… And if they don’t, they are Russian sympathizers.

Delivering remarks from the stage built next to the White House, earlier today Joe Biden demanded that congress and states suspend gasoline taxes for 90-days in order to offset the massive price increases his energy policy has created. {Transcript Here} Additionally, Biden says any political opposition to his demand means his opponents support Russia:

“for all those Republicans in Congress criticizing me today for high gas prices in America, are you now saying we were wrong to support Ukraine?  Are you saying we were wrong to stand up to Putin?  Are you saying that we would rather have lower gas prices in America and Putin’s iron fist in Europe?  I don’t believe that.” {Direct Rumble Link}

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It will be worth watching how California Governor Gavin Newsom responds to this instruction.  California has the largest gasoline taxes in the nation and uses them to fund the majority of their left-wing policies.

Full video and transcript below.

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The conflict of interest is simply off-the-proverbial charts here.   Tom Donilon is a deep DC swamp operator and has been for his entire career.  Donilon is connected to every tentacle of the Obama and Biden administrations.  Donilon is also the Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute.

We have written about the conflicts {Go Deep Here} and {Go Deep Here}, but this move by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is stunningly fraught with serious conflicts of interest.

Tom Donilon’s literal job description at Blackrock is to “leverage the firm’s expertise and generate proprietary research to provide insights on the global economy, markets, geopolitics and long-term asset allocation,” and the State Dept has just appointed him as Co-Chair of the U.S. foreign policy advisory board.

Specifically, the Biden administration has just put Blackrock Investment Institute Chairman Tom Donilon in charge of U.S-China policy.

How in the proverbial hell can this be permitted?  That’s way beyond a rhetorical question.   The Dept of State has selected a team of Wall Street control agents to guide global U.S. policy.

(STATE DEPT) – Today, Secretary Blinken announced his selections for the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

Since its establishment in 2011, the Board has provided independent advice on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy, consistent with each Secretary of State and administration’s evolving priorities for it.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell admitted the obvious in his senate testimony today when asked about U.S. inflation.  However, his testimony directly contradicts the White House claims.

Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), member of the Senate Banking Committee, walked through the inflation timeline and asked Chairman Powell about the cause of the escalated inflation in 2021.  Powell admitted the massive rise in inflation had nothing to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. WATCH (02:16 Prompted):

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The New York Times reported this.  There is a certain irony in the New York Times outlining the consequences of the U.S. led sanctions are essentially that western governments and NATO countries are essentially punishing themselves with continued sanctions against Russia.  Then again, the WEF coalition doesn’t really seem to care as long as they can continue chasing their Build Back Better agenda.

(Via New York Times) – The ruble cemented its unlikely status as the world’s best-performing currency, rising to new multiyear highs this week. Since collapsing in the weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which triggered sweeping international sanctions aimed at crippling the Russian economy, the ruble has come roaring back.

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Some very good reporting here from local journalists with KVUE and the Austin-American Statesman. Local journalists were able to view CCTV video from inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, showing heavily armed police were in the building with at least one ballistic shield only 19 minutes after the school shooter entered the building.

In a very disturbing update to the story.  KVUE has outlined a new timeline with the details from the CCTV system, showing the police had all the resources they needed to deal with the shooter, yet they stood down for an additional 58 minutes and waited.  The local media broadcast is below.  Senior KVUE Reporter Tony Plohetski discusses the details of surveillance footage taken at Robb Elementary. WATCH:

UVALDE, Texas — On Monday, KVUE and its news partners at the Austin American-Statesman exclusively obtained surveillance footage from inside Robb Elementary School on the day of the May 24 shooting.

The footage shows that multiple officers were inside the building with rifles and at least one ballistic shield, 19 minutes after the gunman arrived. They didn’t enter the classroom the shooter was inside for nearly another hour. (read more)

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Fox News host Tucker Carlson, use the opening segment of his television broadcast to spotlight the most alarming threat to our democracy in recent years.  According to Capitol Hill police an extremist movement, with the full cooperation of congressional members, attempted to overthrow democracy by breaking into the Capitol last week in a carefully planned insurrection.   WATCH:

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The definition of the modern “western democracy” in Ukraine is increasingly showcased as the goal for modern totalitarian government.

The inflection point away from representative democracy was first evident in the way COVID-19 was leveraged by “western” governments in the U.S, Canada, Australia and the European Union.  Totalitarian minded leaders within those democracies, including governors in the United States, began operating without any elected representative feedback. Everything shifted from legislative representation to a system of dictatorial fiats with no opposition allowed in the arbitrary rules and regulations.

