Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 28, 2022

April 28, 2022 | sundance | 89 Comments

Yes, this actually happened today.  During her press briefing Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the White House doesn’t want to “define what success in Ukraine looks like,” but demands U.S. taxpayers to give them another $33 billion toward it.

A few moments later Psaki admits the money will be spent subsidizing not only Ukraine, but NATO allies who are suffering the results of inflation.

Psaki stated the Biden demand for more money “is not all for Ukraine, it’s also for some of our Eastern European partners and others to help support them during this time as well.”  Wait, now we are paying to subsidize the economy of EU countries while our own economy is contracting?

Seriously, the scale of this hubris is blood boiling.  First, they cannot tell us what success consists of, but give us money anyway.  The first segment to watch happens at 18:15 of the video, WATCH (prompted):

TRANSCRIPT – Q    Against the backdrop of the President’s announcement today and request for this $33 billion aid package, can you say: Is it the policy goal of the United States for Ukraine to defeat Russia? 

MS. PSAKI:  Well, look, it depends on how you — we’re not going to define that from here.  That’s for the Ukra- —

Q    How would you define it?

MS. PSAKI:  Well, that’s for the Ukrainians to define. 

What we are going to do from here is to continue to provide them with a range of security and military assistance, as is evidenced by the package that the President proposed and put forward to Capitol Hill today; to strengthen their ne- — their hand at the negotiating table; and ensure that they have the support and backing of the United States and the world.

Q    Just to be clear — and I understand what you’re saying: It’s for the Ukrainians to define.  But does the United States think that success has to include Russians leaving all of the new portions of Ukraine that they currently invaded? 

MS. PSAKI:  Again, we’re not going to define that from here, Kristen.  There are a range of negotiations that may happen and may take place, and we’re just not going to get ahead of that. (read more)

… 

Q    And then, is there any effort, I guess — you heard this a little bit from him today talking about how Ukrainians are giving up their lives, so the money — I guess, is there anything that the White House is doing to address the concern from some Americans that this is an awful lot of money going to a foreign country when we have domestic needs at home?

MS. PSAKI:  Well, I would say that we’ve also seen an incredibly heart- — heartfelt outpouring of support from the American people for the efforts of the United States to lead in standing up to Russian aggression and to stand up in favor and support of the Ukrainians.

You know, to the President, this is about American leadership in the world.  It’s also about standing up for democracy versus autocracy.  It’s about standing up against one foreign country invading another foreign country.  And, you know, it’s about American leadership in the world.

So, we will continue to articulate that and make that clear.  And that is part of the reason why the President also detailed in specificity today what all of this would go to.  I mean, some of it — a great deal of it is, of course, to military assistance to fight this war, but there is funding in there, as he noted this morning, for food security and ensuring that we are addressing any food shortages around the world.  There is assistance that is going into humanitarian assistance and helping the outflow of refugees.  And so, it was important to him personally to lay out the specifics in his remarks this morning. 

At 42:15 of the video, Psaki is asked directly why should the U.S. taxpayer be stuck paying for the pensions of Ukraine politicians?  Psaki responds by saying ‘that’s who we are.”  WATCH (prompted)

.

Q    — to follow up on the issue of, you know, Americans being concerned about the amount of money being sent out to Ukraine: One of the things that the President outlined today in his speech was not just humanitarian assistance, but also allow pensions and social support to be paid to the Ukrainian people. 

So, what would you say to the American public who says, “Okay, it’s one thing to help Ukrainian refugees with food and shelter, but why should we be paying for their pensions?”

MS. PSAKI:  Well, look, I would say that we have provided a range of economic assistance, because we know that their economy has been devastated — not of their doing, because they were invaded by a foreign country.

Q    But how is that —

MS. PSAKI:  And they’re going — let me — let me finish.  And they are going to need assistance in order to recover.  We provide assistance — economic and humanitarian assistance — to a range of countries around the world because that’s part of American leadership.  And so, I would say that’s the reasoning for this assistance being proposed in the package.

Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 28, 2022

This is getting seriously out of hand.  On top of the $14 billion already appropriated for Ukraine assistance, Joe Biden is now asking for a supplemental budget allocation of an additional $33 billion for Ukraine.  Good grief, that’s almost $50 billion in aid, plus the billions in distributed weapons.

Biden is asking for U.S. taxpayers to fund the budget, salaries and pension obligations of the Ukraine government.  Biden made his request in a letter [SEE HERE] to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

[…] “I am writing to provide you with my request for fiscal year (FY) 2022 emergency supplemental funding for critical security and economic assistance to Ukraine.
 
I appreciate the Congress’ continued bipartisan support for Ukraine, NATO, and other partner countries affected by Russia’s War in Ukraine.  My Administration is committed to providing the Ukrainian people the assistance they need.  Our assistance to date has made a difference on the battlefield, helping Ukraine win the battle for Kyiv. 

This $33.0 billion request for additional funding and authority builds on the Congress’ supplemental appropriation of $13.6 billion on March 15, 2022, and seeks to address immediate and near-term security and economic needs.  Additional security assistance will put urgently needed equipment into the hands of Ukraine’s military and police, including ammunition, armored vehicles, small arms, demining assistance, and unmanned aircraft systems. 

Economic assistance will provide Direct Budget Support to provide rapid, flexible funds to assist the Government of Ukraine.” (read more)

Joe Biden wants U.S. taxpayers, those who are struggling to pay our own bills, to fund the government of Ukraine?  In case anyone is not up on current events, we are broke.

Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 28, 2022 

Jack’s magic coffee shop posted their latest financial results today.

As suspected, the social media company Twitter said revenue for the first quarter totaled $1.2 billion (+16%). However, costs and expenses totaled $1.33 billion (+35%), resulting in an operating loss of $128 million. (link)

Another unsustainable result for a company that doesn’t make a profit yet continues to operate.   I digress…

REPOST WARNING – The metaphorical Jack had a great idea, open a coffee shop where the beverages were free and use internal advertising as the income subsidy to operate the business.  Crowds came for the free coffee, comfy couches, fellowship, conversation and enjoyment.

It didn’t matter where Jack got the coffee, how he paid for it, or didn’t, or what product advertising the customers would be exposed to while there.  Few people thought about such things.  Curiously, it didn’t matter what size the crowd was; in the backroom of Jack’s Coffee Shop they were able to generate massive amounts of never-ending free coffee at extreme scales.

Over time, using the justification of parking lot capacity and township regulations, not everyone would be able to park and enter.  Guards were placed at the entrance to pre-screen customers. A debate began.

Alternative coffee shops opened around town.  It was entirely possible to duplicate Jacks Coffee Shop, yet no one could duplicate the business model for the free coffee.  Indeed, there was something very unique about Jack’s Coffee Shop.  Thus, some underlying suspicions were raised:

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.  A public-private partnership.

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.

FREE COFFEE:

♦ June 2013: […] “Cloud computing is one of the core components of the strategy to help the IC discover, access and share critical information in an era of seemingly infinite data.” … “A test scenario described by GAO in its June 2013 bid protest opinion suggests the CIA sought to compare how the solutions presented by IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) could crunch massive data sets, commonly referred to as big data.” … “Solutions had to provide a “hosting environment for applications which process vast amounts of information in parallel on large clusters (thousands of nodes) of commodity hardware” using a platform called MapReduce. Through MapReduce, clusters were provisioned for computation and segmentation. Test runs assumed clusters were large enough to process 100 terabytes of raw input data. AWS’ solution received superior marks from CIA procurement officials”… (MORE)

♦ November 2013: […] “Twitter closed its first day of trading on Nov. 7, 2013, at $44.90 a share. In the years since then, it briefly traded above $70, but more recently, it has struggled.”

