The primary race in Wyoming is August 16th, just about two weeks away. CNN traveled to Wyoming to review the possibility that Republican House Member might lose her primary race. All signs point to “yes”, she’s going to lose her seat. However, CNN was able to find two republicans who said they supported Cheney. WATCH:
https://youtu.be/bX5ChF96eLU
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin was on every Sunday talk show today (CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox) responding to his reversal of position on the Build Back Better legislative package (Green New Deal spending) that is part of the senate budget reconciliation bill. There is something very interesting in his justification. [Do not skim read this, all citations included]
Fox News Brett Bair does the best job challenging Manchin on his prior statements saying there would be no spending deal without first seeing the August inflation data. [LINK]. Manchin never answered that hypocrisy directly but says there are two components of the deal, two parts of a new future legislative bill, that brought him to the agreement on the $370 billion current spend.
The current Senate bill is a reconciliation bill, meaning it involves taxes and spending – AND ONLY taxes and spending, because the bill originated in the House.
The constitutional framework for taxes & spending requires the House to originate all spending bills. If a desired additional measure does not involve taxes and spending (a budgetary impact) it cannot be added to a reconciliation bill. The senate must originate a new bill and then send it to the House.
According to Manchin the deal between himself, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden includes his support for the current green energy spending, in exchange for two new items in future legislation: 1) Streamlined energy permitting/regulation; and 2) Increased development of Oil, Coal, Gas. Both of these pieces of legislation have to be handled in a separate Senate bill.
According to Manchin, his agreement to the current spending bill was contingent upon a promise that: (A) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will generate a new bill for streamlined energy permitting and increased oil, gas and coal development; (B) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will take up the Senate bill and whip enough of her House Democrat membership to join with Republicans in support of that Senate bill; and (C) Joe Biden will sign that increased energy production bill.
Here’s the important part. Senator Manchin claims he has leverage over Biden, Pelosi and Schumer to ensure a new bill with those priorities is created and advanced. Manchin further claims there are “consequences” for Biden, Pelosi and Schumer if they were to renege on the deal. He is quite emphatic about that point if you listen to the NBC interview.
In a remarkable interview attempting to justify his agreement with the senate Build Back Better climate change bill (fraudulently labeled ‘inflation reduction act’), West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin says the massive energy spending and tax bill will bring green renewable energy much quicker. In essence, the windmills and solar panels for West Virginia will arrive faster now, and that will improve energy production. [Transcript Here]
When discussing the new energy origination provisions, Senator Manchin catches himself mid-sentence saying, “the battery better be made in America.” He quickly corrected himself knowing the claim was false and followed up with, “better be sourced in North America, it better be processed,” because he is well aware the largest employment and investment beneficiaries for his deal will be Mexico and Canada, not American workers. WATCH:
♦ BRASS TACKS – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was gleeful last week promoting Manchin’s new green energy proposal because, with steel and aluminum tariffs removed, Canada will be one the biggest beneficiaries of $370 billion congressional spending package. Canada has no heavy industry left, they are the assembly economy for foreign manufacturing that uses loopholes, and the senate bill creates a USMCA loophole for this exact purpose.
The West Virginia windmills and solar panels will be shipped as raw materials from China and the EU into Canada. Canada will assemble the parts and ship the finished goods into the United States for placement by illegal alien workers employed by the contractors. The batteries to store the solar and windmill power will come from Mexico, after they receive the raw materials from Africa and Asia.
Canadian workers, Mexican workers, Chinese Workers, African workers and ASEAN workers will all benefit from the generous Joe Manchin spending package.
Unemployed West Virginia coal miners will watch Joe Manchin run for office in 2024 on Japanese televisions powered by China, while eating cheese puff flavored cricket snacks sourced from Canada. Brilliant plan, Joe.
President Barack Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe famously said of Donald Trump’s entry into politics: “It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.”
What was it that Washington DC and President Obama’s team feared so much about Donald J Trump?
The answer to that question is why the FBI, DOJ and CIA targeted Trump in 2016; and why they continued the targeting in 2017 with the Mueller investigation; and why they continued the targeting through two attempts at impeachment in 2019 and 2020; and why they still keep targeting Donald Trump with the J6 committee and a DOJ investigation two years after he is no longer in office.
