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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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.

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Democrats love war, even when they have to go looking for one.  The New York Times is reporting that Joe Biden has signed a Defense Dept order authorizing 700 combat troops to redeploy to Somalia, reversing the Trump-era troop withdrawal.

WASHINGTON — President Biden has signed an order authorizing the military to once again deploy hundreds of Special Operations forces inside Somalia — largely reversing the decision by President Donald J. Trump to withdraw nearly all 700 ground troops who had been stationed there, according to four officials familiar with the matter.

In addition, Mr. Biden has approved a Pentagon request for standing authority to target about a dozen suspected leaders of Al Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that is affiliated with Al Qaeda, three of the officials said. Since Mr. Biden took office, airstrikes have largely been limited to those meant to defend partner forces facing an immediate threat.

Together, the decisions by Mr. Biden, described by the officials on the condition of anonymity, will revive an open-ended American counterterrorism operation that has amounted to a slow-burn war through three administrations. (read more)

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Turkey as a member of NATO has always been a thorny and multi-layered geopolitical issue.  In the latest chapter of the dynamic, Turkish President Recep Erdogan, a man with visions of his own grandiose importance as the leader of the next Ottoman empire, has said Sweden and Finland do not warrant entry into NATO because they have held positions adverse to the interests of Erdogan and the Muslim Brotherhood.

As the entry point from the middle east into Europe, Erdogan has long leveraged his gatekeeper status to create an oversized influence of power.  When the EU formally declared the era of multiculturalism was failing 2012, and Islamic extremists were carrying out terrorism attacks all over the NATO alliance, Erdogan leveraged his ability to open the floodgates from Syria to gain additional financial benefits.

On one hand, when Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet in northern Syria, Erdogan hid behind the skirt of NATO seeking protection from Russian retaliation.  On the other hand, when the U.S. refused to give Turkey missile defense systems, Erdogan buried the hatchet with Putin and purchased Russian missile defense systems.   President Erdogan plays all sides in advancing his interests.

In the latest development, what Joe Manchin is to the leftist agenda of Joe Biden, Erdogan is playing that role toward the globalist agenda of NATO.  The big picture behind Erdogan’s priorities is always connected to the agenda of the Brotherhood.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Swedish and Finnish delegations should not bother coming to Ankara to convince it to approve their NATO bid.

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Pennsylvania Senate Candidate Kathy Barnette appeared on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream to answer questions about her prior positions, statements and current candidacy.  Barnette has climbed in the polls and is in a tight race for the PA senate seat.

There has been an onslaught of criticism and critique in opposition to Kathy Barnette.  Many political followers are concerned she might win the primary but then get crushed in the general election due to inflammatory statements in her past.  This interview was a great opportunity for her to calm the nerves of republican primary voters and instill confidence. Unfortunately, Barnette did not do well in this interview.  WATCH:

Shannon Bream was fair and gave Barnette plenty of time to explain her positions.   Pennsylvania voters will need to make their own decisions.  Trust your instincts; if you sense sketchy, it is likely because sketchy exists.

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In the second segment of the interview with Maria Bartiromo, Devin Nunes and Kash Patel discuss the trial of Michael Sussmann which begins tomorrow. {Direct Rumble Link}

Ultimately the issue in the Michael Sussmann trial is quite simple:

Did the DOJ and FBI know the material Michael Sussmann was giving them came from the Hillary Clinton campaign?

We all know the answer to that question, of course they did.  However, there has been –and continues to be– a game of grand pretense from the DOJ/FBI group where they pretend not to have known.

Two groups: the “insider group” (DOJ/FBI) and the “outsider group” (Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS, Clinton campaign, Sussmann, Elias, Mook, etc).

Claiming the DOJ and FBI were duped, is the government firewall that protects the inside group.  However, this claim is now against the interest of Michael Sussmann who has been accused of false representation and lying to the FBI about the provenance of the information he provided.

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Fox News Maria Bartiromo interviewed Devin Nunes and Kash Patel ahead of the trial for Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann which begins tomorrow.  The interview breaks down into two segments, the first segment outlines the discussion of Elon Musk purchasing Twitter. {Direct Rumble Link}  WATCH, Part I

The issue of ‘bots’ operating on the Twitter platform is an interesting aspect 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 -clouds- linked to government resources, the bots would not be an 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.

