Fox News host Tucker Carlson delivered a speech in Arizona at AmFest yesterday that hits home for many people. [Direct Rumble Link, at 02:21:46]  If you have not watched his full speech, I recommend it and will embed at the bottom of this post.

In part of Tucker’s unscripted remarks, a discussion about this current moment in the lifecycle of life’s storm and cultural chaos, Carlson noted his need to go silent for a few days and reflect on the bigger picture of our situation.   For me, that part of his discussion rang very familiar and perhaps, based entirely on my instinct that many are feeling the same sense of unease and trepidation, it is worthy to share why.

I was born a person of natural curiosity; intensely so.

Orderliness, natural alignment and the bigger principles of universal balance in all things, have always been important to me.  When things are chaotic and out of balance, my general inclination is to ask why.

What is happening that creates this imbalance, an imbalance ultimately from truth?

The natural order of things is so much a part of my instinctual makeup that as a young child my maternal grandfather once said and wrote to me, “son, you were born with an incurable case of curiosity, and someday it might kill you.”

Later in life I discovered the nature of that conversation stemmed from an episode where I refused to accept being taught imbalanced rules at school. My worried and intensely patient mom sought advice from her father, my granddad, in a letter I later discovered in his well-worn satchel of mementos.

Turning a phrase my mom wrote, “Dear dad, we are attempting to tame the shrewd“… Apparently, my childhood sense of curiosity was loved and cherished, but also worrisome in the way that only a mother’s wisdom could assess.

Granddad replied with a comforting dispatch to my exasperated mom, and then appeared in person a week later to help lend some practical support to my parent’s efforts.

In this context, ‘practical’ meant me and grandpa on a week-long fishing and camping trip right in the middle of the school year.  The timing was why that specific visit imprinted so memorably, yet the purpose remained unknown to me until much later in life.

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One thing I dislike immensely about Republican punditry, specifically as it relates to internal dynamics, is their tribal narrative engineering. The example from Breitbart about President Trump’s discussion of the next Speaker of the House is a case study.

Take out Matthew Boyle’s woven narrative; and remind yourself that Boyle is writing from a position of DeSantis advocacy; read just the direct quotes from President Trump about the risk of House Speaker if the party doesn’t align to support Kevin McCarthy, and the position is pragmatic.

Essentially, if not Kevin McCarthy, and the House vote is dependent on Democrat support, the result will likely be worse.

Just the Trump quotes: “I think it’s a very dangerous game that’s being played,” Trump said. “It’s a very dangerous game. Some bad things could happen. Look, we had Boehner and he was a strange person but we ended up with Paul Ryan who was ten times worse. Paul Ryan was an incompetent speaker. I think he goes down as the worst speaker in history. We took [out] Boehner—and a group of people, some of whom are the same, and they’re very good friends of mine. All those people are very good friends of mine.”

[…] ““Think of it—we ended up with Paul Ryan. Boehner was like Winston Churchill compared to Paul Ryan,” Trump said. “Boehner wasn’t perfect—nobody’s perfect—but Paul Ryan was a disaster for the Republican Party. That’s what we got. Now we have to live with him. He’s destroying Fox and he’s destroying the New York Post. We got to live with this maniac. This guy, Paul Ryan, couldn’t have gotten elected in his own area of Wisconsin. I went with him after I won the election and we had a tremendous crowd of people and they booed him off the stage. You remember that? They booed him off the stage. This guy is now telling Fox what to do.”

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As soon as this information gets mainstream, watch for an entire tribe of ‘conservative’ pundits to suddenly find advocacy for the benefit of billionaires controlling politicians. Indeed, there will likely be a benefit to bookmarking this post.

Against the backdrop of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis receiving 94% of his campaign support from multinational corporations, billionaires and Wall Street tycoons, there has been a debate about whether DeSantis would be a purchased GOP nominee for the presidency in 2024.

Based on current available evidence, the announcement of a 2024 presidential bid is a mere formality, likely to surface later in 2023, as all the background datapoints reflect the strategic and financial team behind Ron DeSantis have been positioning an announcement since late 2021.   One visible datapoint has been his campaign office, specifically his then spokesperson Christina Pushaw, reaching out to a group of Florida influencers and organizing a meeting on January 6, 2022.

