Our dear friend Sharon always reminds us, “Those whose motives are based on deception, will always find an audience willing to be deceived.” That, my friends, is the current status of the Republican party watchers and one of the primary reasons this little corner of the internet, The Last Refuge, was formed.
We accept things as they are, not as we would wish them to be and never as we would pretend them to be. Pretending is an endless quest akin to convincing. Those who operate in the world of political pretense expend an exhaustive amount of energy in constant vigilance against those who speak plain truths.
The House of Representatives has adjourned until 10pm tonight, when another vote will be taken, as outlined by the design of the Kevin McCarthy supporters.
Why adjourn? Why return at 10:00pm on a Friday evening? Simply, because the McCarthy team is counting on several House members (mostly Democrats) not being in attendance for the quorum, facilitating a lower threshold of the vote to achieve a majority.
435/434 members present = 218 votes needed
433/432 members present = 217 votes needed
431/430 members present = 216 votes needed
429/428 members present = 215 votes needed etc.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election House democrats led by Nancy Pelosi directed a national pantomime from Washington DC that extremists were running amok and terrorizing congress. The January 6 Committee was intended to further establish that narrative.
Pelosi called up the national guard, put fences and barbed wire around congress then installed metal detectors, all as part of the theater for manufacturing the domestic violent extremist narrative. The media engineered the supportive narrative and the ridiculous pantomime continued throughout the past two years. However, as congress now changes hands and republicans take control, the fences are taken down and the metal detectors are being removed.
Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert highlights the return of normalcy. {Direct Rumble Link} WATCH:
However, against the backdrop of revelations from the Twitter Files where the intelligence apparatus, Dept of Homeland Security and FBI were part of the government operation to influence public opinion, the possibility of an FBI inspired and coordinated attack against the Capitol is now more likely than previous.
The New Year brings a look of forward-looking economic perspectives from major financial institutions. Unfortunately, if the perspective of Bank of America Chief Economist Michael Gapen is reflective of the larger institutional analysis, the financial pretending is anticipated to continue.
[Side Note: Notice how they will all start talking about ‘deglobalization’ in 2023. There’s a reason for that that I will touch on in the IMF interview to follow]
Appearing on Face the Nation Gapen accurately indicates the U.S. housing market is already in a steep economic recession, housing prices falling rapidly with a considerable amount of distance to go (-30% range), and the overall housing market will likely be in this situation for around two years. On a macro level the Bank of America indicators line up with the general housing trajectory. From a lending standpoint, Gapen would have specific insight.
Beyond the housing sector, Mr. Gapen starts to get sketchy. He anticipates inflation taking 24 to 36 months to lower to the norm 2% range. That is generally in line with CTH expectations; however, nowhere in the analysis does Gapen even mention energy costs and the overall impact to the economy from energy policy. You will note this absence will be present in almost all financial punditries. Mentioning “energy policy’ as a cause of economic pain is a third rail amid his peer group; it is simply not permitted.
Astute readers will note the great financial and economic pretending that surrounds the Build Back Better and Green New Deal climate change agenda will not be discussed by anyone, ever. The massive price impacts, the supply side inflation pressures, are baked into the western global economic outlooks. It is strictly verboten to talk about climate change policy being stopped, modified, reversed or even, well, gasp, removed. WATCH:
[TRANSCRIPT] – […] BANK OF AMERICA CHIEF ECONOMIST MICHAEL GAPEN: Happy New Year as well. Thank you for having me on.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You know, a majority of voters polled by The Wall Street Journal say that the economy is going to look and feel worse in 2023. What is your forecast?
GAPEN: So I think that’s probably true. I think we’re in a situation where the risk of recession is high, may not be a deep and prolonged one. But we’re in a situation where the economy has recovered very rapidly from- from COVID, and it’s come with a lot of inflation. And the Federal Reserve is trying to slow down the economy, to bring inflation down. And in the past, more often than not, that’s coincided with some sort of recession in the US economy and the U.S. labor market. It’s not baked in. It’s not for certain. We may be able to avoid it, but I would agree that the outlook by most people who sit in the position that I do think 2023 could be a difficult year for the U.S..
