Everything about the Maui fire is sketchy.  It was sketchy when it happened. It is sketchy in the aftermath, and it remains sketchy in the recovery stage.  The FBI, EPA and FEMA have essentially locked down the island, and there are reports of people being evicted who did not perish and did not lose their homes.

I’m not sure if the issues are related to systemically gross incompetence, nefarious constructs, a blue state with poor systems and weak leaders, or a combination of all the above.  However, what is abundantly clear is that the people of Maui are victims of more than just a massive wildfire.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green appears on “Face the Nation” to tell Margareet Brennan that the failure of the now-resigned Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator was “utterly unsatisfactory, to the world.” “Of course, as a person, as a father, as a doctor, I wish all the sirens went off,” Green said.  The governor also stated there are more than 1,000 people still missing and many of them are children.  He blames global warming. WATCH:

[Transcript] –  MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to Hawaii’s Governor Joshua Green in Honolulu. Good morning. Thank you for getting up so early, and I’m so sorry for what is going on in your state.

GOV. JOSH GREEN: Thank you, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Governor, can you tell us how many are still unaccounted for, and how long will it take to identify remains?

GOV. GREEN: More than 1000 are unaccounted for, about 1050. It will take several weeks, still, some of the challenges are going to be extraordinary. As you reported, 85% of the- of the land of the impact zone has been covered now by what amounts to an army of search and rescue teams and 41 dogs. So 85% of the land has been covered. Now we go into the larger buildings, which require peeling back some of the floors and structures. That last 15% could take weeks. We do have extreme concerns that because of the temperature of the fire, the remains of those who have died, in some cases, may be impossible to recover meaningfully. So, there are going to be people that are lost forever. And right now, we’re working obviously with the FBI and everyone on the ground to make sure that we do what we can to assess who’s missing.

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I swear this guy has people looking over my research shoulder.  Tucker Carlson travels to Hungary, home of PM Viktor Orban, for an interview with the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić.  Carlson then shares a preview of the upcoming conversation {Direct Rumble Link}.

We have discussed Hungary quite a bit, because Viktor Orban has been a very public thorn in the side of Joe Biden, the CIA and USAID (same/same), along with the US State Dept. It makes sense that Orban, via Budapest, would be a safe host for a discussion between Tucker Carlson and Aleksandar Vucic. WATCH:

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CBS has produced another poll [DATA HERE] just ahead of the first-loser GOPe debate in Wisconsin. President Trump, with 62% support, holds a whopping 46-point lead in the 2024 GOP primary election, as Ron DeSantis continues to collapse in national and early state polls.

For the billionaire Wall Street donors, multinationals and corporate funders of the DeSantis campaign, the scale of epic fail is off the charts.  Never before have so few given so much for so little.  It pains Margaret Brennan to pretend so much. WATCH:

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[Transcript – MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to the 2024 campaign and our new CBS News poll shows former President Trump with his biggest lead yet this cycle with support of 62 percent of Republican primary voters surveyed. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has dropped since our last survey. He’s now at 16 percent. And the rest of the field remains in single digits as most of them prepare for the primary debate coming up later this week.

Our elections and surveys director Anthony Salvanto is here with us.

Anthony, it’s great to see you in person.

ANTHONY SALVANTO: Good to see you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So, does it matter to these primary voters if Donald Trump is on that stage or not?

ANTHONY SALVANTO: Well, he’s not in a competitive race right now. Right now they would nominate him and it would be not close. It would be an easy win for him.

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I’m not always right.  Sometimes events change and intersections take place on the path toward the predicted outcome.  However, when ancillary events -mostly driven by human intervention in an effort to avoid what’s coming- do not cross the directional path, we arrive at the predicted destination.

At the end of May CTH shared the motive behind a series of events we should see unfold on the Twitter platform.  By the time we arrived in June, there was enough actual data to solidify a timeline {GO DEEP}. Shortly after, the New York Times published leaked revenue side documents allowing us to calculate an accurate burn rate {Go Deep} for the situation around Elon Musk.  Through this accurate financial prism, everything that Elon Musk has done lines up in sequence {Go Deep}.

