“Crowds? I see nothing. I’m surprised,” retail worker Jeremy Pritchett told FOX 2. “Normally, it’s wrapped all the way around the building. Today: no one.”

That’s the typical ground report from areas all over the country.  No one, literally almost no one, is doing any holiday shopping and the traditional Black Friday rush to get deals and discounts just didn’t happen.  Financial media are scratching their puzzlers, perplexed with furrowed brows.

Interestingly, almost every financial media outlet is using the same Retail Federation talking point about anticipating an 8% increase in holiday sales this year.  Apparently, pretenses must be maintained.  Meanwhile, news crews and camera crews are having a desperate time finding any holiday shopping to use as background footage for the claims that sales are strong.

“Look, over there. There’s a person buying something. Oh, wait, no, that’s just an employee dusting the empty cash register.”  At a certain point, one would have to believe reality would run head-first into the mass delusional pretending.  Maybe this holiday season will be it, maybe not.

Reuters – […] About 166 million people were planning to shop from Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday through this coming “Cyber Monday,” according to the National Retail Federation, almost 8 million more than last year. But with sporadic rain in some parts of the country, stores were less busy than usual on Black Friday.

“Usually at this time of the year you struggle to find parking. This year, I haven’t had an issue getting a parking spot,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry adviser of the NPD Group Inc.

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The true cause of inflation, and yes that includes ‘global inflation ‘, is the collective western economic jump into climate change energy policy known as “build back better.”  Stopping the use of oil, gas and coal as the source for cheap energy, has resulted in every element of the inflation now outlined.

As an outcome of their ideology, the central banks of the western economies began desperately to lower economic activity to reduce energy consumption.  The goal was/is to lower human economic activity to the point where windmills and solar farms can sustain it.  Everything else is pretending.  Tucker Carlson finally points this out. WATCH:

Coming out of the pandemic, western oil, coal and gas energy development was blocked.  Immediately energy prices skyrocketed, driving up the costs of everything.  Using the justification of “too much demand” the central banks (including the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank) are raising interest rates to lower the need for energy.

Western political leaders are pretending this is not a collective intention.  However, their prior promotion of the Build Back Better agenda belies their current protestations.

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I have given a great deal of thought to this in the past several years and I am welcoming all opinions.  Just to let you know I intend to read every single comment, because ultimately this is important. AND I believe it will become a salient topic in the next two years [As did the recent conversation of Ballots -vs- Votes].

In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled on a campaign finance legal challenge known colloquially as The Citizens United decision.  The essence of the decision was a speech issue. In the court’s opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that limiting “independent political spending” from corporations and other groups violates the First Amendment right to free speech.

Prior to CU corporations were limited in financial spending on behalf of political campaigns just like individuals.  However, unions were not.  Organized Labor Unions could spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates.  Corporations were limited like individuals.

At the time of the January 2010 Supreme Court ruling Democrats and Barack Obama were furious.  Corporations could now form SuperPACs and spend unlimited amounts of money ‘independently’ supporting candidates.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules on coordination and communication between the political campaigns and the independent SuperPACs was/is supposed to create a firewall.  However, the obscure nature of that effort has failed miserably.

Real World Example. A SuperPAC can organize a pro-Ben rally, spend on the venue, spend on the banners, t-shirts, rally material etc., and then advertise it.  If Ben shows up to deliver a speech, he’s not breaking the rules so long as Ben and the SuperPAC didn’t coordinate the event.  Ben just shows up to share his support for the effort, thank everyone and everything is legal in the eyes of the FEC.  Yeah, it’s goofy.

More commonly as a result of the Citizens United (CU) case, massive corporate advertising (considered speech) is permitted in support of the candidate; or the corporation can organize ballot collection or get out the vote efforts, etc.  Again, as long as they do not coordinate with any “official campaign” ie. Mark Zuckerbucks, yeah, goofy.   As a result, expanded corporate spending has massive influence over U.S. elections.

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We have been closely monitoring the signs of a global cleaving around the energy sector taking place.  Essentially, western governments’ following the “Build Back Better” climate change agenda which stops using coal, oil and gas to power their economic engine, while the rest of the growing economic world continues using the more efficient and traditional forms of energy to power their economies.

Within the BBB western group (identified on map in yellow), the logical consequences are increased living costs for those who live in the BBB zone, and increased prices for goods manufactured in the BBB zone.  In the zone where traditional low-cost energy resources continue to be developed (grey on map), we would expect to see a lower cost of living and lower costs to create goods.   Two divergent economic zones based on two different energy systems.

This potential outcome just seemed to track with the logical conclusion.  The yellow zone also represented by the World Economic Forum, and the gray zone also represented by an expanding BRICS alliance.  Against this predictable backdrop we have been watching various events unfold, some obvious and some less so.

Today, we get an obvious example:

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Comrades, Dear Leader wants to help you with correct thoughts this Thanksgiving.

The administration cares about you.  With magnanimous intent Dear Leader provides the correct guidance for your discussions.  Please follow the transcript as outlined for your family gathering this year.  All the best comrade citizens will be reciting it.  [Source]

Good citizenship begins at the family table by honoring Dear Leader’s accomplishments.

Dear Leader provides appropriate instructions for the way all good citizens should thank him.  It is no longer your burden to say, “this holiday we celebrate and are thankful for friends and family.”  Instead, Dear Leader is providing thoughtful guidance, so you do not have to worry about appropriate thinking.

