Elon Musk’s potential Twitter takeover has brought to light the alarming amount of fake internet accounts on the platform that has been used to push the liberal political agenda. Musk has threatened to abandon the deal if the company cannot account for fake accounts or bots. Twitter later admitted when filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that around 5% of its 300 million users are in fact fake accounts. Twitter initially did not want to explain how they determined the 5% figure until it was revealed that their sample size was just 100 accounts out of 300 million. Musk exposed their slanted study, and Twitter reported him for violating their NDA.
Twitter quietly began to crack down on bots last month, and some of the most followed accounts saw a significant drop in followers. Former President Obama once held the record for being the most followed man on Twitter with 131.7 million followers. After the algorithm changed, Obama lost 300,000 followers instantly. Pop singer Katy Perry, the third-most-followed account and an outspoken Democrat, lost 200,000 of her 108.8 million followers.
A recent audit found that half of President Joe Biden’s 22.2 million followers are fake accounts. Based on the 2020 US Presidential Election, Biden should be the most popular president in history after securing more votes than any other president. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I don’t care about the economics at all,” Musk said in April.
Some believe Musk is using the bot excuse to lower the purchase cost. However, there is clearly something awry at Twitter. The massive platform was known to be a left-leaning tool for propaganda, but no one realized how deep the corruption was until recently. I expect more will be exposed shortly.
QUESTION #1: Dear Martin and AE Team, Thank you for everything you do and have done for us, the little people. My question is this. As you/Socrates have predicted the fall of governments on a global scale, along with the collapse in confidence, of which I am the poster child for, I was a lifelong Democrat, but no longer, I have completely lost all confidence in our government. My concern is what do you or Socrates think is going to happen to Social Security. I will be turning 62 very soon and think that given everything that is going on, I should take what I can get NOW, because it doesn’t look like Social Security will be around after 2033. Does Socrates have any predictions on this. I would think there are a lot of other AE subscribers in the same predicament. Any opinion (not advice) on this would be gratefully appreciated.
Thank you very much,
TH
ANSWER #1: It is a difficult question. Inflation will erode what you get anyhow. But there will come a point in time when the whole thing goes belly-up. It was January 1935, when President Roosevelt sent his “Economic Security Bill” to Capitol Hill. On August 14th, 1935 (1935.619) President Roosevelt signed the bill into law at a ceremony in the White House Cabinet Room. The likelihood of SS coming to a complete end will be 2029.6. Just keep in mind that they will pay only what is owed and they will not take into account real inflation. Just ask those who were promised pensions from Venezuela. When they were finally paid, what would have covered a month’s living expenses would buy a cup of coffee.
The problem that we have with Social Security is that the entire system is a Ponzi Scheme. It needs population growth to keep paying taxes to pay for the previous generation. As you know, I was called in to reform Social Security and turn it into a wealth fund that actually invested back in the Nineties. The Democrats would not vote for it claiming it was more secure investing in government binds exclusively, and if it was privatized they wanted to change the fund managers when they go back in power. The whole thing was a joke.
QUESTION #2: Mr. Armstrong, it is becoming obvious that _______ no longer publish your forecasts because they are like the Biden Administration and will only publish people taking your work as long as they claim gold will rise to $40,000. If I remember correctly, you said the postwar period of the baby boom was the peak in population growth and that a decline into 2028 would unfold but the low would be after 2032? How low is low?
Concerned Reader
KE
ANSWER: Those who are always desperate to claim everything will go down except for gold are spouting out their personal bias which prevents them from looking at the real trend. The eventual low in population may not arrive until 2040. As far as how low is low, that should be about a 50% reduction up there with the Black Plague.
We have war, but on top of that, we have climate change that is heading to colder – not warmer periods. That is when crops fail and that results in malnutrition and this disease rises. These mandatory COVID vaccines are probably the catalyst for a sharp rise in disease. Viruses mutate. That is their function in this world. The more you vaccinate unnecessarily, the more mutations will emerge from the viruses to survive. That means they will get worse there y defeating the vaccines. Those who were NOT vaccinated will stand a far better shot at surviving.
Just look at the antibiotics. The overuse of these drugs has led to superbugs evolving that are not incurable. The CDC has even stated that the overuse of antibiotics has led to superbugs. Interestingly, even the World Economic Forum (WEF) report published in 2014 warned that ‘The world will run out of effective antibiotics.” The WEF stated the link between the overuse of antibiotics was causing antibiotic resistance and superbugs in hospitals. This has increased the death rates of many people. They concluded that antibiotic-resistant bacteria posed the greatest risk to human health. Others have noted that bacteria are growing stronger and acquiring resistance to multiple drugs. (Spellberg, Bartlett, & Gilbert, 2013).
