Posted originally on the CTH on March 12, 2023 | Sundance
BREAKING NEWS – The U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Board, FDIC and Joe Biden collectively announce that *all* depositors with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will have access to their funds – regardless of amount deposited. Also, all senior bank management has been terminated.
This announced action appears to cover those under FDIC protection ($250k or less) and those above FDIC protection (deposits greater than $250k). The only vulnerability is that SVB “shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected.”
WASHINGTON DC – The following statement was released by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell, and FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg:
Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system. This step will ensure that the U.S. banking system continues to perform its vital roles of protecting deposits and providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth.
After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, and consulting with the President, Secretary Yellen approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, in a manner that fully protects all depositors. Depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13. No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer.
We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority. All depositors of this institution will be made whole. As with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, no losses will be borne by the taxpayer.
Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected. Senior management has also been removed. Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law.
Finally, the Federal Reserve Board on Sunday announced it will make available additional funding to eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.
The U.S. banking system remains resilient and on a solid foundation, in large part due to reforms that were made after the financial crisis that ensured better safeguards for the banking industry. Those reforms combined with today’s actions demonstrate our commitment to take the necessary steps to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe. (LINK)
Will this action help stop any contagion related to California’s largest bank?
…The odds are, yes.
Despite Friday’s action to stop trading of FRB, with this action, I doubt First Republic Bank (FRB) is now at risk.
Posted originally on the CTH on March 12, 2023 | Sundance
During an interview with Margaret Brennan today, Congressman Michael McCaul -another GOPe weasel – said he stands with Vice President Mike Pence in saying “they avoided a constitutional crisis” on January 6, 2021, when Congress declared an emergency session and refused to entertain any challenges to the 2020 election certification. WATCH:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Texas Republican Congressman Michael McCaul.
Good morning to you, Chairman McCaul.
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-Texas): Good Morning, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I have got a lot to get to with you today.
But I want to start where I just left off with those very strong remarks from Mike Pence last night. Do you want to associate yourself with what he said?
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Let me just say Vice President Pence exercised moral clarity and judgment that day by doing his constitutional responsibility, authenticating the votes and counting them.
He avoided a major constitutional crisis that day. As you know, I voted for certification. That is our constitutional role not to overturn state- certified ballots. So, I agree. I mean, look, it was a dark — dark day. And I think people will be — history will judge everyone by what they did that day.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
It was a pretty strong condemnation of Donald Trump, who he hasn’t directly taken on like that before. But it’s also back in the news very much, Chairman, because it was the speaker of the House who gave those 41,000 hours of surveillance video access to FOX News, which then has used a recasting of the events, trying to sanitize it, trying to whitewash history.
Do you think it was a mistake for Republican leadership to strike this deal with Tucker Carlson? That is who Mike Pence was talking about.
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Well, I know Kevin McCarthy has turned all the videotape over to FOX News.
He has given me assurance he’s going to turn it over to the entire media. I think — I believe in the fourth estate, freedom of press, and I think the American people deserve to see all the footage from that day, and all the footage is not going to be tourism at the Capitol. It’s going to show a very dark, tragic day that I witnessed firsthand that included our Capitol Police being assaulted, 140 of them injured, two pipe bombs, one — one Capitol police officer killed, and a protester killed.
That’s not — that’s not a good day. And I think it should have been prevented had we had good intelligence that day beforehand. And, look, I support law enforcement. Like this D.C. crime bill we were passing, I support law enforcement everywhere, especially at the United States Capitol.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you on the other side of an upcoming commercial break about the hearing you just held on Afghanistan.
But, before I do that, I want to quickly ask you about what we’ve been talking about, with the Treasury Secretary saying no government bailout for this Silicon Valley Bank, but they are trying to take some action.
She didn’t give a lot of detail there. I know Austin is a start-up hub in your home state of Texas. How concerned are you about spillover here?
REPRESENTATIVE REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Yes, we do have South by Southwest this weekend, a lot of tech.
Yes, I am concerned, I hope it’s more of an isolated event, because the assets were very — it was all just technology sector and it wasn’t diversified, also, as the secretary mentioned these low interest bonds. And I think part of the problem, Margaret, is, in this inflationary time, the Reserve, Federal Reserve, now is raising interest rates, and that, I think, is part of the problem as well.
We want to make sure this is — this is an isolated event, and not a systemic event that could impact things like in 2008…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: … when we did bailout the financial sector.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, I have got to take that break now.
And we’ll come back and continue our conversation in a moment.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: If you can’t watch Face the Nation live, you can set your DVR. We’re also available through our CBS and Paramount+ apps.
And we’re replayed on our CBS News Streaming Network.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We will be right back with a lot more Face the Nation.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION.
We want to return now to our conversation with House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul.
