community feathers.

A tenth of the population is on the waiting list for treatment by the NHS. The National Health Service is not keeping the nation healthy. All this about free at the point of delivery is about as much use as a magic spell. You can call a lunch a free lunch – but you’ll still be left hungry if you can’t get into the restaurant. So-called free steaks won’t fill you up if you have to wait so long in the queue you starve to death in the meantime. Free becomes another word for something you’ve heard about but can’t have.

I say again, though – we have nothing to fear. Not if we decide to be unafraid. In many ways, the worst has already happened: we have been shown where we stand, in the eyes of the State – which is beneath their contempt.

I don’t have the answers to all of the questions, but I know this much – even just asking them, airing the thoughts, should make the government, the State, the Establishment – sit up and pay attention.

More and more strikes are happening – rail workers, teachers and university lecturers, nurses next. What about the self-employed who were abandoned for the last two years? They can’t strike. What would happen if they withheld their taxes, all at the same time? I wonder.

But history tells us we should never underestimate the power of the many.

Just over a hundred years ago, during World War I, thousands of workers were pulled into the City of Glasgow to work in the munitions factories. At that time there wasn’t a single council house or flat in the whole of Britain. Private landlords owned 100 percent of homes for rent. They could and did raise rents as often as they wanted. Tenants either paid up or were evicted.

In February 1915, landlords across the city told tenants their rents were going up by as much as 25 percent. This was against a backdrop of the steeply rising cost of living generally, food scarcity and the rest. There was a war to win – remember – and sacrifices were expected from the people if the enemy was to be defeated.

In the case of many homes, the man of the house was away fighting in the war, leaving just women and children.

Into this crisis for poor people stepped Mary Barbour, an ordinary Glasgow woman with two children. She and others realized their only hope lay in sticking together. A mass non-payment campaign got under way. Arrears built up and soon Sheriff’s Officers were turning up to demand back rent or to evict non-payers.

But whenever anyone got wind of an eviction, hundreds of women would descend on the address and block the entrance to the home. A Glasgow MP, Willie Reid, described a typical incident:

“A soldier’s wife in Parkhead, had an eviction notice served on her, with a warning that if she failed to vacate her house by 12 noon the Sheriff’s Officer would call to enforce it. The strike committee got busy. They instructed every mother in the district with a young child to be there for 11 am on D-Day, complete with prams.

“Long before noon the close and street were packed with prams, and every pram had at least one youngster in it. No raiding party could have got near the house. Moreover, the men of Parkhead Forge and other works in the district decided to down tools at 11.30 am and lend a hand if necessary…”

People began to talk about Mary Barbour’s Army. On 17 November, 18 tenants appeared in court for eviction. Tens of thousands of Glasgow people lined the streets outside. In the end, on 25 November 1915, rents were frozen at pre-war levels. The Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest Act 1915 was passed and some elements of it remained in force as late as 1989.

I wonder what would happen if all of us … opposed to what is going on now … came together like those Glasgow women of 1915 – AND JUST SAID NO.

I wonder.

When thinking about that time, I am reminded of real leaders. I’ve been talking again this week about Ernest Shackleton who, when all seemed lost – his ship sunk beneath the Antarctic ice and with nothing but flimsy tents, three little boats, and 28 men trapped on the pack ice and depending on him for life itself he said,

“Well … now we’ll go home.”

Our so-called leaders tell us our lives must be filled with hardship while they warm themselves in centrally heated homes paid for with our taxes … and look forward to Christmas parties and food and drink and decorations paid for by all of us. That is not leadership. That is an abusive relationship.

Shackleton put himself through every hardship he expected his men to endure. He did it first and for longest. What he asked of them, he did too. He said they should leave behind on the ice anything that would not help keep them alive.

Some saying he walked to a hole in that ice and dropped in his gold watch and cigarette case, to the bottom of the ocean. He led from the front, every step of the way and over nearly a thousand miles of the cruelest sea on earth. And in the end, he got every man home.

They called him The Boss.

He cared not a jot for the comforts of home. Back home once more he wrote:

“We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down and grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole.”

He was a leader who saw that it was shared endeavor and shared striving that made all else possible.

Our leaders? … our leaders would pick our pockets for any gold watches and valuables before climbing aboard their private jets and flying home, leaving us behind on the melting ice.

I say we owe them nothing – not our loyalty and not our obedience. If we continue to comply, we build our own prison around ourselves, for their benefit.

They have promised us the earth while stealing it from us – raping and pillaging its resources only for their own enrichment. I say again, there is nothing to fear if we have each other.