Donald J Trump is the existential threat.
When your business involves gaining personal wealth by selling out America, Donald Trump is bad for business.
Barack Obama, John Brennan, Eric Holder and James Comey did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act. What the Obama era officials did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so those weapons of government only conducted surveillance and targeting toward one side of the political dynamic.
This point is where many people understandably get confused.
At first blush I’m inclined to see Jose Ruben Zamora as the Latin version of Jamal Khashoggi; which is to say, he glows CIA.
Yesterday in Guatemala, the government arrested a “journalist” and “businessman” named Jose Ruben Zamora who was the publisher of a national newspaper and strong opposition voice against the conservative government of President Alejandro Giammattei [WSJ link]. Today, Guatemalan President Giammattei is reported to have survived an assassination attempt, leaving people injured as a result of gunfire [details sketchy].
(Via WSJ) – […] Guatemalan police arrested José Rubén Zamora, a businessman and renowned journalist who heads the elPeriódico newspaper, at his house in a tree-lined residential neighborhood in the capital after a judge issued an arrest warrant against him, the country’s attorney general’s office said.
“This is a political persecution,” Mr. Zamora told reporters, flanked by policemen, in front of his house. A group of people gathered at the site, shouting: “You are not alone! You are not alone!”
In fact, there are several western nations who see the ‘climate change” energy transformation as an economic kamikaze mission… and that reality is upsetting those who control the larger western alliance agenda.
When we outlined the ‘biggest problem‘ we noted: Brazil, Mexico, and more recently Japan, have started pushing back against the climate change ideologues. We must do the same.
So, let’s get everyone up to speed.
Factually, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is not only a nationalist leader for his country, Brazil itself is in an emerging economic relationship within the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The BRICS group are not in ideological or geopolitical alignment with the World Economic Forum (WEF) climate change instructions known as Build Back Better. This lack of ideological synergy is one of the reasons we see a joint effort between the U.S. State Dept and U.S. intelligence group to target Jair Bolsonaro for removal. [Watch Bolsonaro w/ Tucker Carlson]
Recently, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador (AMLO) visited the White House. AMLO is basically soft-socialist, a nationalist who does not like the influence of multinational corporations on the economic politics within Mexico. When he visited with Joe Biden, AMLO’s public comments in the oval office (he actually had them written down so he would not be deterred from his delivery) about the U.S. chasing a short-sighted and dangerous energy policy, were just ignored by media. However, watching AMLO deconstruct the Biden energy policy was very telling. [Review Outline Here].
In addition to so-called geopolitical adversaries like Russia, China and Iran, there are also geopolitical allies who clearly see that fracturing the global economy based on energy development, the center of the Build Back Better agenda, is going to create major issues for the citizens within the countries determined by ideological quest to change their energy system. As noted with Brazil and Mexico, not everyone in the “west” is on board with the program.
Jumpin’ ju-ju-bones, CTH did not expect the BEA to admit the U.S. economy was in recession. CTH originally predicted the BEA would use lower import data as the primary tool to modify the GDP result.
Factually, in this report, import data -in combination with lower consumer spending- was the primary sector that led to the result. However, even with drops in the valuation of imports which lift GDP calculations, the economy still contracted.
Things must be much worse than officially admitted (details below), if the BEA is going to admit things are bad.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the dollar value of all goods and services produced in the economy, minus the dollar value of goods and services we import. The percentages discussed are percentages of change over time.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their first estimate of the second quarter GDP [Data Here] reflecting a 0.9% drop in U.S. economic activity. The second quarter contraction follows a 1.6% drop in the first quarter, which means we now have two consecutive quarters of declining economic activity, the technical definition of a recession.
The two primary data points which show the economic contraction are: (1) Lowered consumer spending; and (2) much lower imports as a result of lower consumer spending on durable goods and non-essential items. High Q1 inventories of goods were also flushed out by companies and not replaced. Starting with the consumer spending, here’s the data [Table-2, BEA report]:
Consumer spending, also called “personal consumption expenditures” declined 1.08% for goods overall in the second quarter.