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This is terrible news for many blue-collar families in Mississippi and North Carolina.  Last night, United Furniture, makers of Lane brand, fired all of their manufacturing employees and transportation workers effective immediately.

Fortunately, other manufacturers are quickly messaging the displaced workers with job offers {link}, but the overall message from the collapsed company is alarming.

Read the email letter from today that accompanied the late-night notification:

(Via Furniture Today) – “At the instruction of the Board of Directors of United Furniture Industries, Inc., and all subsidiaries (the “Company”), we regret to inform you that due to unforeseen business circumstances the Company has been forced to make the difficult decision to terminate the employment of all its employees, effective immediately, on November 21, 2022, with the exception of over-the-road drivers that are out on delivery. Your layoff from the Company is expected to be permanent and all benefits will be terminated immediately without provision of COBRA.

Over-the-road drivers that are out on delivery will be paid for the balance of the week. Whether or not you have completed your delivery, please immediately return equipment, inventory, and delivery documents for those deliveries that have been completed to one of the following locations: Winston-Salem, N.C., Verona, Miss., or Victorville, Calif. location. To be clear, do not complete any additional deliveries.

We regret that this difficult and unexpected situation has made this necessary. Additional information will be provided shortly.

Thank you for your service and dedication.
UFI/Lane Corporate Communications” (link)

A few quick points.

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If you read the article about the “Pegasus Project”, spyware created to infect cell phones that was marketed by Israeli intelligence through a company called NSO {Go Deep Here}, then you essentially know the background.  Pegasus is “no click” targeting spyware that can be deployed against cellular phones, simply by inputting the phone number and transmitting to it.

The Guardian previously reported, “Claudio Guarnieri, who runs Amnesty International’s Security Lab, said once a phone was infected with Pegasus, a client of NSO could in effect take control of a phone, enabling them to extract a person’s messages, calls, photos and emails, secretly activate cameras or microphones, and read the contents of encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.”

Pegasus was deployed to target tens-of-thousands of cell phones by the people who Israel sold the spyware to.  The Guardian, and a group of allied leftists in media, were previously granted access to a leaked batch of 50,000 phone numbers that the Pegasus software was operating in.

In a recent update from the New York Times they stated, “[it] has been used by police and intelligence services to hack the phones of drug kingpins and terrorists, but gained notoriety when it was revealed that governments, like Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Hungary and India, had deployed it against political dissidents, journalists and human rights workers.

It was also recently revealed the U.S. FBI under Director Chris Wray purchased the Pegasus program for “FBI experiments” and “exploration” into how the spyware program could be used domestically.

The FBI was initially reluctant to reveal their ownership of the Pegasus program, however, within FOIA documents related to the potential for domestic surveillance and concerns about fourth amendment constitutional protections, the FBI admitted they retain the capability – but promised it has not been deployed.

(New York Times) – […] The Times revealed in January that the F.B.I. had purchased Pegasus in 2018 and, over the next two years, tested the spyware at a secret facility in New Jersey. Since the bureau first purchased the tool, it has paid approximately $5 million to NSO.

Since that story was published, F.B.I. officials, including Mr. Wray, have gone further than they did during the closed meeting with senators last December. They acknowledged that the bureau did consider deploying Pegasus, though they still emphasized that the F.B.I.’s main goal was to test and evaluate it to assess how adversaries might use it. (read more)

Now, stay with me…

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“The Committee’s purpose in requesting President Trump’s tax returns has nothing to do with funding or staffing issues at the IRS and everything to do with releasing the President’s tax information to the public,” Trump’s non-pretending attorneys wrote to the court in October.  However, today the Supreme Court maintains the pretense of a valid legislative purpose.

(Washington DC) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to block a request by the House Ways and Means Committee for former President Trump’s tax returns. There were no noted dissents.

The decision likely means that the returns will be released to the Committee immediately, ending a multi-year legal battle.

Trump filed an emergency application at the Supreme Court on Oct. 31 to block the release of his tax information at least until the court considered whether it wanted to hear full argument on the issue. Trump similarly lost his case in the lower courts, most recently with a panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling unanimously that the Committee’s request for tax returns was constitutional.

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The Associated Press received a lot of international scorn for reporting incorrectly that Russia fired missiles into Poland {Backstory}.

As soon as the AP attributed the missile attack to Russia almost immediately other media outlets began promoting calls for a NATO led war against Russia.  Additionally, the G20 summit was taking place and various international leaders began discussing an article-5 convention against Russia.

However, the single source of the AP report was wrong, a senior U.S. intelligence official, if there actually was a source.   It was the Ukraine military who fired the missile into Poland, not Russia.

The Daily Beast notes today that the Associated Press has fired James LaPorta, the journalist who made the claim of Russian origin.

(Via Daily Beast) – The Associated Press scared much of the world last Tuesday when it alerted readers that “a senior U.S. intelligence official” said “Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.”

That report, which was widely cited across the internet and on cable news, was taken offline the following day and replaced with an editor’s note admitting the single source was wrong and that “subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.”

On Monday, the AP fired James LaPorta, the investigative reporter responsible for that story, Confider has learned.

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Good grief, talk about being late to the story, after pretending for two years….

According to CBS, “House Republicans say one of their top investigative priorities is the Biden family businesses, and Hunter Biden’s purported laptop could be crucial to those investigations. CBS News commissioned an independent forensic review of what is believed to be Hunter Biden’s laptop data.”

And with the midterm election in the rearview mirror, the Elf on The Shelf, Catherine Herridge, reports. WATCH:

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