The $40 billion UniParty aid package for Ukraine pass the senate this afternoon in a vote of 86-11 (vote tally below).

The Biden administration had originally requested $33 billion, but congress did not feel he was spending enough. The House added an additional $7 billion and passed the $40 billion legislation last week.  Today the Senate voted 86-11 to approve the package which is targeted to last 5 months and includes U.S. taxpayers funding the salaries and pension benefits for officials in the Ukraine government.

11 republican senators voted against the massive money laundering operation. They were Senators Blackburn (R-TN), Boozman (R-AR), Braun (R-IN), Crapo (R-ID), Hagerty (R-TN), Hawley (R-MO), Lee (R-UT), Lummis (R-WY), Marshall (R-KS), Paul (R-KY), Tuberville (R-AL).

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The second day of witness testimony in the trial of Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI was completed on Wednesday.  For a good recap of the granular aspects Techno Fog has a play-by-play SUMMARY HERE.

For CTH readers I want to focus on a point that is visible in the defense argument and challenging, insofar as it has not yet been revealed, in the prosecution position.   The issue surrounds why Rodney Joffe gave the Alfa-bank fraudulent information to Michael Sussmann instead of just giving it to the FBI himself.  {A Question Margot Cleveland posits here}

In the cross examination of the first set of prosecution witnesses the defense lawyers keep contending that Sussmann did not lie about the fraudulently created origin of the Alfa-Bank material and there was no reason for him not to tell the FBI he was a courier for the Clinton campaign.  The defense is essentially that Sussmann and the FBI knew he was working for the Clinton campaign when he delivered the fraudulent material.  Sussmann wasn’t trying to hide anything, ergo he didn’t lie.

Sussmann’s defensive point is essentially true.  The DOJ, FBI and everyone associated with the information knew they were receiving opposition research from the Clinton campaign.  However, the FBI had to pretend they didn’t know in order to use it to start an investigation.

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Do you know what it’s technically called when “government takes control of the means of production?”  Yeah, that.

This afternoon Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) giving Health and Human Services (HHS) the legal authority to control the supplies needed for the creation of baby formula (how it is made), and the authority to determine distribution equity (who gets it).  Emphasis mine:

White House [DPA Sec. 2] – “[T]he authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act to require performance of contracts or orders … is delegated to the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to all health resources, including the ingredients necessary to manufacture infant formula.”

“(b)  The Secretary of Health and Human Services may use the authority under section 101 of the Act to determine, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and the heads of other executive departments and agencies as appropriate, the proper nationwide priorities and allocation of all ingredients necessary to manufacture infant formula, including controlling the distribution of such materials (including applicable services) in the civilian market, for responding to the shortage of infant formula within the United States.” (read more)

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, an über-leftist who ironically self-describes as an abortion absolutist, is now in charge of infant formula manufacture and distribution. You do not need to be a conspiracy theorist to predict which “at risk” group will get priority distribution of limited resources.

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The stock market is dropping, Wall Street analysts are flummoxed, but it just isn’t rocket science folks.  It’s Main Street economics 101.

The price to produce, manufacture and transport goods has skyrocketed, that’s the Producer Price Index (PPI).  Arriving goods at retail are significantly higher in price.  Simultaneously, consumer spending is being squeezed by unavoidable inflation in housing, energy, food and gasoline; so consumer spending is tight, that’s the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Higher costs to retail that cannot be passed on as higher prices to customers, means lower profit margins for the sellers.  That’s it.  That’s the majority of it.  Major retail companies like Target and Wal Mart are reporting the impacts from the squeeze in higher costs that cannot be passed to consumers in higher retail prices.   Checkbook economics.

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Businesses are seeing higher costs in the unavoidable goods they need to sell, the fixed price of goods.  What comes next?  Businesses, knowing they cannot raise prices too much, look at lowering the costs of operations in an effort to remain competitive, stay profitable, and stay in business.

How do businesses lower operational costs?  Increase expectations of employee productivity and/or lower employment costs.  That leads to layoffs.

I guarantee you…. YOU know more about the basic principles of Main Street economics than a room full of these Wall Street analysts.   I like El-Erian, but sheesh, talk about pretending not to know things.

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I think we all knew the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary race was going to be close, but wow, it’s really close.   As of right now, only 1,750 votes separate Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, or a mere .2% of the more than 1.3 million votes cast.

According to the Philadelphia Enquirer there are approximately 105,000 mail-in ballots to be counted and no one knows how many of them are republican ballots.  Politico is estimating around 21,000 of them are republican ballots.

Regardless of the outcome from the mail-in ballots, it seems a recount is a certainty as Pennsylvania state law requires an automatic recount if the difference is less than half of one percent (.50%).

PENNSYLVANIA – […] Pennsylvania law requires an automatic statewide recount if the top two candidates in a race are within half a percentage point of each other, which Oz and McCormick currently are.

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Interesting background discussions today, very interesting.  There are some aspects to the Washington Post story about DHS abandoning, at least temporarily, the Dept of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board.

