Biden Spreads Inflation Lies on Twitter. Jeff Bezos’ Response Is Priceless | DM CLIPS | Rubin Report


Posted originally on the The Rubin Report  on Rumble on May 23, 2022

Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks about Jeff Bezos calling out Joe Biden’s inflation lies. Jeff Bezos attacked Joe Biden’s statement which connected inflation with corporate tax rates. Even Democrats like Bezos are turning on Biden as the US economy continues to tank amid inflation, supply chain problems, and market crashes.

Interest Rates & The Chaos Ahead


Armstrong Economics Blog/Interest Rates Re-Posted May 25, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Marty, Your forecast for the Panic Cycle here in Australian politics was correct and it beat all the polls as you did in BREXIT. Our new leader is a full-on board with the WEF climate agenda and will have all cars electric by 2030. As you say, in war you take out the power grid first. I guess this makes the power grid even more of a first-strike target.

I want to thank you for Socrates. It is great to have something that provides a non-emotional forecast. The forecasts you publish on so many things around the world are amazing and accurate.

So my question is this. You were correct that rates would rise, or Socrates was, and you said that there would be shortages with a commodity cycle mixed with war rising and civil unrest. So now that the central banks are in a state of panic, what do you expect with the panic cycle in 2023 in the Fed?

ANSWER: You are correct. Too many people attribute everything to just me as if I have a crystal ball. The forecasts are from the model. Nobody could be forecasting so many things for 40 years on a gut feeling and be correct. The odds of humanity are against that.

People tend to forecast what they want to happen. It is just an inherent human flaw. But it is also what drives markets. The majority of people are influenced by the direction of the trend. So a rising market makes people feel bullish and a declining market makes people more pessimistic. That is just a fact of life. So the ONLY hope for an accurate forecast MUST come from a non-emotional source. Staring into 2023 just looks like total chaos.

I do get the occasional email asking me how I cope with my own forecasts. I look at it this way. If I said here comes my fist, I’m going to punch you in the face. Do you just stand there and smile or do you dodge the punch, or defend against it? Isn’t it better to know something is coming to prepare?

It is more like an out-of-body experience for me personally because these forecasts are the computer and I have to stand here and watch as well as live through them. It is a different experience to forecast these events years in advance and live through them myself.

I am concerned that when you look around the globe, so many things have serious targets and panic cycles in 2023. Even in the war cycle, the computer has the highest aggregate bar for 2023. The central banks are unable to prevent inflation because this is a shortage crisis, not a speculative boom where raising interest rates will reduce the buying.

While the Central Bankers think this is clear sailing, they have entered uncharted waters. The risks of the markets discovering they cannot control the economy anymore will raise the crisis to extreme levels as we head into 2023.

Horrific Elementary School Shooting in Ulvalde, Texas, 19 Students Killed and Two Teachers3


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 24, 2022 | Sundance 

According to officials and media reporting from Texas.  Fourteen eighteen nineteen children and a teacher two teachers have been killed at a Texas elementary school by an 18-year-old gunman who was then shot dead by police. The shooting happened in Ulvade, Texas.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott held a press conference naming 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a student at Uvalde High School, as the gunman who shot and killed 14 Robb elementary school students and one teacher on Tuesday afternoon. WATCH:

The gunman was a resident of the community and entered the school with a handgun, and possibly a rifle, and opened fire, Abbott said. He said the shooter was likely killed by responding officers but that the events were still being investigated.

Bear Spray Doesn’t Work Like Bug Spray


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 24, 2022 | Menagerie 

h/t WeeWeed

This made me think about really dumb things I’ve seen people say or do over the years. You know, the ones that are just a head and shoulders above the usual.

While I’m quite sure every profession has their own share of stupidity, years of working in retail management left me convinced that a huge number of people have no common sense whatsoever, and as most of us know, common sense is often inversely related to IQ. And education!

Here is perhaps my all time favorite unbelievably dumb story. You’re going to think I’m making this up, and it was an attempt at a joke, or someone trying to aggravate me. I promise you, it wasn’t.