Now, Chairman, I mentioned that you held this hearing on Afghanistan this past week, and it was pretty emotional.
REP. MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-TX): Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re really examining the chaotic withdrawal from that country. And you had a Marines Corps sergeant, injured in the suicide bombing, who testified that he was an eyewitness and he actually saw the suicide bomber before the attack. He testified he has never been interviewed as part of the U.S. investigation.
How was this overlooked?
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: I think it’s very — well, first of all, very powerful testimony. Very emotional. But very devastating and damaging to the administration. These – these snipers and troops were put at HKIA, surrounded by the Taliban.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The airport in Kabul.
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: They put the Taliban in — in Kabul. That’s the HKIA airport. And surrounded by the Taliban who were put in charge. And that was the first mistake in the chaos that we heard that happened that day and the State Department virtually non-existent.
I think the most dramatic thing, Margaret, was the fact that this sniper had the suicide bomber in his sights and an intelligence bulletin went out, you know, describing him. He said, this is — this meets the description, meets with the team, PSYOPS, psychological operations get together, they run this up the chain of command and the commanding officer says, I don’t have the authority. And then they said, who does have the authority for permission to engage, and the commanding officer says, I don’t know, and he never got back to them.
The point is, they could have taken out this threat. But then, when the suicide bomber went off, not only did Marine Sergeant Vargas Andrews have his leg blown off and his arm, but we had 140 Afghans killed, 13 service men and women killed.
I talked to the mother of one of the Marine sergeants.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: I gave her just a hug. She was so devastated. In addition to 50 injured, including Marine Sergeant Vargas Andrews.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: And it could have been avoided.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, to the point of how it could be avoided. You know, you – you hear it, there were intelligence failures. Events just got ahead of planning.
The State Department argues that they’ve briefed Congress more than 150 times since the withdrawal. What information do you need that you don’t have yet?
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Well, I think the compelling testimony we got from the sniper. We’ve never heard this before. In fact, Margaret, this is the first open hearing we’ve had on Afghanistan since the fall of Afghanistan. And I intend to move forward with this investigation. And I what to know what the commanding officer was thinking when he denied permission to take out the threat and how — what levels did it go to within the United States government? I think those are all very important questions.
And the State Department has not been compliant with our document requests. I met with the secretary. We had a very cordial conversation. Cooperation is always key. But they’re not cooperating. If he fails to cooperate with my document production request by, you know, the time he testifies on March 23rd, I am prepared to issue a subpoena.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And issue — issue a subpoena for Antony Blinken to come testify before your committee. What exactly do you think he’s withholding? What’s the documents?
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: No, he is – he — he will be testifying, but we have an outstanding document production request that the lawyers are very combative. I think the secretary, in good faith, has told me he wants to cooperate with this investigation, be transparent to the American people, but we’re not seeing that with the lawyers handling this on the ground. So, we need these documents because a lot of this stuff, to your point, Margaret, has never been brought out to the public.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes. This is the dissent cable specifically that you are requesting, that is people within the State Department disagreeing with the policy that was the administration’s planning?
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: It’s a dissent cable. The extraordinary measure to have 23 members of the State Department at the embassy dissenting with the policy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: The after action report from the ambassador. But also the plan of evacuation. Just a simple plan of evacuation. What was your plan? They have failed to deliver that to Congress. Those are three key, you know, areas that we want to see compliance with.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
All right, Congressman, we will be watching that. I know there are a number of other issues we’ll talk to you about sometime soon, including China, but I’ve got to leave it there for today. [Transcript End]
Posted originally on the CTH on March 12, 2023 | Sundance
The Ring of Truth – “I am too well accustomed to the taking of evidence not to detect the ring of truth.” 1908, Edith Wharton
Much has been made of the events of January 6, 2021, and with the latest broadcast of CCTV video from inside the Capitol Hill complex, more questions have been raised.
Within the questions: the FBI and government apparatus had advanced knowledge of the scale of the J6 mall assembly yet doing nothing? Why were the Capitol Hill police never informed of the FBI concerns? Why didn’t House Speaker Nancy Pelosi secure the Capitol Hill complex, and why did she deny the request by President Trump to call up the national guard for security support? Why did the FBI have agent provocateurs in the crowd, seemingly stimulating rage within a peaceful crowd to enter the Capitol building? There have always been these nagging questions around ‘why’?
Long time CTH reader “Regitiger” has spent a great deal of time reviewing the entire process, looking at the granular timeline and then overlaying the bigger picture of the constitutional and parliamentary process itself. What follows below is a brilliant analysis of the federal government motive to create a J6 crisis that permitted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to trigger an emergency session and avoid the 2020 election certification challenges.
