Sen. Marco Rubio Demands Probe on ActBlue Following Reports of Hundreds of Thousands of Likely Illegal Donations to Democrats – Totally Ignored by Republican Party
James O’Keefe brought attention to the ActBlue donation mules in Maryland in a recent report.
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent off a letter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) demanding an investigation into the hundreds of thousands of small donations adding up to millions of dollars given to Democratic fundraising giant ActBlue in the past two elections.
As The Gateway Pundit first reported late last year on the thousands of donation mules donating to Democrat Raphael Warnock from across the country.
Joe Hoft published a remarkable report on the millions of dollars going to ActBlue by ‘donation mules’ in a recent article.
In 2020 millions were reportedly donated to BLM after George Floyd was killed. At the same time, 20+ police were killed and American cities suffered nearly $2 billion in record damages following the George Floyd riots.
The Gateway Pundit was the first to report that ActBlue was raising money using BLM as its front group. ActBlue is the Democrats’ funding apparatus. We know this from our early reporting and from the fact that BLM later admitted this. In 2022 Black Lives Matter announced in February 2022 that the organization was deactivating its fundraising pages on ActBlue. This was after the Washington Examinerexposed that BLM was still accepting donations on the Democratic platform despite claiming it had stopped amid questions about its finances.
The Daily Caller confirmed that ActBlue was using BLM to raise money. BLM is not a recognized non-profit organization and nonprofit organization (Thousand Currents) said it provides ‘fiduciary oversight, financial management, and other administrative services’ to BLM.
Candice Owen reported on the BLM – ActBlue relationship and was targeted by a bogus fact-checker. Tom Fitton from Judicial Watch jumped in and stated that their findings confirmed what TGP and Candice Owen reported:
‘Thousand Currents’ was allegedly a non-profit organization and Susan Rosenberg served on its Board. Susan Rosenberg was a member of the Weather Underground terrorist group, which included Obama friend Bill Ayers. President Bill Clinton gave her a pardon on his last day in office.
So in summary contributions to BLM were funneled through ActBlue, the major resource for Democrat donations, and then funneled to at least one organization run by a member of a domestic terrorist group.
In early 2020 FOX News reported that half of all donations to ActBlue in 2019 came from “untraceable, unemployed donors.”
A preliminary computer analysis by the Take Back Action Fund, obtained exclusively by Fox News, has found that nearly half of all 2019 donations to ActBlue were made by people claiming to be unemployed.
“After downloading hundreds of millions of [dollars in] donations to the Take Back Action Fund servers, we were shocked to see that almost half of the donations to ActBlue in 2019 claimed to be unemployed individuals,” he said. “The name of employers must be disclosed when making political donations, but more than 4.7 million donations came from people who claimed they did not have an employer. Those 4.7 million donations totaled $346 million ActBlue raised and sent to liberal causes.”
Action Fund’s President John Pudner had this to say regarding the finding:
“It is hard to believe that at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate was less than 4 percent, that unemployed people had $346 million dollars to send to ActBlue for liberal causes,” Pudner said, adding that “4.7 million donations from people without a job … raised serious concerns.”
“When Take Back Our Republic first pointed out in 2015 that foreign interests could potentially use gift cards to flood money in through ActBlue’s unverified credit card system, more than 100 members of Congress stopped using the system and 31 Democrats joined 52 Republicans in trying to outlaw the practice,” said John Pudner, president of Take Back Action Fund.
“It took vendors only a few hours to change their setup to allow the banks to verify if donations were really from Americans,” Pudner added. “Unfortunately, as things turned harshly partisan after Trump’s election, ActBlue doubled down and moved more and more candidates onto an unverified system at a time when intelligence officials are warning that foreign interests want to impact who wins our elections. TBAF asks ActBlue to join the hundreds who have stopped using this system.”
Per a review of ActBlue Texas disbursements via the website TransparencyUSA.org, there are hundreds of individuals being paid by ActBlue Texas for similar small amounts (e.g. $300 or $250) who are not candidates running for office. In total, ActBlue Texas has paid out $9.6 million in disbursements. We have no idea who most these people are.
On Wednesday Marco Rubio called on the FEC to investigate this mammoth crime. So where was the GOP on this?
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is demanding that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) open an investigation into Democratic fundraising behemoth ActBlue after a report claimed it was raking in cash from unwitting elderly Americans.
“Two weeks ago, alarming reports emerged of fraudulent donations being reported to the FEC by ActBlue,” Rubio wrote in a letter to the FEC chairs. “These reports indicate that numerous individuals, including senior citizens, have purportedly donated to ActBlue thousands of times a year. However, according to recent investigative reports, many of these individuals had no idea that their names and addresses were being used to give thousands of dollars in political donations, with most of these ‘donations’ going to ActBlue.”
Project Veritas claims to have spoken with some people on fixed incomes who were stunned to learn that their names and addresses were used to donate thousands of dollars to ActBlue.
“It should come as no surprise that ActBlue serves as vessel for fraud, considering the intentional lack of security engrained within their donation processes and systems,” Rubio wrote to the FEC.
