Olena Zelenska, wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, traveled to Paris France for a three-day visit December 12-14.  As reported by Le Monde, “Members of the Ukrainian government will also come, including Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, and several ministers in charge of reconstruction, including Yulia Svyrydenko (economy), Oleksandr Kubrakov (infrastructure) and German Galushchenko (energy).”

However, social media has erupted today after a “reliable store clerk” working on the ritzy Avenue Montaigne, has reported that Olena Zelenska went on a Christmas shopping spree spending €40,000 euros in an hour. (citation) Previously President Zelenskyy’s wife was received by French first lady Bridget Macron.

If the reporting is accurate, the spending spree comes at a bad time optically, as Mrs. Zelenska’s husband Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is simultaneously asking the European Union to provide more financial support for the embattled country.

Additionally, the Biden administration is trying to push congress to pass another $38 billion spending package for Ukraine to bring the total spent well over $100 billion.

Mrs. Zelenskyy Christmas shopping in glitzy Paris stores and dropping €40,000 while her husband bangs his tin cup isn’t exactly a good look.

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House Democrats have returned to their old ‘deem as passed’ playbook to provide a vehicle for the Senate to construct another stopgap omnibus spending bill despite the legally required non-origination from the House.

WASHINGTON DC – The House is expected to pass a stopgap spending bill Wednesday night that would give negotiators an extra week to finish a $1.7 trillion year-end spending package, setting up an all-out legislative sprint before lawmakers leave for the holidays. (more)

Texas Representative Chip Roy explains exactly what the House is doing.  WATCH:

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Yup, it’s Deja vu all over again.

Did you know the last regular order congressional budget was passed in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008.  That’s it.  Every single year from 2008 to now has been a series of baseline budgeting, continuous resolutions and omnibus spending bills.

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As we have often discussed on these pages, inflation would ultimately moderate and plateau not because prices were dropping but rather because of the calendar cycle.

As the economy cycles through a year of large price increases, the current inflation rate cycles through to the period when prices first increased.  This calendar cycle means continued price increases are lower as a percentage and thus the inflation rate appears to modify despite prices continuing to rise. [BLS Report]

This scenario, prices remaining high and continuing to climb – yet lower as a percentage, now provides the justification for the federal reserve to state inflation is moderating.

(Via NBC) – Amid signs that price growth in the U.S. economy is rapidly cooling, the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it was slowing the pace of its rate-hiking program designed to tackle inflation — but that more hikes were still on the table.

The Federal Open Market Committee said it was increasing its key federal funds rate by 0.5%, after announcing four-straight 0.75% hikes at its most recent meetings. In its Wednesday statement, the Fed said it continues to target an inflation rate of 2% over the long term and would continue to increase the federal funds rate to do so.

“Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices, and broader price pressures,” the committee said.

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Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard had an interesting discussion on her podcast today [LINK] which included Carlson retelling the story of the NSA conducting surveillance on him during a prior attempt to gain an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After recounting the NSA story, Tucker then went on to outline a conversation with representative Mike McCaul after the Texas republican and incoming Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee described Carlson as an agent of Russia.  When Carlson got into an argument with McCaul over the accusation, McCaul went on to tell Carlson his intelligence community briefers were the ones who provided the information.

Overall, if you have an understanding of our prior CTH outline of The Fourth Branch of Government, this interview fits into that aspect perfectly.  Additionally, expand your perspective as you listen to Carlson outline the details; remind yourself of the stakes within the domestic surveillance network from their perspective; then overlay the current headlines surrounding Twitter.  Tucker Carlson is coming darn close to the center of the target.  WATCH (prompted to 40:05):

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The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) has a vested interest in keeping the public unaware of the details behind the U.S. surveillance state.  All of the institutions that were created after 9/11/01, specifically including the Dept of Homeland Security, the DOJ National Security Division and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), would go to extreme lengths -under the auspices of national security- to maintain the framework of the surveillance state they represent.

Penetrating this matrix is almost impossible as you are seeing from the Executive Branch (DOJ) and Judicial Branch (federal courts), as the institutions have an umbrella of protection by shouting for a ‘national security’ shield.   There are trillions at stake, and the system of utilizing social media to conduct internal domestic surveillance is part of the process.

Barack Obama specifically enveloped the social media sphere by recruiting Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, Microsoft and Apple into the DHS system.  Essentially what formed as an outcome of the mutually beneficial agreements was a Big Tech oligarchy (a monopoly of sorts).   The construct was intentional, because within an oligarchical system no rogue oligarch will be permitted to put the group at risk.

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Arguably, Glenn Greenwald has been the most critical voice about the rise of the U.S. surveillance state and generational shift of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to conduct domestic surveillance on American citizens.  There’s a reason Greenwald lives in Brazil where no extradition treaties with the U.S. government exist.