WaPo represents the CIA public relations/narrative engineers, so it doesn’t come as a surprise they would be the announcing outlet for the leaked information.  There’s also an interesting aspect in who was selected to write the article, Taylor Lorenz, the conscripted narrative engineer and lead on-line counterintelligence/propaganda pusher.  [LINK]

However, beyond the background intelligence motive; and accepting the expressed intent of the DHS ministry of truth effort; notice the picture Lorenz published to accompany the notification (see above). “Nina Jankowicz … works in a press room at Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign headquarters in 2019 in Kyiv, Ukraine.”  Quite telling.

The takeaway from the above data points, outlines how long the DHS has been planning to use the conflict in Ukraine to advance the agenda of the State Dept and intelligence apparatus (CIA).  When combined with the rapid response from big tech search engine notifications about removing on-line content that contradicted the official position of the U.S. government toward the Ukraine conflict (Google and DuckDuckGo), what we see is a very fulsome picture of how the U.S. government advanced propaganda was being constructed.

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Today is the primary voting day in Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon, & Pennsylvania.  Results will begin coming out tonight.  Consider this an open discussion and results thread (will remain atop site throughout).

Polls close in Kentucky at 6:00pm (EDT) / 7:00pm for counties using Central time, North Carolina at 7:30pm (EDT), Pennsylvania at 8:00 pm (EDT), Idaho at 8:00 p.m. (MDT) / 9:00pm for counties using Pacific time, and finally Oregon at 8 pm (PDT) Oregon primary is mostly by mail.

New York Times – Election RESULTS HERE

CNN – Election RESULTS HERE

Decision Desk HQ – Election Results HERE

Politico – Election Results HERE

The most watched race tonight will likely be the republican Pennsylvania Senate primary race between Kathy Barnette, David McCormick and Mehmet Oz.  Pennsylvania polls close at 8:00pm EST.

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…We call it ‘World War Reddit‘ for a reason.

In February the White House said strategic victory in Ukraine would be dependent on who can win the cultural war of social likeability {link}.  In March the White House and State Dept recruited a battalion of TikTok influencers so they could dance and sing about Ukraine and Russia for their audiences in social media {link}.  In April USAID announced they would coordinate entertainment resources to keep the public interested in Ukraine and Bono was recruited to sing in Kyiv {link}.

Following along with the coordinated scheduling, Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats took turns rotating through Kyiv with Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans.   Boris Johnson from the U.K and Justin from Canada also took their entourages into Kyiv to hold media events and photo ops with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

All of the U.S. propaganda efforts originate from within the strategy teams at the U.S. State Dept.  It is the Dept of State who coordinates with U.S. intelligence, Hollywood and big tech social media to frame the overall narrative.  Big Tech and social media assist by blocking any platform content that does not fit the narrative created by the State Dept.

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New York Times narrative engineer Charlie Savage is tweeting from within a packed media center at the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington DC for the government case against Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann. [TWEET THREAD]  The mentions and notations, while skewed toward the self interest of media, give us a good insight into what is taking place in the courtroom.

First things first. All media reporting of this case will be done through the prism of their own cooperation in the perpetration of the fraud.  The MSM knew along with everyone else inside and outside of government, that their efforts to create the Trump-Russia conspiracy and collusion narrative were based on fraudulent pretext manufactured by the Clinton campaign.  They all knew it. They all acted collaboratively and they all engaged purposefully.

As noted by Charlie Savage, prosecutor Deborah Shaw, a member of the Durham team, delivered the opening remarks to frame the government position in the case.

The telling remarks came early: “Shaw addresses “the elephant in the room” – tells jury their feelings about Russia, Trump, Clinton can’t play a role in the case. This is about “our FBI” which should not be used as a tool by anyone, Republicans or Democrats.”  In essence, prosecutor Shaw is telling the jury the FBI were duped into the Trump-Russia conspiracy investigation by outsiders connected to the Clinton campaign.

That’s a critical baseline from the government we must understand and accept.  That baseline now indicates that none of the DOJ and FBI operatives involved in the fraudulent scheme will be held accountable by the Durham team.  “Our FBI should not be used as a tool by anyone,” yet they were, so sayeth the United States Government.

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A quick update to the drama around the potential Elon Musk takeover of the social media platform Twitter. The eventual outcome of this could carry large consequences, it is worth watching how it plays out.

This morning, Elon Musk indicated the $44 billion deal he’d agreed to “cannot move forward” until he sees the proof he’s looking for about its active user numbers or monetized Daily Active Users (mDAU’s). Musk does not believe there are less than 5 percent “fake” or “bot” accounts. [Tweet Link]

As we have mentioned from the outset of the purchase offer, the more Elon Musk demands transparency on the operations, the more Twitter is going to end up painted into a corner on the engineering and data-processing side of the platform.

If Twitter cannot publicly explain how they are making determinations for Daily Active Users, they are going to have major issues with; (a) fraud in their billing of advertisers, and/or (b) shareholder lawsuits for fraudulent operations. {Go Deep}  Musk’s demands could take down Twitter and/or make the purchase price much lower.  Stay tuned….

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