ActBlue amasses small-dollar donations from across the country and then funnels them to various Democratic candidates and causes. Republicans use a similar platform known as WinRed.
November 5, 2022 at 09:22AM NBC Quietly Removes Report Claiming Paul Pelosi Walked Away From Police, “Did Not Immediately Declare” Emergency
The Paul Pelosi attack continues to grow more bizarre by the day.
On Friday, sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News that when the police responded to the high-priority call, they had no idea they had been called to the Pelosi residence. What’s more, Pelosi did not immediately declare an emergency or try to leave his home.
“After a ‘knock and announce,’ the front door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82-year-old did not immediately declare an emergency or try to leave his home,” reports NBC. Instead, Pelosi “began walking several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police.”
What’s more, Pelosi and attacker David DePape were reportedly alone for 30 minutes.
Of note, NBC News has deleted the clip from their Twitter feed and scrubbed it from their website.
Meanwhile, a neighbor living across from the Pelosis who was awake when the assault took place didn’t hear an alarm or anything unusual.
“No, not a thing, and you know we were awake at that hour in the morning; my husband was awake. We didn’t even hear sirens,” neighbor Sally McNulty told The Epoch Times.
McNulty, who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years, said everything was quiet around the time of the 2 a.m. attack on Oct. 28.
“This is one of the quietest streets in the city,” she said. “You can hear a pin drop at night.”
McNulty said she doesn’t recall ever hearing the Pelosis’ alarm go off in the past, though she has occasionally heard others in the neighborhood.
She said that Paul Pelosi had no enemies she knew of and was well-liked.
Other neighbors declined to comment.
Marjorie Campbell, a former neighbor of the Pelosis for 10 years, told the Daily Mail she recalled fleets of black SUVs surrounding the house around the clock when she stayed there.
Everyone in the neighborhood has alarms on their windows, and if glass were smashed, an alarm would sound, she told the publication. Campbell recalled her computers getting scrambled by alleged security measures to protect the congresswoman.
Nancy Pelosi was at her Pacific Heights home, the site of the attack, on Nov. 2 while several dark SUVs were parked outside. Capitol Police were present, too, as were multiple San Francisco Police Department cars.
Paul Pelosi had surgery to address a skull fracture and other injuries at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, after 42-year-old David DePape allegedly fractured his skull with a hammer on Oct. 28.
Pelosi’s failure to call out for help or flee his home was a detail in the court filing that previously raised a red flag to me, and it seems that even NBC News finds it odd. “Why Pelosi didn’t try to flee or tell responding officers he was in distress is unclear,” NBC News’s Miguel Almaguer noted.
Nevertheless, the report suggested it was unknown whether Pelosi was already injured or what mental state he was in.
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Here is why we need to regularly audit all public institutions:
What do we know about the ATF? Media reports have confirmed there were ATF agents working undercover at Jan. 6th… but what about their agency? Is it safe? Do they protect the weapons they take from Americans- because that is their job- and they are not doing well.
There were also 20 FBI/ATF agents confirmed to be working undercover on J6, according to court documents. I don't think they were there tailgating during the riot.
Here is how we know they are not doing it well:
A new explosive OIG report shows that the government workers in Washington DC are a clown show and also a serious disaster for our safety. While the tyrants in DC talk about stealing guns out of the hands of law-abiding Americans- for self-defense- they are also getting paid to safeguard gun and ammo stockpiles, which they have allowed to be stolen by the bus load.
Check this out from a September 2022 audit of the ATF:
“The OIG undertook this audit following the discovery that thousands of firearms, firearm parts and ammunition had been stolen from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) National Destruction Branch (NDB) facility in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
Our audit objectives were to: (1) assess the adequacy of the
ATF’s controls over firearms approved for disposal, and (2) evaluate the ATF’s processes for ensuring all firearms sent to its disposal facility are ultimately destroyed. This audit covers the ATF’s firearm disposal practices at its NDB facility from March 2019 through April 2022.”
From the report, here is what caused the audit:
“Since September 2015, the NDB has been responsible for disposing of thousands of ATF-owned firearms and
firearms seized for forfeiture each year by the ATF and other Department law enforcement agencies. In August 2019, a former contract security guard stationed at the ATF facility in Martinsburg was sentenced to 14 years in prison for stealing thousands of firearms, firearm parts, and ammunition from the NDB facility from 2016 to 2019.
The events that led to this conviction triggered two internal ATF inspections of the NDB facility and an OIG investigation that resulted in the identification of several vulnerabilities that enabled the thefts to occur undetected, as well as recommendations for corrective action by the ATF’s internal inspection groups.”
Here is what the auditor found was the problem:
“We found that NDB staff does not consistently adhere to established operating procedures in place to mitigate risk of firearms being lost or stolen. Specifically, we observed NDB staff: (1) propping open doors into secure areas of the facility solely for the sake of convenience, (2) allowing visitors to enter the facility through doorways other than the main entrance and drive their cars into the facility to unload firearms, and (3) permitting unauthorized individuals to access NDB vault storage spaces.
