Olena Zelenska, wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, traveled to Paris France for a three-day visit December 12-14.  As reported by Le Monde, “Members of the Ukrainian government will also come, including Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, and several ministers in charge of reconstruction, including Yulia Svyrydenko (economy), Oleksandr Kubrakov (infrastructure) and German Galushchenko (energy).”

However, social media has erupted today after a “reliable store clerk” working on the ritzy Avenue Montaigne, has reported that Olena Zelenska went on a Christmas shopping spree spending €40,000 euros in an hour. (citation) Previously President Zelenskyy’s wife was received by French first lady Bridget Macron.

If the reporting is accurate, the spending spree comes at a bad time optically, as Mrs. Zelenska’s husband Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is simultaneously asking the European Union to provide more financial support for the embattled country.

Additionally, the Biden administration is trying to push congress to pass another $38 billion spending package for Ukraine to bring the total spent well over $100 billion.

Mrs. Zelenskyy Christmas shopping in glitzy Paris stores and dropping €40,000 while her husband bangs his tin cup isn’t exactly a good look.

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House Democrats have returned to their old ‘deem as passed’ playbook to provide a vehicle for the Senate to construct another stopgap omnibus spending bill despite the legally required non-origination from the House.

WASHINGTON DC – The House is expected to pass a stopgap spending bill Wednesday night that would give negotiators an extra week to finish a $1.7 trillion year-end spending package, setting up an all-out legislative sprint before lawmakers leave for the holidays. (more)

Texas Representative Chip Roy explains exactly what the House is doing.  WATCH:

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Yup, it’s Deja vu all over again.

Did you know the last regular order congressional budget was passed in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008.  That’s it.  Every single year from 2008 to now has been a series of baseline budgeting, continuous resolutions and omnibus spending bills.

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The political branding and campaign team behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have structured a “Win with Ron 2024” strategy constructed around the politicization of the COVID-19 vaccine.  Yesterday, the team launched the effort through the governor’s office [Details Here].

The polarizing federal vaccine and mask mandates continue to create an opportunity for exploitation by political interests.  The WWR ’24 team see the opportunity within the republican base for Ron DeSantis to create a 2024 lane by presenting himself in alignment with medical autonomy in a similar vein that a candidate might create with strong support for the second amendment.

To accomplish this brand strategy, the people around DeSantis need to pretend the Florida Governor did not advocate for lockdowns and vaccines in 2020 and 2021; even going so far as to threaten the liquor licenses for non-compliant bars and restaurants.  Through a series of continuous and carefully organized drumbeats surrounding the later held position on medical freedom and autonomy, the WWR24 team attempt to rewrite history in advance of his 2024 GOP nomination announcement.

The branding and image strategy for Ron DeSantis has been carefully mapped since early 2022 and includes the coy game of pretending to be above the national political fray while simultaneously dropping into national political issues at carefully constructed moments.

COVID-19 has been poll-tested amid the base of the republican party and positions have been established based on surveyed responses.  That’s the background for a rollout that took place yesterday in Florida complete with the creation of a Florida Public Health Integrity Committee.  The Florida governor grabs headlines by asking for a state grand jury to “hold the federal government and Big Pharma accountable.”

The ‘medical freedom‘ rollout yesterday included a simultaneously timed 2024 election primary poll showing DeSantis with the highest favorability rating.

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The logic within the research outline is silly.  Unvaccinated people have a 72% higher rate of severe vehicle accidents than vaccinated drivers according to the study.

Could it be the difference between rural vs metropolitan populations; one drives frequently, for longer durations and distances, while the other does not?

Apparently, that type of commonsense possibility did not make it into the analysis.  However, the authors of the study do suggest insurance companies should start considering insurance risk hikes based on vaccination status.

(Via Yahoo) – If you passed on getting the COVID vaccine, you might be a lot more likely to get into a car crash.

Or at least those are the findings of a new study published this month in The American Journal of Medicine. During the summer of 2021, Canadian researchers examined the encrypted government-held records of more than 11 million adults, 16% of whom hadn’t received the COVID vaccine.

They found that the unvaccinated people were 72% more likely to be involved in a severe traffic crash—in which at least one person was transported to the hospital—than those who were vaccinated. That’s similar to the increased risk of car crashes for people with sleep apnea, though only about half that of people who abuse alcohol, researchers found.

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Mike Lindell appears with Steve Bannon to talk about his progress so far contacting RNC members who will vote for the next chairmanship position in January. {Direct Rumble Link} Currently, Ronna McDaniel, Harmeet Dhillon and Mike Lindell are the top three candidates seeking to take control of the RNC chair position.

Ronna McDaniel is the current chair akin to Mitch McConnell (Tim Scott ’24), Harmeet Dhillon represents party interests in alignment with Kevin McCarthy (Ron DeSantis ’24), and Mike Lindell is the outsider voice in the MAGA lane.   WATCH:

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President Trump has announced on Truth Social that he will be making an announcement about something tomorrow.  Perhaps President Trump is planning an endorsement for the RNC chair in this race.

Given the nature of the 2024 contest as it is being carried out by the schemes, plans and strategies of the background participants, I would love to see President Trump endorse Mr. Lindell and force the RNC into a position that would create a bigger potential for a second party to break through.

