Slightly interesting, and in the big picture somewhat expected.  During a lengthy interview with ABC’s primary propagandist, Jonathan Karl, former VP Mike Pence asserts that if he is forced to give testimony to Special Counsel Jack Smith on conversations with President Trump about the 2020 election results, the legal team behind Pence will not assert that private conversation as “executive privilege.”

This approach was expected by the most cynically minded, because it explains why Pence is delaying any presidential race announcement.  If Pence is to be valuable to the special counsel, he must testify before he makes a 2024 announcement, or else his testimony gives the impression of denying “executive privilege” in order to undermine his opponent, Donald Trump – which is, of course, his true motivation. Video [@21:36] and Full Transcript Below:

We all know a Mike Pence person in our lives. A person highly skilled in delivering weaponized superiority and passive aggression.  Mike Pence was always the earworm.

[Transcript] – JONATHAN KARL, “THIS WEEK” CO-ANCHOR: Mr. Vice President, thank you for taking the time to talk to us here in Iowa.

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: Thank you Jon, good to be with you.

KARL: As — as I’m sure you’ve seen, Donald Trump is saying that he’s going to be indicted on Tuesday, he’s calling for people to protest, now we — we don’t know if that’s true, the Manhattan D.A. has not said anything about it, but he’s calling for people to protest. Is that irresponsible?

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The pearl-clutching apoplexy is thick in the latest report from NBC claiming the Dept of Homeland Security, FBI and New York City officials are conducting preparation drills in anticipation of President Trump being indicted for…. wait for it – paying porn star Stormy Daniels.  Good grief, I mean they might as well have said the Pentagon is positioning satellites, NORAD is conducting drills and the National Guard has been put on alert… for something.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is investigating Trump for felony falsification of business records because President Trump paid his attorney, Michael Cohen, with business funds identified as ‘legal services’.

(Via NBC) – Local, state and federal law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump is indicted as early as next week, according to five senior officials familiar with the preparations. 

Law enforcement agencies are conducting preliminary security assessments, the officials said, and are discussing potential security plans in and around the Manhattan Criminal Court, at 100 Centre Street, in case Trump is charged in connection with an alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels and travels to New York to face any charges.

The officials stress that the interagency conversations and planning are precautionary in nature because no charges have been filed. 

The agencies involved include the NYPD, New York State Court Officers, the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the officials said.  NBC News has reached out to all of those agencies for comment, and all have declined to comment.  (read more)

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The European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rates again today, while simultaneously promising to support further bank bailouts that might come as an outcome of raising the rates again.   In the bigger picture there are two dynamics supported by the ECB playing out.

The first issue is the ideological effort to change the economic models based on climate change.  The Build Back Better (Green New Deal) policy, a traditional energy production control effort, is being supported by the ECB effort to shrink the EU economy to meet the rate of diminished energy production.  Make the economy smaller to meet the lower energy production rate.

Lowered energy production (oil, coal and natural gas) has raised energy prices; this is the fuel behind supply side inflation.  The Western (policy-created) energy inflation is hitting every aspect of the EU, US and western global economy.  The prices of all downstream goods and services have risen dramatically as a result.  The European banks are not going to stop trying to make the economy smaller just because banks are failing.  That brings us to the second issue.

Like the first issue with BBB controls, the World Economic Forum action plan for government also includes the creation of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).  The collapsing of the traditional banking system supports the agenda to create CBDCs.  Raising interest rates puts more pressure on already weak banks.  This is a feature not a flaw of the intent.

Shifting the economy from traditional oil, coal and natural gas is one control aspect (climate change).  Shifting the banking system from traditional currency to central bank digital currencies is the second control aspect (total govt financial control).   The banking instability is the crisis that facilitates the CBDC solution.   Ergo, continue raising rates and continue making the crisis more useful.

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Small to medium sized banks along with credit unions are the best vehicle for Main Street USA small businesses.  Somehow in all the conversations about banking customers, this little factoid is seemingly, perhaps purposefully, overlooked.   WATCH:

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If you wonder about whether people are really starting to understand the UniParty operation in Washington DC, the answer appears to be a resounding “Yes.”

According to the latest Rasmussen poll [LINK HERE], even a majority of Democrats admit that Republicans likely conspired with Democrats to keep President Trump from winning the 2020 election. The exact wording of the question is:

How likely is it that Republican politicians in DC worked secretly with Democrats to keep Trump from being reelected in 2020?

55% – of all voters agree it is likely.
67% – Republicans
51% – Democrats

Rasmussen’s Mark Mitchell appeared on the Steve Bannon podcast to discuss the results of the poll.  WATCH:

https://youtu.be/FuTdJHjVHwc

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As CTH has continued to outline, the Republican Party of Bush, Romney, McConnell et al, is dead.  Voters who support President Trump reject the Wall Street professionally Republican donor class.  The Republican Party is the party of MAGA, America First and Donald Trump now.

Recently on Twitter I stated, “There are not enough people who take pictures of their lunches to post on Instagram to support Ron DeSantis for president.”  This is the essential core of the issue.  Working people and people on fixed incomes understand the value of America First and Donald Trump in/on their lives.  Every other coalition is a small segment of elite minded snobbish people who think they know better.  Keep watching.

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Here’s a fun little bit of datamining by the folks at TrendingPolitics.  Apparently, former DOJ apparatchik and current New York Representative Daniel Goldman is holding $32+ million in a Cayman Island bank account.

Goldman was one of Los Tres Amigos conscripted from the DOJ who was enlisted by Mary McCord to run the public face of the House impeachment effort against President Trump.  More recently sketchy Goldman attempted to run defense for the Mueller-Weissmann team during testimony about the Twitter files. {Go Deep}

Considering his legal exposure to the multiple frauds he assisted and perpetrated, it seems part of his financial risk mitigation is to keep his bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.  Curiously interesting, because it’s always worth noting what ammunition the Fourth Branch carries to keep their toadies in line.