Failure to strictly adhere to established operating procedures not only undermines the NDB’s security protocol, but unnecessarily places firearms in NDB custody at risk of loss or theft.”
Here is how they got away with being reckless criminals with it before the audit:
“We identified blind spots in the NDB’s surveillance camera coverage of both the interior and exterior areas of the facility that could be exploited by an individual seeking to conceal illicit activity. We also found that the low resolution of some of the surveillance video does not allow the viewer to identify individuals or discern activities conducted within certain secure areas of the facility. In
addition, we found that 1 of the 13 cameras covering the facility was not functioning. This issue went unnoticed until we pointed it out to the ATF’s Physical Security Programs Branch, indicating that the ATF is not regularly inspecting surveillance cameras at the NDB to ensure they are functioning”
So while the ATF is busy harassing Americans, they are literally letting guns go right out the front door and into the hands of criminals.
Check out what Markwayne Mullin reported, along with Republicans who are watching the ATF:
Credit card companies are now taking steps to track lawful firearm purchases by law-abiding citizens. The information they will collect is already on file with the ATF. This serves no purpose other than to chill the exercise of our fundamental 2A rights. https://t.co/s65vgcy3rp
July 25, 2022 at 03:34PM via Reason.com Most Americans Think Government Is Corrupt, According to a New Poll
Another sign of growing discontent in America? A new poll from the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics finds a majority of Americans think the government is corrupt and stacked against them.
To probably no one’s surprise, 73 percent of poll respondents who identify as “strong Republican” respondents agreed with the statement that the government is “corrupt and rigged against everyday people like me.” But Republicans are far from alone in this sentiment. Fifty-one percent of “very liberal” voters agreed with the same statement.
Overall, 56 percent of survey respondents said that the government is corrupt. This included 66 percent of all Republican respondents, 63 percent of independents, and 46 percent of Democrats.
The survey of 1,000 registered voters found that a significant number of people expect that extreme measures may be necessary to protect against government overreach. 28 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government.” Thirty-six percent of Republicans, 35 percent of independents, and 20 percent of Democrats agreed.
While some have portrayed this as a sign of increasing polarization or extremism, I think it’s the kind of poll question that makes for dramatic results but doesn’t really tell us much. Agreeing that armed revolution “may” (or may not!) be necessary at some unspecified point in the future doesn’t mean you think it’s terribly likely to be necessary.
One interesting finding is that people across the board believed that their political opponents might agree with them if they were better informed. Asked about “people who you disagree with on political issues,” half said that “the root of the problem” is that these people “are misinformed because of where they get their information.” Fifty-one percent of Republicans, 52 percent of Democrats, and 37 percent of independents believed this.
And despite being a poll about political polarization, the survey actually found a number of areas of agreement.
Asked if “immigration is good for the country,” only 34 percent of Republicans agreed, while 57 percent of independents and 73 percent of Democrats did. But asked if “legal immigration is good for the country,” these numbers were boosted to 70 percent, 72 percent, and 82 percent, respectively.
Most respondents, regardless of political affiliation, were also in agreement that “it should be illegal for private companies such as Verizon, Google and Facebook to collect information about people’s phone and internet usage.”
The poll was conducted at the end of May. You can find the full results here.
A Delaware man’s home security camera captured the moment two ATF agents and a Delaware State Police trooper showed up at his house to verify he still had possession of firearms he had recently purchased.
The homeowner provided footage of the incident to Armed American News (AAN), which published the videos on Monday.
When the officers arrived at the Delaware man’s door, he asked how he could help them and learned the trio was assigned to a task force investigating potential straw purchases.
A straw purchase is when a person knowingly buys a gun for an individual who is not allowed to obtain one.
The man being questioned by the federal agency told AAN he had bought seven guns since January 2022.
One agent told the citizen the ATF had to check on him because he purchased more than two firearms, adding, “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“All I’m doing is verifying that you have it, you got two different purchases,” he said, pointing to a paper document apparently showing proof of purchase. “If you have them, I’m out of here. That’s how quick it is. Do you have them with you by any chance?”
When the homeowner told the three armed men his guns were in his safe, the lead ATF agent asked him to “unload them and bring them out.”
Continuing, the agent said, “There’s an email from the federal side saying, ‘Can you make sure this guy’s got his guns?’ If you recently purchased a whole bunch of guns, if we can look at them and just scratch them off.”
Another agent told the homeowner if he’d just let them check the serial numbers on his recently purchased guns, they wouldn’t have “to come back.”
According to the man who was hassled by the federal agency, he got one rifle out of his safe and let the officers inspect its serial number.
After asking if he had to get the rest of his weapons out of the safe, the agents told the man it wouldn’t be necessary and went on their way.
In retrospect, the homeowner feels he was bullied into giving his consent for the property search and is “embarrassed.”
