The U.S. Census Department releases retail sales data today showing a strong contraction in consumer spending for July [MSM LINK].  The out-of-touch financial pundits were looking for a 0.3% decline; however, the drop was four times greater with a contraction of 1.1% in spending.

“The slide in retail sales comes after Friday’s preliminary consumer sentiment report from the University of Michigan showed one of the largest drops on record, leading some strategists and economists to warn of downside risk to the sales data.” (link)

This should not be unexpected for those who read here.  Massive price inflation on essential goods is eating up wages.  Food, fuel and energy price increases are changing consumer spending habits.  Non-essential purchases have stopped….. they haven’t slowed, they have stopped. ←Emphasize this because it is not showing up yet in the data lag.

The data reflects that auto sales were the primary contributor to the decline in spending (-4.3%).  This should make sense to people because auto purchases are the largest general consumer purchase outside of home purchasing.

When purchase decisions are made by families; and food and fuel prices are skyrocketing; replacing a vehicle is not essential.  Auto sales are a key indicator of consumer confidence and income.

Overall inflation is the primary driver.  Real wages are declining (wages – inflation), and disposable income is dropping quickly.  Americans need to start talking very deliberately about what is about to happen.  CTH predicted this and has been walking through the visible outcomes as each set of new data surfaces {SEARCH BOX}.  Nothing happening right now is unforeseen or not easily understandable.

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The number of Americans trapped in Afghanistan is actually unknown.  According to Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby,  somewhere around 5,000 to 10,000 are known, but the number could be 20,000.  Those U.S. citizens are not at the airport in Kabul, and need to reach the airport in order to be evacuated.

Several media reports outline that the Taliban have checkpoints around the airport presumably looking for people who were aligned with the former government.  Unfortunately, given the nature of media bias and previous propaganda, it is challenging to determine the level of risk or threat to any American.  There have been no reports of Americans killed or taken hostage.  Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby outlines the current priority is to secure the airport, that’s what the additional troops are intended to do. WATCH:

…”Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up“… ~ Barack Obama

There is no such thing as “idiot proof.”  As soon as you think you’ve developed an “idiot proof” system, you will discover Joe Biden.

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Many people have wondered how the Biden administration could get the collapse of Afghanistan so horribly wrong and botched completely the withdrawal of U.S. forces. To that point there is a little known Question and Answer session by Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn (CO, CD05) that deserves some attention.

Approximately 7 weeks ago, June 23rd, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley testified in front of the House Armed Services Committee about their budget requests. Rep Doug Lamborn took this opportunity, he only had 4 minutes, to ask some very specific questions about Afghanistan and his concerns for early reports of the Taliban surging back into control.

Lamborn asked about the hazard of closing Bagrham AFB given the tenuous nature of reliance on one airport in Kabul. Lamborn also asked about the evacuation of U.S-Afghan allies and the risk to women and girls if the Taliban were successful. What Def Sec Austin and General Milley said in response totally explains why the White House was blind-sided by the Taliban in the past week. [WATCH Video at 01:06:56, Prompted]

Given the nature of what has happened in Afghanistan, those totally wrong estimations of the situation in the region should be enough to see both Secretary Austin and General Milley fired.  At the very least reliance on this inept and totally wrong outlook explains why the Biden administration had no idea what was about to happen.

Congressman Doug Lamborn’s questioning was directly on point and in hindsight, stunningly prescient.   Great job by Lamborn!

Hopefully Austin was wrong when he said that any defense of women and girls in Afghanistan will be contingent upon the U.S. embassy in Kabul.  The U.S. embassy in Kabul is no longer there, the Taliban have it.

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Apparently, the communications goal from the White House team was to create a strawman argument around the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, and totally avoid the main point of crisis right now being the method and manner of the withdrawal.

However, he went one step further which makes it worse.

Joe Biden blamed the Afghan people, currently being hunted in the streets of Kabul by the Taliban, for not availing themselves of earlier opportunities for evacuation at the time when Joe Biden and his Secretary of State were telling them the country was in no imminent threat of collapse.

…”I know that there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghans — civilians sooner. Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier — still hopeful for their country. “… [Full Transcript]

The entire speech delivered by Biden was a classic example of a non-sequitur argument.  Biden kept defending his decision to exit Afghanistan (which few disagree with) while avoiding the massive crisis created by his unplanned and haphazard manner/method of exit.  A point that was not missed by former President Trump:

Biden took no questions, ran away from the podium and immediately hopped back on the helicopter to escape back to his bunker in Camp David.

Joe Biden is an embarrassing joke, installed on our nation.

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Facing domestic and international ridicule for his abject failure to plan, organize and successfully withdraw a U.S. military presence from Afghanistan without creating a massive international crisis and humanitarian nightmare, the installed occupant of the White House has announced he will address the nation today at 3:45pm ET.

The diplomatic and humanitarian crisis the Biden team have created is so bad, even CNN cannot cover for them. As a consequence, Joe Biden is being pulled from his bunker at Camp David and pushed to read the teleprompter from the White House. WATCH:

Four decades on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee….Eight years as Vice-President of the United States…. Eight months as acting President…. and the mess Biden has created is stunning.  Even the water-carrying media is having a hard time with it.

Biden’s key national security handler Jake Sullivan attempted to deflect earlier today, and even he made more of a hot mess over everything.

