When hardline leftists (fascists, communists, et al) are successful in advancing their political ideology, we always reach a point where all opposition must be silenced.  Dissent is a risk to the totalitarian state; that’s also why communists always ban religion.

Totalitarianism needs total control.  Free speech is antithetical to that control.  The natural evolution of any totalitarian state is to use the justification of security as a method for that control; hence, the U.S. received The Patriot Act, and all of the longer-term slippery slope consequences that are never fully discussed at the outset.  I digress.

So, here we are today – facing a U.S. Dept of Homeland Security (DHS), under the current control of the far left, stating that free speech is now the biggest domestic threat for terrorism.  Whereby the voices to target are those voices who might: “sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.”

Undermine trust in government, as defined by anyone who does not blindly trust the policies from Biden administration, and you are now subject to be labeled a terrorist.

DHS Alert (Feb 7, 2022) – The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.

(more…)

Something has changed in the past several days.  Likely the private COVID fear polling continued to show an overwhelming number of Americans are just done with the constant COVID-19 fear porn and mandates.

Today, several states including New Jersey and California announced they were dropping their mask mandates and many COVID-19 regulations.  In the past week there appears to have been a big shift in the narrative.  To highlight that point, the biggest fear porn and mandate seller on CNN, Dr. Leana Wen, completely reversed her position, and said it’s time to let people make their own choices.  WATCH:

Notice also how there’s been virtual silence on any further White House efforts to push the booster or vaccination program.  Last we saw the booster compliance effort, it was less than 50% of those who were previously vaccinated.  There’s definitely been a change in narrative engineer pressure for more COVID pushing overall – vaccinations, regulations and/or masks.

Last point, Zach on Twitter had been searching for a video for quite some time that he just recently found again and shared.  It’s a video of Dr. Leana Wen from several years ago.  It really makes you stand back and think.  The video is very weird.

(more…)

Gasoline prices have risen, on average, 40% in the past 11 months.  This leads to higher consumer costs across the board.  Oil, currently $90/barrel, is going to go even higher as a merge of Biden economic, regulatory, energy and foreign policies are going to make things worse.

As the Obama-Biden administration previously said when they achieved their last historic increase in gas prices, “U.S. energy prices will necessarily skyrocket“, in order to achieve their ideological climate change objectives.

(VIA CNBC) Gas prices rose to the highest level in more than seven years Friday, on the heels of the U.S. oil benchmark topping $90 per barrel for the first time since 2014. 

The national average for a gallon of gas stood at $3.423 on Friday, according to AAA, slightly surpassing the prior high-water mark of $3.422 from Nov. 8.  Friday’s price means consumers are now paying the most at the pump since Sept. 10, 2014, AAA data shows.

The national average stood at $2.44 a year ago.  The rapid rise in prices is contributing to inflationary fears across the economy and is creating a headache for the Biden administration. (read more)

Yes, a 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.

(more…)

There really isn’t an adequate way to encapsulate what the Bureau of Labor and Statistics has done with their reported January jobs result [Main Data Here].   If you want a deep weeds review of the actuarial scheme deployed READ THIS ARTICLE.

In my lifetime of reviewing data and analytics, I have never reviewed a level of statistical manipulation that even comes close to this.  Well, at least not since the 1980’s junk bond valuations used for corporate restructuring and asset removal.  What the BLS produced today will likely go down in the annals of actuarial history as one of the most comprehensively fraudulent manipulations of labor and statistics in history.

In order to get to a point of being able to claim 467,000 job gains last month, the BLS needed to revise four years’ worth of claimed jobs and population data. By subtracting over a million prior jobs from 2021, essentially wiping out the COVID pandemic monthly impact, and by changing the workforce population over the same number of years, the BLS was able to recalculate the current number of people in the workforce and claim 467,000 jobs were recently created.

(more…)

If you watch anything today, this is it.  AP Journalist Matt Lee has been around for a long time. He’s the consistent person in the State Department briefing room who understands the deep state institutional games, and he knows how to spot narrative engineering.

Earlier today State Department Spokesman Ned Price said, “The United States has information that Russia is planning to stage fabricated attacks by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces as a pretext for a further invasion of Ukraine.”

Journalist Matt Lee then asked Ned Price what the declassified evidence was that the state dept was referring to.  Price responded that he just gave it to the audience; meaning his word was the evidence.  Matt Lee calls bullshit on Price, and things got really interesting. WATCH:

Folks, the intelligence state, the Fourth Branch of Government, is making it all up.  Everything about this Russian looming attack narrative has been manufactured out of whole cloth by the Intelligence Community and Biden administration.

The statements and position by Ned Price are transparently absurd.  Ridiculously so.  Matt Lee calling the bluff on the U.S. State Department, and comparing them to Alex Jones conspiracy theorists, is peak insanity.  No one trusts the U.S. government institutions any longer.  Everyone knows the “intelligence state” makes stuff up to steer and control events.  It’s a joke.

Russia is likely not doing anything, likely doesn’t even have a threatening posture, but yet, inside the DC bubble we are on the precipice of a thermonuclear war. We have passed through the looking glass, and now we are in bizarro world.

(more…)

Senator Ray Lujan from New Mexico suffered a stroke recently.  Thankfully, despite the seriousness of his medical situation, he is expected to make a recovery.  However, he will likely miss all U.S. Senate work for at least a month.  Lujan’s absence creates a significant issue for Senate Democrats in an upper chamber with a 50/50 split.