“My neighbors saw the whole thing – guys in these police vests standing in my yard,” he explained. “I was really uncomfortable. I felt really confused, like I was in some way being accused of something even though I didn’t commit a crime. It was quite embarrassing. I knew they couldn’t come in, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to get put on some watch list. We just got new gun laws here. I didn’t want them coming back again. I felt like they were invading my privacy.”
According to AAN, “The only insight into ATF’s surprise home inspections was in a Washington Post story published July 22, 2021, in which Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Biden-Harris administration was targeting straw purchasers.”
The corrupt federal agency is disrespecting the U.S. Constitution by deliberately disobeying the Fourth Amendment’s stance against unwarranted searches and seizures.
July 19, 2022 at 06:26AM The J6 Motive – Why Donald Trump Must be Removed, The Political Surveillance of American Citizens – The Last Refuge
Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act. What Obama and Holder did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum.
This point is where many people understandably get confused.
In the era shortly after 9/11 the DC national security apparatus, instructed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.
After 9/11/01 the electronic surveillance system that was originally created to monitor threats from abroad was retooled to monitor threats inside our country. That is when all of our electronic ‘metadata’ came under federal surveillance.
That inflection point, and the process that followed, was exactly what Edward Snowden tried to point out.
What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their political opposition became the target of this new national security system.
The problems we face now as a country are directly an outcome of two very distinct points that were merged by Barack Obama. (1) The post 9/11 monitoring of electronic communication of American citizens; and (2) Obama’s team creating a fine-tuning knob that it focused on the politics of the targets. This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.
Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01. The Department of Homeland Security came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was formed.
When President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.
The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus: a domestic surveillance state. However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology.
The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution. Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.
We were not sleeping when this happened, we were wide awake. However, we were stunningly distracted by the economic collapse that was taking place in 2006 and 2007 when the engineers behind Obama started to assemble the design. By the time Obama took office in 2009, we sensed something profound was shifting, but we can only see exactly what shifted in the aftermath. The four pillars were put into place, and a new Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created.
As time passed, and the system operators became familiar with their new tools, technology allowed the tentacles of the system to reach out and touch us. That is when we first started to notice that something very disconcerting was happening. Those four pillars are the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this current state of perpetual angst will start to make sense.
Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and take a walk with me as we outline how this was put together. You might find many of the questions about our current state of political affairs beginning to make a lot more sense.
Remember, it is not my intent to outline the entire history of how we got to this place where the intelligence community now acts as the superseding Fourth Branch of Government. Such an effort would be exhausting and likely take our discussion away from understanding the current dynamic.
History provided enough warnings from Dwight D. Eisenhower (military) to John F. Kennedy (CIA), to Richard Nixon (FBI), to all the modern versions of warnings and frustrations from HPSCI Devin Nunes and ODNI Ric Grenell.
None of those prior reference points are invalid, and all documented outlines of historic reference are likely true and accurate. However, a generational review is not useful, as the reference impacting us ‘right now‘ gets lost.
Instead, we pick up the expansive and weaponized intelligence system as it manifests after 9/11/01, and my goal is to highlight how the modern version of the total intelligence apparatus has metastasized into a Fourth Branch of Government. It is this superseding branch that now touches and influences every facet of our life. We The People are under surveillance.
If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.
After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions. My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no one elected, and few people pay attention to.
It was during this process when I discovered how information is purposefully put into containment silos; essentially a formal process to block the flow of information between agencies and between the original branches. While frustrating to discover, the silo effect was important because understanding the communication between networks leads to our ability to reconcile conflict between what we perceive and what’s actually taking place.
After days of research and meetings in DC during 2020; amid a town that was serendipitously shut down due to COVID-19; I found a letter slid under the door of my room in a nearly empty hotel with an introduction of sorts. The subsequent discussions were perhaps the most important. After many hours of specific questions and answers on specific examples, I realized why our nation is in this mess. That is when I discovered the fourth and superseding branch of government, the Intelligence Branch.
I am going to explain how the Intelligence Branch works: (1) to control every other branch of government; (2) how it functions as an entirely independent branch of government with no oversight; (3) how and why it was created to be independent from oversight; (4) what is the current mission of the IC Branch, and most importantly (5) who operates it.
The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government, it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.
The Intelligence Branch functions much like the State Dept, through a unique set of public-private partnerships that support it. Big Tech industry collaboration with intelligence operatives is part of that functioning, almost like an NGO. However, the process is much more important than most think. In this problematic perspective of a corrupt system of government, the process is the flaw – not the outcome.
There are people making decisions inside this little known, unregulated and out-of-control branch of government that impact every facet of our lives.
None of the people operating deep inside the Intelligence Branch were elected; and our elected representative House members genuinely do not know how the system works. I assert this position affirmatively because I have talked to House and Senate staffers, including the chiefs of staff for multiple House & Senate committee seats. They are not malicious people; however, they are genuinely clueless of things that happen outside their silo. That is part of the purpose of me explaining it, with examples, in full detail with sunlight.
We begin….
In April of 2016, the FBI launched a counterintelligence operation against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The questioning about that operation is what New York Representative Elise Stefanik cites in March of 2017, approximately 11 months later (First Two Minutes).