By the late spring of 2022 the branding and management of the pending Ron DeSantis presidential bid was strongly underway, and by early August 2022, not coincidentally timed with the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, after an unusual five days in a bunker, a new national campaign team was announced and launched.  Everything from that national image launch has been carefully managed, organized and constructed.

With the Florida legislature set to change the law permitting DeSantis to run and remain as governor; and with the intentionally elevated profile and controlled national branding in place; the office of the Florida governor has transformed from a state executive focus to a launch vehicle for higher office.  State policies and office advocacy now run through the priority prism of national politics, as the announcement of the DeSantis book launch is simultaneously positioned.

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Displaying some of the most insufferable logic imaginable, four Republican senators voted against reinstating military members who were discharged for refusal to get vaccinated.

Apparently, according to the logic provided, Congress can select the location for the military to engage, select the weapons they can use, select their commanding officers who will lead their engagement, select the method, manner and purpose of their deployment…. yet, when it comes to requiring vaccinations, Congress must defer to military leadership.

Apparently, the concept of “civilian lead military oversight,” does not apply when it comes to forced COVID-19 vaccination.  Sorry, but these Republican senators are intellectually dishonest idiots.

(Via Daily Signal) –   Four Republican senators voted Thursday against reinstating military members who were discharged for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Mitt Romney of Utah, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Susan Collins of Maine voted against Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson’s amendment that would have reinstated and provided backpay to military members discharged for refusing to get vaccinated.

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During his opening segment tonight, Tucker Carlson bid an epic farewell to Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger.  This is really, really funny.

I will obey grandmas rule for this one, saying only that Will Rogers never met Adam Kinzinger.  WATCH:

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Note the exit music at the end 😉

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Independent journalist Matt Taibbi has released the sixth installment after review of more Twitter File data [SEE HERE].  Keep in mind, the research group containing Mr. Taibbi are only seeing the consequences side of the content removal process.  What specifically happened in/around the portal of information flowing into Twitter HQ is a different division.  Taibbi et al are only seeing the consequences from the requests that entered the Twitter system.

[Twitter Release #6, Here]

The first section of Taibbi’s analysis is the most interesting.  Having tracked the issue for several years, I would modify some of the descriptive language Taibbi presents yet agree with the overall context of his presentation.

Taibbi begins by noting, “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.”  I would safely take that a step further, yes there is a subsidiary relationship; however, as years of government involvement continued by 2016 Twitter became the subsidiary of DHS, not vice-versa.  This dynamic within the relationship explains some of the more curious elements that Taibbi struggles to fully understand.

Notice the timing of escalation by DHS/FBI: “The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.”

As we have noted from the lead into and out of the 2016 election, the surveillance state took action specifically to protect itself from President Trump.   This activity included the NSA, FISA court, FBI, DOJ-NSD, CIA, ODNI while specifically and purposefully enmeshing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

Protecting Washington DC from the risk President Trump represented was a whole of government approach.  The executive and legislative branches worked together and weaponized national security claims to involve the judicial branches in the effort.  In the aftermath of the 2016 election outcome, now we see social media being pulled further into the approach.

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There is a historic irony surrounding today as the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) and Elon Musk suspending the accounts of multiple journalists who violated the Twitter terms of service about publicly releasing private information without consent. To say the ‘splodey heads are epic, would be an understatement.

After several ‘mainstream’ journalists began spreading the physical location of Elon Musk, his airplane travel and his family location, Twitter began suspending all accounts that were affiliated with promoting the activity. Several high follower journalists were -by their own expressed conduct- caught up in the account suspensions, some permanently, and the resulting outrage over their claimed curtailment of speech has exploded the universal hypocrisy continuum.

Demands for reinstatement by allies of the suspended accounts stretch from threats to “haul Musk before congress,” to foreign government demands. While demanding to see the manager, CNN’s Oliver Darcy contends that Twitter cannot exist without the journalists Mr. Musk has now removed.

White knuckled fists are clutching pearls tightly.

New York – […] Speaking with anchor Jim Sciutto about several journalists, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, having been suspended under Elon Musk‘s newly minted policy about posting real-time location info, Darcy made clear that Musk is playing with fire and could get burned.