To me, it is hard to imagine that this demand for 100% vaccinations for COVID is a risk to humanity for the COVID-19 virus will mutate to defeat all possible vaccines as what is already taking place with antibiotics.
The more volcanoes that are erupting (3 now in Alaska), the greater the chance of volcanic winter. If that unfolds on top of this food shortage created by the COVID Lockdowns and the crazy Climate Change people who want to terminate all fossil fuels right now, we are looking at a lethal combination of events that can certainly lead to a 509% reduction in the population by 2040.
There are plenty of people who are taking our forecasts and pretending they have derived this all on their own. Sorry. This comes from a computer that has been putting that forecast out for the last 20 years by correlating everything. You cannot simply look at war and claim that is your source. This is a combination of events – it is never a single cause and effect.
QUESTION #3: Marty, there were a number of major financial institutions there in Orlando and two central bankers I overheard in a conversation. They were all focused on not your international war cycle, but your cycle of civil unrest. I think the punch line was that was much more serious. Do you have any updates on that here midterm?
Thanks really for you and your team. They are standing by society in a time we need it. My hat is off to your entire staff.
HB
ANSWER #3: Yes, Civil Unrest is actually far more dangerous than international war. As I have warned many times, the Civil Unrest is what leads to revolutions. The International War lead to a reduction in population, and they can lead to civil unrest as was the case in Germany following WWI when they overthrew the monarchy. World civil unrest turned up sharply with the ECM turning point of 2020.05.
That said, the #1 question I do get right now from our global banking clients, investment firms, and international hedge funds has been about the civil unrest forecasts. They saw the uprising in Pakistan because of rising inflation. The polls here show that inflation is the #1 concern. There are more people concerned about the Johnny Depp trial than Roe v Wade. Even Walt Disney has suffered a major collapse in their trust following their attack on DeSantis. Sorry, but most parents do not want third graders being told they might be gay. This entire WOKE movement has undermined the confidence in corporations and government.
Our institutional clients are bracing themselves for a surge in civil unrest in the US, but especially in Europe including Great Britain. This entire insanity of trying to shut down fossil fuels BEFORE you have a viable alternative is not just sending energy prices to the Moon, but food prices are exploding and shortages are expanding. This is a combination that is b behind our computer forecasts on the Civil Unrest models we have published for the last 40 years.
Our models on Civil Unrest go back to 600BC which is significantly different than the international war which goes back to 6000BC starting with recorded history covering Europe and Asia.
And BTW, this is not a one-man-band. Our staff is around the world. We have Staff in China, Europe, Middles East, and SE Asia. They deserve the recognition. They are committed to what we do try to provide answers and forecasts for the largest international audience of anyone.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 19, 2022 | sundance
The second day of witness testimony in the trial of Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI was completed on Wednesday. For a good recap of the granular aspects Techno Fog has a play-by-play SUMMARY HERE.
For CTH readers I want to focus on a point that is visible in the defense argument and challenging, insofar as it has not yet been revealed, in the prosecution position. The issue surrounds why Rodney Joffe gave the Alfa-bank fraudulent information to Michael Sussmann instead of just giving it to the FBI himself. {A Question Margot Cleveland posits here}
In the cross examination of the first set of prosecution witnesses the defense lawyers keep contending that Sussmann did not lie about the fraudulently created origin of the Alfa-Bank material and there was no reason for him not to tell the FBI he was a courier for the Clinton campaign. The defense is essentially that Sussmann and the FBI knew he was working for the Clinton campaign when he delivered the fraudulent material. Sussmann wasn’t trying to hide anything, ergo he didn’t lie.
Sussmann’s defensive point is essentially true. The DOJ, FBI and everyone associated with the information knew they were receiving opposition research from the Clinton campaign. However, the FBI had to pretend they didn’t know in order to use it to start an investigation.
Margot Cleveland notes at the time in 2016 when these events took place, Rodney Joffe was actually a confidential informant for the FBI.
At the same time Joffe was a CI, he was creating false evidence for the Clinton campaign to bolster their politically motivated Trump-Russia collusion nonsense; the “October Surprise.”
