Tag Archives: Cultural Marxism

Apr 20 2022

DeSantis Announces Special Legislative Session Will Debate Removal of Disney World Special Districting Status in Florida


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 19, 2022 | sundance

Jumpin’ ju-ju bones, Governor Ron DeSantis detonated a thermonuclear political bomb on the Disney Corporation today.

A special legislative session has been called to approve the new congressional districting map.  However, in an unexpected announcement, the Florida governor said that, in addition to a new congressional map they’re voting on, lawmakers “will be considering termination of all special districts that were enacted in Florida prior to 1968, and that includes the Reedy Creek Improvement District.”

As NBC notes, “The Reedy Creek Improvement District in the Orlando area shields Disney from local government regulations and from local property taxes, which could be worth as much as $200 million per year, by one lawmaker’s estimate.  Legislators in both chambers predicted the legislation — which could end the 55-year-old taxing district next summer — would pass by Friday.”  WATCH:

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DeSantis knows he has a sky-high approval rating in the state, and he is moving fast while the public still has the cultural antagonism and political weaponization by the Disney Corporation in the headlines.

The Disney Corporation previously announced they were going to fund political attacks against the Florida Legislature for creating laws that protect children from sex predators in schools.  Disney openly announced they support grooming efforts by teachers in K-3 education to sexualize children and discuss gender identity issues for children under 9-years-old without parental consent.

Ron DeSantis and the Florida Republican Legislature are about to deliver big revenge against Disney for that decision.  In the political, cultural and all things corporate business world inside Florida, the removal of Disney’s special district status is huge.

(NBC , FLORIDA) – […] The prospect of the Legislature taking such a direct shot at Disney, the state’s largest private employer and traditionally one of the most powerful political players in the Florida capital, was unthinkable until the DeSantis era.

“This is a governor who is willing to buck your traditional elite establishment and corporate America,” Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls said. “And maybe that’s a difference in politics over the last 20 years, but I think that we’re starting to live in this really unique time.”

DeSantis is in a uniquely powerful position as governor. His favorability ratings are so high in the GOP that they rival those of former President Donald Trump’s in Florida, according to polls. If Trump doesn’t run for president in 2024, polls suggest, DeSantis is well positioned to be his heir apparent in two years as an early front-runner for the Republican Party’s nomination.

In a sign of his political clout, DeSantis had already forced legislators back to Tallahassee this week for a special session to rubber-stamp a proposed congressional map he drew after vetoing maps drawn by the Legislature — both unprecedented acts for a Florida governor. (read more)

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Apr 20 2022

Fannie Mae More Than Triples Negative Forecast for Housing Sales


Posted Originally on the conservative tree house on April 19, 2022 | sundance

Lots of people talk about an inflation driven recession.  Essentially, that’s a total economic contraction in the value of goods and services produced, sold and purchased, due to rising prices.   However, as CTH has been pointing out for more than six months, if you subtract the federal COVID infusion money from the overall economy, we have been in a contracting demand economy for almost nine months.

A negative GDP outcome is quite possible, perhaps likely, when the first quarter GDP figures are released on the last Friday of this month.  The most recent sales and economic data shows that U.S. consumers are prioritizing spending and high priced durable good sales are negative.

Now, Fannie Mae is delivering a rather stunning shift in their economic forecast.  In addition to projecting a recession for 2023, these revised home purchase figures are remarkable:

...”We have downgraded our total home sales forecast for 2022 to a decline of 7.4 percent (previously a 4.1 percent decline) followed by a decrease of 9.7 percent in 2023 (previously a 2.7 percent decline).” (link)

That is a very significant change in home sales forecast to the negative position.

We already have serious energy inflation to contend with and low wage growth.  We already know a third inflation wave on highly consumable goods is coming this summer, likely around 30% or more in food prices at the grocery store.

The professional forecasts are always tilted toward the positive for this administration, so this new statement by Fannie Mae should be considered accordingly.  Remember, Boy Scouts motto.

Apr 20 2022

Too Dangerous to Allow Elon Musk Control Over So Much Data Says Washington Post


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 19, 2022 | sundance

The latest developments in the effort to purchase the unsustainable magic coffee shop are quite revealing.

According to the New York Post, “Musk himself is willing to invest between $10 billion and $15 billion of his own cash to take Twitter private, two sources close to the situation said. That’s up from the current 9.1% stake in the company he revealed on April 4, which is worth about $3.4 billion.”