MARGARET BRENNAN: So we may be able to avoid recession?
If 2022 was not the apex year for the era of great pretending, then we remain sitting in a handbasket – destination, full speed ahead.
When asked for the topic of a ‘big picture‘ podcast this 2022-year ending, the obvious answer from me was We Need to Quit Pretending.
For the past two years I can only encapsulate the entire social, political and socioeconomic dynamic that surrounds us by saying we are living in an era of great pretending. Why? Because nothing else adequately explains it.
A recession is no longer two negative quarters of economic growth. Elections are no longer defined by votes cast, but by ballots counted. Meanwhile, women are claimed to have penises and people will argue -strenuously and with commitment- that men can give birth to babies.
Simultaneously, vaccines are no longer about medicines to avoid viruses, and Americans have some moral obligation to fund the administrative salaries, pensions and expense accounts for a nation of European politicians, in a country that few taxpayers could find on a map.
We must pretend the occupant of the oval office is not a dementia patient, at the same time we must pretend the Dept of Homeland Security and FBI is not telling online speech platforms that identifying the dementia patient, as a dementia patient, means you are a domestic violent extremist. The absurdity of the pretenses are off-the-charts.
However, on the upside, we now see even blissfully ignorant people starting to realize something is wrong when their electricity and heating bills quadruple, while the same system of governmental caretakers are telling us to embrace a new earth friendly normal of $12 dollar eggs. We been knew, but more are now knowing – thank God.
As we’ve been saying for seven months, keep watching how the globalists respond to Mexico. AMLO doesn’t want to join the economic suicide pact known as Build Back Better, or the North American version “Green New Deal.” This puts him in a precarious place.
This sentence from a recent financial analysis article in Reuters is telling, “concerns about a U.S. recession and a trade spat Mexico is embroiled in with the United States and Canada over Lopez Obrador’s energy policy, which critics call nationalist, muddy the outlook for the peso.” A “nationalist energy policy”?
What exactly is a “nationalist energy policy,” and why would international financial people be having fits about it?
In the past year the Mexican peso has outperformed the U.S. dollar, in part because Mexico is not following the economic roadmap, a World Economic Forum inspired united inflationary malaise as an outcome of unified energy policy. [Side Note: The Brazilian currency was also outperforming the western bloc and dollar; but that situation has been rectified now, Bolsonaro removed, and the central bank will start contracting the economy.]
The global financial control mechanisms now start to look at the Mexican non-compliance:
(Reuters) – Mexico’s peso, which is ending 2022 with one of its strongest performances in a decade, could have its gains wiped out in 2023 after an expected end to the Bank of Mexico’s rate hikes cycle and a possible recession in top trade partner the United States.
Oh, now this is just the proverbial cherry on the fishy cake in Arizona. The results of a mandatory recount in Pinal County, Arizona, are set to be released today, December 29th, showing “significant discrepancies” from the original vote. Results favoring the republican candidates [Details Here].
Then there’s this very interesting development….
“The results of the statutorily required recount in 3 races were expected to be released on December 22nd however, inexplicably, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs petitioned the courts to have the results go directly to her office and asked to postpone the release until December 29th.”
Apparently, in her role as Secretary of State Katie Hobbs filed a motion with the court to seal the final recount result until after the lawsuit filed in Maricopa County against her was concluded. That means the Lake team did not have the results of three recounts to use in court as evidence that something sketchy in Arizona had taken place.
It appears Mrs. Hobbs intentionally did not want the recount information coming out until her lawsuit to become governor was completed.
Twitter File release #11 hits on the long-anticipated information surrounding how the platform was instructed by various government agencies to remove content adverse to the expressed opinion of CDC, HHS, and DHS officials. [Release #11 Here]
The first installment of the Twitter COVID-19 files comes from David Zweig, a writer for New York Mag, New York Times, The Atlantic and other publications. Because the U.S. Government COVID-19 information control operation was so extensive, there will likely be several Twitter File releases related to the SARS-CoV2 pandemic issue. However, in this first release Zweig starts to build the story of how the CDC and HHS set the foundation for the echo-chamber that ended with Twitter executives running amok.
