Remember that fourth quarter GDP result that seemed manipulated?  Well, I suspect the record setting trade deficit now being reported for January is an outcome of those pesky fourth quarter trade results being intentionally skewed by the withholding of December 2021 import data.

Additionally, methinks we are likely to get some increased economic clarity about why the White House needed Ukraine to become the big shiny thing with such urgency.

Just like everything else, geopolitical dynamics –especially those surrounding entrenched ideology– are always about the economics.  Someone, eventually, always has to pay.  Follow the money; there are trillions at stake.

First, keep in mind that missing Port of Los Angeles result from December as you review the import/export details:

(REUTERS) […]  The goods trade deficit jumped 7.1% to an all-time high of $107.6 billion last month. Imports of goods increased 1.7%, led by food and motor vehicles. There were also large increases in imports of industrial supplies, capital and consumer goods. Imports of other goods, however, tumbled 15.3%.

Exports dropped 1.8%, weighed down by consumer goods, motor vehicles, food and other goods. But exports of capital goods and industrial supplies increased. Trade has been a drag on gross domestic product for six straight quarters. (read more)

That missing Port of LA December import data, now being introduced into the month of January, might just be the cause of the “all time high” noted above.  I will bet one sustainable rice cake on it.

Next up, inflation.

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A fantastic piece by Peter Beinart on substack {SEE HERE} puts excellent clarity on the people around Joe Biden baiting Russian President Vladimir Putin to enter Ukraine.

Current CIA Director William “Bill” Burns was the former ambassador to Russia and Jordan.  Bill Burns had a 33-year career at the State Department under both Republican and Democratic presidents and speaks fluent Russian. If the people in the background of Joe Biden wanted an intelligence operative to trigger a specific result from Russia, there’s no one more strategically perfect for the job than CIA Director Bill Burns.

The article by Beinart is mainly focused on pointing out the irreconcilable nature of Joe Biden implying Ukraine could join NATO, while his own CIA Director has a history of giving serious warnings emphasizing the “brightest of all red lines” about that specific point.

[…]  “Two years ago, Burns wrote a memoir entitled, The Back Channel. It directly contradicts the argument being proffered by the administration he now serves. In his book, Burns says over and over that Russians of all ideological stripes—not just Putin—loathed and feared NATO expansion. He quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow in 1995. ‘Hostility to early NATO expansion,” it declares, “is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.”

On the question of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about the breadth of Russian opposition are even more emphatic. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote in a 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” (read more)

Against this backdrop of Bill Burns, the details about the lead up to the Russia-Ukraine crisis gain quite a bit of clarity.

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Attending a black history month celebration at the White House today, Kamala Harris gleefully remarked “you get what you vote for”.

WATCH 04:11 Prompted:

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A recent image attributed to the Moscow subway system presents some consideration for a potentially larger problem.

Increasingly, people everywhere have stopped using cash to pay for simple purchases.  The electronic payment systems shifted to credit cards and debit cards, and then, eventually as technology merged with phone platforms, the linking of your portable transponder to your financial institution in order to make purchases became an efficient way to make transactions.

However, as governments start using definitions of who is good and who is bad to create sanctions against the bad actors, and with Russia representing the most expansive modern targeting of the global financial system, the control of monetary transactions enters the sphere of integrated payment systems like VISA, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay and others.  With Russia being essentially “de-banked” on the world stage, this happens:

There’s an irony to this surfacing now… so soon after the Canadian government began targeting their political opposition for de-banking.

Essentially, what is happening in Russia, on an entire citizen scale, is the same issue that happened in Canada to the individuals targeted.  The financial mechanisms in this integrated system of payment are now creating havoc for the individual.

The SWIFT transfer system sanction(s) against the Russian government, end up debanking everyone in the country.  These are remarkable times, and this is an example of something that needs to be factored into how you can retain individual liberty and freedom.

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As the beatification of Saint Zelenskyy continues in the west, the Ukrainian president signs a request for EU membership.  The propaganda is thick obviously as these things take years; however, when the social media optics of World War Reddit need an angle, well, the selfie star is mandated to comply.

The western propaganda campaign continues in stunning form as the U.S. State Department coordinates the collaboration of global elites in their campaign against Russia.  However, there are a few conservative voices in the U.S, and the people outside the beltway who have started figuring this all out, beginning to wonder if the assembly of global leftists is really the Ukrainian cocktail party they want to attend.