Those congressional floor challenges, known and anticipated well in advance of the morning of January 6, 2021, would have formed a legal and constitutional basis for ‘standing’ in judicial challenges that would have eventually reached the Supreme Court. The certification during “emergency session” eliminated the problem for Washington DC.
I think most, not all, but a large number of people, are totally missing what happened; and why this happened on Jan 6th. I am going to try my best to outline the events that day, blast past the commonly held assumptions and get right down to the core corruption.
I will present this as a series of questions and answers.
♦ Q1: How do you prevent congress from delaying the certification of state electoral votes?
A: It requires a crisis. A crisis that creates an “emergency” …An “emergency” that invokes special house rules.
FACTS: Remember carefully, focus please. Just moments, literally 3 minutes before two representatives issued a vote for motions to suspend the certification, the House members were “informed” by capitol police and other “agents” that a protest was about to breach the chambers. It was at this time that key people: Pence, Pelosi, Schumer, Mcconnell can be seen being walked out and escorted from the chamber. This effectively halted the Entire Chamber Process.
♦ Q2: Why was it necessary to halt the chamber process?
A: The crisis was created to eliminate the motion challenges to halt the certification and to begin voting to look into voting irregularities and fraud
FACTS: The two motions were completely legal and constitutional under at least two constitutionally recognized procedures… procedures that would REQUIRE the house to pause the certification and then vote to determine whether the motions of suspend could move forward.
♦ Q3: What was so important to refuse this motion and the subsequent votes to suspend the electoral certification?
A: It was important to remove that process entirely and continue the fraud and certify the fraud with no detractors on record. This effectively gives no standing for a SCOTUS ruling appeal! Understand this. If those two motions, even just one had successfully been voted EVEN IF THE MOTIONS were DENIED IN VOTE, this gives those who presented them with STANDING FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL LEGAL ARGUMENT BEFORE SCOTUS.
♦ Q4: Could this have been done some other way other than creating a crisis/protest?
A: Unlikely. In order to prevent those two motions, requires that speaker of the house, minority leaders, and the president of the congress (vice president of the United States: Pence), to NOT BE PRESENT IN THE CHAMBERS.
Once the capitol police and other “law enforcements agents” informed the speaker and these three other individuals, Pelosi UNILATERALLY UNDER EMERGENCY RULES, suspended the business of the congress. This protest was necessary. The crisis was created because there is no other way to suspend the business of certification UNILATERALLY. By creating a crisis invokes emergency procedures. No other circumstances other than war or mass simultaneous explosive diarrhea can create such unilateral speaker delivered suspension of the certification.
♦ Q5: Why did the motions, once that the speaker RECONVENED congress, move forward back again to the floor for votes? Why were members disallowed to even consider putting forward ANY motions to the floor in when the chamber business was reopened?
A: The Speaker initiated the NEW sessions under special emergency rules. These rules abandon and make it clear that the ONLY purpose of the new session was to EXPEDITE the certification and dismiss all prior regular session procedural rules. This is why those two motions to table votes to consider a debate and pause to the certifications of state vote electors never happened later that evening when the house business was reconvened!
♦ Q6: Other than new rules, emergency rules, what other peculiar things occurred when the speaker reconvened?
A: Members were allowed to “vote” in proxy, remotely, not being present. You can use your imagination about what conditions were placed on ALL members during this time to prevent anyone from “getting out of line”.
Also clearly, it was at THIS NEW SESSION that VP Pence, President of Congress, would also have no ability to even consider pausing the electoral certification, because there were no motions of disagreements on the matter. So, in a technical legal claim, he is correct that he had no constitutional authority to address any issues of fraud or doubts about electoral irregularities. But this completely dismisses the FACT that congress created rules in this crisis/emergency that never allowed them to be floored!
Understand what happened in Jan 6, 2021. Don’t get hung up on Viking impostors, stolen Pelosi computers, podium heists, and complicit capitol police. Understand the process and what happened and what WAS NOT ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.
This was a coup….it was a very organized and carefully planned coup. VP Pence without a doubt as well as most members of the house were quite aware of how the certification was going to be MANAGED. It would require new rules to prevent the debate clause from occurring! New rules that ONLY AN EMERGENCY CRISIS COULD CREATE! So, they created an emergency.
•NOTED: I understand why many people have great interest in debunking the j6 event. I get that. I think it is important to dissect and examine the events of that day but please, step back and understand WHY these things happened. Examine the chain of events in congress. Why those two motions that would have at least paused the certification THAT WOULD GIVE VP PENCE THE CONSTITUTIONALLY RECOGNIZED POWER TO MOVE TO SUSPEND THE ELECTORAL CERTIFICATION AND THEN EXAMINE THE IRREGULARITIES AND CLAIMS OF FRAUD!