Things to note:
♦ Notice how FBI Director James Comey just matter-of-factly explains no one outside the DOJ was informed about the FBI operation. Why? Because that’s just the way things are done. His justification for unilateral operations was “because of the sensitivity of the matter“, totally ignoring any constitutional or regulatory framework for oversight; because, well, quite simply, there isn’t any. The intelligence apparatus inside the DOJ/FBI can, and does, operate based on their own independent determinations of authority.
♦ Notice also how FBI Director Comey shares his perspective that informing the National Security Council (NSC) is the equivalent of notifying the White House. The FBI leadership expressly believe they bear no responsibility to brief the Chief Executive. As long as they tell some unknown, unelected, bureaucratic entity inside the NSC, their unwritten responsibility to inform the top of their institutional silo is complete. If the IC wants to carve out the Oval Office, they simply plant information inside the NSC and, from their perspective, their civic responsibility to follow checks-and-balances is complete. This is an intentional construct.
♦ Notice how Comey obfuscates notification to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), by avoiding the fact James Clapper was the DNI from outset of the counterintelligence operation throughout the remainder of Obama’s term. When I get deeper into the process, we will understand how the Intelligence Branch has intentionally used the creation of the DNI position (established post 9/11/01) as a method to avoid oversight, not enhance it. Keeping an oblivious doofus like James Clapper in position held strategic value [Doofus Reminder HERE].
That video of James Comey being questioned by Elise Stefanik was the first example given to me by someone who knew the background of everything that was taking place preceding that March 20, 2017, hearing. That FBI reference point is a key to understand how the Intelligence Branch operates with unilateral authority above Congress (legislative branch), above the White House (executive branch), and even above the court system (judicial branch).
Also, watch this short video of James Clapper, because it is likely many readers have forgotten, and likely even more readers have never seen it. Watch closely how then White House national security adviser John Brennan is responding in that video. This is before Brennan became CIA Director, this is when Brennan was helping Barack Obama put the pillars into place. WATCH:
[Sidebar: Every time I post this video it gets scrubbed from YouTube (example), so save it if you ever want to see it again.]
The video of James Clapper highlights how the ODNI position (created with good national security intention) ended up becoming the fulcrum for modern weaponization, and is now an office manipulated by agencies with a vested interest in retaining power. The Intelligence Branch holds power over the ODNI through their influence and partnership with the body that authorizes the power within it, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor. The checks create silos of proprietary information, classified information, vaults of information that work around oversight issues. The silos, which include the exploitation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court, or FISC) are part of the problem.
Ironically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented. The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.
The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the Executive Branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S. This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.
However, the creation of the DNI office also created an unconstitutional surveillance system of the American people. The DNI office became the tool to take massive amounts of data and use it to target specific Americans. Weaponizing the DNI office for political targeting is now the purpose of the DNI office as it exists.
The illegal and unlawful nature of the surveillance creates a need for careful protection amid the group who operate in the shadows of electronic information and domestic surveillance. You will see how it was critical to install a person uniquely skilled in being an idiot, James Clapper, into that willfully blind role while intelligence operatives worked around the office to assemble the Intelligence Branch of Government.
• The last federal budget that flowed through the traditional budgetary process was signed into law in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008 by George W. Bush. Every budget since then has been a fragmented process of continuing resolutions and individual spending bills.
Why does this matter? Because many people think defunding the Intelligence Community is a solution; it is not…. at least, not yet. Worse yet, the corrupt divisions deep inside the U.S. intelligence system can now fund themselves from multinational private sector partnerships (banks, corporations and foreign entities).
• When Democrats took over the House of Representatives in January 2007, they took office with a plan. Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, and Democrats controlled the Senate where Harry Reid was Majority Leader. Barack Obama was a junior senator from Illinois.
Pelosi and Reid intentionally did not advance a budget in 2008 (for fiscal year 2009) because their plan included installing Barack Obama (and all that came with him) with an open checkbook made even more lucrative by a worsening financial crisis and a process called baseline budgeting. Baseline budgeting means the prior fiscal year budget is accepted as the starting point for the next year budget. All previous expenditures are baked into the cake within baseline budgeting.
Massive bailouts preceded Obama’s installation due to U.S. economic collapse, and massive bailouts continued after his installation. This is the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ aspect. TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program), auto bailouts (GM), and the massive stimulus spending bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, ie. those shovel ready jobs) were all part of the non-budget spending. The federal reserve assisted with Quantitative Easing (QE1 and QE2) as congress passed various Porkulous spending bills further spending and replacing the formal budget process.
Note: There has never been a budget passed in the normal/traditional process since September of 2007.
• While Obama’s radical ‘transformation‘ was triggered across a broad range of government institutions, simultaneously spending on the U.S. military was cut, but spending on the intelligence apparatus expanded. We were all distracted by Obamacare, and the Republican Party wanted to keep us that way. However, in the background there was a process of transformation taking place that included very specific action by Eric Holder and targeted effort toward the newest executive agency the ODNI.