Here’s the thing: if we set a course for ourselves and back each other every step of the way, we will cross this ocean of darkness together, all the way to where we want to be. [Transcript End]

Iowa GOP Chair Proclaims Support for Ronna McDaniel – Everyone in the RNC Business Wants McDaniel, Except the Voters


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 26, 2022 | Sundance 

U.S. political parties operate as a business.  Both wings of the business are private corporations.  The professionals inside the industry have a vested financial interest in retaining the business model.  The needs of the corporation are the priority, voters are annoying.

Having spent his career inside the industry, the Iowa GOP Chairman puts it this way:

‘Imperative’ Ronna made lots of money for the business.  Consultants, advisors, offices, polling groups, analysts, data, technicians, meetings, catering and more, take lots of money.  The corporations of the RNC and DNC exist to serve their own interests.  Politics is the RNC and DNC business; however, the income stream -the financial aspects to the business- is what holds influence over the corporate priority.

Ideology is part of the equation, but control of the business and generating revenue is the main function of the corporation. Unfortunately, in the reality of the business model, election outcomes are downstream from those two priorities.

There are two private corporations representing Republicans and Democrats; they are most commonly referred to as political parties. There is no basis for the existence of private political parties in the United States constitution.  Both parties’ function from a position as private interests outside the framework of government.

What we commonly refer to as ‘politicians’ are selected representatives to the government from each of the corporations.  What we commonly refer to as ‘primary elections’ are suggestions to each of the corporations from citizens expressing their preference for the representative.   The corporation can individually choose to accept or decline the suggestion from the voters, and the only thing that binds the corporation to follow the suggestion are the corporate rules.

Without money, the corporate mission doesn’t operate.  Without money the RNC members -essentially board members- do not function, hold meetings, assemble, or participate in the organization.

Therefore, from the standpoint of the corporation, the business of politics (inputs) drives the activitynot election results (outputs).

This facet to U.S. politics is rarely discussed because the corporations and the people who run them do not want this process emphasized.  However, if voters do not comprehend this dynamic, they can fall victim to the fallacy of false representative choice.

The corporation is made up of members.  The members make the rules.  The members have preferences and ideological outlooks about the objective of the corporation as part of their position within it.  Inside this dynamic is where you see the changing of rules to benefit the preferences of the members; ultimately influencing outcomes.

It is easier to just sit back and discuss the consequences than it is to watch the officials inside the club make rule changes proactively.  However, it is by watching the rule changes that we can see the roadmaps of influence within game as played by both RNC and DNC corporations.

Any political commentary that does not take this private club dynamic into consideration, and/or explain the consequences from decisions within the club, is not serving the interests of the American electorate.

The winter meeting of the RNC is taking place January 25-27th, in Dana Point California at the Waldorf Astoria – Monarch Beach Resort.  There are 168 members who will be in attendance (3 from every state) along with various RNC officials and national republican leadership.

Some RNC members support MAGA, some do not.  Some RNC members support the Wall Street alignment, some do not.  Some members support the populist movement, others do not.  Some RNC members support a big tent approach to a working-class coalition, other RNC members regard the working-class as beneath their representative interests.

The key point is that it’s a private club making these decisions.

A private club that may or may not care about your opinion.

Insert vote, pull lever, get pellet and pat on head.  Next?!

Meloni Set to Abolish Italy’s Welfare State


Armstrong Economics Blog/Italy Re-Posted Nov 25, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Italy’s new PM Giorgia Meloni revealed her first economic initiatives with a budget of 21 billion euros. The Italian government will no longer provide free handouts to those who simply refuse to work. This should not be controversial.

For starters, anyone eligible for welfare must actually reside in Italy. Those capable of working will have eight months to find employment before their free paycheck runs out. Alternatively, if someone refuses a job, they will be excluded from receiving welfare. The 5-Star’s citizens’ wage will be abolished by next year as the system has been abused by many who simply do not want to work. They are reviewing the pension system as well, but it’s too late to save the pension funds.

Italy’s first female PM is also encouraging couples to start families amid a birth rate crisis. Women may take a sixth month of maternity leave and still receive 80% of their salary. Meloni cut taxes on goods for newborns and feminine hygiene. Couples will receive a 50% increase in the “baby bonus,” and families with over three children will receive more incentives. Italy needs future taxpayers.

Everyone cheered when America appointed its first female vice president, but Kamala Harris has done nothing for women who still pay the pink tax and do not have access to maternity leave. It is astonishing how controversial this move has become with the papers calling Meloni a Fascist dictator for preventing working taxpayers from paying for those unemployed by choice.