Joffe was dropped as a confidential informant (CI) in 2021 “for cause,” meaning he did something that eventually violated the FBI rules for CI’s to be operating. It’s possible the John Durham investigation had something to do with that decision.
The question for the 2016 events is why Joffe didn’t just give the material to the FBI instead of giving it to Sussmann to give to the FBI?
The answer is really quite simple. The priority of the “October Surprise” was to get the media to write the Trump-Russia collusion stories before the election, hoping the cloud of suspicion would help Hillary Clinton defeat Donald Trump.
It was the media that was important, not just the FBI.
As a confidential informant Rodney Joffe could not take the information to his FBI handler and simultaneously give that information to the media. That would be a violation of the CI rules. If Joffe gave the material to the FBI and then the same FBI saw articles written about the material, they would know: (a) that Joffe violated the rules; and (b) the information was transparently political and thereby useless to them.
However, Michael Sussmann could give the material to the FBI and simultaneously give it to the media in a ‘wrap up smear’ move.
The media were told the FBI had the Alfa-Bank material under investigation, that gave the illusion of credibility. The media then asked the FBI if they did have an investigation of the material and wrote their articles accordingly.
The media articles carried additional weight because the suspicions existing connected to actual material within an FBI investigation gave the suspicions more credibility.
This is the exact same reason why several months later, March 2017, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Vice-Chairman Mark Warner, told the SSCI security director James Wolfe to leak Carter Page FISA application to journalist Ali Watkins. Same approach as Sussmann.
In 2016 Michael Sussmann wanted media articles verifying Donald Trump as an investigative target of the FBI to help Hillary Clinton.
In 2017 Mark Warner wanted media articles verifying Donald Trump’s campaign officials as investigative targets of the FBI to get a special counsel appointed.
In both examples the primary motive was to use the media to get an outcome.
Michael Sussmann was the delivery agent to the FBI so that the Perkins Coie law firm to lean on their media allies to spread the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy. Sussmann had a pre-existing relationship with FBI Counsel Jim Baker that would be useful for that purpose. Hence, the origin of the case that is now being argued in court.
It was the media angle that was more important, the FBI angle was only to bolster the credibility of the accusation.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 18, 2022 | sundance
Elon Musk has publicly announced today he can no longer vote for Democrat candidates and will instead vote for Republican candidates. [Tweet Link Here] This is a rather bold move for a man who is now putting himself in the forefront of the modern Democrat hate furnace.
He appears very aware of the level of opposition he will now face as a result of calling the Democrat party the “party of division and hate,” despite the bold truth expressed. In an earlier tweet he stated, “political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months;” and when Musk says “on me” he likely understands that means on all he represents, including his businesses.
Elon Musk looks more and more like John Galt every day.
Despite all the challenges, and perhaps because the righteous battle is always fought on the right side of history, we are alive in very remarkable times. This decision by Mr. Musk will embolden many more to join us….. Happy warriors.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 18, 2022 | sundance
In Washington, D.C. today, the House Judiciary Committee held a four-hour hearing about the need for abortion [full video here]. Within the hearing one of the congressional witnesses, Ms. Aimee Arrambide, Executive Director of Avow Texas, was asked about her position. Her response encapsulates the mindset of current democrats in office. WATCH (20 seconds):
Comrade Dissidents, if these people think their views are commonly understood, even fathomable, by the majority of commonsense thinking Americans, I seriously doubt they have any concept of what common sense actually implies. This is just flat-out weird.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 18, 2022 | sundance
Do you know what it’s technically called when “government takes control of the means of production?” Yeah, that.
This afternoon Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) giving Health and Human Services (HHS) the legal authority to control the supplies needed for the creation of baby formula (how it is made), and the authority to determine distribution equity (who gets it). Emphasis mine:
White House [DPA Sec. 2] – “[T]he authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act to require performance of contracts or orders … is delegated to the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to all health resources, including the ingredients necessary to manufacture infant formula.”
“(b) The Secretary of Health and Human Services may use the authority under section 101 of the Act to determine, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and the heads of other executive departments and agencies as appropriate, the proper nationwide priorities and allocation of all ingredients necessary to manufacture infant formula, including controlling the distribution of such materials (including applicable services) in the civilian market, for responding to the shortage of infant formula within the United States.” (read more)
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, an über-leftist who ironically self-describes as an abortion absolutist, is now in charge of infant formula manufacture and distribution. You do not need to be a conspiracy theorist to predict which “at risk” group will get priority distribution of limited resources.