The people behind Obama, those same people now behind Joe Biden, knew from years of strategic planning that ‘radical transformation’ would require control over specific elements inside the U.S. government. Eric Holder played a key role in his position as U.S. Attorney General in the DOJ.
AG Holder recruited ideologically aligned political operatives who were aware of the larger institutional objectives. One of those objectives was weaponizing the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) a division inside the DOJ that had no inspector general oversight. For most people the DOJ-NSD weaponization surfaced with a hindsight awakening of the DOJ-NSD targeting candidate Donald Trump many years later. However, by then the Holder crew had executed almost eight full years of background work.
• The second larger Obama/Holder objective was control over the FBI. Why was that important? Because the FBI does the domestic investigative work on anyone who needs or holds a security clearance. The removal of security clearances could be used as a filter to further build the internal ideological army they were assembling. Additionally, with new power in the ODNI created as a downstream consequence of the Patriot Act, new protocols for U.S. security clearances were easy to justify.
Carefully selecting fellow ideological travelers was facilitated by this filtration within the security clearance process. How does that issue later manifest? Just look around at how politicized every intelligence agency has become, specifically including the FBI.
• At the exact same time this new background security clearance process was ongoing, again everyone distracted by the fight over Obamacare, inside the Department of State (Secretary Hillary Clinton) a political alignment making room for the next phase was being assembled. Names like Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton were familiar on television while Lisa Monaco worked as a legal liaison between the Obama White House and Clinton State Department.
Through the Dept of State (DoS) the intelligence apparatus began working on their first steps to align Big Tech with a larger domestic institutional objective. Those of you who remember the “Arab Spring”, some say “Islamist Spring”, will remember it was triggered by Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo – his first foreign trip. The State Department worked with grassroots organizers (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Qatar and Libya. Obama leaned heavily on the organizational network of Turkish President Recep Erdogan for contacts and support.
Why does this aspect matter to us? Well, you might remember how much effort the Obama administration put into recruiting Facebook and Twitter as resources for the various mideast rebellions the White House and DoS supported. This was the point of modern merge between the U.S. intelligence community and Big Tech social media.
In many ways, the coordinated political outcomes in Libya and Egypt were the beta test for the coordinated domestic political outcomes we saw in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community working with social media platforms and political operatives.
Overlaying all of that background activity was also a new alignment of the Obama-era intelligence apparatus with ideological federal “contractors“. Where does this contractor activity manifest? In the FISA Court opinion of Rosemary Collyer who cited the “interagency memorandum of understanding”, or MOU.
Hopefully, you can see a small part of how tentacled the system to organize/weaponize the intelligence apparatus was. None of this was accidental, all of this was by design, and the United States Senate was responsible for intentionally allowing most of this to take place. The tools the government used to monitor threats were now being used to monitor every American. WE THE PEOPLE were now the threat the national security system was monitoring.
That’s the 30,000/ft level backdrop history of what was happening as the modern IC was created. Next, we will go into how all these various intelligence networks began working in unison and how they currently control all of the other DC institutions under them; including how they can carve out the President from knowing their activity.
♦ When Barack Obama was installed in January 2009, the Democrats held a 60 seat majority in the U.S. Senate. As the people behind the Obama installation began executing their longer-term plan, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was a tool to create the Intelligence Branch; it was not an unintentional series of events.
When Obama was installed, Dianne Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and Democrat operative Dan Jones was her lead staffer. Feinstein was completely controlled by those around her including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The CIA was in the process of turning over personnel following the Bush era, and as a result of a massive multi-year narrative of diminished credibility (Iraq WMD), a deep purge was underway. Obama/Holder were in the process of shifting intelligence alignment and the intensely political Democrat Leader Harry Reid was a key participant.
THE TRAP – Many people say that Congress is the solution to eliminating the Fourth and superseding Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. This is an exercise in futility because the Legislative Branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch. The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they too are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.
Every member of the SSCI is compromised in some controlling manner. Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee. None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.
[Note: You might remember when Vice Chairman Mark Warner’s text messages surfaced, there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018. It was not accidental that exact Senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself. That Republican Senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]
All of President Obama’s 2009 intelligence appointments required confirmation from the Senate. The nominees had to first pass through the Democrat controlled SSCI, and then to a full Senate vote where Democrats held a 60 vote majority. Essentially, Obama got everyone he wanted in place easily. Rahm Emmanuel was Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Valerie Jarrett was Senior Advisor.
Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the midterm “shellacking” caused by the Obamacare backlash. Mitch McConnell was Minority Leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his Senate colleagues were getting primaried by an angry and effective grassroots campaign. McConnell’s friend, Senator Bob Bennett, getting beaten in Utah was the final straw.
Dirty Harry and Mitch McConnell saw the TEA Party through the same prism. The TEA Party took Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts (Scott Brown); Sharon Angle was about to take out Harry Reid in Nevada; Arlen Spector was taken down in Pennsylvania; Senator Robert Byrd died; Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller in Alaska; McConnell’s nominee Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware; Rand Paul won in Kentucky. This is the background. The peasants were revolting…. and visibly angry Mitch McConnell desperately made a deal with the devil to protect himself.