Before I went into retail sales and then management, I sold building materials wholesale. My favorite part of that was selling millwork, in particular high end windows and doors like Marvin and Kolbe & Kolbe. There are dozens of details that must be exactly right when dealing with a large custom order of windows and doors, and any mistake can result in the windows not fitting, or other costly problems. Because of the complexity and expense of Marvin orders, most of my retailers simply refused to deal with their own customers and always had me deal directly with the orders.

One of the lumber yards in town had a guy who just wasn’t too bright, and he was kind of treated like the unpopular kid in school by his fellow salesmen. He was a challenge to deal with because he had a way of making errors happen and also promising his customers things that could not be delivered. I wish now, looking back, that I’d been more patient with him, not that I was cruel or unkind. But he sure made my job extra hard. Anyhow, there’s no one left after thirty plus years to harm in an anonymous story.

One job he sold had a pair of french doors in the great room. They were to be placed at the end of the long room, one on either side of a center fireplace, so naturally there was one of each hand. A few days after the order was delivered he called me in a panic, insisting I meet him at the job site to discuss a major problem with the contractor. When I asked him what the problems was, he told me the doors were the wrong hand, both of them.

I never did find out for sure if the contractor and his employees were as dumb as the salesmen or making him the butt of a bad joke. Of course I suspect the latter, but I worked with some really, really dumb contractors too.

I can’t tell you how many times they came in to Home Depot and told me they needed to know how much siding they needed for a 2,000 square foot house. Or how many roof shingles, also giving me square footage without roof pitch and other pertinent information.

Share your best stories, be they professional or from some other walk of like. It’s time to toss a little fun in the day.

How the Democratic Party Abandoned Liberals | Dave Rubin | POLITICS | Rubin Report


Re posted from the The Rubin Report  Published on Rumble on May 20, 2022 

Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks to Tucker Carlson, Lewis Howes, Larry King, and the Babylon Bee about why the Democratic party is turning so many liberals into conservatives in this special “best of” episode. Was Dave Rubin ahead of the curve for leaving the left? As identity politics and the oppression olympics destroy the Democratic party, many more Democrats are being turned towards conservatism and classical liberalism. Whether it’s trainings about intersectionality in the workplace or talk of reparations for slavery no one can run away from woke politics any more. Dave discusses what he learned about systemic racism from Larry Elder, and why collective guilt and victimhood culture are pushing many on a similar political journey.

Can Cryptocurrencies Survive WWIII?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Cryptocurrency

Posted May 20, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

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QUESTION: Hi Marty, You mention that cryptocurrency has been orchestrated to get people accustomed to cryptocurrencies for the end goal of the Great Reset – all digital currency so they can tax, absolutely every transaction. All popular blockchains are transparent and provide no privacy but there are some blockchains that do provide privacy and are uncensorable. Do you think crypto could ultimately live up to its name?

Alan

ANSWER: The sales pitch behind cryptocurrency is seriously flawed. (1) they depend entirely upon the government; with the stroke of a pen, they can all be seized; (2) They also depend upon a power grid; (3) they also become dependent upon others accepting them. But note that the last 12 years from 2020 to 2032 were dominated by a rising authoritarian level of government. That means you better not trust that they will simply standby and allow some alternative currency to defeat them. It’s not going to happen. Anyone who disagrees has unprecedented confidence in politicians. I’m amazed when people believe that government really cares about them.

The scenario they put out is that these are outside the fiat system and thus somehow surviving. The only thing outside the fiat system as they want to call it is EVERYTHING tangible from real estate, stocks, collectibles, and precious metals. There is a much greater track record behind those and how they survive than cryptocurrencies. If the world went to Hell in a hand-basket as they say, there is no power grid, then how is a cryptocurrency going to survive?

In a Mad Max event, the #1 store of value will be food. Forget anything dependent upon the power grid. When the United States wages war as in Iraq, the first thing they do is take down the power grid, the communications, and then the water supply. Step back and look at Putin and Ukraine. He seized the nuclear power station, the biggest in Europe, but he did not shut it down. He did not knock out the communications and he did not attack the water supply. All of that PROVES he had no intention of conquering Ukraine, but he was in fact defending the separation of Donbas.

If we were to get into a direct war with Russia or China, they will attack those three key sectors — power, communication, and water. How are cryptocurrencies going to survive such an event?