However, more revealing about the overall issue are the comments from the PR firm of the U.S. Intelligence Community, The Washington Post:

(WaPo) […] “Putting so much power in the hands of one company is bad enough, but putting it in the hands of one person, as is largely the case with Facebook shareholder Mark Zuckerberg and would be the case if Twitter were owned by Musk, would be incompatible with democracy.” 

“There are simply no checks and balances from any internal or external force,” … “It would leave Musk, like Zuckerberg, with an amount of assembled data about people and the ability to use it to manipulate them “that cannot be compared to anything that has ever existed, and allows intervention into the integrity of individual behavior and also the integrity of collective behavior.” (read more)

People are starting to catch on to the reality that costs for data processing on many social media platforms (the free coffee), exceeds the ability of the platform to generate revenue.  People are starting to understand that behind the scenes of the Big Tech consortium, there is something else, some other operational construct and mechanism, that subsidizes & facilitates their existence.

It is very revealing how the intelligence apparatus of the United States had no issue with Twitter data and influence, until the potential for private ownership, perhaps uncontrolled private ownership, surfaced.  Do not be naïve in pretending not to know how The Washington Post represents the interests of the intelligence apparatus.

In the long arc of history, I truly believe we will discover the inflection moment for the merge of U.S. Deep State (intel community) and U.S. Social Media, will be identified in the early moments of the Arab Spring of 2010/2011.  That was when Facebook and Twitter became tools for the State Dept operation in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain and beyond.  That was the beta-test of synergy.

“Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011.” (LINK)

It was from that original, albeit misguided and manipulative partnership, when the actual details about how to create the social surveillance state was first tested.   Everything after those events more than a decade ago, has been this rapidly evolving blend of social media technology and the capacity of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to create and fund the underlying structures.

Daily, we see numerous examples of the ideological control that surfaces as a direct result of this public-private partnership, the closed-conversations between deep government interests (the Fourth Branch) and social media companies which are dependent on the subsidized technology for them to exist.

Perhaps 2022 represents the first time the commonsense of the American electorate begins to recognize the fallacy of the ‘free coffee’ business model.  Personally, I am very optimistic people will soon recognize what many have suspected for a long time.

Ultimately the question becomes, how far will the U.S. Fourth Branch of Government go to stop people from understanding?

Marc Andreessen believes Govt and Big Tech will double, triple and quadruple down to keep their public-private partnership, the backbone of the Free Coffee Shop, hidden.  I cannot say I disagree, because ultimately it is still only the minority of people who understand the stakes.  However, on the upside, the number of people who are starting to understand it, is growing almost exponentially thanks to Elon Musk.

(Source Link)

This is one of those situations where we should all welcome being called ‘conspiracy theorists’, because no matter how big the crowd is that refuses to believe it, ultimately the impossible business model of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop will reveal everything.

That’s why the public-private partnership must stop Elon Musk.  As the Washington Post noted, this level of revelation “cannot be compared to anything that has ever existed.”

“Very shadowy” indeed.

Apr 20 2022

CNN New Subscription Based Service Likely to Collapse, Spent $300 Million Only Gained 150k Subscribers


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 19, 2022 | sundance

Put this in the tracking file for ratios and such.  Axios is reporting that CNN+ is likely to collapse as Warner Bros has suspended all external marketing and product development and fired the Chief Financial Officer.  The network has spent $300 million, and only generated 150,000 subscribers.  A major fail by any measure.

(Via Axios) Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward, five sources tell Axios.

• Why it matters: Inside CNN, executives think the launch has been successful. Discovery executives disagree.

• CNN+ has roughly 150,000 subscribers so far.

• Warner Bros. Discovery wants to eventually build one giant service around HBO Max.

• New leadership has replaced CNN CFO Brad Ferrer with Neil Chugani, Discovery’s current CFO for streaming and international, as part of a broader finance team restructuring.

• Other high-level positions at WarnerMedia across different business functions are likely to be eliminated to cut costs and streamline leadership in coming weeks.

