Tag Archives: FTX

Mar 8 2023

Tucker Carlson Responds to the Blitzkrieg of DC and Media Apoplexy Following His Broadcast of J6 CCTV Video


Posted originally on the CTH on March 7, 2023 | Sundance 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson became public enemy #1 as a result of him showing some of the CCTV footage from the January 6, 2021, protests in Washington DC.  Collectively both parties in Washington DC and their stenographers in the mainstream media spent the last day in hysteric criticism of Tucker Carlson.

The need for control is a reaction to fear, and Mr. Carlson seems to understand that sunlight always brings forth the greatest demands for control.  In his opening segment tonight, Mr. Carlson took on the critics directly.  WATCH:

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Mar 8 2023

Senator Mitch McConnell Rips Tucker Carlson for Depicting a False Impression of the Horrific Insurrection He Experienced on January 6th


Posted originally on the CTH on March 7, 2023 | Sundance 

Senator Mitch McConnell Rips Tucker Carlson for Depicting a False Impression of the Horrific Insurrection He Experienced on January 6th

March 7, 2023 | Sundance | 838 Comments

Tucker Carlson has kicked a hornet’s nest by broadcasting the January 6, 2021, footage on his television show and outlining the violent insurrection narrative as a false premise.  Given the nature of the entire apparatus of government and media that is now united against him, it will be interesting to see if Carlson’s TV show survives.

Standing in front of the cameras earlier this afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Fox News and Tucker Carlson specifically for misrepresenting the events that McConnell says he experienced. “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict (January 6th) in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”  WATCH:

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Mar 8 2023

FTC Demands to Know Which Journalists Had Access to Twitter Files


Posted originally on the CTH on March 7, 2023 | Sundance 

In a Republican administration the leftist media would be going bananas asking why the Federal Trade Commission is requiring Twitter to notify them of which journalists have had access to internal communication files.  Alas, with a Democrat administration in office, the FTC demand is not an issue.

It would appear the mechanisms of government are aligned to fight back against any sunlight that might be provided upon the government manipulation of the social media platform.

In a profound display of institutional hubris, the U.S. government claims they are concerned about user privacy as the justification for their involvement.

In addition to the U.S. government demanding to know who may have reviewed the Twitter company communication with the U.S. government, the FTC is also looking for a deposition from Twitter CEO Elon Musk about the status of the company.

(Via Wall Street Journal) – WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission has demanded Twitter Inc. turn over internal communications related to owner Elon Musk, as well as detailed information about layoffs—citing concerns that staff reductions could compromise the company’s ability to protect users, documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal show.

In 12 letters sent to Twitter and its lawyers since Mr. Musk’s Oct. 27 takeover, the FTC also asked the company to “identify all journalists” granted access to company records and to provide information about the launch of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service, the documents show.

“We are concerned these staff reductions impact Twitter’s ability to protect consumers’ information,” an FTC official wrote to Twitter’s lawyers on Nov. 10 following an initial wave of layoffs, according to a copy of the letter viewed by the Journal.

[…] “Protecting consumers’ privacy is exactly what the FTC is supposed to do,” said FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar. He said the agency is “conducting a rigorous investigation into Twitter’s compliance with a consent order that came into effect long before Mr. Musk purchased the company.” (read more)

That last paragraph is particularly filled with irony and hubris, considering the same U.S. govt concerned about “consumer privacy” is the same U.S. govt who demanded Twitter reveal the identities of users in order to enhance targeting efforts.

Mar 8 2023

Hiding Data – DeSantis Staffed Public Service Commission Drops Requirement for Electricity Companies to Tell How Many Disconnections Due to Non Payment


Posted originally on the CTH on March 7, 2023 | Sundance 

It’s a local Florida story and multi-faceted. However, for the bigger national audience the issue that should be considered is that Ron DeSantis and the Florida Republican party took $9+ million in campaign contributions from state energy providers, then approved the biggest electricity rate hikes in Florida history.

Additionally, and more obscure in the outcome, the Public Service Commission (Public Utility Commission, or PUC), after being filled with DeSantis appointees, informed the electricity providers they no longer needed to report the number of residents who were disconnected from utility service due to nonpayment.

