Kari Lake is running an excellent campaign for governor of Arizona in advance of the November election.  In this interview with Maria Bartiromo, Ms Lake discusses her perspective on the border control collapse as well as the attacks against her from lame-duck congresswoman Liz Cheney.

After losing her Wyoming primary challenge, Liz Cheney has now promised to campaign on behalf of Democrats against Kari Lake in Arizona. WATCH:

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The DeSantis Crew, formerly the 2016 Cruz Crew, is up in arms over a selectively edited soundbite from Jared Kusher, President Trump’s son-in-law. {Direct Rumble Link}

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis went shopping for South American aliens at an El Paso migrant processing facility in Texas.  The DeSantis people took the aliens to a hotel with plans to fly them to Delaware, Joe Biden’s home state.  However, facing backlash over the legality of spending Florida funds on a previous operation to move Texas migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, the DeSantis team abandoned the recruited Venezuelan aliens at the hotel, leaving them confused and stranded.

Jared Kushner noted in a Fox appearance that he did not like the approach of recruiting, manipulating and using arriving aliens as political pawns.  Immediately the DeSantis supporters pulled an 8-second soundbite from a one-hour Fox News appearance and proclaimed Kusher was criticizing Ron DeSantis, which in the world view of Team DeSantis makes Kushner an enemy.  However, the full statement with context is not controversial at all, and in my opinion Kusher is correct.  WATCH:

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The fact that Ron DeSantis sent people to Texas to recruit aliens from an El Paso processing facility with the promise of a flight to Delaware, then abandoned them when the political heat started, literally leaving them at the hotel confused and waiting for a bus that never arrived, shows the operation itself was using aliens as “political pawns,” and it is unseemly.

The DeSantis people can try to spin this against Kushner, but the outrage should really be toward the people working for DeSantis who pulled this stunt.

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National Grid and Eversource are the two major electricity providers for Massachusetts. Both companies have notified the Department of Public Utilities (DPU) that rates for electricity are about to skyrocket.

National Grid has announced a 64% increase in electricity rates effective November 1st. While Eversource is on a different schedule, they too have announced an increase in natural gas rates of 38% on November 1st and the January 1, 2023, electricity rate will be announced in the next few weeks. Eversource is anticipated to announce a similar rate increase to National Grid. WATCH:

Both major power companies rely on natural gas to create electricity.  Thanks to Joe Biden’s energy policies, which includes the massive export of natural gas in LNG form, domestic prices for natural gas have skyrocketed and will continue increasing as production is further shut down by regulation.

We are helping the EU survive their sanction driven energy crisis by sending them natural gas (LNG format), while simultaneously forcing Americans to pay more in order to maintain the EU export.   Everything about the process is FUBAR.

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For those who have followed the deep weeds of republican political games and schemes, the DeSantis flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard had a specific familiarity to them.

The transfer of Venezuelan migrants, illegal alien border crossers, from Texas to Massachusetts via Florida taxpayers and Ron DeSantis was/is, well, something republican strategist Lee Atwater would have come up with.  The protege’ to Atwater is a person more familiar to modern republican followers, Karl Rove.  Yes, the migrant transfer operation held all the political benefits of something very Rovian in its construct.

Take an issue like border security, central to the majority of republicans, add an element of targeted benefit and overlay an establishment playbook carried out by shadow constructs giving plausible deniability to the central planners in the backroom, and you get this type of operation.  However, there’s always a risk of taking things just too far and losing control.  An investigative article in the Miami Herald today has the elements of a looming backlash that needs to be avoided by the principle.

The Miami Herald is a notoriously left-wing super narrative machine, but when it comes to using their investigative resources to target a vulnerability in their opposition, they are akin to the New York Times in the sharpness of their attack.   If the story as outlined in the Miami Herald is even remotely accurate, the thirsty people behind DeSantis may have just set themselves up for a problem and created an ‘own goal‘ scenario.

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With most financial media being intentionally obtuse with the Biden economic impact upon Main Street, it is refreshing to see analysis that cuts to the heart of the matter.  HatTip to ZeroHedge who provides a link to a great article outlining reality for blue and white-collar working families.

The folks at NerdWallet have taken the inflation date from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) and applied the math to real life.  The result is a good encapsulation of checkbook economics and how the Biden economy is painful for the working class.

In total, Joe Biden’s energy policy driven inflation has added $961/month to preexisting expenses.  That’s $11,532 a year just to retain the status quo standard of living.

(NerdWallet) – […] In all of 2020, American households spent $61,300, on average. This number includes everything we spend our money on: housing, food, entertainment, clothing, transportation and everything else. In 2022, it stands to reach $72,900, a difference of more than $11,500 if consumers want to maintain the same standard of living. Keep in mind, this is an average, a number that represents an approximation across all Americans, but one that’s exact to a very few. Those who earn (and therefore spend) more will see more dramatic dollar increases. Those who earn less may see less dramatic dollar jumps, but the impact of these rising prices could be more significantly felt. (read more)

If the average household spent $61,300 and inflation is adding $11,500 to the expense, that means we now have to spend 18.7% more just to maintain the current standard of living.  That average is in line with what we are seeing in the real world.

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The king of manipulating Wall Street shorts is Citadel founder Ken Griffin.

