Comrades, Dear Leader Joe Biden cares about your well-being.

Today, the United States government is proud to announce the first ever emergency food shipments from international relief agencies to help feed American citizens.

Let that sink in.

White House – Today, the Department of Defense (DOD) is sourcing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s request for Operation Fly Formula to transport Nestlé S.A. formula from Zurich, Switzerland to Plainfield, Indiana.

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~ The Great Pretense of Biden ~

CTH has been preparing to write about this for a week. Today a serendipitous event took place which highlights the dynamic within the current Biden administration.

During a Senate Energy Committee hearing today, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a woman specifically appointed for her progressive identity as a native American indian – with no skills to be interior secretary, was questioned by Senator Joe Manchin about a press release [LINK] from the interior department that took place in real time as Secretary Haaland was giving testimony.  Secretary Haaland had no idea what the press release was about. WATCH:

[The Press Release is Here]

The issue surrounds the U.S. Interior Department, which is filled to the brim with left-wing climate activists, pushing out a press release saying that any further oil and gas leases are not going to happen.  Secretary Haaland was telling congress the Interior Department was doing everything they can to allow oil and gas leases and expand drilling with additional permitting.

The press release from the dept says the proposal the Secretary was stating “is not a decision to issue specific leases or to authorize any drilling or development,” literally undercutting her testimony in real time, and reaffirming that no further oil drilling will be authorized.   Secretary Haaland was caught completely off-guard, stammered and admitted she had no idea what the bureaucrats in the dept were doing.

What this example reveals is something we have noticed and discussed but has become very clear in the past few weeks.

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Montana Senator Jon Tester is deeply connected to the corrupt and multinational Big Agricultural (BigAg) lobby.  As a democrat connected closer to Wall Street, he is not a supporter of American farmers overall as it pertains to America First food security and domestic food prices.  However, that said, what Senator Tester says in the first two minutes of this interview is correct.

As Tester notes, the food “supply” issue is not as big a deal in North America as it will certainly be in food dependent regions.  Between the U.S, Mexico and Canada we produce more food than we consume, and with excellence in industrial farming we export food products to the world, eastward and westward.  The issue for the U.S. population is going to be massive increases in food prices in later summer and fall as the cumulative increase in costs at the field reach the stores.  WATCH (2 mins):

My own back of the envelope calculations put the third-wave price increase in the 35 to 40% range overall.  Based on the input costs, energy and transportation, a current $4.00 item is going to cost around $5.50 later this year.  That is the approximate scale of price increase in foodstuff we should be anticipating.

Food insecurity, as an outcome of food pricing, is going to be the election issue that might supersede the gasoline price issue.  That’s going to be the crisis, and we are going to need to be very careful; because depending on the scale of the crisis there are going to be massive numbers of people demanding the government step in to solve it.   Our current government is being run by economic socialists; we do not want their equitable distribution solutions.

Conduct your affairs accordingly….

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Despite the request from prospective purchaser Elon Musk to verify the number of fraudulent accounts supported within the Twitter social media platform, company executives told employees the purchase is going forward regardless of Musk requested verification.

(Bloomberg) – Twitter Inc. executives told employees on Thursday that the $44 billion deal to sell the company to billionaire Elon Musk is moving forward as planned, and that it won’t renegotiate the agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share.

Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and head of policy, also told workers at an all-hands meeting that there is “no such thing as a deal being on hold,” according to people who attended the meeting. She was pushing back on claims from Musk over the past week that he is pausing the deal while he learns more about the number of bots and spam accounts on the social-media service. (read more)

Immediately after the executive meeting with employees, and perhaps in a proactive effort to control any content changes to the platform, the executives then announced a new internal “crisis misinformation” team {LINK}.  Essentially new rules that will give Twitter censors new tools and justifications to block and control content.

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The $40 billion UniParty aid package for Ukraine pass the senate this afternoon in a vote of 86-11 (vote tally below).

The Biden administration had originally requested $33 billion, but congress did not feel he was spending enough. The House added an additional $7 billion and passed the $40 billion legislation last week.  Today the Senate voted 86-11 to approve the package which is targeted to last 5 months and includes U.S. taxpayers funding the salaries and pension benefits for officials in the Ukraine government.

11 republican senators voted against the massive money laundering operation. They were Senators Blackburn (R-TN), Boozman (R-AR), Braun (R-IN), Crapo (R-ID), Hagerty (R-TN), Hawley (R-MO), Lee (R-UT), Lummis (R-WY), Marshall (R-KS), Paul (R-KY), Tuberville (R-AL).