The stock market is dropping, Wall Street analysts are flummoxed, but it just isn’t rocket science folks. It’s Main Street economics 101.
The price to produce, manufacture and transport goods has skyrocketed, that’s the Producer Price Index (PPI). Arriving goods at retail are significantly higher in price. Simultaneously, consumer spending is being squeezed by unavoidable inflation in housing, energy, food and gasoline; so consumer spending is tight, that’s the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Higher costs to retail that cannot be passed on as higher prices to customers, means lower profit margins for the sellers. That’s it. That’s the majority of it. Major retail companies like Target and Wal Mart are reporting the impacts from the squeeze in higher costs that cannot be passed to consumers in higher retail prices. Checkbook economics.
.
Businesses are seeing higher costs in the unavoidable goods they need to sell, the fixed price of goods. What comes next? Businesses, knowing they cannot raise prices too much, look at lowering the costs of operations in an effort to remain competitive, stay profitable, and stay in business.
How do businesses lower operational costs? Increase expectations of employee productivity and/or lower employment costs. That leads to layoffs.
I guarantee you…. YOU know more about the basic principles of Main Street economics than a room full of these Wall Street analysts. I like El-Erian, but sheesh, talk about pretending not to know things.
Look at the companies. The companies most exposed to wholesale inflation, those who deal in highly consumable goods like food, are the companies that will see their profit margins shrink fastest.
Highly consumable goods rise in price from origination (field) to destination (fork) the fastest.
The next phase covers the same results in durable goods. That’s when things get really ugly.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 18, 2022 | sundance
I think we all knew the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary race was going to be close, but wow, it’s really close. As of right now, only 1,750 votes separate Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, or a mere .2% of the more than 1.3 million votes cast.
According to the Philadelphia Enquirer there are approximately 105,000 mail-in ballots to be counted and no one knows how many of them are republican ballots. Politico is estimating around 21,000 of them are republican ballots.
Regardless of the outcome from the mail-in ballots, it seems a recount is a certainty as Pennsylvania state law requires an automatic recount if the difference is less than half of one percent (.50%).
PENNSYLVANIA – […] Pennsylvania law requires an automatic statewide recount if the top two candidates in a race are within half a percentage point of each other, which Oz and McCormick currently are.
The secretary of state will make that determination by “the second Thursday following the day of the election,” which would be May 26.
The recount would be run by the individual counties, and it would have to start no later than June 1 and be completed by noon on June 7. Counties would have to submit results to the state by June 8. (Non-recounted races need to be certified by June 6.)
Recounts rarely change the results of elections, even incredibly close ones. Races with margins even in the low thousands usually hold. But in the closest of elections, small shifts in the corrected count can have an effect on the eventual winner. (read more)
In the big picture it looks like the GOPe effort to split the MAGA base to benefit David McCormick almost worked. Kathy Barnette ended up a strong third place.
The only factor that pushed Dr. Oz to the top of the race was the endorsement by President Donald Trump. Without President Trump’s endorsement there’s no way Dr Oz could have won (perhaps) Pennsylvania.
Hopefully that means Oz will keep America-First at the very top of the policy agenda as he heads into the general election against a big time socialist, John Fetterman, the Democrat candidate.
In the interim, it looks like we will have to wait until after June 8th to know the official winner on the republican side.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 18, 2022
Interesting background discussions today, very interesting. There are some aspects to the Washington Post story about DHS abandoning, at least temporarily, the Dept of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board.
WaPo represents the CIA public relations/narrative engineers, so it doesn’t come as a surprise they would be the announcing outlet for the leaked information. There’s also an interesting aspect in who was selected to write the article, Taylor Lorenz, the conscripted narrative engineer and lead on-line counterintelligence/propaganda pusher. [LINK]
However, beyond the background intelligence motive; and accepting the expressed intent of the DHS ministry of truth effort; notice the picture Lorenz published to accompany the notification (see above). “Nina Jankowicz … works in a press room at Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign headquarters in 2019 in Kyiv, Ukraine.” Quite telling.
The takeaway from the above data points, outlines how long the DHS has been planning to use the conflict in Ukraine to advance the agenda of the State Dept and intelligence apparatus (CIA). When combined with the rapid response from big tech search engine notifications about removing on-line content that contradicted the official position of the U.S. government toward the Ukraine conflict (Google and DuckDuckGo), what we see is a very fulsome picture of how the U.S. government advanced propaganda was being constructed.