At the very center of this coup stands Mike Pence, the same individual who also spoiled President Trump’s first opportunities in the earlies hours of his Presidency just 4 years prior, when he created and facilitated the removal of Lt General Michael Flynn. I will not spend much time on this thread explaining why Lt Gen Flynn was so important to President Trump and why the IC was so afraid he would have advisory power to the President. That I will leave for another day, another time. But understand this clearly: MIKE PENCE WAS AND IS WORKING FOR THE MOST CORRUPT CRIMINAL TREASONOUS PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT.
•PRO TIP: If you really want to get a true understanding of this matter videos of protesters walking in the capitol is not going to address them. Actual video and timeline records of events and the specific actions taken by the speaker just moments before TWO MAJOR ELECTORAL ALTERING MOTIONS WERE ABOUT TO BE FLOORED.
This crisis was developed just in time with a precise coordination to prevent those two motions to be entered into the chamber record. The two motions do not exist. The emergency powers established in the new session made sure they never could be entered. The emergency powers could never happen without a crisis.
Note from Author: “I started this effort years ago. To date, no one and I mean no one has replied. It’s as if everyone that can expose it that has a larger platform is either disinterested, or suspiciously withdrawn from the issue. I made several comments about this over the years right here at CTH, on article threads that are relevant to the topic.
I was watching the certification live that day. I recorded it ALL on every channel. I was doing this because no matter what happened that day, I KNEW IT WOULD BE A PROFOUND AND SIGNIFICANT EVENT TO REMEMBER. I never in my wildest imagination (and I have a pretty vivid imagination, always have), expected to see the unmistakable perfectly timed “coincidences” that occurred.
One member raises a motion (with another in waiting for his turn) those two motions were well known and advertised. These were motions to vote for a pause in the certification to examine electoral vote fraud and irregularities. I can’t speak to the veracity and substance of those motions. They were never allowed to even be floored. it was at that exact moment that the house chambers were suspended and 4 of the key members, Pence, Pelosi, Schumer and McConnell were escorted OUT right after initiating the end of the session.
Effectively, this resulted in that motion never being floored at all. Then, when reconvened under special emergency rules, inexplicably those two motions (and perhaps more – we will never know – or will we?) were not even attempted to be motioned. That was not just peculiar to me.
It all started to make more sense when I did some study on constitutional law AND THE HISTORY of specific special authorities given to president of the congress, Pence in this case. Not only did he have the authority and power to suspend the certification, but the duty to address the motion in the same sense that it becomes vital to the debate clause.
There really is no higher significance of weight given to the debate clause than the certification of the votes. This was more than odd to me the way that the media and pence framed their narrative: Pence would not have the constitutional power to suspend certification. Then it hit me, like the obvious clue that was there all the time. He was right. But the reason he is right, is because there WAS NO MOTION ON THE FLOOR TO CAUSE HIM TO SUSPEND!
Understanding this, happened for me about 4 or 5 months after this Jan 6 day. I took me this long to examine the facts, look at the video again, compare it to the arguments made by several leading constitutional academics, and again, inexplicably even some that I respect seemed to dodge that central reality. The motions were never allowed to be floored in the re-convened house rules later that evening. Most would not even venture to address the exotically coincidence that the moment those two members would stand to place the motion before the house, that the House Speaker Pelosi AND Pence ended the session, effectively blocking the motions from being heard in normal house rules.
It’s been a journey for me. A journey that was initiated because I am just a simple but curious person. Perhaps even to a point where I get obsessive in those efforts. Many days and nights combing over the details. praying and trying to make sense of what makes little sense. With over 6 states having serious well known and obvious defects in the voting process, some more credible to believe – some less, but one would not expect the house would be so deliberate in marching past the motions that were definitely going to be present to slow this process down and take the time to get it right. Even IF the claims never reached an intersection that would change the outcome.
There are two possibilities: Millions of people, against all the odds, hitting all-time records even past Obama and Clinton, voted for a naval gazing ambulatory pathological racist moron. And chose Joe Malarkey as their leader. Or this was a coup, a conspiracy, and a treasonous manipulation regime change because President Trump could not be controlled by the deep state and globalists who OWN AND OPERATE WASHINGTON DC.
BOTH POSSIBILITIES ARE TERRIFYING.
The only way for THE PEOPLE to gain power in this country is to force the transfer of it. If truth isn’t the fuel and vehicle, we will just be replacing deck chairs and hitting the next series of expected ice bergs.
Knowing the truth is not enough; however, it is truth that makes it a righteous cause.
Julie Kelly – […] Just as the first wave of protesters breached the building shortly after 2 p.m., congressional Republicans were poised to present evidence of rampant voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Ten incumbent and four newly-elected Republican senators planned to work with their House colleagues to demand the formation of an audit commission to investigate election “irregularities” in the 2020 election. Absent an audit, the group of senators, including Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) pledged to reject the Electoral College results from the disputed states.