In many ways, the TEA Party movement was/is very similar to the MAGA movement. The difference in 2010 was the absence of a head of the movement, in 2015 Donald Trump became that head figure who benefited from the TEA Party energy. Trump came into office in 2017 with the same congressional opposition as the successful TEA Party candidates in 2011.
Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 mid-terms. Republicans took control of the SSCI in January 2015. Senator Richard Burr became chairman of the SSCI, and Dianne Feinstein shifted to Vice-Chair. Dirty Harry Reid left the Senate, and Mitch McConnell took power again.
Republicans were in control of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2015 when the Intelligence Branch operation against candidate Donald Trump was underway. [Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, left the SSCI so he could act as a liaison and political operative between private-sector efforts (Fusion GPS, Chris Steele) and the SSCI.] The SSCI was a participant in that Fusion GPS/Chris Steele operation, and as a direct consequence Republicans were inherently tied to the problem with President Trump taking office in January of 2017. Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats was a member of the SSCI.
Bottom line…. When it came to the intelligence system targeting Donald Trump during the 2015/2016 primary, the GOP was just as much at risk as their Democrat counterparts.
When Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election, the SSCI was shocked more than most. They knew countermeasures would need to be deployed to protect themselves from any exposure of their prior intelligence conduct. Immediately Senator Dianne Feinstein stepped down from the SSCI, and Senator Mark Warner was elevated to Vice Chairman.
Indiana’s own Mike Pence, now Vice President, recommended fellow Hoosier, SSCI Senator Dan Coats, to become President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). [Apply hindsight here]
• To give an idea of the Intelligence Branch power dynamic, remind yourself how House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Devin Nunes, tried to get access to the DOJ/FBI records of the FISA application used against the Trump campaign via Carter Page.
Remember, Devin Nunes only saw a portion of the FISA trail from his review of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) previously given to President Obama. Chairman Nunes had to review the PDB at the White House SCIF due to compartmented intelligence, another example of the silo benefit.
Remember the massive stonewalling and blocking of the DOJ/FBI toward Nunes? Remember the back and forth battle over declassification surrounding the Nunes memo?
Remember, after Nunes went directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan for help (didn’t get any), the DOJ only permitted two members from each party within the HPSCI to review the documents, and only at the DOJ offices of main justice?
Contrast that amount of House Intel Committee railroading and blocking by intelligence operatives in the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI, with the simple request by Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner asking to see the Carter Page FISA application and immediately a copy being delivered to him on March 17th 2017.
Can you see which intelligence committee is aligned with the deepest part of the deep state?
The contrast of ideological alignment between the House, Senate and Intelligence Branch is crystal clear when viewed through the prism of cooperation. You can see which legislative committee holds the power and support of the Intelligence Branch. The Senate Intel Committee facilitates the corrupt existence of the IC Branch, so the IC Branch only cooperates with the Senate Intel Committee. It really is that simple.
• The Intelligence Branch carefully selects its own members by controlling how security clearances are investigated and allowed (FBI). The Intelligence Branch also uses compartmentalization of intelligence as a way to keep each agency, and each downstream branch of government (executive, legislative and judicial), at arms length as a method to stop anyone from seeing the larger picture of their activity. I call this the “silo effect“, and it is done by design.
I have looked at stunned faces when I presented declassified silo product from one agency to the silo customers of another. You would be astonished at what they don’t know because it is not in their ‘silo’.
Through the advice and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations. Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote. If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination. The president is then blocked from that appointment. This is what happened with President Trump over and over again.
• Additionally, the Intelligence Branch protects itself, and its facilitating allies through the formal classification process. The Intelligence Branch gets to decide unilaterally what information will be released and what information will be kept secret. There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.
No one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to. Doubt this? Ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.
• The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves. They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work product that is created by anyone else. The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not. The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not. A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.
[For familiar reference see the redactions to Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The Intelligence Branch does all redactions.]
• Similarly, the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information. The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control. If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her? {Again, GO DEEP} How does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member? They have to go through the SSCI confirmation. See the problem?
Yes, there are ways to break up the Intelligence Branch, but they do not start with any congressional effort. As you can see above, the process is the flaw – not the solution. Most conservative pundits have their emphasis on the wrong syllable. Their cornerstone is false.
For their own self-preservation, the Intelligence Branch has been interfering in our elections for years. The way to tear this apart begins with STATE LEVEL election reform that blocks the Legislative Branch from coordinating with the Intelligence Branch.
The extreme federalism approach is critical and also explains why Joe Biden has instructed Attorney General Merrick Garland to use the full power of the DOJ to stop state level election reform efforts. The worry of successful state level election control is also why the Intelligence Branch now needs to support the federal takeover of elections.
Our elections have been usurped by the Intelligence Branch. Start with honest elections and we will see just how much Democrat AND Republican corruption is dependent on manipulated election results. Start at the state level. Start there…. everything else is downstream.