What to watch: Sources say a plan is being considered to replace Chris Cuomo’s 9:00pm EST primetime slot with a live newscast, instead of personality-driven perspective programming. (read more)

Apr 17 2022

Twitter Board of Directors Own Almost No Shares of Stock in Company, Elon Musk Notes “their economic interests are simply not aligned with shareholders”


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 16, 2022 | Sundance 

In the ongoing public battle over Twitter as a speech platform, one actual user of Twitter, Chris Bakke, wanted to see who exactly these Board of Directors are, who are attempting to stop Elon Musk from purchasing it.

Chris Bakke then noted how little of the actual stock is owned by the company’s Board of Directors.  Sans Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey, the combined ownership of the entire board equates to 77 shares of stock, worth around $3,200 bucks.

The Board of Directors [SEE BoD LINK HERE] consists of academics, tech executives, business and policy wonks, and a random baroness who doesn’t even use the service.  These are the people who are making fiduciary decisions for all Twitter stock owners without any financial stake in the decisions they make for the company.

(TWEET LINK)

BOARD MEMBERS – (2) Bret Taylor, Independent Board Chair; Co-CEO, Salesforce (former Google exec). (3) Parag Agrawal,CEO, Twitter. (4) Mimi Alemayehou, Senior Vice President for Public – Private Partnership at Mastercard. (5) Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Professor at Stanford (former Google exec). (6) Egon Durban, Co-CEO, Silver Lake. (7) Robert Zoellick, Former Chairman of the Board of Directors of AllianceBernstein Holding L.P. (8) Patrick Pichette, General Partner, Inovia Capital; Former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Google. (9) Martha Lane Fox, Founder and Chairperson, Lucky Voice Group; Former Co-Founder and Managing Director of lastminute.com; Crossbench Peer, House of Lords. (10) Omid Kordestani, Former Executive Chairman, Twitter (former Google exec). (11) David Rosenblatt, CEO, 1stdibs.com, Inc. (former Google exec). (12) Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder, Twitter; CEO and Co-Founder, Square.

Further evidence the motivations behind the Twitter board have nothing to do with stewardship for their shareholders.  Again, this is yet another datapoint highlighting the background structure of Twitter that Musk is exposing.

Twitter is not making a decision to decline the generous offer by Elon Musk because of stewardship or fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.  The financials of Twitter as a non-viable business model highlight the issue of money being irrelevant.  Twitter does not and cannot make money.  Growing Twitter only means growing an expense. Growing Twitter does not grow revenue enough to offset the increase in expense.

There is only one way for Twitter to exist as a viable entity, people are now starting to realize this.

What matters to the people behind Twitter, the people who are subsidizing the ability of Twitter to exist, is control over the global conversation.

Control of the conversation is priceless to the people who provide the backbone for Twitter.

Once people realize who is subsidizing Twitter, everything changes.

That’s the fight.

{Go Deep}

Apr 15 2022

In His Own Words, Elon Musk Explains Why He Tendered an Offer to Purchase Twitter (Video)


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 14, 2022 | Sundance

Appearing on Stage in Vancouver earlier today with the head of TED Chris Anderson, Elon Musk discusses why he has made a financial bid to purchase the social media platform Twitter.  The video is prompted to 11:40 when Musk takes the stage, the first part of the conversation surrounds the Twitter announcement that had made global headlines only a few hours earlier.  WATCH:

Apr 15 2022

Elon Musk Makes a Massive Proposal, Offers to Purchase Twitter for $41 Billion With Plan to Take Company Private


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 14, 2022 | sundance

April 14, 2022 | sundance | 553 Comments

The richest man in the world, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, made an offer to purchase the Twitter platform for a price of $41 billion.  The offer represents a value of 38% more than the current evaluation.  [SEC FILING HERE]  The offer is filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission proposing a full takeover for $54.20 per share in cash.

Within the filing Elon Musk states his intentions:

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.  However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.

As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential.  I will unlock it. (SEC LINK)

What Elon Musk appears to be doing is perhaps the biggest story that few understand.

I share this perspective having spent thousands of hours in the past several years deep in the weeds of tech operating systems, communication platforms, and the issue of simultaneous users.   What Twitter represents, and what Musk is attempting, is not what most would think.

In the big picture of tech platforms, Twitter, as an operating model, is a massive high-user commenting system.

Twitter is not a platform built around a website; Twitter is a platform for comments and discussion that operates in the sphere of social media.  As a consequence, the technology and data processing required to operate the platform does not have an economy of scale.