The Wall Street hedge fund billionaire has made most of his money betting against Main Street stocks and then manipulating their downfall to reap the rewards.

Griffin is despised by small investors, especially the Reddit WallStreetBets group who went head-to-head against the titan in the Gamestop and Robinhood story {backstory}.  Recently Griffin moved his financial HQ from Chicago to Miami after giving Florida governor Ron DeSantis $10 million for his reelection effort.

Bloomberg News reported earlier today that Ken Griffin has said he is open to taking the position of U.S. Treasury Secretary after he is successful installing Ron DeSantis as the 2024 presidential winner.

[New York] – […] Griffin also revealed that he would be open to serving as Treasury secretary in a Ron DeSantis administration if the GOP governor of Florida decides to make a bid for the White House in 2024.

He told Bloomberg that he “will definitely be involved in the presidential race” and that he would consider moving to Washington, DC, if called upon to do so by a Republican president. (link)

There are trillions at stake…

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“Hoffman Estates” is a Chicago area location containing an abandoned furniture store and warehouse.  The Obama Foundation leased, then re-upped the lease, to use the facility to store all the paper documents from the Obama administration {Location Link}.

The Obama administration told the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) they were going to upload the documents into a digital form for use in the Obama library.  The paper documents were, still are, held at the Hoffman Estate warehouse while this digitization process took place.  It should be noted, the Obama Foundation has never digitized the records, hence they renewed the warehouse lease.

Contrast against the DOJ-NSD legal position about classified records held in the secure facility of Mar-a-Lago, a 2018 letter {Obama.org pdf here} from the Obama Foundation to the NARA is an example of the two-tiered selective justice system.  Within the 2018 letter the Obama team admit to storing both “classified and unclassified” documents at the warehouse: [Page #2, bullet-point 7]

[Obama.Org pdf]

Obviously, there were no raids on Hoffman Estates from the FBI to secure the classified documents.  Nor did the DOJ National Security Division trigger a criminal investigation of President Obama for holding documents, particularly classified documents, against the interests of the NARA while they “digitized them;” a process, which again should be noted, never even began.

The intent of sharing this information is just to highlight the political dynamic within the NARA, DOJ and FBI as it pertains to selective enforcement of presidential records.

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Trying to survive current price increases in housing costs, energy costs, electricity costs, food and fuel costs has forced consumers to reevaluate purchasing decisions.  As consumer demand for non-essential items has collapsed, and as Americans dig deeper into their savings just to sustain current unavoidable expenses, major retailers are now cancelling Christmas inventory orders.

On one hand the leaders of large multinationals must pretend everything is splendid; after all, the only acceptable position they can articulate is to support interest rates being raised because demand is just too darned high.  lololol…  pretending.  But on the other hand – those same retailers are furiously trying to calculate how to avoid being stuck with billions worth of unsold inventory.

RetailWire – Walmart, Target, Macy’s and Kohl’s are among retailers that have recently said they are canceling some orders to better balance inventory levels, a replay of a strategy used at the start of the pandemic.

Other steps retailers are using to clear inventories as spending has slowed on some non-discretionary categories are employing markdowns and packing away products for the following year. The elevated inventory levels also reflect intentional over-buying to mitigate shortages and the easing of supply chain constraints.

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The statistics behind the energy impact upon the German economy, the largest economy in the European Union, are almost unfathomable in scale.  There is no way for the German industrial economy to continue with this level of price pressure.  Stick a fork in the current creation of German industrial products and exports, the inflection point of feasibility for continued production has been crossed.  They are done.

According to release statistics from the German economic ministry, energy prices in August were more than double the same period last year, up 139%.  The monthly increase was more than 20.4% higher than July.  Additionally, producer prices for electricity rose 174.9% compared with August 2021 and by 26.4% in a single month.

This jaw-dropping increase in energy cost has resulted in German manufacturing prices for industrial goods jumping 7.9% in August alone, with a year-over-year increase in the cost to manufacture goods at 45.8%.  That is the highest rate of price increase since Germany began recording their statistics in 1939.

BERLIN, Sept 19 (Reuters) – German producer prices rose in August at their strongest rate since records began both in annual and monthly terms, driven mainly by soaring energy prices, raising the chances that headline inflation will surge even higher.

Producer prices of industrial products increased by 45.8% on the same month last year, the Federal Statistical Office reported on Tuesday. Compared to July 2022, prices rose 7.9%, it added.

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Representative Jim Jordan appeared on Tucker Carlson’s evening broadcast to outline the claims by a DC Bureau FBI whistleblower.  {Direct Rumble Link} In his framing of the statements from the FBI insider, Jordan states the FBI are intentionally diverting resources to investigate claims surrounding the J6 narrative in an effort to give the appearance of a national domestic extremist threat.  WATCH:

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The creation of a national narrative to inflate the appearance of Domestic Violent Extremists, would fall directly in line with the prior examples of the FBI politicizing their agency.

In semi-related news, Joe Biden quietly extended the 9/11/01 National Terrorism Emergency today. {LINK HERE} For 21 years the 2001 National Terrorism Emergency has been continued as a tool for the Dept of Homeland Security, through the FBI, to use powers not granted by congress.   Yes, twenty-one-years of continuous extensions.

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