[Trending Politics] – Newly disclosed financial documents show that a House Democrat leading the charge against income inequality has stashed over $30 million in a tax-free international haven to support his nonprofit.

The Richard W. Goldman Foundation, which for a decade has provided charitable efforts on behalf of the disadvantaged, reported holding $32.2 million in investments harbored within the Cayman Islands, a renowned haven for wealthy individuals and corporations seeking to relieve tax burdens. The organization was founded in 2012 by Democratic Congressman Daniel Goldman of New York.

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Knowing, not predicting – knowing – the Biden economic policies were going to create massive U.S. inflation in the years to follow, in 2021 I pinned a tweet thread to the top of my timeline on the CTH Twitter account that could be used as a reference. [You Can Read Here] Not a single month of statistical data has come in the past two years that was not entirely predictable.  Today’s report from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) [DATA HERE] is no different.

Inflation is a measure of the change in a price. It is usually presented in terms of a percentage of change. When inflation starts to lessen, what that means is the rate of the price increase slows down. The price is still going up, but at a slower pace.

February prices overall increased 0.4% for the month, putting the current rate of annual inflation at 6.0%.  Meaning prices (on aggregate) are 6% higher than this exact same time last year.

Meanwhile, wages increased 0.2% for the month, and hours worked dropped 0.3% [DATA]. Wages only rising by half the rate of prices, and hours worked dropping, means the net ‘real wages’ declined, yet again, by 0.4%.

Workers are going backwards.

The very real impact on the working class is getting worse.  The blue collar team, who works for a living and does not take Instagram pictures of their lunches, are getting crushed in the Biden economy.  The divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ is getting wider.

Put another way, Team MAGA, the entire continuum of normally apolitical working class, is watching the rust growing and feeling the worst part of the Biden economic outcome.  I have often spoken in my immediate circle of influence with the phrase, “financial anxiety is a very real concern the closer you get to the laundromat,” and many people have no idea what that means.

The biggest BS statement of the day goes to CNBC with this sentence:

“Inflation began rising in early 2021 due to a supply-and-demand imbalance. Now, it’s largely fueled by strong demand for labor, economists said.”  (link)

I challenge you to find a more encapsulating pile of horsepucky that represents the financial media era of great pretending.  When I read stuff like this, I begin to think the next great eruption of a violent war is getting even closer, and this war will have nothing to do with nations.

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Last week, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem broadcast a warning on the Tucker Carlson show about a bill that passed her State House and Senate that she was forced to veto because it changed the definition of money and banned non-govt-issued cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. {Broadcast Warning Here}

The bill stems from the generally innocuous Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), which Daniel Horowitz describes as, “a set of standards to facilitate interstate sales and commercial transactions such that all definitions pertaining to such commerce are uniform and clearly understood.”  It looks like Horowitz was the first to transmit the public warning, as identified by two members of the South Dakota House Freedom Caucus, and then Kristi Noem became aware – thus the veto.

Governor Noem warned that the bill was already passing through several states, and if you look at the UCC Amendment tracking page [DATA HERE], she is correct.  The states in green on the map below are states where the UCC revision bill has already been introduced.

As Daniel Horowitz notes in his initial warning dated March 2, 2023:

“The revisions to Article I are very clear now that Bitcoin will not be money, because even though the definition provides for electronic money … it says that an asset that is adopted by a government as its medium of exchange will not qualify as money … if the electronic asset, such as Bitcoin, existed before it was adopted by the government. So Bitcoin, of course, exists today; it existed before El Salvador adopted it as its currency … so it will never be money for UCC purposes. The same for other kinds of crypto currencies.” So there you have it. Officials clearly mean to pave the way for CBDC while explicitly barring all competition. (more)

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The CNN panel was jaw-agape as Kevin O’Leary appeared earlier today to inform them the decision by Joe Biden to guarantee every deposit in U.S. regional banks is akin to “Joe Biden just nationalized the U.S. banking system.”

O’Leary is correct, and anyone who is holding assets like stocks or bonds in U.S. banks now needs to reconsider the disappeared line between government and the bank assets.  If the government can assume, control and backstop every single account balance within the bank, the government can assume and control all activity of the bank.  WATCH:

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Downstream…. think about the consequences.  Remember the frozen bank accounts in Canada as a result of defining truck protest supporting Canadian citizens as domestic extremists?

Now think about the government no longer needing to ask the bank to take action, the govt has a regulatory ability to demand the bank to take action.  This takes “debanking” to an entire new level.  People are wondering why cryptocurrencies went up in value today.  There’s your answer.

Comrade citizens, at the end of this rainbow of bank nudges, we will find ourselves at the footsteps of a government controlled central bank digital currency.

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During an interview with Margaret Brennan today, Congressman Michael McCaul -another GOPe weasel – said he stands with Vice President Mike Pence in saying “they avoided a constitutional crisis” on January 6, 2021, when Congress declared an emergency session and refused to entertain any challenges to the 2020 election certification.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Texas Republican Congressman Michael McCaul.

Good morning to you, Chairman McCaul.

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-Texas): Good Morning, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I have got a lot to get to with you today.

But I want to start where I just left off with those very strong remarks from Mike Pence last night. Do you want to associate yourself with what he said?

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Let me just say Vice President Pence exercised moral clarity and judgment that day by doing his constitutional responsibility, authenticating the votes and counting them.

He avoided a major constitutional crisis that day. As you know, I voted for certification. That is our constitutional role not to overturn state- certified ballots. So, I agree. I mean, look, it was a dark — dark day. And I think people will be — history will judge everyone by what they did that day.

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