Call me old fashion, old-school, or just old. But the most PRACTICAL thing you can do is have pre-1965 silver coins that the average person can recognize and see the date knowing that it is valuable. We have all seen those videos where a person is offered a silver bar or a chocolate bar, and they take the chocolate. DO NOT judge everyone by yourself. Just because you understand something does not mean everyone does.

Cryptocurrencies are TRADING VEHICLES but not a long-term asset class. Our computer called the top in the cryptos, and it has been the ONLY unbiased forecaster out there. This is why so many major institutions and central banks look at our system — it has NO conflict of interest and NO HUMAN EMOTIONS (like Spock of Star Trek). Someone neck-deep in crypto will never see a decline because they are influenced by their own position.

Socrates independently writes over 1,000 reports every day covering markets around the world. We are NOT blocked in China or Russia because they KNOW this is written by a computer and it is objective. Here is a video providing just a quick overview of the various markets and economic statistics that are available. There are not enough analysts in the world to write these many reports daily.

Pennsylvania Senate Republican Race is a Dead Heat as Candidates Make Closing Arguments


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

The republican primary race in Pennsylvania is essentially a three-way tie going in to voting day tomorrow.  All three of the top candidates are carrying approximately 25 percent of the vote with around 15 percent still undecided.   It really is anyone’s race.

President Trump has sent robocalls into Pennsylvania to support Mehmet Oz as a last-minute effort to push his endorsement over the line. “I’ve just spent a lot of time with him. I did endorse him, and the reason is he’s tough, he’s smart and he really loves our country and he wants to do a great job for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

Fox News Sean Hannity also hosted Mehmet Oz on his evening broadcast to deliver his closing arguments, while Fox News Laura Ingraham provided the same opportunity for David McCormick.  In the counterbalancing effort, Steve Bannon hosted Kathy Barnette for an interview Monday providing her the opportunity to speak to the Bannon audience.

The wild aspect to this race is the still high number of undecided voters as the final hours count down.   McCormick representing the party candidate, with both Oz and Barnette splitting the MAGA base.  Pennsylvania undecideds have a tough decision.

Mehmet Oz is not trusted by the base despite President Trump’s endorsement.  Kathy Barnette is the landing place for many base voters who do not want to support the establishment McCormick and cannot bring themselves to vote for Oz.  However, democrats and left-wing media are already showing their intent to weaponize Barnette’s attendance at the J6 rally in Washington DC, if she should win the primary {Video Here}.

As expected, David McCormick’s current position tying all three of them at the top of the polling, appears to have resulted as a splitter strategy from the fractured MAGA base.

Many people just cannot support Mehmet Oz because of his prior positions on issues of importance.  Oz is by far President Trump’s most controversial endorsement of the year.  As an outcome, those who refuse to vote for Oz lean heavily toward Kathy Barnette.

(Via Politico) – […] “You are seeing people move to McCormick because he is a trustworthy conservative,” said James Schultz, a former Trump White House lawyer who is close to McCormick’s campaign. “We have seen for this entire cycle Mehmet Oz’s struggle with the truth. With Barnette, there have been many questions surrounding her truthfulness as well.”

Messaging from McCormick’s campaign on Monday appeared to concede that he is one of multiple candidates crowded at the front of the pack. The campaign wrote in an election eve press release that McCormick would make the case to Republicans that he is “the only front-runner who grew up in Pennsylvania and shares the same conservative values as PA voters.”

A series of other twists in recent days have added to the sense of volatility ahead of Tuesday’s primary election. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the leading Democratic Senate candidate, remains hospitalized after suffering a stroke over the weekend. And Trump, on Saturday weighed in with a last-minute endorsement in the governor’s race, picking Doug Mastriano, the candidate who is publicly backing and campaigning with Barnette.  (read more)

This race will be very interesting to watch on Tuesday as the votes come in.  However, with the race so close, and with all three of the leading candidates willing to request a recount, we might not even know the results tomorrow.


Project Veritas Releases Video of Senior Twitter Engineer Describing Culture and Ideology of The Platform


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

A senior engineer working for the Twitter social media platform is captured on undercover video explaining the culture and ideology of the people who work within the organization.