Cliff Notes Version:  Musk has a deficit burn rate of around $250 to $300 million per month.  Musk runs out of working capital in Sept/Oct, depending on how quickly Yaccarino was/is able to enhance revenue.

Regardless of revenue, and because she just can’t generate it fast enough, approximately, seven weeks from now Musk has to secure another roughly $5 billion, to give himself enough breathing room to continue operations.

Musk has lost the $30 billion he put in.  The current estimates are that Twitter is now worth between $12 to $15 billion.   There is debt of $12.5 billion from the initial purchase structure still in place.  The asset is worth its debt, not much more.

With a current debt service of $100+ million per month, adding another $50 million/month ($5 billion loan) is tenuous at best. And that’s IF he can secure that investment loan.  Musk has admitted he is personally limited in leverage using Tesla.  He is approaching an inflexion point.  1 million subscribers paying $8/month is pittance ($8 million).

Recently X-Corp:  (1) Linda Yaccarino introduced the novel concept of speech that was “lawful but awful” and must be suppressed. (2) Their desire to remove the block function. (3) Restrictions on visibility, “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.” (4) and hired back a platform censorship team.  All of these measures are designed to make “safe spaces” for advertisers to return.   In essence, they are all revenue decisions.

People inside tech, and even people inside the X-Corp organization, who initially did not think my analysis was accurate, are now starting to admit it is the most likely scenario.

This arc of directional travel is not going to change, especially with Musk needing to go back into the capital markets for more working cash.  Everything we are seeing is a result of this financial dynamic and the desperation is starting to show.

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Two good facets for Southern California as Hilary arrives.  First, she’s losing power and has dropped into strong tropical storm strength.  Second, she’s moving north very fast at 25 mph, which is contributing to the weakening.  The storm event should be complete for the state in less than 24 hours. That said, the rain and flooding look to be the biggest issue for the region. [NHS Information]

Six to ten inches of heavy rain with sustained winds of 40 mph+, with higher gusts, can create major issues for an area of hard soil that doesn’t generally get large amounts of rain in a short period of time.  Washed out roads, fallen trees, flash flooding and other significant risks associated with this scale of rain are the major concern.  As with most storms of this type, if you are in higher elevation areas the wind will be much stronger.

Hurricane Center – {…] At 800 AM PDT (1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Hilary was located near latitude 29.7 North, longitude 115.9 West. Hilary is moving quickly toward the north-northwest near 25 mph (41 km/h). Hilary is expected to accelerate even more as it moves north-northwestward to northward during the next day or so. On the forecast track, the center of Hilary will move near or over the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula during the next few hours, and then move across southern California this afternoon. (more)

All preparations should be completed and everyone in the zone of largest impact should remain indoors for the next 24 hours.  Power failures are highly likely as the storm will knock out electricity throughout the region. [Good luck to those with EV’s] In the hours immediately following the storm, do not travel.  Stay close to home as the emergency service and first responders will activate to the areas of greatest issue.

We have quite a few Treepers in this area.  Check in when you can and if you need anything send us an email or drop a comment, I will be checking throughout.  The biggest issue I would foresee is the potential for weakened infrastructure, roads, bridges and systems that perhaps have not encountered high pressure or stress for many years.

Always take these things seriously, but do not alarm yourself with dark imaginings.  Be prudent, be wise and be safe. Focus on the immediate area around your home, pull your family in close, watch out for each other and mitigate risks from a 100-foot perspective.  [If “it” (a risk or threat) is within 100′, that’s your focus.]

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the JoeBama Administration and Presidency.

“This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won’t be done. The Founders’ Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.”

“But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.”

~ Mike Vanderboegh

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

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For his weekly monologue, Neil Oliver hits on a familiar metaphor.  The grand theatrical performance of global politics and the orchestration of the actors and scripts.  The difference, in this modern era, is that no one in the audience is watching the pantomime any longer; it is all too predictable.   WATCH:

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Feeling empowered after his boost from Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp, a man of notoriously intemperate disposition, presidential candidate Ron DeSantis begins the process to align himself with the neocon establishment and labeling Donald Trump supporters as “listless vessels” devoid of principle, who simply “follow whatever comes down the pike from Truth Social every morning.”

