Move along, move along folks… please do not pay attention to the fire raging downtown, the suburbs are so nice this time of year… move along folks, look shiny Ukraine thing over there…

When retail sales are calculated, they are calculated in dollars.  Any recorded increase in retail sales that does not exceed the price increases in those items is factually reflecting a drop in units sold.

Ex. – if you sell 300 items at $1.00 each, you have $300 in sales.  If you sell 250 items at $1.25 each, you have $312.50 in sales.  Technically, you have a 4.1% increase in sales.  However, you have sold 17% less items (50 units).

When you are selling less stuff, your business (economy) is contracting, not expanding.  We have been in this contracting cycle (an actual production recession) since May/June of last year; however, the contraction has not been recognized because massive inflation is hiding it.  That, my friends, is the painful truth and it spells big trouble ahead.

(AP) […] Retail sales increased 0.3% after registering a revised 4.9% jump from December to January, fueled by wage gains, solid hiring and more money in banking accounts, according to the Commerce Department. January’s increase was the biggest jump in spending since last March, when American households received a final federal stimulus check of $1,400.

Business at furniture and home furnishing stores fell 1% in February, while sales at consumer electronics and appliance stores slipped 0.6%. General merchandise stores saw business down 0.2%, while online sales fell 3.7%. Restaurant sales rose 2.5% as shoppers shift more of their spending to services as the threat of COVID-19 fades. (read more)

Take the figures above and compare them to the sector inflation in February (Table-2, BLS Report)  – Just sticking to what is above:

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In September of 2019, Elizabeth Warren promised to do something on her first day in office that would rebuild the Russian economy, grow China’s influence and support the Maduro regime in Venezuela.  We immediately wrote about it HERE.

SEPT 7, 2019 – Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has made a campaign promise that was quite remarkable:

What Senator Elizabeth Warren promised in that tweet is EXACTLY what Joe Biden did on his first day in office.   Now, before going further, let me explain something about that relationship that will likely make a lot more sense.

You might remember when all the democrat candidates in the 2020 primary were told to drop out right before Super Tuesday, as part of the organized effort to stop Bernie Sanders from becoming the nominee.  The lone holdout was Senator Elizabeth Warren.  She was polling essentially even with Joe Biden while Bernie was leading.

It was very well documented at the time that Senator Warren was negotiating terms with the Biden team for her compliance and support.  Eventually, as the controlled party momentum grew, Warren agreed to drop out of the race, and she endorsed Joe Biden.  The terms of that agreement were never made public, but when we look at the priority of Warren (tweet), and compare it to the literal duplication of that pledge that was carried out by Joe Biden, well, the coincidence doesn’t look coincidental.   I digress…

Back to the original statement by Warren.  At the time she made this statement in 2019, we outlined a very specific series of consequences that would happen if she really did target fossil fuel on day one.  Now that Joe Biden has carried out exactly what Warren outlined, let’s go back to that 2019 outline of consequences and compare it to where we are today.

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Tucker Carlson used his monologue tonight to give a big picture review of how the White House is using the Ukraine-Russia conflict to hide the economic outcomes created by their policy.

Massive inflation on basic necessities, combined with rising gas, fuel and energy costs are crippling the working class.  The White House is now using the Russia-Ukraine conflict as an excuse to hide their responsibility.   It’s an accurate outline. WATCH:

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President Donald Trump sits down for an extensive interview on current events with the Nelk boys on Full Send Podcast.

https://youtu.be/WRbRoQcO9os

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Gasoline is now at the highest price ever recorded. The average cost of a retail gallon of unleaded gasoline hit $4.173, according to the American Automobile Association, with many regions now far exceeding that price.  It is not uncommon to see $5/gal gasoline in many areas.

Against this backdrop, Joe Biden announced today that his administration is banning the import of oil, liquified natural gas (LNG) and coal from Russia.  [We do not import LNG or coal from Russia, so that political point is moot.]  You can read the executive order HERE.

The executive order also bans any U.S. entity from investing or facilitating the investment of Russian energy development.  That section explains why there were earlier reports of Oil companies withdrawing from Russia.  They were obviously given a heads up.

The way the order is currently written, and a lot of it has to do with extremely generous interpretations by the U.S. Treasury Dept., it would appear that any energy company currently operating in the U.S. cannot simultaneously be operating in Russia (or be part of the subsidizing and insurance network that supports energy development in Russia).  The Treasury interpretations here are fraught with complexity.

The part that matters is boiled down in this section:

(i)    the importation into the United States of the following products of Russian Federation origin:  crude oil; petroleum; petroleum fuels, oils, and products of their distillation; liquefied natural gas; coal; and coal products;

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White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki said today the Biden administration will try to reduce the impact of rising oil prices for American consumers but will not do anything to allow increased production of U.S. energy resources.