One could make the intellectual and political argument, the scale of disconnection -which is quite alarming- would be averse to the interests of Governor DeSantis seeking a higher office.

Like much of the country, electricity rates in Florida have skyrocketed with the increase in natural gas prices.  However, unlike much of the country, most Florida residents have only one option for electrical utility power.  The rate of disconnection in Florida amid lower income and working families is far greater than almost any other state.  Florida is quickly becoming a class-driven society with haves and have-nots.

FLORIDA –  […] In November 2021, Florida’s Public Service Commission (PUC) issued a memorandum allowing  electric utilities to stop disclosing their shutoff data. The memorandum, which reversed the commission’s September 2020 decision to collect the data to track the pandemic’s effects on utility customers, came after DeSantis stacked the board with his appointees. The move came less than a month after commission members approved the largest electric rate hike in Florida’s history, resulting in a 20 percent increase in costs to residential ratepayers.

Now it’s impossible to know how many customers have been disconnected from their electric utilities for being unable to pay their increasing power bills. NextEra — the parent company of Florida’s largest utility, Florida Power & Light — disconnected 738,000 Floridians in 2021 and 1.1 million Americans nationwide since 2020, according to a report from Bailout Watch last month. If that disconnection rate continued, noted the report, NextEra would have shut off 1.2 million customers in 2022. But we do not know the total, because the DeSantis-appointed Florida PUC allowed them to hide the data.

[…] In early December, the Bailout Watch report noted, Florida regulators approved a fuel rider, or a cost increase tied to the price of fuel, allowing utilities to pass the cost of higher fuel prices to consumers, without affecting their enormous profits. Company executives have been handsomely rewarded for such political wins. Top executives at NextEra gave themselves a 59 percent raise between 2020 to 2021. (read more)

One of the reasons I became confident last year that Ron DeSantis was planning a 2024 presidential bid, was the one-and-done nature of his focus.

Florida working class residents are under extreme economic duress as a result of unavoidable increases in energy costs (home cooling), massive increases in insurance costs (tripling of homeowners, doubling of auto), skyrocketing housing costs (largest in nation) and these financial struggles are atop general inflation costs driven by national economic policy.

Throughout 2022 Governor DeSantis focused almost exclusively on social issue constructs, and the economic policies of Florida -while more challenging to address- have been exclusively unattended.  From the 30,000 ft level, the disconnect in executive priority becomes more explainable when you consider the management team was assembling a policy strategy for media and public consumption.

Throughout my research and review on the managers and background of DeSantis team, it just became obvious (mid-summer ’22) there was a longer-term plan in the background, created in the latter part of 2021 and everything thereafter -a severe emphasis on social issues- was a political management and national branding approach.  If you overlay the hindsight timelines, including the PUC story, one can see the proactive political construct to control any negative issues.

Regardless of where his national political intentions land, moving forward Florida residents -especially the working poor and working class- are going to be faced with severe and worsening financial hardship, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will likely not be around to see or address most of it as it surfaces publicly.  That is an unfortunate and depressing realization.

I don’t dislike the guy, I’m just heartbroken at what I see happening in my state.

Mar 7 2023

Tucker Carlson Outlines Review of Capitol Hill J6 CCTV Tapes and Publicizes Footage


Posted originally on the CTH on March 6, 2023 | Sundance 

As promised, Fox News host Tucker Carlson began publicizing the closed-circuit TV footage from Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.  In the introduction to the footage, Mr Carlson outlines the process and limitations that his producers encountered.

Tucker Carlson states no one from the House of Representatives placed any restrictions on the footage as reviewed. Additionally, Carlson notes that no one at Fox News leadership had any input into the review that his team undertook.  As he describes, much of the 40,000 hours of footage was innocuous, empty rooms with CCTV camera footage showing very little.  However, the footage that did show events, does not support the “violent insurrectionist” narrative as promoted by the J6 committee.  WATCH:

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Additional footage and continued segment below.