Let the club reject Lindell, sooner or later the Republican party needs to be fractured.  Continuing to work on reforming a party that connives for its own interest and hates the voting base is not sustainable.

The DNC wants power. The RNC wants money. The DNC uses money to get power. The RNC uses power to get money. The ideology of the DNC drives their donor activity. The donor activity of the RNC drives their ideology. This is the only current difference between the two clubs, two wings of the same vulture.

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As we have often discussed on these pages, inflation would ultimately moderate and plateau not because prices were dropping but rather because of the calendar cycle.

As the economy cycles through a year of large price increases, the current inflation rate cycles through to the period when prices first increased.  This calendar cycle means continued price increases are lower as a percentage and thus the inflation rate appears to modify despite prices continuing to rise. [BLS Report]

This scenario, prices remaining high and continuing to climb – yet lower as a percentage, now provides the justification for the federal reserve to state inflation is moderating.

(Via NBC) – Amid signs that price growth in the U.S. economy is rapidly cooling, the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it was slowing the pace of its rate-hiking program designed to tackle inflation — but that more hikes were still on the table.

The Federal Open Market Committee said it was increasing its key federal funds rate by 0.5%, after announcing four-straight 0.75% hikes at its most recent meetings. In its Wednesday statement, the Fed said it continues to target an inflation rate of 2% over the long term and would continue to increase the federal funds rate to do so.

“Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices, and broader price pressures,” the committee said.

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For his weekly monologue today, U.K pundit Neil Oliver looks at the climate change agenda, energy policy, and the constructs of how the new green agenda manifest to create new ways for people to die.

We aren’t allowed the energy available from a century of gas beneath our feet here in Britain – because it’s not Green. But we’re paying top dollar for nine billion cubic litres – twice as much as last year’s order – of gas fracked out of the ground in the US. WATCH:

[Transcript] -Winter arrived last week – and with it a dose of reality. All that talk about wrapping up warm in the house, putting on an extra jumper, hot water bottles, full-size onesies – it’s dangerous nonsense. It might be fine for a while if you’re a healthy adult – but it’s a tragedy in slow motion for babies, young children, the elderly, the sick.

And it’s only the second week in December. It’s a long time until Spring.

Even if layering up and donning a hat were enough to keep a body going, once cold properly gets a grip of a house, it too starts to die in its own way.

The creep of dampness that takes its own toll on house and health alike. Frozen pipes – followed by burst pipes – and not enough plumbers to go round. People who can’t afford to heat their homes are likely struggling with spiking food bills as well.

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Apparently, Dept of Energy Nuclear Waste official Sam Brinton is facing grand larceny charges from Las Vegas in connection to another luggage theft incident.

Following a previous case in Missouri, it appears non-binary Ms/Mr. Brinton is a serial thief of women’s garments from airports.

(New York Post) – The rainbow atomic symbol T-shirt should have been a clue.

Sam Brinton, the allegedly sticky-fingered Biden administration nuclear official, was captured on security footage making off with a woman’s bag worth more than $3,670 from a Las Vegas airport on July 6, KLAS News reported.

A surveillance snap from Harry Reid International Airport shows a stern-faced Brinton wearing the white T-shirt with the colorful symbol, a black backpack, and black jeans, rolling the suitcase in question through the airport.

The distinctive tee — which Brinton sported in a selfie posted to Instagram that same day — led the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to issue a warrant for Brinton’s arrest on grand larceny charges, according to a detective’s declaration.

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… Both were targets of the U.S. government’s use of Twitter and social media to manipulate election outcomes.

While current conservative headlines are filled with discussion surrounding revelations of Twitter being used by U.S. government officials to control and manipulate public opinion, it is worthwhile reminding everyone how this process was first triggered – and then look at how the intelligence community applied the lessons to the USA in 2020.

The Obama administration first created the public-private partnership with Twitter and Facebook to support the “Arab Spring” uprising.   As a consequence, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was the first elected official to be taken out by former President Obama’s deployment of Twitter as a community activist tool for revolution in 2011. In direct and consequential ways, Egypt was the BETA test for a process that surface a decade later in the United States during the 2020 election.

Using and influencing social media was a tool created by the Obama state department, as noted years ago in Mic.Com:

[…] In countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, rising action plans such as protests made up of thousands, have been organized through social media such Facebook and Twitter. “We use Facebook to schedule the protests” an Arab Spring activist from Egypt announced “and [we use] Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” The role that technology has taken in allowing the distribution of public information such as the kinds stated by the aforementioned activist, had been essential in establishing the democratic movement that has helped guide abused civilians to overthrow their oppressor. (link)

(NationalPulse) The most popular Twitter hashtags in the Arab region in the first three months of this year were “Egypt”, “Jan25”, “Libya”, “Bahrain” and “protest”.

Nearly 9 in 10 Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed in March said they were using Facebook to organise protests or spread awareness about them. All but one of the protests called for on Facebook ended up coming to life on the streets.

These and other findings from the newly released second edition of the Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011. (link)

Fast forward to 2020, and those same elements deployed against the Egyptian government were deployed in the United States in a coordinated public-private partnership with Twitter, Facebook and social media.

The U.S. government control over these social media platforms is ultimately what lies at the heart of the latest Twitter Files release.

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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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