Oh, and it’s all Vladimir Putin’s fault, WATCH:

I’ll keep repeating it, because many people just don’t understand the unique nature of our North American position.  Energy resources are nation specific.  Ireland, the U.K, Europe, or Australia, do not have abundant oil and natural gas deposits like the U.S. does.  ANWAR has more oil than Saudi Arabia.

A U.S. president can and does control the price of gasoline.  What can a U.S. President and administration specifically do?  We have abundant U.S. energy resources.  Quite literally the strongest in the entire world.

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The propaganda effort by western media, specifically but not exclusively U.S. media, to shift blame for massive economic damage from Joe Biden to Russia is reaching a stunning level of coordinated intent.

The cognitive dissonance (fancy words for telling lies under the cloud of economic analysis) is not only happening in the U.S; a similar level of blame-shifting is happening in Europe, Australia, Canada and most western media outlets.

The global economic contraction, which was specifically and intentionally created by the collective ‘Build Back Better‘ promoters, is now being blamed on Russia; and, quite frankly, the motive behind the corporate media shifting the blame is because the underlying ideology (western policy) was/is supported by the leftist media tribe.

Throughout 2021, it is well documented how government COVID policies of lockdowns, economic consequences and insane spending, created the baseline problem behind inflation.  Simultaneously, the western approach toward energy development and the “opportunity” the EU and U.S. sought to exploit within the BBB agenda to radically transform energy use, was simply pouring super-volatile fuel on an already burning fire.

In 2021, gasoline prices increased 60 to 80 percent.  Food prices jumped 15 to 40 percent, with some sectors even higher.  By the time the EU central bankers and U.S. Federal reserve finally admitted inflation was no longer “transitory,” we were facing next harvest fertilizer prices that tripled in price from 2020, and oil prices that had doubled in the span of 12 months.

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Senator Marco Rubio (U-DC) was installed as vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) to assist covering up the SSCI involvement in the intelligence community targeting of Donald Trump.  Rubio replaced Richard Burr, who was working closely with Mark Warner.

During his appearance with the State Department’s unofficial spokesperson, CNN’s Jake Tapper, Senator Rubio outlined the case against Vladimir Putin noting that Ukraine is a legacy move by the Russian president.   In the background of Rubio stating the U.S. needs to stop buying oil from Russia, the Biden administration has entered discussions with Venezuela for replacement oil so they can create the better optic and stop purchasing from Vladimir Putin.

Think about the ridiculousness of the situation as it now presents.  Only a few short years ago (January 2019), Marco Rubio was one of the main characters who led a ‘whole of government‘ effort to remove Venezuela leader Nicolas Maduro on behalf of his Latino constituents in Florida. Now that the focus has shifted to Russia, Rubio wants to remove Vladimir Putin, by purchasing oil from Nicolas Maduro.  Yup, there’s U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell.

Another worthwhile note, in an earlier segment Jake Tapper called for U.S. sanctions against the Russian DUMA, essentially Russian congress.  Tapper wants the U.S. government to start targeting Russian politicians, freezing assets and confiscating their wealth.  He just says this as if it’s just an ordinary evolution of “the process.”

It would be interesting to see Jake Tapper’s position if China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Brazil or South Africa started to confiscate the wealth, property and interests of U.S. politicians and/or citizen billionaires of the United States because the U.S. invaded Iraq under false pretenses.

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Within the book of instructions for the ideological Chicago crew (Alinsky peeps), there are chapters on how to create off-ramps to cloud their agenda. If they need a bigger cloud, they create a bigger crisis. The crisis then becomes the cover, the justification to explain the outcomes of their agenda.

In the latest example, the White House is shifting blame for massive gas price increases and overall U.S. inflation.  The crisis in Ukraine then takes on a geopolitical angle and a domestic angle.  Last year’s doubling of gas prices and the current increases are now being blamed on Russia.  WATCH:

If they keep doing this, and the Ukraine conflict continues, you’ll be amazed at how many Americans will forget everything before (Biden policy) and believe all things bad in the economy are Russia’s fault.

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In a public tweet tonight, Senator Lindsey Graham calls for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The propaganda push from the U.S. government is actually quite remarkable to watch unfold.   I mean seriously, there’s a point when you don’t go all-in because there has to be an exit option.   We are in very tenuous place, because no one is thinking about an off ramp…. it’s full speed ahead.

If Lindsey Graham, Joe Biden, NATO, the EU, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Word Economic Forum and the multinational corporations in this alliance of Public/Private geopolitical partnerships, succeed in the fight against Vladimir Putin – I promise you, we are not going to like the world on the other side of their victory.

A few weeks ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent a clear and specific message to citizens in Canada when he sanctioned the trucker’s bank accounts.  Joe Biden, NATO and EU are right now sending a clear message to the citizens of the world, as they sanction Putin’s bank accounts and the Russian economy.

If you can’t see the connection, you are not thinking carefully enough about it.

Everything will be different now.

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