Consumer spending represents two-thirds of all GDP in the United States. Americans buy lots of stuff, and when Americans stop spending on goods the economy stalls. As you can see in Table-2, consumer spending on goods dropped 1.08% and spending on services increased 1.78%. The net difference is 0.70%, a massive drop in consumer spending compared to prior quarters/years.
The next component with major impact is the result of the drop in spending.
Two weeks ago, CTH warned everyone that Joe Manchin’s torpedoing of the $500 billion Green New Deal senate spending program was a head fake; he was always going to sign up to expand the control of the federal government over energy use. Today Manchin and Chuck Schumer made it official.
The people operating the “energy transition” levers will get $370 billion to spend on bigger windmills, more solar panels and new energy programs to eliminate coal, oil and natural gas. They will pay for it by raising taxes and hiring a new army of IRS enforcement officials. In exchange for his vote, the federal government will pay increased health insurance subsidies for West Virginians and pass out lower priced medications.
There you go. Exactly as predicted. Energy inflation will continue as the energy transition becomes a permanent feature. Ironically, Joe Manchin made them change the name to “The Inflation Reduction Act,” and pushed the effective dates for all renewals past the 2024 election (where he plans to be a candidate against Gavin Newsom).
WASHINGTON – Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday reached a deal on a bill that includes energy and tax policy, a turnaround after the two deadlocked earlier this month in talks on Democrats’ marquee party-line agenda. In a joint statement, the two Democrats said the legislation will be on the Senate floor next week. It includes roughly $370 billion in energy and climate spending.
While admitting that consumer spending had dropped; and while admitting that production of goods and services had “slowed significantly”; and while admitting that consumers have “lower real disposable incomes and tighter financial conditions; and while stating that “activity in the housing sector had weakened”, housing purchases have fallen; and while accepting that “business fixed investment seems to have declined in the second quarter,” Fed Chairman Powell announces his intention to continue targeting excessive demand.
If we accept that monetary policy can only impact the demand side of the economy (regulatory policy impacting the supply side); and if we accept all off the currently existing realities of a declining demand side, as outlined by Powell; then you might wonder what excessive demand is it that he’s targeting? The answer to that question is the secret sauce. They want less energy demand. WATCH (2 mins):
The federal reserve, just like all the central banks around the collective western alliance, is trying to reduce the economy in order to reduce energy use. This is the monetary policy side supporting the Build Back Better, Climate Change, regulatory policy side. {Go Deep}
They cannot admit openly what they are doing, but the bankers are trying to help the globalist politicians by shrinking their economy. Raising interest rates into preexisting economic contraction is against their legislative mandate, because it only leads to unemployment and a smaller economy.
Powell is using the pretense of demand side inflation as a justification to raise interest rates. It’s not demand driving inflation, it’s the energy policy.
Yesterday, Senator Chuck Grassley sent a letter [pdf HERE] to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, notifying them of whistleblower allegations from within the FBI that senior leadership in both Main Justice and FBI are involved in a coordinated effort to cover-up criminal activity related to Hunter Biden.
The whistleblower allegations, in combination with the documented history of DOJ and FBI misconduct, culminate in Senator Grassley stating:
“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been – institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law. Attorney General Garland and Director Wray, simply put, based on the allegations that I’ve received from numerous whistleblowers, you have systemic and existential problems within your agencies.” (LINK)
Unfortunately, what this amounts to, is Senator Grassley is telling Chris Wray and Merrick Garland, the leaders of the institutionally corrupt activity, that they are systemically corrupt. Which is akin to telling a criminal that he is engaged in unlawful conduct.
Our friend Techno Fog breaks down the outlined allegations succinctly HERE. Absolutely none of the information contained in the allegations is surprising or new to anyone who has followed the details of Main Justice and FBI activity through the past several years. What Grassley outlines is simply evidence, supportive evidence, of what has been transparently obvious to those who have reviewed the DOJ and FBI conduct.
The U.S. Dept of Justice and FBI are now political institutions that have abandoned their originating mission in order to become the domestic equivalent of the Soviet-era FSB. Their joint targeting mechanisms have been redesigned to support the interests of corrupt DC politicians, specifically the interests of democrats. Grassley is admitting what has been visible for years.