The Hail Mary effort was doomed to fail; yet the American people would have heard hours of debate related to provable election fraud over the course of the day.
And no one opposed the effort more than ex-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
During a conference call on December 31, 2020, McConnell urged his Republican Senate colleagues to abandon plans to object to the certification, insisting his vote to certify the 2020 election results would be “the most consequential I have ever cast” in his 36-year Senate career.
From the Senate floor on the afternoon of January 6, McConnell gave a dramatic speech warning of the dire consequences to the country should Republicans succeed in delaying the vote. He downplayed examples of voting fraud and even mocked the fact that Trump-appointed judges rejected election lawsuits.
“The voters, the courts, and the States have all spoken,” McConnell insisted. “If we overrule them, it would damage our Republic forever. If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral.”
Roughly six hours later, McConnell got his way. Cowed by the crowd of largely peaceful Americans allowed into the building by Capitol police, most Republican senators backed off the audit proposal. McConnell, echoing hyperbolic talking points about an “insurrection” seeded earlier in the day by Democratic lawmakers and the news media, gloated. “They tried to disrupt our democracy,” he declared on the Senate floor after Congress reconvened around 8 p.m. “This failed attempt to obstruct Congress, this failed insurrection, only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our Republic.”
Congress officially certified the Electoral College results early the next day. (read more)
The J6 pipe bombs were the insurance policy, in the event they couldn't get the crowd to comply with the FBI provocations. If no one stormed the Capitol, the finding of the pipe bombs would have been the emergency needed to stop the process. https://t.co/JqVcGROAPN
Posted originally on the CTH on March 12, 2023 | Sundance
Speaking at the Gridiron Dinner in Washington DC yesterday, former Vice President Mike Pence directly blamed President Trump for the events in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, saying:
“President Trump was wrong; I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.” ~ Mike Pence
Be of good cheer. Despite the main takeaway being pushed by mainstream media, these remarks strike me as good news.
These remarks indicate to me that the professional Republican control officers are growing increasingly desperate as President Trump continues to command the new Republican Party. If Ron DeSantis was making ground, the professional Republican class would not be as desperate as these remarks convey. All of their collective GOPe effort isn’t working…. they are starting to reach for the kitchen sink.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday harshly criticized former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, widening the rift between the two men as they prepare to battle over the Republican nomination in next year’s election.
“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said during remarks at the annual white-tie Gridiron Dinner attended by politicians and journalists. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
Pence’s remarks were the sharpest condemnation yet from the once-loyal lieutenant who has often shied away from confronting his former boss. Trump has already declared his candidacy. Pence has not, but he’s been laying the groundwork to run.
[…] With his remarks, Pence solidified his place in a broader debate within the Republican Party over how to view the attack. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for example, recently provided Tucker Carlson with an archive of security camera footage from Jan. 6, which the Fox News host has used to downplay the day’s events and promote conspiracy theories.
“Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence said in his Gridiron Dinner remarks. “And it mocks decency to portray it any other way.” (read more)
Posted originally on the CTH on March 11, 2023 | Sundance
In his weekly monologue, U.K pundit Neil Oliver takes the occasion of the 2023 Hollywood Oscar film awards to overlay the current state of theatrical horsepucky from the professionally political.
As the COVID-19 narrative collapses around them, the rulers who justified their fiats under false pretenses are naked to the sunlight of truth. The people are awake; the lies are easy to see; the gig is up; the bloom is off the ruse… We are watching, and the elites are not comfortable now. WATCH:
[Transcript] – Brace yourselves for the latest from La-La-Land. It’s the Oscars this weekend, another ceremony I used to care about in the world of before.
But for those who feel like we’ve been trapped for the past three years watching a bad movie with an unbelievable script, full of gaping plot holes and bad actors, I can tell you we’ve at least reached a good bit. Not the end, by any means, but perhaps a foretaste of comeuppance yet to be.
After the opening sequence the introduction of the characters establishing who were to be the goodies and baddies, after the setup and then the jeopardy and the darkness when all seems lost we’ve got to one of those bits where the audience leans forward in their seats in expectation of some payback, however slight and however brief. Anything to lift the mood.
I knew we had reached a good bit when I started hearing people talk about “limited hangout”. Have you noticed that term, yet? Limited hangout is more jargon, of course, spy talk this time, from the CIA and the rest of the secret squirrels, for what baddies try and do when they know, as we say in Scotland, that the game’s a bogey means the game is up and those fraudsters and tricksters and over-acting villains inside their hollowed-out volcanoes realise they might well have been rumbled and so start reaching for the back-up plan.