In the video Twitter Sr. Engineer, Siru Murugesan, a self-described communist, explains why most of his colleagues are freaked out about Twitter being purchased by Elon Musk and operating as a capitalistic company.  Many might have to work more than 4 hours a week to earn their salary. WATCH:

[NEW YORK – May 16, 2022] Project Veritas published explosive undercover footage on Monday night featuring one of Twitter’s senior engineers discussing the dynamics behind internal reactions to the acquisition of the tech company by business magnate, Elon Musk.

In the video, Twitter Sr. Engineer, Siru Murugesan, says many of his colleagues have voiced “this would be my last day if it happens,” referring to Musk’s high publicized intended purchase of Twitter. He also says employees at Twitter are “stress-eating” and “worried for our jobs.”

More significant than those soundbites are the reasons he says employees at Twitter feel this way. (read more)

The Twitter Bot Inquiry Intensifies as Musk is Seemingly Stiff Armed


Posted Originally on the conservative tree house on May 16, 2022 | Sundance

The ramifications for Twitter surrounding fake users or algorithmic bots are considerable.  One issue is overcharging advertisers for ad impressions based on mDAU’s, which are “monetized Daily Active Users.”  The second issue is an outcome of the first and relates to the valuation of Twitter.  If Twitter bots are higher than Twitter estimates, then the mDAU rate is overstated.

Elon Musk is indicating there may need to be a lowering of the purchase price unless Twitter becomes transparent with how they are calculating the number of bot users at less than 5%.  All outside reviews attempting to estimate the number of fake accounts, or bots, puts the estimations considerably higher than the claims by Twitter.  Elon Musk tweeted:

At “The All In Summit 2022,” Elon Musk gave the impression the purchase price of Twitter may be tenuous.  He said that a deal with a lower price tag is not “out of the question,” Bloomberg reported.  “Currently, what I’m being told is that there’s just no way to know the number of bots… It’s like, as unknowable as the human soul,” Musk said at the Miami conference, per a social media video, Bloomberg added.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrwal has responded to the controversy in a very obtuse twitter thread:

Let’s talk about spam. And let’s do so with the benefit of data, facts, and context…

First, let me state the obvious: spam harms the experience for real people on Twitter, and therefore can harm our business. As such, we are strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can, every single day. Anyone who suggests otherwise is just wrong.

Next, spam isn’t just ‘binary’ (human / not human). The most advanced spam campaigns use combinations of coordinated humans + automation. They also compromise real accounts, and then use them to advance their campaign. So – they are sophisticated and hard to catch.

Some final context: fighting spam is incredibly *dynamic*. The adversaries, their goals, and tactics evolve constantly – often in response to our work! You can’t build a set of rules to detect spam today, and hope they will still work tomorrow. They will not.

We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter. We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam – if they can’t pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc).

The hard challenge is that many accounts which look fake superficially – are actually real people. And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous – and cause the most harm to our users – can look totally legitimate on the surface.

Our team updates our systems and rules constantly to remove as much spam as possible, without inadvertently suspending real people or adding unnecessary friction for real people when they use Twitter: none of us want to solve a captcha every time we use Twitter.

Now, we know we aren’t perfect at catching spam. And so this is why, after all the spam removal I talked about above, we know some still slips through. We measure this internally. And every quarter, we have estimated that <5% of reported mDAU for the quarter are spam accounts.

Our estimate is based on multiple human reviews (in replicate) of thousands of accounts, that are sampled at random, consistently over time, from *accounts we count as mDAUs*. We do this every quarter, and we have been doing this for many years.

Each human review is based on Twitter rules that define spam and platform manipulation, and uses both public and private data (eg, IP address, phone number, geolocation, client/browser signatures, what the account does when it’s active…) to make a determination on each account.

The use of private data is particularly important to avoid misclassifying users who are actually real. FirstnameBunchOfNumbers with no profile pic and odd tweets might seem like a bot or spam to you, but behind the scenes we often see multiple indicators that it’s a real person.

Our actual internal estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5% – based on the methodology outlined above. The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements each quarter.

Unfortunately, we don’t believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share). Externally, it’s not even possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs on any given day.

There are LOTS of details that are very important underneath this high-level description. We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him, and all of you.  (Link to Twitter Article)

Methinks Parag Agrwal doth protest too much….  Especially if you overlay the ideological incentives that Twitter carries into its operational platform.