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This is a painful interview between furrowed brow Jake Tapper, painfully wanting to defend the administration and yet the total failure is too insurmountable to defend, and an abjectly overwhelmed and clueless Secretary of State Anthony Blinken – who is trying to explain the complete mess they have created.

The background here is the history of foreign policy failures and boondoggles by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton…. and the transferring of those same geopolitical outlooks into the Biden administration.  Blinken talks in platitudes of diplomacy that are irrelevant today.  The Chinese, Russians and Afghanistan Taliban don’t give a tinkers-damn what the dementia nurses around Biden are talking about.

The pearl-clutching Biden/Blinken approach is just as irrelevant as the bomb-dropping Obama/Clinton approach.  Team Biden act as if the Taliban cares about what Facebook, Twitter and Instagram voices say about them; it’s nuts.  The single-minded totalitarian Taliban don’t care about the United States or United Nations any more than they care about Tik Tok or CNN opinions.

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I’m left wondering where Ayman al-Zawahiri is in all of this?

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While using their own tactics against them, Alinsky judo per se’, just a short reminder from the White House itself in April.

Many outlets have reported on a leak from the White House that JoeBama was considering a vaccine mandate for interstate travel. These public probes into how far they can go should not come as a surprise; however, as each day passes more and more people are realizing COVID fear is being weaponized.

As a result of a larger awakening; which must be maintained with large trumpet by every ally of freedom; further federal mandates will get a lot more push-back and become harder and harder to execute.

VIA Associated Press – […] The sharper federal approach comes as nearly 90 million eligible Americans still have not been vaccinated and as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, says shots are the only path for the nation to contain the delta variant.

[…] Still, while more severe measures — such as mandating vaccines for interstate travel or changing how the federal government reimburses treatment for those who are unvaccinated and become ill with COVID-19 — have been discussed, the administration worried that they would be too polarizing at this time. An administration official said the interstate travel vaccination requirement was not under consideration at the moment.

That’s not to say they won’t be implemented in the future, as public opinion continues to shift toward requiring vaccinations as a means to restore normalcy. (read more)

CTH has been warning about the Chicago network behind Biden and their objective.  We have accurately predicted their moves, but what we cannot determine is how the larger American electorate will respond to these encroachments.

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It has been almost ten years since CTH first outlined the 1984 interview between Yuri Bezmenov and G. Edward Griffin titled “Deception was My Job”.  [2013 CTH Article Here] However, it is worth revisiting the interview as we find ourselves increasingly influenced by a deliberate effort to control U.S. society.

Mr. Yuri Bezmenov was a Soviet informant and KGB operative who defected to the United States in the early 70s.  Within the interview [full video here], Bezmenov lays out the four stages of “ideological subversion” created by radical Marxists to indoctrinate and weaken nations from within.

It is my contention the Chicago Marxists aligned with Barack Obama (revolutionary communists) were/are following this ‘four stage’ roadmap.  The U.S. State Department is filled with like-minded travelers who align with this approach.

Some researchers have identified the objective as connected to the Fabian Socialist goal, others have called it “The Color Revolution”, but the names do not matter much; what matters is the map they follow, the four stages:

♦Stage One: Demoralization – Elimination of American Exceptionalism, fundamental change of national identity, structural deconstruction of foundational principles, elimination of religion. Embedding a new societal design upon the psyche of generations through ideological academia. Peer pressure by elites upon academics and society to convince that prior values were inherently flawed, racist, prejudiced etc. National identity is diluted with aspersions toward historical references. National history is re-written, re-defined, and molded to fit the new intended behavioral model and create the new values.

♦Stage Two: Crisis – Creation of economic, financial, and national security crisis. Also includes social crisis and breakdown of previous self-evident restrictions on moral behavior. Cloward Piven approach to overloading the system, ie more takers than producers. The crisis produces benevolent leaders who will promise to deliver “things” (Hope and Change) to meet people’s needs through Social and Economic Justice. False illusions that the situation is under control if certain strategic directions are followed (Bailouts, Stimulus, Jobs Bills, Regulations of industry, Unconstitutional Power Grabs, Dismissal of Historical Laws, Changes in legislative processes, Changes in checks and balances of power etc).

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The “producer price index” is essentially the tracking of wholesale prices at three stages: Origination (commodity), Intermediate and Final.  The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released stunning price data [Available Here] showing a dramatic 7.8% price increase in Final Demand products at the wholesale level.

When you see the wholesale level of prices almost double the increase in consumer level inflation rate, you can predict that consumer prices will likely go even higher.  The future finished goods at a retail level will carry the current wholesale price increase.  Stuff costs a lot now… and stuff is about to cost even more pretty soon.

Food products are fast-turn consumable goods, and the inflation in the food sector is jaw-dropping already.  However, fresh and processed foods turn at different inventory levels.

Obviously fresh foods spoil fastest (think produce, fish, meats and dairy) so they are replenished more quickly and the thin supply chain (field to fork) passes along increased costs fast. Processed foods have a longer shelf life (boxed, canned, frozen, etc), and as a consequence have a much larger inventory level in manufacturing, warehousing and retail storerooms/shelves.  Within processed foods, there is a lag between cost increase at origination and that cost hitting the stores.

The problem identified within the current ‘producer price index’ is that price increases in the raw material and intermediate material are building into the supply chain.  Keep in mind the entire supply chain is dependent on energy costs and the fuel prices that impact transportation.

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