Limited hangout is a short-term fix when the baddies realise their trousers are starting to fall down. They’re not quite around their ankles but some stuff is definitely exposed and so those chancers are forced into buying some time while they try to pull themselves back together and keep going without falling over completely.
What we’ve been handed this past week or so all the high-excitement newspaper revelations are obviously what the baddies regard as the least damaging truth about what they’ve been up to, mere tidbits really, embarrassing but still the least of it. What’s been made visible to us now on account of the baddies’ zips being down, is therefore a limited hangout.
I will come back to the movie analogy in a minute but let me digress.
Billionaire financier Warren Buffet is credited with saying that it’s when the tide goes out that you get to see who’s been swimming naked. Ain’t that the truth?
Well, the tide is quite far out now not all the way but already we can see plenty of bare bottoms. We see you, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer we see you MSM loudmouths and the rest of the ringleaders, in politics and elsewhere making a run for the sand dunes with your bits out. We see you. You can bleat and whine all you want about how hard you found the last three years and how much pressure you were under trying to keep up with an evolving situation, but you said what you said, and you did what you did and so much of it was wrong and lies and caused incalculable harm to millions.
What we are glimpsing now – even in the midst of the so-called limited hangout – is what we’ve known all along and that is the way the truth does, in the end, what the truth always does. Which is to say, the truth comes out.
There’s been a line out there on social media from the beginning, a meme, which has it that the truth is like a lion, the truth, like the lion, needs no protecting all that is required is for the lion of truth to be set free from its cage and then that lion takes care of itself.
The truth has a partner along for the ride, and that partner is trust. You can’t have the one without the other. What our so-called leaders and their henchmen in the media did over the past three years was abuse our trust to the point where it’s gone now.
As I’ve said before, trust is like a fragile vase. If you break it, you might manage to glue it back together, but you’d never again dream of putting water and flowers in it.
I started by talking about the movies, and movies are all about stories. An old story is The Boy Who Cried Wolf and we’ve all heard it … and we all remember it … because it’s true. It reminds us of what happens when foolish people sound the alarm without good reason. Out of a desire to attract attention and so further their own ends, foolish dangerous people cry wolf when there is no wolf. Everyone around them is briefly alarmed, fearing for their lives. But sooner or later they realise they’ve been had.
One day, of course, a wolf comes a real wolf and when that same fool cries wolf again no one comes to help. The fool is eaten by the wolf and why? Because they lied, and lied again, until the people who might have helped them had no reason to believe them, far less trust them.
Boris Johnson pushed nonsense about the danger of Covid. So did Rishi Sunak. So did Michael Gove. So did Jeremy Hunt. So did Keir Starmer and scores of others. They pushed nonsense about how to handle it as well, nonsense about Scotch eggs and stickers in the aisles of supermarkets, hand washing, face masks, social distancing and the rule of six. They pushed nonsense when they knew it was nonsense while they partied together, drank together and danced together and laughed up their sleeves together about what a bunch of mugs we were.
They cried wolf. Now there’s talk about pushing more mRNA jabs … next time for TB and smallpox and diphtheria and the rest. But what happens when billions of people have no trust whatever in that science, in those products from Big Pharma? What happens when the trust is gone?
More and more people around the world have stopped listening to scientists and stopped trusting scientists. They have also stopped listening to the cries of wolf. If a real wolf comes in the future – and there are more wolves out there than just invisible viruses – millions of people will refuse to listen to the alarm.
And now that the trust is gone, for so many people, more and more are questioning everything else they’ve been told by the same characters about what’s going on in the world. More and more people look at the lies and manipulative propaganda they were fed for the past three years about ONE THING, and rightly wonder if they are actually being told the truth about anything else about the war in Ukraine about the climate about immigration about the EU about food shortages about what’s being done to farmers all over the world about the real motivation behind the push for electric vehicles about the imposition of 15-minute cities.
Our so-called leaders knowingly talked nonsense that destroyed lives and turned society upside down and inside out. We know that … the people responsible are wildly exposed and cannot convincingly deny any of it. Why I ask, would anyone trust them about anything else? Liars lie, it’s what they do.
For now though, let’s, by all means, notice that it’s a good bit in the movie and we might allow ourselves to enjoy it.
It’s like when the money-grubbing lawyer in the first Jurassic Park movie tries to hide in the bamboo toilet stall only to have the T-Rex bite him in half. He’s strictly a minor character but he has put his own needs ahead of the helpless children in the movie, so it’s satisfying to watch him get caught, exposed by his cowardly nature, and gobbled up.
This is the bit when Alan Rickman’s baddie in Die Hard realises Bruce Willis is running loose with a machine gun.
This is the bit when Indiana Jones realises the big guy only has a sword, while he’s got a revolver full of bullets.
It’s important to remember the movie has a way to go yet. More clumsy twists for sure … more bad acting in the world of politics which, as we are regularly informed, is only showbiz for ugly people.