Appearing with a young millennial wearing a beaver tail on his head, namely Will Witt from the Florida Standard, Ron DeSantis outlines his opinion that the MAGA movement is only driven by the support of President Donald Trump, a person who has exhausted his usefulness in awakening the electorate.  As a result, the high-minded superior intellects of the Republican Party now need to step in, reestablish the core values of the conservative movement, and put the squirming MAGA children in their play pens.

You can watch the entire interview below; I’m just prompting it to the part that best highlights the sanctimonious arrogance of a dim-witted candidate who really doesn’t carry his own policies, only those of the managers and branding consultants that create his talking points.  WATCH:

What the insufferable DeSantis and his branding/image consultants pretend not to know, is that President Trump’s America First policies are the driving force behind the MAGA movement.  Those policies consist of three main attributes that are non-existent in any other candidate:

Immigration.  The construct of a southern border wall, denial of illegal entry and a return to immigration border controls that block illegal aliens. 

Economics.  The implementation of MAGAnomics that puts incentives behind Made In America.  Baseline tariffs on all imports. The removal of the 70-year-old one-way Marshal plan for tariffs on USA products into the EU.  Reciprocal tariffs against all nations who participate in bilateral Free Trade Agreements, and a return to America first manufacturing independence.

Foreign Policy.  The withdrawal of USA interventionist foreign policy. The respect of national borders and national policies that are the outcome of the independent will of people within sovereign nations.  The primary responsibility of NATO funding, support and activity, to the member states of the European Union. The use of USA economic strength as a national security weapon. 

Those three pillars form the baseline of the America First policy that President Trump represents.  No other candidate comes even close to the policies therein.  President Trump represents the vessel we are using to force the professional political class to accept these policy priorities. MAGA is a set of policies uniquely attributed to President Trump, because only Trump willingly represents those policies.

The GOPe know this; so too does Ron DeSantis and his handlers.  Every candidate in the Republican field understands this set of policies, and they have been paid by the multinational donors to pretend they do not know.  Their collective GOPe mission is to destroy the policy platform; therefore, they must attack the core of the Trump supporters by pretending not to know.

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Big Picture: Democrats want power, Republicans want money – and when it comes to foreign policy, they are in complete UniParty alignment.  This is the baseline to understand why only Donald J. Trump represents an alternative to the foreign policy worldview of the corrupt DC system.  This is also why they hate him and us.

There is no genuine alternative, no distinction between the foreign policy of professional Democrats and the foreign policy of professional Republicans.  The nature of each wing of the UniParty vulture flows in complete sync on the issues of U.S. global interests and the multinational beneficiaries who pay for the policies of intervention.

At the absolute core of the issue for Republicans is the money. The financial mechanisms which create a need for outcomes in various nations.  The ultimate and biggest pay-to-play scheme, where the policy of the United States is sold to the highest bidder and becomes an outcome of the interests of the multinational corporations.  It is maddening to watch this dynamic continue to play out and yet feel incapable of stopping it. This is part of the value in Donald Trump.

(Politico) – Speaking to Erick Erickson at an Atlanta-area conference on Saturday morning, Christie went deep on his foreign policy vision, saying the U.S. must push back against authoritarian leaders and uphold democratic rights and norms in a broad preview of what foreign policy in his administration would look like (more).

Uphold “democratic rights and norms” while we still have the memories of the COVID-19 regime in our memory banks.  How exactly was democracy evident in forced vaccinations, mandated medical rules by fiat, shutdowns, lockdowns, violations of just about every right these presumed democrat leaders claim to advocate?  Who exactly are the totalitarians in this equation?

It wasn’t Russia or Vladimir who forced the U.S. government to mandate medical procedures.  It wasn’t China or Xi Jinping who denied people the ability to comfort their sick, infirmed and dying loved ones.  It wasn’t North Korea or Chairman Kim who arrested parents on playgrounds, chased people from the beach or set about rules saying if you were seated in a restaurant you were safe, but if you stood up the rona would kill you.  These were the insufferable fiats of hypocritical politicians right here in the USA.

But seeing as it is Chris Christie making this argument, let me go bigger.

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