As Zweig begins his review he noted, “The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19.” While the Trump administration was worried about information that would create panic, like runs on grocery stores, the Biden administration was more focused on content control to push the overall narrative about fearing COVID and the vaccination demand.
“When the Biden admin took over, one of their first meeting requests with Twitter executives was on Covid. The focus was on “anti-vaxxer accounts.” Especially Alex Berenson,” Zweig writes as he then begins to give examples of various medical professionals that were targeted by the White House and the platform.
The outcome of the HHS and CDC push circled around politics, which, when combined with the ideological perspectives of the Twitter executives, inevitably ended up making COVID-19 a political issue on the platform. Critics of COVID-19 policy were blocked, censored, removed and restricted. Advocates of government policy were enhanced, amplified, promoted and enlarged.
Twitter File release #10 was shared by journalist Matt Taibbi on Christmas Eve [Outline Here]. In many ways this is the most important release so far; not from the context of the internal Twitter communication Taibbi cites, but rather from what it means in the bigger picture.
As with the prior releases, Taibbi is describing the evolution of a process we suspected, discussed, outlined and then documented at CTH for several years. Taibbi is outlining exactly how the public-private partnership behind Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop was created. Each new revelation, and Elon Musk’s reaction to that revelation, is pointing toward Musk not having any knowledge of what was going on in the Coffee Shop Production Space.
Taibbi shares the scale and scope of contacts into Twitter from a variety of government agencies including the CIA. However, as the public-private partnership over the platform moderation continued in time, access to controlling content expanded from federal agencies to even state and local officials. In essence, the control over platform content evolved into a whole of government approach.
This is a critical inflection point in the evolution of the Twitter file release because the ramifications now begin to surface publicly. Taibbi walks through Twitter being overwhelmed by the inbound instructions from various agencies. The FBI acting as the gatekeeper for Homeland Security, Defense Dept, CIA, State Dept., and other partnership agencies within government through the “Foreign Influence Task Force” (FITF).
As Taibbi provides context for the internal conversation, “The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors – from local cops to media to state governments. Twitter had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track. Is today the DOD, and tomorrow the FBI? Is it the weekly call, or the monthly meeting? It was dizzying.”
Yes, Judge Peter A Thompson has ruled from the Maricopa Superior Court of Arizona, that success for Mrs. Kari Lake’s lawsuit was contingent upon her being able to prove malicious intent on behalf of the country election officials. [Read 10-page Ruling HERE]
The Maricopa County officials have denied malicious intent and are afforded great benefit of doubt; after all, the election result was duly certified.
Therefore, absent direct evidence of corrupt intent by the election officials, which would require them to make admissions in court, any certified outcome is considered valid.
Additionally, yes there were multiple documented problems with ballots, tabulators and chain-of-custody violations; and yes, there were multiple simultaneous failures which would have impeded accurate voting by the residents of Arizona; however, the Lake campaign could not quantify to a demonstrable certainty, the exact number of votes that were impacted by the simultaneous collapse of voting systems, processes and ballot control standards.
Absent Mrs. Lakes’ ability to scientifically and empirically quantify the exact number of votes impacted, there is no basis for a judgement in favor of the plaintiff.
Lastly, the defendant has requested that Mrs. Lake be punished by the court for attempting to question the certification of the election as validated by her opponent, the court will consider what punishment to impose and proclaim the sanctions after Monday, December 26, 2022.
President Trump released a video statement today about the Democrats in the Congressional Ways and Means Committee releasing his private tax returns. {Direct Rumble link}.
As outlined by President Trump, the tax returns show ordinary, albeit financially complex, income and losses as customary for any large business. However, now that the precedent has been set by Congress, Donald Trump asks the same committee to release the same tax filings of the Biden family so that a comparative dive into the financial holdings of Joe Biden can be conducted. WATCH:
For the past two years I can only encapsulate the entire social, political and socioeconomic dynamic that surrounds us by saying we are living in an era of great pretending. Why? Because nothing else adequately explains it.