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The second day of witness testimony in the trial of Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI was completed on Wednesday.  For a good recap of the granular aspects Techno Fog has a play-by-play SUMMARY HERE.

For CTH readers I want to focus on a point that is visible in the defense argument and challenging, insofar as it has not yet been revealed, in the prosecution position.   The issue surrounds why Rodney Joffe gave the Alfa-bank fraudulent information to Michael Sussmann instead of just giving it to the FBI himself.  {A Question Margot Cleveland posits here}

In the cross examination of the first set of prosecution witnesses the defense lawyers keep contending that Sussmann did not lie about the fraudulently created origin of the Alfa-Bank material and there was no reason for him not to tell the FBI he was a courier for the Clinton campaign.  The defense is essentially that Sussmann and the FBI knew he was working for the Clinton campaign when he delivered the fraudulent material.  Sussmann wasn’t trying to hide anything, ergo he didn’t lie.

Sussmann’s defensive point is essentially true.  The DOJ, FBI and everyone associated with the information knew they were receiving opposition research from the Clinton campaign.  However, the FBI had to pretend they didn’t know in order to use it to start an investigation.

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In Washington, D.C. today, the House Judiciary Committee held a four-hour hearing about the need for abortion [full video here].  Within the hearing one of the congressional witnesses, Ms. Aimee Arrambide, Executive Director of Avow Texas, was asked about her position.  Her response encapsulates the mindset of current democrats in office.  WATCH (20 seconds):

Comrade Dissidents, if these people think their views are commonly understood, even fathomable, by the majority of commonsense thinking Americans, I seriously doubt they have any concept of what common sense actually implies.   This is just flat-out weird.

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Do you know what it’s technically called when “government takes control of the means of production?”  Yeah, that.

This afternoon Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) giving Health and Human Services (HHS) the legal authority to control the supplies needed for the creation of baby formula (how it is made), and the authority to determine distribution equity (who gets it).  Emphasis mine:

White House [DPA Sec. 2] – “[T]he authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act to require performance of contracts or orders … is delegated to the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to all health resources, including the ingredients necessary to manufacture infant formula.”

“(b)  The Secretary of Health and Human Services may use the authority under section 101 of the Act to determine, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and the heads of other executive departments and agencies as appropriate, the proper nationwide priorities and allocation of all ingredients necessary to manufacture infant formula, including controlling the distribution of such materials (including applicable services) in the civilian market, for responding to the shortage of infant formula within the United States.” (read more)

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, an über-leftist who ironically self-describes as an abortion absolutist, is now in charge of infant formula manufacture and distribution. You do not need to be a conspiracy theorist to predict which “at risk” group will get priority distribution of limited resources.

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The stock market is dropping, Wall Street analysts are flummoxed, but it just isn’t rocket science folks.  It’s Main Street economics 101.

The price to produce, manufacture and transport goods has skyrocketed, that’s the Producer Price Index (PPI).  Arriving goods at retail are significantly higher in price.  Simultaneously, consumer spending is being squeezed by unavoidable inflation in housing, energy, food and gasoline; so consumer spending is tight, that’s the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Higher costs to retail that cannot be passed on as higher prices to customers, means lower profit margins for the sellers.  That’s it.  That’s the majority of it.  Major retail companies like Target and Wal Mart are reporting the impacts from the squeeze in higher costs that cannot be passed to consumers in higher retail prices.   Checkbook economics.

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Businesses are seeing higher costs in the unavoidable goods they need to sell, the fixed price of goods.  What comes next?  Businesses, knowing they cannot raise prices too much, look at lowering the costs of operations in an effort to remain competitive, stay profitable, and stay in business.

How do businesses lower operational costs?  Increase expectations of employee productivity and/or lower employment costs.  That leads to layoffs.

I guarantee you…. YOU know more about the basic principles of Main Street economics than a room full of these Wall Street analysts.   I like El-Erian, but sheesh, talk about pretending not to know things.

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I think we all knew the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary race was going to be close, but wow, it’s really close.   As of right now, only 1,750 votes separate Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, or a mere .2% of the more than 1.3 million votes cast.

According to the Philadelphia Enquirer there are approximately 105,000 mail-in ballots to be counted and no one knows how many of them are republican ballots.  Politico is estimating around 21,000 of them are republican ballots.

Regardless of the outcome from the mail-in ballots, it seems a recount is a certainty as Pennsylvania state law requires an automatic recount if the difference is less than half of one percent (.50%).

PENNSYLVANIA – […] Pennsylvania law requires an automatic statewide recount if the top two candidates in a race are within half a percentage point of each other, which Oz and McCormick currently are.

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