Lujan suffered the stroke last Thursday, on the same day Joe Biden announced the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.  The news of Senator Lujan’s major medical condition has been essentially quiet.

With Joe Biden expecting to nominate a Supreme Court justice very soon, the senator’s absence could be problematic.

However, not to worry, creepy Joe’s recent praise of Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham will likely assist.

WASHINGTON DC – […] While the 49-year-old New Mexico Democrat is expected to make a full recovery, no one knew when he would return to the evenly divided Senate, or what it means for the immediate agenda.

Luján’s unexpected medical condition comes at a moment when Senate Democrats simply don’t have any votes to spare to pass party priorities, including reviving their social spending bill and now confirming a Supreme Court justice. The latest news could leave Democrats reliant on Republican votes to move forward on nominees and other priorities.

(more…)

According to the White House, 50 special forces operators attacked the leadership compound of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the ISIS replacement head for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who was killed in 2019.  According to the White House occupant, after a lengthy engagement with U.S. forces, al-Qurayshi killed himself the same way al-Baghdadi did, by exploding a bomb.  There were no U.S. casualties.

(Via ABC) First responders reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said U.S. officials believe al-Qurayshi’s explosive killed himself, his wife, and three children. She added that U.S. officials were conducting an assessment to determine whether American action resulted in any civilian deaths. (more)

The White House background briefing on the strike IS HERE.  The remarks by Joe Biden ARE HERE.

Sending 50 special operators for one building engagement is a little heavy; however, obviously the White House was petrified that something would go wrong, and the last thing Ron Klain wants would be another boondoggle to add to the pile of disasters this administration has created.

That said, rather than debate the mission, I would draw attention to the location and bigger picture.  Northern Syria is part of the Muslim Brotherhood territory under the influence of Turkish President Recep Erdogan.  ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and all extremist Islamic factions therein are all just various shades of authentic Islam as promoted by The Muslim Brotherhood.

Turkey is a member of NATO.  Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and all of the various offshoots of ISIS could not operate in Northern Syria without the assistance of Turkey.  But we are not allowed to talk about that.  Notice how none of the media ask the White House or Pentagon if we discussed the attack with Turkey in advance?

(more…)

The business and financial wires are melting down today as ADP Payrolls, the nation’s largest private sector payroll providing service, releases data from January showing a drop of 301,000 jobs.  [ADP Raw Data Here]

The financial, economic and business pundits are completely caught off guard and using the words “shocked”, “unexpected” and “surprised,” within their analysis.  These employment numbers just don’t align with an economy growing at 6.9%, as measured by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).  However, for CTH readers who have carefully scrutinized the economic claims and looked at the bigger picture through the prism of kitchen table checkbook economics, these results are not a surprise.

Every sector of the employment picture on Main Street USA is hit.  The pundits, following the narrative first seeded by the White House on Monday, are pointing to Omicron as the justification inside their review.  That’s nonsense.  For the better part of seven months these same pundits first claimed Delta, then shifted to Omicron as a way to explain the structurally weak economy.  All of that is nonsense.

What we are witnessing are the outcomes of massive inflation now hitting the labor market.  A drop in demand, and a subsequent drop in the employment of goods and services, is an unavoidable outcome of inflationary pressure on wages.

Let me say it again, on a macro level, natural consumer DEMAND has dropped – we are only now starting to see it surfacing in the statistical measures.

This is why White House spokesperson Jen Psaki made that weird statement on Monday.

(more…)

The latest BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLT) report [DATA HERE] reflects a headline of 4.3 million U.S. workers quitting in December.  However, that number is 161,000 fewer quits than November. The job openings are starting to fill up.

While there is evidence the mandatory vaccine requirements are still working through the job market, we are still about another month away before the fog clears from the private sector employment data.

This Friday we will see the unemployment data from December, but in the interim this JOLT’s report is tracking with CTH expectations.

The primary driver of the quits rate has been inflation.  Workers seeking higher wages in an effort to deal with inflation can get faster paycheck results by switching jobs rather than asking current employers for more money.

We have been watching this trend for several months.  However, the rate of job-jumping is slowing down as the available jobs to jump into are fewer, and the vaccine mandate impact is settling down.

Despite the number of job openings, blue collar workers are starting to see job vacancies decreasing.  The service industries around accommodation, food services and basic dirty fingernail positions still have many vacancies; this is the epicenter of where the job jumping takes place. Employment in durable goods manufacturing is at that phase where things are about to get sketchy for tradespeople and union workers.

The white collar jobs are static and/or slightly downsizing.  The total number of hires was 6.3 million for December, a drop of 333,000 from prior month.  The number of people hired in professional and business services dropped by 159,000.

(more…)

Many people were wondering who it was that preempted Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer making the announcement of his stepping down from the court.  That answer comes today.

White House Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, was the one who leaked the Breyer retirement, likely in an effort to change the narrative of negative stories that continue to overwhelm the Biden team.

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden’s chief of staff leaked Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s plan to retire to “a limited group” on Wednesday, a top Democrat told reporters.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin told reporters he received a “surprise” call on Wednesday morning from White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who “said that President Biden wanted [Durbin] to know that Stephen Breyer was about to announce his retirement from the court.”

Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said Klain told him to keep the news a secret and that Breyer planned to make an official announcement on Thursday. (read more)

(more…)