“This is raising a number of issues,” said Darcy. “Obviously it highlights how Musk doesn’t really have that commitment to free speech that he said he does. But it also raises questions about what the future of the press looks like on Twitter.” (more)

Apparently, the world will not exist without journalists being able to push their narrative engineering efforts through the social media platform.

Putting Mr. Musk’s ultimate long-term motives in a box over in the corner of the room just so that we can enjoy this moment, the billionaire space entrepreneur will never exceed today’s creation of smiles regardless of his electric cars or the eventual goal of a human population on the Martian landscape.

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During a podcast Matt Taibbi describes the big picture takeaway of the data they have been permitted to review so far. {Direct Rumble Link}

Interestingly, Taibbi notes the silo effect within Twitter as the division in charge of taking action on requests is not necessarily the division that receives the requests.  There is an inflection point between two silos. Taibbi notes the current data set does not include access to the inbound requests and instructions from government officials, they are limited to only seeing what happens after the request is received.

They are also limited in only seeing the activity that is taken within the action division where the accounts are restricted.  The division within Twitter that was in the process of amplifying or boosting accounts, is a different silo.

Additionally, as Taibbi also notes, if the scale of what they are seeing in Twitter is representative of outside contacts to other social media platforms, then he is sure Facebook, YouTube, Google, Microsoft, Instagram, Apple etc. also have a process to receive and act upon these inbound DHS/FBI instructions.  WATCH:

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In essence, everything Taibbi is seeing is fully in line with Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop.

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The G7 leaders have been debating the problem of African farming for quite a while. The issue surrounds the conflicts between the G7 climate change agenda and the need for Africa to develop fertilizer production to enhance their farming and crop yields.

As noted in a Reuters article from June, “the European Union is divided on how to help poorer nations fight a growing food crisis and address shortages of fertilisers caused by the war in Ukraine, with some fearing a plan to invest in plants in Africa would clash with EU green goals.”  As the argument unfolded, “the EU Commission explicitly opposed” any effort to enhance African fertilizer development, “warning that supporting fertilizer production in developing nations would be inconsistent with the EU energy and environment policies.”  

The energy development corporations, the source industry needed to create the components for nitrogen-based fertilizer, have been waiting to invest in African energy production pending the approval of western government decisions.  Addressing the issue today, Joe Biden told the African Union the United States would send an emergency $2.5 billion in food crisis aid to offset the inability of Africa to feed itself.

In essence, instead of Western government policy supporting energy production in Africa that would lead to a greater farm yield, and by extension a greater level of food independence, the Biden administration would rather restrict energy/food development in Africa and send them food subsidies; because, climate change.

(White House) – […]  President Biden announced an additional $2.5 billion in emergency aid and medium to long-term food security assistance for resilient African food systems and supply markets, which builds upon over $11 billion in U.S. humanitarian and food security assistance for this year alone.  President Biden also launched a new strategic partnership on food security between the United States and the African Union.  

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Friends, in the late summer and fall of 2021 CTH warned of massive waves of price increases that would push inflation to record highs.  We watched as each wave arrived almost on schedule throughout 2022, and as a direct result of Joe Biden energy and economic policy, prices necessarily skyrocketed.

In essence in 2021 we were warning about the expenditure side of the ledger that all working-class and fixed income families would experience.  We advised to take every proactive measure possible to avoid future price increases.

Now, unfortunately, we begin moving those same warnings to the other side of the ledger; because as a natural consequence of consumer checkbook pain, the financial pressure always transfers to the income and employment side of the economic dynamic.

Keep in mind, retail sales are calculated in dollars spent by consumers.   November 2022 retail sales as reported by the commerce department today [DATA pdf], reflect a 0.6% decrease in spending vs October.  November data includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the traditional early holiday shopping.  0.6% less dollars were spent, despite prices being double digits higher than the prior year.

When the prices you are charging for goods and/or services are 10, 20, even as high as 60 percent more than prior year, yet your sales are running flat to negative – that means consumer purchases of those goods/services are substantially lower.

If you were selling 100 widgets for $1 each in 2021, you gross $100.   If your widgets now sell for $1.25 and you gross $94 in 2022 sales, you have sold 75 widgets.

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