Everything surrounding the propaganda push continues unabated, as the public image of Volodymyr Zelenskyy is maintained by the very best efforts of Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Silicon Valley.  All the best people, you know, the ‘elites’, are flowing in one direction.

At this point in the dynamic, the Big Tech social media groups have fulfilled the demands of the White House, State Dept, intelligence agencies, United Nations, EU, NATO, World Economic Forum, George Soros and U.S. Foreign Relations Committee, and rallied the collective west to defeat Russia using the cultural weapon of social likeability.

It is verboten to speak about warrior Zelenskyy with anything other than heroism.  References of David and Goliath are recommended.

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the JoeBama Administration and Presidency.

“This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won’t be done. The Founders’ Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.”

“But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.”

~ Mike Vanderboegh

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

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Macgregor Makes Sense!

My spidey senses tell me that Col Douglas Macgregor will not be welcomed back on Fox News after he gave a rather different take on what is happening amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict that does not toe the common media line.  [SEGMENT HERE] Jennifer Griffin was furious.

The first presentation was during a segment with Fox Host Dan Bongino (below).   The second presentation of essentially the same analysis was with Trey Gowdy [SEGMENT HERE].  In both discussions Macgregor’s perspective reconciles the disparity between what the U.S. government, State Dept, and corporate media are saying -vs- what is visible.

Essentially, Macgregor is saying that Russia does not want to engage a civilian population and is making every effort to avoid civilian conflict in those population centers.  In part this is because Putin knows the Western approach is a propaganda war that would be fueled by what it would look like if population carnage took place. However, if Ukraine President Zelenskyy does not acquiesce to terms, Putin could easily crush those centers with artillery and rockets.  WATCH:

What Macgregor outlines would explain why these skirmishes always seem ‘off in the distance’.

The western government and media perspective is to make it seem like Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the rebellious civilian misfits are beating the Russian army because that frames a better story.  However, what Macgregor outlines is Putin not wanting to fuel the United Nations, NATO and State Dept narrative engineering, thus the absence of visible fighting.

The second segment with Trey Gowdy is HERE… and below:

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CNN ‘War Correspondent’ Clarissa Ward accidentally explained why the public is confused about what the corporate media are saying about the Ukraine war with Russia, compared to what is actually visible about the Ukraine war with Russia.

During a segment with Brian Stelter, Ms Ward explained how CNN war corresponding in Ukraine consists of talking about material provided to her by CNN production crews who sit and scour through YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and social media posts to find the input material for their stories.

Clarissa Ward didn’t mean to expose how the propaganda of modern warfare is created, but she did.

Ward was thanking the people in the background of CNN who search social media for their Ukraine content; however, in talking about what they do, she affirmed what we already knew was taking place.

People wondering why there is no visible ‘fight’ in this war, now find the baseline which Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh was talking about last week.  The State Department, intelligence community and political participants in the U.S. government are constructing the “war” against Vladimir Putin through the prism of social likeability as a cultural weapon.

When the goal is to produce content that tells the “better story,” social media becomes the battlefield.  War corresponding is reduced to using the corporate media platform to enhance the social media battlefield.  Essentially you might call this “World War Reddit.”

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In case you missed it, March 1st has been declared as the unofficial end date for COVID-19 as a political weapon.

Domestically, the political leftists, who weaponized science for their totalitarian control, have decided it is time to head for the exits.  We are now supposed to ignore the last two years of brutal impact they inflicted on society.  You can always spot the shift by looking at how Hollywood and pop culture are triggered by the messaging from the political crew.

Once given the nod, there’s a silent move toward the exits while everyone is distracted.  Of course, the exit strategy is always frustrating for those who have watched this play out.  The SNL segment is presented as humor, but when you recognize the inherent message, there’s nothing funny about it.

The left weaponized COVID for their political needs.  However, within this COVID fiasco there were real victims.  Many people lost incomes, small businesses were closed, families were torn apart as people were caught up in the frenzy.  All of that now positioned as a joke, as the professionally political left try to find a way to tell their tribe it’s over.

We are supposed to forget the pain they inflicted as loved ones were choking in anguish, unable to visit family in hospital, the funerals that were not permitted, the catastrophic damage to our children’s lives, and the massive ridicule deployed (with maximum snark) in their condescending attacks against anyone who did not kneel at the altar of COVID virtue signaling.  All of it…. ALL OF IT… now boiled down to a few jokes as they walk backwards trying to avoid the political fallout.

They are declaring victory, and moving on.

These are sick people.

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