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NBC is promoting their contracted poll today [pdf HERE] around the lesser-important voting issue of abortion.  However, before getting to the poll it is worth noting again who they contracted with.  Inside the article you will note this sentence, “[…] who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.”   If that name sounds familiar, that’s because it is the same ideologically aligned polling outfit who spent six months creating the ultra-MAGA branding campaign for Anita Dunn and the White House {link}.

The abortion polling is irrelevant to the issue of larger public opinions of the Biden administration.  On abortion, 10% of polled respondents say they are single issue voters [respondents = 790 RV’s, (79 single issue)].  Out of 79 single issue voters, 22% list abortion as their top priority. So, out of 790 registered voters, 17 view abortion as their single issue to vote on.  That’s the scale being overemphasized.

On the larger issues of voter priorities, the economy dominates with 40% responses.  Additionally, the polling identifies 39 percent of Americans approving of President Biden’s job as president, versus 56 percent who say they disapprove.  75% say the country is heading in the wrong direction, and only 16% saying the country is on the right track.   That’s the bigger headline.  WATCH:

[POLL pdf Here]

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Appearing on Face the Nation (FtN) Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein discussed his views and perspectives on the economy overall and U.S. inflation specifically.  Undoubtedly Blankfein has access to resources and analysis far beyond CTH scope; however, despite a statistically factual contracting GDP, Blankfein is claiming to see overall demand side inflation remaining in the macro economy.

Perhaps that view might still be true domestically on the service side (it certainly isn’t on the trade side), but demand driven inflation does not appear visible on the goods side of the economic ledger.  What is clearly present as the price driver is “production side inflation,” the costs to create goods and bring them to market.   If you look at economic activity in units instead of dollars, the units are contracting.

The demand for goods is now focused almost entirely on priority or essential purchases like housing, energy, fuel and food.  The price for those essential products is driven by production costs, which are a direct outcome of the energy policy, environmental policy, regulatory policy, and to a lesser extent trade policy, of the Biden administration.  Blankfein is pretending not to know things… WATCH:

Putting housing aside due to investment purchasing of real estate, if Blankfein was correct, and demand was still driving inflation, then a massive deflationary cycle would be coming as a result of lowered consumer purchasing of goods.   There isn’t any chance we are going to see “deflation” in the next several years.  [We will likely see housing prices collapse, but not consumer goods.]

Inflation is being driven by production costs, and there is no end in sight to the production cost increases as long as the crew behind Joe Biden keeps strangling the U.S. energy sector…. and then compounding the domestic price issue by creating incentives for energy exports (vis-a-vis EU sanctions).  The production inflation is a purposefully inflicted wound on our economy.  Production inflation is avoidable.

That interview is Wall Street gaslighting to a Main Street audience.  I don’t like it one bit.

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BASELINE – Boil all international and geopolitical issues down to their common denominator and everything, E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G., every issue, every discussion, every policy, every position, everything -all of it- circles around economics. Everything is secondary to the underlying economics of every single issue. Power or weakness, famine or war, peace or conflict, master or servant, culture or crisis, growth or collapse, the entirety of everything -including the foundation of freedom- centers around the economics.  There are trillions at stake.

In this interview Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö made some very interesting remarks when asked about his decision to reverse the long-established geopolitical position of Finland and join the “western alliance,” vis-a-vis NATO.

Listen carefully [01:44] when President Niinistö explains why.  Niinistö explains he did not, and does not, consider Russia a threat; however, “what we see now, Europe, the world, is more divided. There’s not very much room for ‘non-aligned,’ in-between. So that was also what we are thinking.”  WATCH:

In March of this year CTH noted, “this intentional global cleaving, using the opportunity created by the Ukraine crisis, is going to be the major story of this year.  This global splitting can be looked at in multiple ways, but the overarching story is the ramifications of two global trade relationships.”

Two world groupings.  One group, oil-based energy (traditional, grey on map below), and one group GREEN energy (the build back better plan, yellow on map).  It is not accidental these two groups hold similar internal geopolitical views and perspectives, hence, their alignment or lack thereof with the sanctions against Russia.

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