Jack’s free coffee shop has been for sale, but there’s no viable business model in the private sector.  No one has wanted to purchase Twitter – it is simply unsustainable; the data processing costs exceed the capacity of the platform to generate revenue – until now….

And suddenly, the people who work in the backroom of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop don’t want Jack to sell.

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. (more)

♦ 2021, Public-Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazen they have made public admissions.

The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):

[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”

Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.

Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.

When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data-mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.

The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.

The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.

Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.

What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.

July 26, 2021, (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.

Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)

The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives. In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize.

After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what Barack Obama was all about.

The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created, and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.

…It’s all Connected Folks, SEE HERE

[…] “The vision was first outlined in the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise plan championed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and IC Chief Information Officer Al Tarasiuk almost three years ago.” … “It is difficult to underestimate the cloud contract’s importance. In a recent public appearance, CIA Chief Information Officer Douglas Wolfe called it “one of the most important technology procurements in recent history,” with ramifications far outside the realm of technology.” (READ MORE)

One job…. “take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum.”

Knowing they put this much effort into it, does everything going on now to regulate the internet, maintain the public-private partnership, define information and use the weapons of the administrative state to protect the assembly, start to make more sense?…

.

Armstrong Economics Blog/WEF Re-Posted Apr 28, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Yuval Noah Harari, a self-described historian and one of Schwab’s loudest mouthpieces, believes that we will see the rise of the “useless class.” Harari noted how during the industrial revolution, people went from working on the farm to working in a car factory. He described it as transferring from one low-skilled job to another low-skilled job.

Since automation is leading the new world, future job prospects in 20 to 30 years are unknown. Harari believes it is impossible to know what to teach children today to make them productive citizens in the future. There will be “a new massive useless class that has no military or economic usefulness, and therefore no political power,” he stated. This is another push toward the World Economic Forum’s goal of government control – you need us but we don’t need you.

History tells us that farming is certainly not a low-skill profession. Look at what happened when Mao killed off all the farmers in China. A low-paying profession does not mean it is low-skilled. Our society could not function without farmers or automotive workers. Additionally, he does not take into account the beauty of creative destruction cited by Schumpeter. The brick and mortar retail stores may be gone in 20 years, but new positions will arise and people will develop skills and adapt to those roles. As for education, schools can begin by teaching children to think independently and question everything (not their gender). Claiming that there will be countless people out of work, “useless” to society, opens the door to government welfare programs becoming commonplace.

I cannot help but to be reminded of Hitler’s classified “useless eaters.” Like those at the WEF, Hitler believed there was a class of humans among society who simply consumed but did not contribute. Instead of hoping they’d rely on government aid, he simply murdered them. Be on high alert when a global agency begins referring to portions of the population as “useless.”

Armstrong Economics Blog/Canada Re-Posted Apr 27, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 27, 2022

New York state democrats attempted to mitigate the bloodbath coming their way in the 2022 elections by drawing a redistricting map that eliminated three republican congressional seats.   Today a New York State appeals court ruled the maps were unconstitutional efforts to gerrymander the districts and now the primary races will likely be delayed.

The 78-page ruling is available here.  The state appeals court ruled 4-3 against the democrats. The June 28, 2022, primary will likely be moved to August because the state now needs to redraw the congressional districts.

(Via MSM) – […] The New York State Court of Appeals said the three maps violated the state’s Constitution by creating political bias. The maps were “procedurally unconstitutional, and the congressional map is also substantively unconstitutional as drawn with impermissible partisan purpose,” the court said.

[…] With no more appeals and time running out, the court ordered the adoption of a neutral map by an outside expert. The court also recommended the state’s June 28 primary be moved to August.

“We are confident that, in consultation with the Board of Elections, Supreme Court can swiftly develop a schedule to facilitate an August primary election, allowing time for the adoption of new constitutional maps,” the court said.  (read more)