If you accept that Twitter is manipulating the public conversation intentionally (they are), then Twitter bots would serve an ideological function.  However, the issue of ‘bots’ operating on the Twitter platform is interesting when you consider the cost of platform operation.

On one hand, extensive auto-generated ‘bots’ would be an issue of cost and data-processing, a net negative.  On the other hand, the use of bots would be a manipulative practice for the creation of false impressions to generate advertising revenue.

If the scale of data-processing was subsidized, an outcome of a network of data processing centers -the AWS cloud- linked to government resources, the bots would not be a cost issue for the operation.  Despite the false impressions generated, bots would, however, under this weird situation, be useful for the manipulation of the conversation.

At the root of Elon Musk’s line of inquiry is the need to discover if this suspicion is true.

If the scale of bots has been underestimated (likely by a willfully blind operation) the advertising fees charged by Twitter were potentially fraudulent.  This is another operational reason (mitigating lawsuits from advertisers) for Musk to make the determination prior to the final purchase of the platform.

Taking Twitter private as a company, eliminating bots (which is essentially removing fraudulent users) then carries the potential benefits of both lowering costs and positioning the company to increase genuine ad revenue from authenticated users as real people.

Many people suspect the size of the political left on the Twitter platform is manipulated by programatic bots.  Meaning there seems to be more people on the left side of the spectrum because bots are deployed to give the impression of like-minded users.  I am one of the people who believe this suspicion is accurate, because it would be a typical way the ideological left operates.

The bots would be in addition to the deployment of algorithms that are designed to suppress speech the platform operators do not like.

I have long suspected the Twitter algorithm process is essentially assigning certain users into specifically designed data-processing containers where their voice is suppressed.   Some people call this ‘shadow-banning,’ I simply call it suppression.

Elon Musk represents a threat to the way the platform was/is designed to operate.  If Musk removes the discussion constraints, opens the containers and removes the restrictions, while simultaneously eliminating bots and fake accounts, the entire perspective of the platform could change very quickly.  This is what I think the current board and operators are trying to avoid.

Another rudimentary way to look at it…. Think about the last several months of public opinion polls.   Despite the efforts of a compliant media, repeatedly we see a 75/25 split against Biden and leftist policies.  The 3:4 and/or 4:5 ratio has been a consistent pattern for several months.  That ratio shows up in almost every poll.  However, if you look at Twitter that ratio is not present in the “organic” conversation about the same issues.

As CTH has said for many years, there are more of us than them.  However, Big Tech controls the mechanisms we use to communicate – and as a consequence the scale of our assembly is severely understated.

Twitter user fraud is the digital and social media equivalent to voter election fraud.   The voices raised in opposition to researching both issues are exactly the same.

Suspicious Cat remains, well, suspicious….

Ten People Killed, 3 Wounded, After 18-year-old Gunman Opens Fire in Buffalo Supermarket


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

What appears to be a horrific racially motivated attack has left 10 people dead, including a store security guard at a Buffalo grocery store earlier today.

Police arrested 18-year-old Peyton Gendron at the scene after Buffalo police charged into the store and confronted the gunman in the vestibule.  Press Conference VIDEO:

(Via Daily Mail) – […] Gendron was caught by police emerging from the Tops Friendly Supermarket, at 1275 Jefferson Avenue about 2.30pm after shooting 13 people, 10 fatally. 

Police said 11 of those shot were black, with the other two white, and suggested Gendron had walked through the supermarket looking for specific people to target, although didn’t say whether this was based on the color of their skin.

Aaron Salter Jr, a former Buffalo police officer, is the first victim that’s been named in the attack. The father of three is being hailed as a hero after exchanging gunfire with Gendron inside the market. 

Gendron apparently scrawled the n-word on his rifle before carrying out Saturday’s massacre at Tops Friendly Supermarket in Buffalo. 

Three gunshot victims are being treated for their injuries, and cops say 11 of those shot were black. 

Gendron lived-streamed the assault as he opened fire inside the Tops Friendly Supermarket, at 1275 Jefferson Avenue, at about 2.30pm.

Police described the incident as a ‘heavily armed’ attack. 

‘He exited his vehicle. He was very heavily armed. He had tactical gear. He had a tactical helmet on. He had a camera that he was livestreaming what he was doing,’ city Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said at a news conference. (read more)