Here’s the thing: I sincerely believe that now the truth is partially revealed, if we can only find the strength to keep pushing … then the really, really good bits of this movie lie ahead. Like the bit in A Few Good Men – when Jack Nicolson plays the colonel in the dock and Tom Cruise is the underdog attorney.
Jack’s colonel does not like one bit being challenged by upstart Tom’s character about how Jack chooses to do what Jack does. Jack is angry enough to kick a puppy through a fan
When Tom finally demands to hear the truth about how a young soldier died under Jack’s watch. Jack finally loses it completely.
“You can’t handle the truth!” he roars and he evidently believes what he has just bellowed. He actually believes that Tom and the rest of the general population lack the mental circuitry to contemplate, far less to deal with, what he does down there in the darkness out of sight.
But it’s the best bit in the movie and Jack is caught out and his ass is grass and we know it.
When you get right down to it, his undoing has been no more complicated than that he has been caught lying.
Of course, the other thing we learn from watching movies is that it’s never, never safe to take your eyes off the adversary the first time they go down … the first time they seem to be finished.
We have to stay sharp and be ready for the bit when Glenn Close’s character is lying quietly in the bath in Fatal Attraction, eyes wide open and no bubbles coming out of her mouth.
Right when we think we’re safe, she’ll sit back up again with her yelling and her knife. We must pay attention.
More and more I think about the disaster movies – and if this isn’t a manmade disaster, we’re living through right now then I don’t know what it is.
I think about when the survivors step blinking out of the smoke and darkness to confront a ruined White House and a toppled Statue of Liberty … or a burning Big Ben and a flattened GCHQ. They realise, those survivors, that what they thought mattered was, in the end, just a house, just a lifeless lump of copper and steel, just a bell tower, just an office block.
Those survivors look around at the devastation, the receding flood waters of the tsunami, and realise they were caring about stuff that didn’t amount to a hill of beans. They get ready to start again with all that really matters, which is people they can trust, which is each other. If we have that, then we have all that we will need. Pass the popcorn.
Posted originally on the CTH on March 11, 2023 | Sundance
South Dakota Governor Krisi Noem appeared on Tucker Carlson’s television broadcast last night to send a warning to fellow governors. According to the background story, the South Dakota legislature passed a bill redefining currency and creating rules for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that would block all other digital currencies from being used in the state. Governor Noem vetoed the bill.
When asked why her legislature would do this, Noem responded the state politicians likely did not read the bill as it was constructed by lobbyists. Noem is exactly correct and hits on a subject we have discussed here frequently {GO DEEP}. However, one of the more alarming aspects to Noem’s discussion of the issue is that around 20 other states are considering similar legislation. WATCH:
Posted originally on the CTH on March 11, 2023 | Sundance
The 44-hour collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is having some reverberations amid the tech sector as companies who carried unsecured deposits with the bank are facing an uncertain future.
Tech company Roku streaming services holds $487 million in cash reserves at SVB representing 26% of their liquid holdings. Those unsecured funds are now tenuous, depending on what steps are taken next. Additionally, Etsy an online brokering retailer for mostly independent sellers, has also run into a snag with processing disbursement payments to those same sellers. Etsy used SVB as a depository and payment transfer provider to the merchant accounts.
According to Axios, “Circle’s usd coin (USDC), the second largest stablecoin in the world” is also in a tough position “because a portion of its cash reserves were held at SVB, which the U.S. government took control of on Friday.” These and other ancillary issues are now part of a larger conversation about whether SVB is representative of a weakness that may impact other banks. However, current consensus is that a contagion effect is not expected.
SVB was exclusively a tech sector bank. Small to mid-size tech companies who relied on SVB may have some immediate issues; but the larger banking sector seems much more solid and less exposed to the long-term treasuries that SVB was holding. “People are used to having zero interest rates and easy money, and it’s gone. And there are people who will manage that well and people who will not,” former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin said during an interview on “Cavuto Coast-to-Coast” Friday. {link}
Meanwhile, congress is meeting with treasury and FDIC officials to discuss if taxpayer intervention is needed. {insert eyeroll here}:
March 11 (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers met with the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Friday to discuss the collapse of SVB Financial Group (SIVB.O), Coindesk reported on Saturday citing a source.
Democratic U.S. Representative Maxine Waters held briefings with officials from the two regulators and the Treasury Department, hours after the startup-focused SVB’s collapse, the report said.
[…] Separately, Representative Ro Khanna said in a tweet on Friday that he reached out to both the White House and the Treasury Department to discuss the situation with the bank.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday met with banking regulators on the collapse of SVB, as she and the White House expressed confidence in their abilities to respond to the bank failure. (more)
Nothing makes the Nope Meterpeg with greater emphasis than hearing the name Maxine Waters and bank bailout in the same sentence.