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Mar 7 2023

BEWARE, Here Comes the Intel Community Laying Groundwork for FISA 702 Renewal


Posted originally on the CTH on March 6, 2023 | Sundance

Ugh, it makes me sick to see these schemes as they are constructed and yet feel helpless to stop them from organizing.  Remember which media outlets push the PR campaigns of the U.S. Govt.  (1) CNN drives Dept of State; (2) Washington Post drives CIA; and (3) NYT/Politico advance the interests of the domestic intelligence apparatus.

With that in mind, here comes the Intelligence Community laying the groundwork for reauthorization of the FISA-702 surveillance system on American citizens.

They are so damned transparent in their agenda, the stenographers have even dropped “FISA,” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as the term within the construct.  Now they are just calling it “702 reauthorization.”

(VIA POLITICO) – The intelligence community has a critical congressional ally in its bid to reauthorize a sweeping warrantless surveillance program. However, even he thinks its officials aren’t making a convincing enough case.

“One of the things the community’s got to do a better job of is explaining, in practical non-classified terms, how valuable this tool is,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a recent brief interview. “And they’ve not done that as well as they should.”

Warner sits at the heart of what will be a months-long, knockout debate about whether to reauthorize the warrantless surveillance program, known as Section 702, by the end-of-year deadline. The program is designed to gather the electronic communications of foreigners abroad, but has the potential to sweep up those of Americans.

The Virginian, who argues continuing the program in some form is essential but is open to changes, will have his work cut out for him. Influential and newly emboldened House Republicans have made it clear they won’t let Section 702 stay alive without significant changes — if they support reauthorization at all — amid an all-time-low relationship with the Justice Department and the FBI.

And the intelligence community can also count Section 702 critics among House Democrats and senators in both parties, many of whom believe this is their best chance to force more limits on the program. (read more)

As most people are now aware, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) sits at the epicenter of how the surveillance state is weaponized against American citizens.  It is the SSCI who helped create the surveillance network, and it is the SSCI who now seek to defend the unconstitutional system they have created.

Pretenses are being dropped, and you will note how in this reauthorization schedule they are dropping “foreign” communication with American citizens, as a limitation on the authority they have already usurped.  Yes, it is factually true the ‘foreign’ aspect was always a ruse, a false premise, that granted the Dept of Justice, National Security Division (DOJ-NSD), and FBI legal authority to conduct intrusive Title-1 surveillance on any American citizen.

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.

How strongly do I feel about this?

I will openly campaign against any politician or candidate who does not fully endorse the elimination of FISA 702 Authorization in sum and total.  I don’t care who the candidate is, or what his/her political affiliation might be.

I am sick and tired of having to construct communication systems, to engage in ordinary conversation and/or communication, knowing the biggest challenge is to construct the system to defend ordinary people against unconstitutional searches and seizures.  Ironically, this includes the very commenting system you are using to share any opinion of this outline.  This domestic surveillance system just needs to be stopped.

Steps off soapbox.

Love to all, but sheesh this is frustrating….

Mar 7 2023

Manufacturing Indexes Continue Downward Trend as Consumers Leery of Big-Ticket Purchases


Posted originally on the CTH on March 6, 2023 | Sundance

Coming out of the pandemic related disruption, the larger story of U.S. manufacturing has been an odd blend of good data and bad data depending on the sector.  While some manufacturing was growing as a result of clearing supply chains, other sectors of manufacturing remained soft.

In total, the full supply chain rebound should have completed around the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter of 2022.

However, simultaneous with the correction within the supply chain(s), consumer purchase activity began contracting.

The consumer pullback led to very weak holiday sales last year, and a combination of increased inventories of finished goods.

Keep in mind that Maersk overseas shipping noted significant drops in orders for the movement of material in the third quarter of last year.  Considering the lag, the previously noted inventory buildup in combination with the drops in unit sales of durable goods, would generally mean lower manufacturing purchase order activity Q4 (’22) and Q1 (’23).   This reality is reflected in the actual data as reported by The Wall Street Journal:

(Via WSJ) – […] New orders for manufactured goods contracted for the sixth straight month through February, according to surveys by the Institute for Supply Management. Manufacturing output is down 1.7% from its postpandemic peak in May 2022, according to a three-month moving average of Federal Reserve data. And the Commerce Department’s measure of civilian capital equipment orders, excluding aircraft—the building blocks of business—was down 3.4% in January from its recent high in November 2021, after adjusting for inflation.