There is no business model where Twitter is financially viable to operate…. UNLESS the tech architecture under the platform was subsidized.

In my opinion, there is only one technological system and entity that could possibly underwrite the cost of Twitter to operate.  That entity is the United States Government, and here’s why.

Unlike websites and other social media, Twitter is unique in that it only represents a platform for user engagement and discussion.  There is no content other than commentary, discussion and the sharing of information – such as linking to other information, pictures, graphics, videos url links etc.

In essence, Twitter is like the commenting system on the CTH website.  It is the global commenting system for users to share information and debate.  It is, in some ways, like the public square of global discussion.   However, the key point is that user engagement on the platform creates a massive amount of data demand.

Within the systems of technology for public (user engagement) commenting, there is no economy of scale.  Each added user represents an increased cost to the operation of the platform, because each user engagement demands database performance to respond to the simultaneous users on the platform.  The term “simultaneous users” is critical to understand because that drives the cost.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter has approximately 217 million registered daily users, and their goal is to expand to 315 million users by the end of 2023.   Let me explain why things are not what they seem.

When people, users, operate on a tech platform using the engagement features, writing comments, hitting likes, posting images, links etc, the user is sending a data request to the platforms servers.  The servers must then respond allowing all simultaneous users to see the change triggered by the single user.

Example: when you hit the “like” button feature on an engagement system, the response (like increasing by one) must not only be visible to you, but must also be visible to those simultaneously looking at the action you took.   If 100,000 simultaneous users are looking at the same thing, the database must deliver the response to 100,000 people.  As a result, the number of simultaneous users on a user engagement platform drives massive performance costs.  In the example above, a single action by one person requires the server to respond to 100,000 simultaneous users with the updated data.

As a consequence, when a commenting platform increases in users, the cost not only increases because of that one user, the cost increases because the servers need to respond to all the simultaneous users.   Using CTH as an example, 10,000 to 15,000 simultaneous commenting system users, engaging with the servers, costs around $4,500/mo.

This is why most websites, even big media websites, do not have proprietary user engagement, i.e. commenting systems.  Instead, most websites use third party providers like Disqus who run the commenting systems on their own servers.  Their commenting systems are plugged in to the website; that defers the cost from the website operator, and the third party can function as a business by selling ads and controlling the user experience.  [It also sucks because user privacy is non existent]

The key to understanding the Twitter dynamic is to see the difference between, (a) running a website, where it doesn’t really matter how many people come to look at the content (low server costs), and (b) running a user engagement system, where the costs to accommodate the data processing -which increase exponentially with a higher number of simultaneous users- are extremely expensive.   Twitter’s entire platform is based on the latter.

There is no economy of scale in any simultaneous user engagement system.  Every added user costs exponentially more in data-processing demand, because every user needs a response, and every simultaneous user (follower) requires the same simultaneous response.  A Twitter user with 100 followers (simultaneously logged in) that takes an action – costs less than a Twitter user with 100,000 followers (simultaneously logged in), that takes an action.

If you understand the cost increases in the data demand for simultaneous users, you can see the business model for Twitter is non-existent.

Bottom line, more users means it costs Twitter more money to operate.  The business model is backwards from traditional business.  More customers = higher costs, because each customer brings more simultaneous users….. which means exponentially more data performance is needed.

User engagement features on Twitter are significant, because that’s all Twitter does.  Not only can users write comments, graphics, memes, videos, but they can also like comments, retweet comments, subtweet comments, bookmark comments, and participate in DM systems.  That is a massive amount of server/data performance demand, and when you consider simultaneous users, it’s almost unimaginable in scale.  That cost and capacity is also the reason why Twitter does not have an edit function.

With 217 million users, you could expect 50 million simultaneous users on Twitter during peak operating times.  My back of the envelope calculations, which are really just estimations based on known industry costs for data performance and functions per second, would put the data cost to operate Twitter around at least $1 billion per month (minimum).  In 2021, Twitter generated $5.1 billion in revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.

There is no business model, even with paying subscribers, for Twitter to exist.  As the business grows, the costs increase, and the costs to subscribers would grow.  So, what is going on?

The only way Twitter, with 217 million users, could exist as a viable platform is if they had access to tech systems of incredible scale and performance, and those systems were essentially free or very cheap.  The only entity that could possibly provide that level of capacity and scale is the United States Government – combined with a bottomless bank account.