The tech sector has a tremendous amount of capital at hand. Let the tech companies who used SVB as a launch vehicle sell some of their own stock holdings and backstop the bank as an investment mechanism. There is no need for the U.S. taxpayer to get involved.
I am more concerned about this failure being used as a tool to initiate a conversation about digital currencies. The ‘never let a crisis go to waste‘ team, are likely chomping at the proverbial bit….
Posted originally on the CTH on March 10, 2023 | Sundance
Having planted the seed for color revolution in Hungary, a European country that doesn’t want expanded war with Russia – therefore the U.S. needs to change the democracy, now Samantha Power moves to another European country for the same reason. This time it’s Georgia.
Georgia legislature recently passed a bill saying all funding for foreign intervention in the country’s politics, via Non-Governmental Agencies (NGO’s), needs to be made public and the funding registered as foreign agent lobbying. Essentially, the proposed Georgia law would mirror the U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
However, because the U.S. is the funding mechanism for the anti-government agencies that operate within the country, the United States is against the effort. To make sure the U.S. can continue to covertly manipulate the political outcomes, the groups supported by Samantha Power attacked Parliament. [Power Tweet]
To highlight what Power is celebrating…. “Georgian protesters in their tens of thousands have gathered in the capital, smashing the windows of the Parliamentary headquarters and fighting local enforcement officers as the country erupts into chaos. The nation’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, rushed through its first reading of a “Kremlin-inspired” bill on Tuesday two days before the debate was scheduled to take place, causing carnage in Tbilisi as citizens fear their government is severing links to the West at a time of increased tensions with Russia.” (more)
So why is Samantha Power targeting Georgia now? Well, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili does not want expanded war with Russia. Therefore, just like Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Georgia must now be removed and replaced with a pro-war leader.
The U.S. has already installed a pro-war President in Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili. Now Samantha Power has the responsibility to replace the anti-war Prime Minister.
The ruling Georgian Dream party has insisted it remains committed to Georgia’s EU and NATO membership. But a “foreign agent” bill reminiscent of Russian legislation used to silence critics has in recent days sparked demonstrations, to which authorities have responded with water cannons and tear gas.
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili on Thursday congratulated protesters in the Caucasus country after the government said it would drop the bill. […] worry has grown since Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili’s party tried to introduce the “foreign agent” law, even if for now they have withdrawn it. (link)
Yes, if you want to have a Foreign Agent Registration Act in a nation where the United States is the foreign actor, then you must be a Kremlin stooge. So goes the argument. It would be a lot more difficult for the U.S. to meddle in foreign countries if the people receiving the money from the U.S. had to disclose it to their citizens.
Posted originally on the CTH on March 10, 2023 | Sundance
Drawing attention to the testimony of FBI Director Christopher Wray in his responses to Representative Darin LaHood.
Representative LaHood is leading an internal congressional review of the FISA “702” reauthorization. During the testimony, LaHood waxes philosophically about the importance of FISA-702 targeting as a tool for the FBI while simultaneously outlining how the FBI is weaponizing the tool. At 06:24 of the video below, LaHood goes on to outline the details of the NSA noncompliance report showing how the FBI intentionally targeted him, likely because he is leading the 702 reauthorization group.
The irony here is thick. The FBI illegally uses 702 search queries, and in the example of LaHood, it is demonstrable targeting because the search query was only for his name, so there can be no claim of “inadvertent” search result. Simultaneously, FBI Director Chris Wray states the number of illegal FBI searches of the database is 84% improved year-over-year. In essence, the FBI is saying they are breaking the law 84% fewer times. WATCH:
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Well beyond the “cell phone metadata,” in the era of your portable transponder having internet and social media connection, just about everyone has metadata connected to a foreign person or entity. Use the Twitter app on your phone, you are connected to foreign entities. Use Instagram or Facebook, WhatsApp or Telegram, same/same/same/same.
TicTok? Fughetaboudit. The auspices of only looking at U.S. persons engaged in foreign contacts is totally moot.
The “702 authorities,” which is an innocuous term for a “U.S. Person“, permit DHS, DOJ, FBI and any national security apparatchik to open up your data and check you out. This is the reality of the modern era. This total surveillance reauthorization is what the SSCI wants to permit. It must be stopped completely. It cannot be “reformed.”
4th Amendment – “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Either you are secure from federal search of your “private papers,” as outlined in the United States Constitution, or you are not.
There is no aspect of this “702” nonsense, where a secret court grants a secret authorization, to engage in secret surveillance, by some secret entity of government – which might be a contractor, just to “see if” you might be doing something suspicious, or against the interests of the federal government. The premise behind “702” reauthorization is unconstitutional.
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