[…] Production of appliances, furniture and carpeting was down almost 15% in January from the previous year, according to the Fed. That coincides with sales of previously owned homes falling for 12 straight months. Consumers often buy furnishings after they move.

Production of steel, iron and other primary metals was down 3.6% and machinery production fell by 1.8%. Output of plastics, food, beverage and tobacco products, and computers and electronics, also fell during that period.

[…] Business inventories swelled in the fourth quarter of last year, when consumer spending cooled. The ratio of inventories to sales for durable goods was higher in November and December than at any point since 2009, with the exception of April and May 2020, when pandemic-related lockdowns froze commerce.

Pat Weiler, chief executive of paving-equipment maker Weiler, said inventory levels are up more than 50% over the last two years. (read more)

Unfortunately, the U.S. doesn’t really manufacture much any longer.  Manufacturing only accounts for around 11% of GDP.  However, if purchase orders for inbound component goods are down for six straight months, we can generally infer the absence of downstream consumer demand.

I fully expected a recession statistic in the fourth quarter last year and was quite surprised we didn’t see one.  The scale in the drop of imports was statistically the majority reason for the outcome.  Imports are a deduction to GDP.  However, that said, there is nothing visible in the consumer purchasing side to indicate why durable good manufacturing is even as strong as it is.

We are in a very weird economic environment that is not helped by the financial punditry pretending that things are going swimmingly.

Mar 7 2023

Staff Lawyer for Southern Poverty Law Center Arrested Along With 23 People in Georgia Charged with Violent Domestic Terrorism


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on March 6, 2023 | Sundance

Last night, around 5:30 p.m., Georgia police said a group of violent agitators used the cover of a festival and peaceful protest to coordinate an attack on construction equipment and police officers at a proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.  “This is not a protest,” APD officials said at a press conference Sunday night. “This wasn’t about a public training center; this was about anarchy.”

Today, Atlanta PD announce 23 people were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism, including Thomas Jurgens of Georgia who is a staff lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The SPLC has long been known as an extremist group of radical leftists operating under the auspices of “anti-hate group” lawyering.  The arrest of an SPLC activist/lawyer on domestic terrorism charges affirms the radicalization of the group itself.  VIDEO REPORT:

(Atlanta PD) –  On March 5, 2023, a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers. They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers.

The agitators destroyed multiple pieces of construction equipment by fire and vandalism. Multiple law enforcement agencies deployed to the area and detained several people committing illegal activity. 35 agitators have been detained so far.

The illegal actions of the agitators could have resulted in bodily harm. Officers exercised restraint and used non-lethal enforcement to conduct arrests. (link)

Officers have arrested a total of 23 people. Only two of them are from Georgia. The following have been charged with domestic terrorism, according to Atlanta police (link):

Mar 7 2023

Stuck on Stupid – Biden DHS Denies Visa to Tennis Star Novak Djokovic Due to Vaccination Status


Posted originally on the CTH on March 6, 2023 | Sundance 

The COVID-19 stupid continues, as the world’s #1 tennis player is denied entry to the United States over his vaccination status.

(Via Fox News) – Novak Djokovic will not participate in the BNP Paribas Open this month after the Biden administration denied his entry to the United States, due to him being unvaccinated against COVID-19.

Djokovic, 35, requested a vaccine waiver, which would have allowed him to enter the U.S. unvaccinated, but it was rejected by the Homeland Security Department.

The 22-time Grand Slam champion subsequently withdrew from the combined ATP-WTA event, which begins Wednesday at Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Indian Wells, California. (read more)

At this point in the COVID-19 era, the decision is more about politics and maintaining a false premise than any effort to mitigate a risk posed by a virus. Ridiculous doesn’t begin to adequately convey the level of frustration seeing this maintained nonsense.