Curiously, when it came time to release information about DHS connections to Twitter, Glenn Greenwald was not considered as an acceptable outlet for the information.  Instead, Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss were selected by Elon Musk to represent his sunlight and transparency interests.  However, in this brief video Greenwald gets to interview Taibbi about his findings. {Direct Rumble Link}

Interested viewers will note Taibbi’s #1 takeaway from his review of the Twitter Files data is that evidence of the DHS connection to Twitter exists.  Taibbi speaks of the “instructions” coming into Twitter from U.S. government officials.  Yet, curiously missing from the documented evidence provided by Taibbi was anything showing a paper trail of this instruction pathway he is describing.  WATCH:

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Greenwald is smart, strategically smart; Greenwald also knows why he was not selected to review the files.  Glenn artfully guides Taibbi to discuss elements of the story that perhaps Taibbi himself doesn’t recognize are being shaped for his reporting.   Note: “we don’t know how the ‘ask’ works yet.”

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Axios has an interesting article today [SEE HERE] about the success of Bari Weiss and her wife Nellie Bowles website launch on the back of the Twitter Files release.

Axios – Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist turned independent newsletter writer, has hired ten full-time employees and over a dozen contractors to help build her new media company, The Free Press, Weiss told Axios in an interview.

[…] Weiss launched The Free Press last Thursday, four days ahead of schedule, to capitalize on the media coverage around her “Twitter Files” reporting.

In less than a week, The Free Press has accrued more than 105,000 followers on Twitter and its flagship newsletter has added an additional 25,000 free and paid subscribers.

Weiss’ Twitter following itself has exploded in that time, growing from more than 500,000 followers to more than 900,000 in less than a week.

Last year, Marketwatch reported that Weiss made over $800,000 from her newsletter alone, which at the time had 14,000 paid subscribers. The newsletter has more than double that number of paid subscribers today.

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Former House Intelligence Committee lead investigator Kash Patel appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast to discuss the Twitter Files. {Direct Rumble Link} Within the interview Mr. Patel asks the obvious question: Why are we not seeing the document trail where the FBI is making contact with Twitter?

The contacts are noted within the Twitter File release, but the specific methods, people and documents or email requests from the U.S. government into Twitter are not being released. Kash Patel asks Elon Musk to release these documents and asks why are we not seeing them? WATCH:

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Patel’s point is well taken because insofar as the U.S. government contacts around the 2020 election would be important, the volume of contact and documents surrounding the COVID-19 control issues will be exponentially more intense and larger.

Release the government 2020 election contact information now, and then do the same thing when Twitter releases the substantive files about censorship related to COVID-19 and the vaccines.   Let the American people see who, what and how this DHS-Twitter ‘trusted partnership‘ portal was exploited.

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CTH took considerable flak for reporting on the uniparty system of Georgia politics prior to the 2020 midterms.  With the election in the rearview mirror, the Georgia Secretary of State is now proposing to permanently codify Democrat control of the state.

(Via Reason) […] Speaking to The New York Times last week, Raffensperger said he would petition the state legislature with three separate proposals. One would force large counties to open more locations for voting early. Another would lower the vote total needed to avoid a runoff from 50 percent to 45.

The third proposal is the most consequential, and the most interesting. Raffensperger will also state lawmakers to consider switching to a ranked choice ballot for future elections. (read more)

Ranked Choice Voting is a particularly insidious way for party control officers to stop unapproved candidates, it also provides the opposition party with a tool to defeat specifically targeted opponents.  As we saw in the Alaska midterm race, it was the second-choice votes of democrats that pushed Senator Lisa Murkowski to victory.

Hopefully the people of Georgia will tell their legislature this is not a workable solution.

Meanwhile Ronna McDaniel is promoting herself for RNC reelection and urging republican voters to unify.

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I’m not going to write extensively about this because I respect your intellectual ability to see the obvious.  Questions have been raised about why the Twitter File releases appear to have been structured in a fashion to protect government interests.

Well, the new Bari Weiss website that was set up to launch as an exclusive outcome of the Twitter File release, includes a current contributor and former 2020 control officer of the DOJ who would have facilitated the DHS/FBI contact with social media; the stuff that is transparently missing from the Twitter File releases.

[ SOURCE ]

Yes, former AG Bill Barr is a content partner with Twitter File narrative engineer Bari Weiss.  Gee, I wonder how that happens?

Oh look, and what a coincidence… they are both promoting Ron DeSantis.

Wait… Elon Musk is also promoting Ron Desantis… and Mr Musk is simultaneously promoting the Bari Weiss website that promotes Ron DeSantis… and contains Twitter File releases that are conspicuously missing the discussion angle of FBI influence in the 2020 election… Almost as if… wait, nah, that would be conspiracy talk.  Just ordinary coincidences everywhere, for sure.

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The timing is transparent, given all of the political donations organized by FTX Cryptocurrency CEO Sam Bankman-Fried for politicians, mostly Democrats, in office.

On the day before he was scheduled to give testimony to congress, a testimony likely to be entertaining with representatives asking specific questions about political contributions by the known fraud MBS to other specific members of congress, the cryptocurrency executive is arrested in the Bahamas.

(Via Daily Mail) – Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former CEO of FTX, has been arrested. 

The crypto billionaire, 30, was arrested in The Bahamas – where he has been hiding out since his $32 billion empire came crashing down last month – and he is now facing criminal charges in the US.

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