From forced lockdowns and arbitrary determinations of “essential workers,” various western government leaders were drunk on their new power.  Those who were already predisposed to the benefits of communism (aka Justin Trudeau) and various shades therein, dropped all pretense of believing there were limits to their power and began dispatching opposition views.

It did not take long before we saw things escalate into lockdowns, travel bans, forced business closures, quarantine camps and ultimately forced vaccinations and checkpoints for transit.  Collectively, none of these efforts ever went before a representative body for debate and consent; they were done through brute force and power of a top-down centralized authoritarian government.  It did not seem as if most people realized how ‘western democracy’ changed overnight through the use of the pandemic.

What we see taking place in Ukraine is an outcropping of this newly defined ‘western democracy.’   Using a declaration of emergency power, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has now banned all opposition voices, taken control of broadcast media and now today banned the second largest political party in Ukraine. [Radio Free Europe Link]

Ukraine’s Opposition Platform For Life (OPPL) was the second largest political force in the Ukraine Parliament.  As of today, the party is officially banned by a Ukrainian court at the request of the Zelenskyy Ministry of Justice.   All assets, funds and property belonging to OPPL have been seized and transferred to the state.

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Kaliningrad is an enclave of Russia on the Baltic Sea, with a population of around 450,000 Russians.  Kaliningrad is surrounded by NATO countries Lithuania to the north and Poland to the south.

Land access for Russia to Kaliningrad is a matter of treaties between Russia and Lithuania providing transit to the Russian enclave through Suwalski gap where railroads connect Kaliningrad to Belarus.

In an intentionally provocative move, the NATO alliance has now decided to use Lithuania to cut off access to Kaliningrad by land.  The NATO alliance is saying this is part of their execution of economic sanctions against Russia by stopping the transport of goods and products through the Suwalski gap.

The blockade began today, and the Russian government is evaluating how to respond to this aggressive effort against Kaliningrad.

This action is being taken as the same time as EU NATO countries are threatening to rush NATO membership for Ukraine into place.  There is no other way to look at this decision by NATO member states as anything except a deliberate effort to increase the likelihood of war between Russia and the western alliance.

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This interview is nothing but gaslighting crazy talk from an insufferable ideologue who is responsible for managing the insane policy driven consequences of transitioning from oil, gas and coal into an era where windmills and solar panels provide U.S. electricity.  Janet Yellen is the decline manager.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen begins the interview by denying the U.S. economy is shrinking.  Literally in the first answer Yellen says the economy “has been growing at a very rapid rate as the labor rate has reached full employment, it’s natural now that we expect a transition to steady and stable growth.”  Obviously, in order to say the economy has been growing, Yellen needs to pretend not to know the first quarter GDP was -1.5% as measured.  But wait… it gets more ridiculous….

At 06:30 of the interview, Yellen claims with a straight face that U.S. energy policy, which includes massive amounts of new crushing regulations from Biden, is not responsible for U.S. oil and gasoline prices.   WATCH (prompted):

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Loretta Mester is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and appeared on CBS Face the Nation to give her opinion/analysis of the US. economic condition.  The disconnect in her viewpoint is alarming and should signal to everyone how the Federal Reserve Board, just like every institution of government, has become a political agency.

In her mind Ms. Mester appears to believe what she is saying, but the disconnect between her view of our status and the reality on Main Street is alarming.  In this interview Mester says emphatically that current inflation is being driven by consumer demand that is outpacing supply.  Not only is this view of inflation origination wrong, and has been wrong for well over a year, it is dangerous.

Inflation has been driven by spending (dollar devaluation & artificial stimulus), and by massive input changes in the supply side which are predominately being caused by energy policy.  Our U.S. inflation is a self-inflicted supply side wound.  Inflation was not caused by demand side pressure, other than from the injection of COVID cash into consumer spending – which hid the natural contraction that was going to take place in Q2, Q3 and Q4 2021.  WATCH:

Ms. Mester says the Fed will watch the month-to-month inflation change, to determine monetary policy success.  Given the nature of the Biden energy policy, that type of success definition is inherently political.  It’s akin to saying, as the victim’s bones and muscles get used to the constant blows during the beating, the severity of the pain will be less than the initial shock… therefore, the continued beating is less damaging to the victim.   Madness.

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