Today at 1:00pm ET the House Oversight Committee will accept testimony from two IRS investigators who are whistleblowers with allegations the DOJ and FBI intentionally interfered with their investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden in an effort to politically protect the Biden family.

The statements by the whistleblowers have been corroborated recently by an FBI supervisory special agent.  The hearing is scheduled to begin at 1:00pm ET, with livestream link below.  [HOUSE LIVESTREAM LINK]

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The sanctions levied against Russia by the collective West have essentially failed.  There is inconvenience within Russia amid ordinary citizens for global and economic transactions, but most of the govt transactions have continued.

On the opposite side of the consequence coin, absent the ability to purchase consumer goods on the global market, Russian domestic consumer independence has grown dramatically.  There is more stuff being made and created inside Russia, for Russians to purchase, than ever before.

I cannot see how the Russian GDP doesn’t benefit from this in the long-term.

Then again, I don’t buy the official Western narrative about the “horrible” life inside Russia, because I talk to ordinary middle class Russians who seem to have found a way to organize life without too much disturbance.

Russia is actually a case study in the elimination of imports and the economic outcomes therein.

It doesn’t suck to be a consumer; average Russians are doing fine, and it seems to get better over time.  Ironically, give them a few more years of Western sanctions, and Russia could be a manufacturing powerhouse.  Russia is a big country with a lot of raw material resources.

UNITED NATIONS, July 12 (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he extend a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of grain from Ukraine in return for connecting a subsidiary of Russia’s agricultural bank to the SWIFT international payment system, sources told Reuters.

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On Thursday morning House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer appeared on Fox News for an interview where he described the evidence of the FBI and U.S. Dept of Justice interfering in investigations about Biden family money laundering. {Direct Rumble Link}

Within the interview Comer outlines that the Biden family received over $20 million in funds from foreign government funds to influence policy. The Biden family then used limited liability corporations (LLC’s) to launder the money into non-existent family businesses.  The DOJ and FBI then blocked any inquiry and investigation into the process by the IRS and others.

Comer outlines the intent of congress to subpoena all of the people who were involved in the network.  When asked if congress “has the goods” to show proof behind the accusations against Biden, Comer responds with “yes.”   James Comer also states that Attorney General Bill Barr was told by the FBI that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.

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Presidential candidate Mike Pence made a pilgrimage to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and affirm Pence’s position that the unilateral power of the Ukraine government needs to be supported.

Mike Pence then presents himself as the arbiter of what it means to be a Republican with a Twitter message saying, “I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal, and I know who needs to win this war in Ukraine, and it’s the people fighting for their freedom and fighting to restore their national sovereignty. There is no room in our party for apologists for Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom.”

Americans must sacrifice to support the magnanimous interests of the industrial military complex. Failure to adhere to the dictates and fiats of Republican power will not be tolerated in his party.

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After reading the entire 75-page transcript of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) testimony to congress [READ HERE], a testimonial that almost no one in the mainstream news has written about, issues surrounding the document search against President Trump take on some new context.

The NARA officials are essentially professional DC bureaucrats with a mission to look out for the best interests of the DC system they support.  It is very clear from their opinion; Donald Trump was considered an outsider to the DC system of government – and that baseline established the framework for why and how NARA took such extreme processes with President Trump.

From the transcript, one NARA official says, “I am storing 555,000 cubic feet of classified national security information. To put that in perspective, the white boxes that many of you have seen in your offices, that is a cubic foot. It holds about 2,500 pages. Another way for me to describe it, a typical stack area that we store records in a Federal records center can hold about 100,000 cubic feet. And that is a room that is about roughly the size of a football field. So you are looking at five and a half football fields floor to ceiling shelving.” {Transcript, page 24}

President Trump did not turn over the letter left to him by President Obama, nor did President Trump turn over the 27 letters exchanged between himself and North Korea Chairman Kim Jong-un.  NARA was looking for these along with other documents pertaining to President Trump engaging in discussions with other foreign leaders, and NARA was angry about the perceived lack of respect shown by Trump toward their endeavor.

However, when you take the current DC establishment system, look at the history of the Trump administration engagement in foreign policy, then overlay that dynamic with the gatekeeping responsibilities outlined by NARA, what you may discover is an entirely different prism through which to view the DC motives.

One can easily argue the Deep State per se’ was looking for notes, information, contacts, tips and hints of discussions that took place between Trump and foreign leaders, that may have actually exposed the mechanisms of DC money and policy laundering.

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As customary in this era of a great awakening, there are a lot more Republican masks dropping this week.  There is a great deal of sunlight upon the professional and institutional Republican politicians that hold office, when contrast against the indictment of Donald Trump.  As we bear witness to the establishment opposition of candidate Donald Trump, once again it is valuable to understand the motive at the heart of this opposition.

CTH can get down in the weeds of each specific issue to discuss the motives and intents (we will, and do), but the big picture MUST remain at the forefront of understanding. If we lose track of the big picture, the weeds are overwhelming.

…“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

♦POTUS Trump was disrupting the global order of things in order to protect and preserve the shrinking interests of the U.S.  He was fighting, almost single-handed, at the threshold of the abyss. Our interests, our position, is zero-sum. His DC opposition seeks to repel and retain the status-quo. They want to return to full economic control.

In these economic endeavors, President Trump was disrupting decades of financial schemes established to use the U.S. as a host for their endeavors. President Trump was confronting multinational corporations and the global constructs of economic systems that were put in place to the detriment of us.

There are trillions at stake. The need for control is a reaction to fear. The billionaire donor class fear losing control over economic policy and finance. They are funding every candidate, media resource, influencer operation, RNC, RGA, and every institution possible to retain their equity position. Opposition is based on economics; everything else is chaff and countermeasures.

