FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried waived an extradition fight and U.S. Marshals flew him from the Bahamas to New York late Wednesday night.  Appearing in a Manhattan court today, the judge set bail at $250 million and permits SBF to remain under house arrest at his parent’s California home until trial begins.

Additionally, it was revealed that Carolyn Ellison, 28, the former chief executive of Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, 29, who co-founded FTX, pleaded guilty to charges including wire fraud, securities fraud and commodities fraud.  Both are cooperating witnesses with the prosecution against the FTX founder.

New York – The cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried can post $250 million bond and live in his parents’ home in California while he awaits trial on charges that he swindled investors and looted customer deposits on his FTX trading platform, a judge said Thursday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos said in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that Bankman-Fried, 30, “perpetrated a fraud of epic proportions.” Roos proposed strict bail terms, including a $250 million bond and house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.

An important reason for allowing bail was that Bankman-Fried agreed to waive extradition, Roos said.

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in DC earlier today to visit the White House and deliver a speech before a joint session of congress. Dressed in his customary casual attire, Zelenskyy demanded representatives of the American people adhere to his demands and provide more taxpayer funding regardless of public opinion.

Tucker Carlson called out the ridiculous pantomime on display and the hubris of a character installed to operate the world’s biggest financial laundry operation. WATCH:

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An example of the absurd Zelenskyy theater performance is below.

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Joe Biden representing the USA and Volodymyr Zelenskyy representing the proxy state of Ukraine, will hold a joint press conference today at 4:30pm EST.

Zelenskyy has arrived in the U.S. with demands for an additional $45 billion in cash and modern missiles.

UPDATE: Video Added

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Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee used an arcane law, well over 100 years old that permits the Chairman Committee, Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.), to review the personal tax filings of any American, in order to obtain Donald Trump’s personal tax filings from the IRS.

However, even in the hands of the committee, strict privacy laws still applied to the tax filings unless the committee interceded and voted to make them public.  That’s exactly what the Democrats in the committee did today with a party-line vote.

The Democrats have set a new precedent in congress for any party in power to demand the tax filings of any individual American and then release them to the public.  When the Republicans take control of the committee in January 2023, will they demand the Tax returns of Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Chuck Schumer, or Jeffrey Epstein, or Nancy & Paul Pelosi and then make them public?

WASHINGTON DC – House Democrats said they will release several years worth of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns in the coming days after a party-line vote Tuesday night to make the long-hidden filings public.

Lawmakers said it would take some time to first redact sensitive information from the documents, such as Trump’s Social Security number and address.

[…] Neal had sued for the filings under an arcane law allowing the heads of Congress’s tax committees to examine anyone’s returns.

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One might think the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act would be constructed in such a manner as to help Americans by reducing inflation.  However, not only does the Inflation Reduction Act not help reduce inflation, but the climate change bill carrying the name The Inflation Reduction Act is now the cause for complaints by Europe and Asia because the falsely named spending bill doesn’t help their economy.

The issue stems from the part of the climate change bill that provides a $7,5000 federal tax credit for electric vehicles.  As the bill was written the vehicles needed to be assembled in the USA with battery components mostly sourced from the U.S.A.   Europe and Asian automakers are not happy because they want their vehicles, made in Europe and Asia to benefit from the tax credit.

Of course, the first thing Joe Biden does is tell Europe and Asia he will modify the rules to permit vehicles made outside the USA to benefit.  The exact opposite of the intended construct of the bill in the first place.

But,… that’s multinational corporate globalism in action.

WASHINGTON—The Biden administration on Monday delayed proposing detailed rules for new tax incentives for electric vehicles, following strong pushback from European and Asian allies that the subsidy program discriminated against their companies.

The Treasury Department said details on the battery-sourcing requirements that electric vehicles must meet to qualify for up to $7,500 in tax credit will be released in March, instead of by the end of this year as earlier planned.

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Picking up checks from congress along with some supplemental Christmas shopping likely a high priority.  Because, why not.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be in Washington DC on Wednesday to deliver a speech to a joint session of congress and visit with Joe Biden at the White House.

WASHINGTON DC – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine intends to make a surprise visit to Washington on Wednesday, the first time the leader has left his war-torn country since Russia invaded 10 months ago.

Zelenskyy’s plans to address a joint session of Congress and at the White House as the Biden administration plans to announce the delivery of a Patriot missile battle system to help Ukraine with its air defenses, according to two people familiar with the plans but not authorized to publicly discuss them because of security concerns.

The trip is not certain to happen, the people cautioned. Zelenskyy was still in Ukraine on Tuesday evening, and there are concerns about his ability to leave his country and then return again.

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The J6 Committee has announced they have found President Trump guilty of four counts of campaigning against their Democrat candidates and attempting to disrupt the DC system of governing and financial graft.   The committee formally announced their intent today for political referrals to the Biden-Obama justice department.

In addition to holding other scandalous political conversations, President Trump is accused of: (1) “aiding and comforting” disgruntled voters; (2) obstructing Congress’ Jan. 6 joint session by holding a political rally in DC; (3) conspiring with some unknown entity to make false claims to the bureaucrats in the National Archives about his private papers; and ultimately, (4) conspiring to defraud the United States and deprive Washington DC of its business model.

The J6 Committee has released a 160-page “executive summary” of a report they will release soon [READ HERE], and will now refer President Trump to Lisa Monaco, Deputy Attorney General and former White House counsel for President Obama, to be prosecuted in Washington DC for heinous crimes and insurrection.

The goal is to fulfill President Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe’s promise to destroy President Trump and block him from holding office again.

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Matt Taibbi files a supplemental thread to his review of DHS/FBI instructions, through the still undisclosed portal.  [Twitter File Supplemental Here]

Just a reminder… how the ‘asks’ actually took place is still a mystery, Taibbi & Weiss et al are only privy to the internal actions and discussions after the inbound requests arrive.  Put another way, we are blind to the method of the DHS/FBI portal into the network.  I do not believe that secrecy is accidental.

[Twitter File Supplemental Here]

The essence of Taibbi’s supplemental report is based on a few internal emails amid the group following DHS/FBI and ODNI officials telling the Twitter rulers they were not cracking down hard enough on the platform content.

As Taibbi notes, “The questionnaire authors seem displeased with Twitter for implying, in a July 20th “DHS/ODNI/FBI/Industry briefing,” that “you indicated you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors on your platform.”

Twitter official Yoel Roth then responded to the U.S intelligence community in a series of back-and-forth conversations, and internally to the Twitter censorship group.

As noted by Taibbi, “[Roth] was not “comfortable with the Bureau (and by extension the IC) demanding written answers.”  Taibbi then seems to pull out the pretending not to know things card and ponders, “the idea of the FBI acting as conduit for the Intelligence Community is interesting, given that many agencies are barred from domestic operations.”

Gee, ya think?  Go figure.

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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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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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