If my hunch is correct, Elon Musk is poised to expose the well-kept secret that most social media platforms are operating on U.S. government tech infrastructure and indirect subsidy.  Let that sink in.

The U.S. technology system, the assembled massive system of connected databases and server networks, is the operating infrastructure that offsets the cost of Twitter to run their own servers and database.  The backbone of Twitter is the United States government.

There is simply no way the Fourth Branch of Government, the U.S. intelligence system writ large, is going to permit that discovery.

Apr 13 2022

Suspect Identified in NYC Mass Shooting, Manhunt Underway for 62-Year-Old Frank R James


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 12, 2022 | Sundance

Police have identified suspect Frank R James (62) as the man who opened fire on a Brooklyn subway train during the early morning rush Tuesday, injuring at least 29 people. According to authorities, ten people were shot when James set off a smoke grenade and opened fire in a subway car.

New York – A 62-year-old man who made bizarre threatening rants on YouTube has been identified as a person of interest in the savage Brooklyn subway attack that injured at least 29 people Tuesday morning, officials said.

Frank James — who warned last month that he was “entering the danger zone” — rented a U-Haul van tied to the N train attack in Sunset Park and is being sought for questioning, police said at an evening briefing.

“Mr. Mayor, I’m a victim of your mental health program,” James said in one lengthy video.

“I’m 63 now full of hate, full of anger, and full of bitterness.” James said he had a diagnosed mental illness and railed against what he called the “horror show” of the city’s mental health services. “What’s going on in that place is violence,” he said about a facility he claimed to receive care from. (read more)

During an evening press briefing (video below), NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said among the items recovered by cops at the scene were a 9 mm handgun, a hatchet, gasoline and “consumer-grade fireworks.”

Apr 8 2022

Australian MP Outlines Concerning School Lesson, Sexual Assignment for 10-Year-Old, “What the Hell Is Going On Here”


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 7, 2022 | Sundance

The issue of inappropriate education topics surrounding the sexualization of children has been in the headlines recently, as Florida and other states initiate laws to stop young students (K-3) from being exposed to sexual material promoted by leftist educators.  However, the issue is not isolated to the United States.

A state legislator in Victoria, Australia, recently outlined an education program where young 10-year-old girls are being told to ask their fathers about “erections and ejaculation” as homework. Bernie Finn, a member of the upper house of the Victorian state parliament in Australia, reads the concerns from a constituent parent in his district, then explodes,”What the hell is going on here?”  WATCH: 

“How the hell are we supposed to protect our kids when this sort of perversion is in our schools? This is what is being dished up to them on a daily basis in a primary school – not even a secondary school – a primary school. This is just unbelievable. It’s staggering.”

Apr 8 2022

Kamala Harris Reacts to Senate Confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson As Supreme Court Justice


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 7, 2022 

Ketanji Brown-Jackson was always going to be installed in the supreme court as part of the overall Obama team’s use of Joe Biden.  Merrick Garland was removed from his position specifically to create the path for KBJ to travel.  Everything about this was planned well in advance of Biden’s installation.  KBJ is to the judicial branch what BHO was/is to the executive branch.

The same motives and intentions were true for the Obama crew selecting Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden’s vice-president.  Harris represents the least qualified person in office and her ineptitude is a specific reason she was selected.  Harris’s inability is the shield that protects Biden from Republican efforts to remove him.  This too is part of the design.

Today the least qualified person ever to hold the VP position, gives her opinion on the most radically qualified Alinsky ideologue ever to reach the Supreme Court.  Eloquence is not her forte’. WATCH:

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Folks, the need for control is a reaction to fear.  The people in “fly over” country have joined with the coastal working class.  People are furious right now, from the guy that guides hunters, to the truck drivers, hammer swingers, mayors of towns and cities, and even state senators, legislatures and newly awakened citizens who are demanding action against this leftist onslaught.

The political pendulum has never, in the history of humanity, stayed on one side of a swing. The back lash from overreach has always been proportionate to how far off center it went before coming back … and right now we’re staring at a whole hell of a lot of the country (about 80-90% of the land mass, as well as about 70% of the population) that is fed up.  DC knows they are in a tenuous place, and they do not want that assembly deciding the only way to fix it is to burn it down and start over.  They are doing everything in their power, and beyond, to control and avoid it.