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Appearing on Rupert Murdoch’s network Fox News, former Attorney General Bill Barr frame his false construct in the documents case against President Trump.

First, the obvious.  Barr is motivated in his position because this is the constructed inflection point against Donald Trump.  The severity of his position, the pretending not to know things, the defensive position about the power of government institutions, all of it is expressed in sum and total for one primary purpose; this is the moment they have manufactured to take Trump down.  This is the DC Republican moment all preceding moments were designed to support.

Second, on the details.  Barr states with emphasis, the “presidential daily brief (PDB) is not the president’s personal document,” it is a document provided for him by the U.S. intelligence community (IC).  Worth noting here is a little factoid that runs in opposition to Barr:

WASHINGTON – […] “while through most of its history the document has been marked “For the President’s Eyes Only,” the PDB has never gone to the president alone. The most restricted dissemination was in the early 1970s, when the book went only to President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who was dual-hatted as national security adviser and secretary of state.

In other administrations, the circle of readers has also included the vice president, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with additional White House staffers.  By 2013, Obama’s PDB was making its way to more than 30 recipients, including the president’s top strategic communications aide and speechwriter, and deputy secretaries of national security departments.” [Source] 

No one is saying the Trump PDB is Trump’s “personal document“, the point is the PDB’s in question -those noted in the indictment- were part of President Trump’s papers, his administration records; able to be reviewed and critiqued by anyone the president would assign, including speechwriters.  Barr us making a non-sequitur.

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As the geography narrows before us, it is important to remember the stakes and avoid the distractions.  As a consequence, the baseline must be reaffirmed. It is critical to understand that both the DNC and RNC are private corporations with no affiliation to government.

It is a difficult shift in thinking, but the party system in U.S. politics revolves around two distinct private corporations – two clubs that feed from the same corporate trough and position for influence and affluence within a political dynamic they control.

The priority for both clubs, Republican and Democrat, is NOT politically or culturally ideological.  In the modern era, the corporate priority first begins with a battle over who controls each corporation.

As long as there is no challenge, the clubs operate without issue.  However, when there is a battle for control of the corporation, a battle that will ultimately determine the financial outcome, the internal battle becomes the priority.

2024 is going to be the election season when we see this corporate battle explode inside in the Republican group.  Decades of entrenched power are at stake, and there has been four years of counter positioning and backroom discussion leading up to this moment.

As a consequence, and I know this might sound odd to many people – but winning and/or losing elections becomes a secondary issue.  The RNC is not focused on winning elections. The RNC corporation is focused on retaining control.

The RNC want to give the illusion of support for MAGA conservatism because they need the base voter, and they need to maintain the illusion of choice. However, every move they make on an operational level is exactly in line with their previous outlook toward cocktail class republicanism.  The MAGA base of support cannot trust this corporate group, and we must not be blind or unguarded about the Machiavellian schemes they construct.

When you hear the influence group saying the two priorities for control of the Republican Club involve, (1) eliminating populism in the ranks; and (2) realigning with multinational corporate objectives (vis a vis Wall Street), what they are publicly expressing is their RNC corporate need to get rid of the America First economic agenda – to get rid of the MAGA influence.

How has this historically surfaced?

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Homeowner equity is being erased. As higher interest rates continue to put pressure on borrowers, the ability of the average person to afford a mortgage diminishes.  Higher mortgage rates lead to downward pressure on residential home values as fewer borrowers can afford higher payments.  Simultaneously, commercial real estate is dropping in value as vacancies continue increasing.

Put both of these issues together and already tenuous banks holding mortgage bonds as assets can become more unstable.

This dynamic creates the continual tremors in the background of an economy already suffering from high inflation and low consumer purchasing of durable goods.

A perfect storm starts to realize.

(Wall Street Journal) – Sales of previously owned homes fell in April from the prior month and prices declined from a year earlier by the most in more than 11 years.

U.S. existing home sales, which make up most of the housing market, fell 3.4% in April from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.28 million, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. April sales fell 23.2% from a year earlier.

The national median existing-home price fell 1.7% in April from a year earlier to $388,800, the biggest year-over-year price decline since January 2012, NAR said. Median prices, which aren’t seasonally adjusted, were down 6% from a record $413,800 in June. Home prices have fallen the most in the western half of the U.S., while prices continue to rise from a year earlier in many eastern markets. (read more) 

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Those of you who are keen financially minded individuals will note exactly what is happening in these recent reports, HOME DEPT HERE – TARGET HERE.  Those of you who are retail investors in the stock market might also see the bigger picture.

Home Depot and Target essentially share the same customer base or market audience. They service a larger segment of the American middle class.  Both companies are reporting negative financial outcomes as a result of low comparable sales, or same store sales comparisons, to last year.   This should not be a surprise, yet Wall Street is seemingly caught off guard.

Right now, we are on the tail end of the massive inflation cycle that took place in 2021 through 2022.  Current inflation, as measured by the rate of price increase over the same period last year, is lower.

Now we are starting to see companies reporting sales comparable without the benefit of massive inflation to assist.

Example – when inflation is running at 10%, a company can report 8% sales growth, and everyone smiles.  However, the sales growth was created by the inflation.  The actual unit sales of goods have declined; the store is reporting higher sales because the prices are higher.  When the sales cycle through to lower inflationary comparisons, the drop in unit sales shows up as drops in topline sales.   This is the cause of both Target and Home Depot now reporting lower than expected comparable sales versus last year.

In real terms, this is why using sales data as a measure of economic growth is less valuable during periods of high inflation.  Significant inflation hides the diminished sales of units, which should be the true measure of sales growth.  I have been tracking unit sales as a measure of economic activity, and the truth is that unit sales have been declining since the fourth quarter of 2021.

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