Knowing how Biden is a front man for the operations of the U.S. government that are now under the full control of the Fourth Branch, intelligence and globalist apparatus as constructed by the Dept of State and DC officials, it makes sense that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas would have no idea about the specifics of how Nina Jankowicz was put into place.
I said a few weeks ago that Jankowicz was likely a CIA construct and operator within the intelligence community on behalf of intelligence interests. I will now say we can remove the word “likely” from that sentence.
The Washington Post – […] Now, just three weeks after its announcement, the Disinformation Governance Board is being “paused,” according to multiple employees at DHS, capping a back-and-forth week of decisions that changed during the course of reporting of this story. On Monday, DHS decided to shut down the board, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation. By Tuesday morning, Jankowicz had drafted a resignation letter in response to the board’s dissolution. (read more)
On the same day the backlash against the DHS Ministry of Truth has collapsed the intended purpose, the United States Senate is scheduled to pass the $40 billion Ukraine package, because….
….Mission Accomplished?
It damned sure isn’t Joe Biden running the U.S. government…
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 18, 2022 | sundance
Zero Hedge published a good article yesterday with some solid internal data showing a strong likelihood that national gasoline prices are likely to rise another 40% from current levels by mid-late summer. That would put the national average for a gallon of gasoline around $6.20 by August.
The data behind the prediction is solid and essentially boils down to the U.S. refineries not having the expanded capacity needed to keep up with an increased summer demand, particularly as they need to keep generating high volumes of diesel fuel due to current critical shortages.
The issues are created by the Biden administration and the regulatory stranglehold they put on the oil and gas industry last year. Obviously, all of this is a feature of the administration plan, not a flaw. The Green New Deal agenda necessarily requires that gasoline rise in price to $7/gal this year in order to force the change in profit dynamic for alternative fueled transportation.
Unfortunately, we the consumers will be the ones punished as the progressive, communist and far-left policy makers chase their climate change agenda. Cheap and cost-effective energy has to be made ‘not cheap’ and ‘not cost-effective’ in order to create the energy crisis their agenda requires.
Massive increases in gasoline prices are a feature, not a flaw.
Remember, Biden is disposable. The people behind Biden purposefully selected him in order to generate a kamikaze ‘fundamental change’ mission within a single 4-year presidential term. Getting crushed on the political outcomes is irrelevant, they just need to push the agenda fast enough, far enough, and destructive enough, so that all energy policies become irreversible.
The people behind the Biden administration energy program are trying to make the infrastructure needed to return to cheap and abundant energy independence, cost prohibitive.
(Via Zero Hedge) – […] According to JPM, a major driver in these counter-seasonal draws in gasoline is higher-than-normal exports. Preliminary EIA data suggest that gasoline exports, mostly to Mexico and the rest of Latin America, are averaging about 0.9 mbd since March, about 100 kbd above seasonal norms and nearly 300 kbd above summer rates.
The punchline: if exports persist at this elevated pace and refinery runs, already near the top of the range for reasonable utilization rates, fall within JPM’s expectations, gasoline inventories could continue to draw to levels well below 2008 lows and retail gasoline prices could climb to $6/gal or even higher, according to JPMorgan.
Some more details from the JPM forecast, starting with assumptions:
♦ The bank expects US refinery runs to peak at 16.8 mbd in August, which, with an average gasoline yield of 49%, means that US refiners will produce about 8.2 mbd of gasoline. Assuming gasoline imports of 0.7 mbd and 10% ethanol blending, the bank expects total finished motor gasoline supply to average 9.9 mbd. If exports continue just below current levels—about 0.8 mbd—that leaves the US with just 9.1 mbd of gasoline supply available for consumption at peak demand this summer.
♦ Because US gasoline demand is expected to average 9.7 mbd in August, the result is an average draw of 0.6 mbd from gasoline inventories in August, about 200 kbd tighter than normal.
♦ Holding those assumptions on refinery yields and flows for gasoline from today through August, total US gasoline inventories could fall below 160 mb by the end of August, the lowest inventory level since the 1950s.
A regression analysis on the relationship between gasoline inventory changes and NYMEX gasoline prices “suggests that a drop of about 60 mb in gasoline stocks between now and August would result in a 37% increase in prices which translates to a $6.20/gal average US retail price”, according to Kaneva. (read more)
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Centinel2012 