♦ COLLAPSED OVERSIGHT – The modern system to ‘check’ the Executive Branch was the creation of the legislative “Gang of Eight,” a legislative oversight mechanism intended to provide a bridge of oversight between the authority of the intelligence community within the Executive Branch.
The Go8 construct was designed to allow the President authority to carry out intelligence operations and provide the most sensitive notifications to a select group within Congress.
The Go8 oversight is directed to the position, not the person, and consists of: (1) The Speaker of the House; (2) The Minority Leader of the House; (3) The Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI; (4) The Ranking Member (minority) of the HPSCI; (5) The Leader of the Senate; (6) The Minority Leader of the Senate; (7) The Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI; and finally (8) the Vice-Chair of the SSCI.
Example: When the Chief Executive (the President) initiates an intelligence operation on behalf of the United States, the President triggers a “finding memo.” In essence, the instruction to the intel agency or agencies to authorize a covert operation. When that process takes place, the Go8 are the first people notified. Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, sometimes the G08 are notified immediately after the operation is conducted. The notification can be a phone call or an in-person briefing.
Because of the sensitivity of their intelligence information, the Gang of Eight hold security clearances that permit them to receive and review all intelligence operations. The intelligence community are also responsible for briefing the Go8 with the same information they use to brief the President.
~ 2021 Gang of Eight ~
The Go8 design is intended to put intelligence oversight upon both political parties in Congress; it is designed that way by informing the minority leaders of both the House and Senate as well as the ranking minority members of the SSCI and HPSCI. Under the concept, the President cannot conduct an intelligence operation; and the intelligence community cannot carry out intelligence gathering operations without the majority and minority parties knowing about it.
The modern design of this oversight system was done to keep rogue and/or corrupt intelligence operations from happening. However, as we shared in the preview to this entire discussion, the process was usurped during the Obama era. {GO DEEP}
Former FBI Director James Comey openly admitted to Congress on March 20, 2017, that the FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, DOJ and DOJ-National Security Division, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, had been conducting independent investigations of Donald Trump for over a year without informing the Go8. Comey justified the lack of informing Go8 oversight by saying, “because of the sensitivity of the matter.”
Stupidly, Congress never pressed James Comey on that issue. The arrogance was astounding, and the acceptance by Congress was infuriating. However, that specific example highlighted just how politically corrupt the system had become. In essence, Team Obama usurped the entire design of congressional oversight…. and Congress just brushed it off.
Keep in mind, Comey did not say the White House was unaware; in fact he said exactly the opposite, he said, “The White House was informed through the National Security Council,” (the NSC). The unavoidable implication and James Comey admission that everyone just brushed aside, was that President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, was informed of the intelligence operation(s) against Donald Trump. After all, the NSC reports to the National Security Advisor.
Does the January 20, 2017, Susan Rice memo look different now?
Again, no one saw the immediate issue. What Comey just described on that March day in 2017 was the usurpation of the entire reason the Gang of Eight exists; to eliminate the potential for political weaponization of the Intelligence Community by the executive branch. The G08 notifications to the majority and minority are specifically designed to make sure what James Comey admitted to doing was never supposed to happen.
Team Obama carried out a political operation using the intelligence community and the checks-and-balances in the system were intentionally usurped. This is an indisputable fact.
Worse still, the entire legislative branch of Congress, which then specifically included the Republicans that now controlled the House and Senate, did nothing. They just ignored what was admitted. The usurpation was willfully ignored.
The mechanism of the G08 was bypassed without a twitch of condemnation or investigation…. because the common enemy was Donald Trump.
This example highlights the collapse of the system. Obama, the Executive Branch, collapsed the system by usurping the process; in essence the process became the bigger issue, and the lack of immediate Legislative Branch reaction became evidence of open acceptance. The outcomes of the usurpation played out over the next four years, Donald J. Trump was kneecapped and lost his presidency because of it. However, the bigger issue of the collapse still exists.
The downstream consequence of the Legislative Branch accepting the Executive Branch usurpation meant both intelligence committees were compromised. Additionally, the leadership of both the House and Senate were complicit. Think about this carefully. The Legislative Branch allowance of the intelligence usurpation meant the Legislative Branch was now subservient to the Intelligence Branch.
That’s where we are.
Right now.
That’s where we are.
Term-3 Obama is now back in the White House with Joe Biden.
NOTE: Former Obama National Security aide and counsel to the President, Lisa Monaco, is in her current position as Deputy Attorney General, specifically to make sure all of these revelations do not become a legal risk to Barack Obama and the people who created them. The SSCI confirmed Monaco for this purpose because the Senate is just as much at risk.
Term-1 and Term-2 Obama usurped the ‘check and balance‘ within the system and weaponized the intelligence apparatus. During Trump’s term that weaponization was covered up by a compliant congress, complicit senate intelligence committee, and not a single member of the oversight called it out. Now, Term-3 Obama steps back in to continue the cover up and continue the weaponization.
Hopefully, you can now see the scale of the problem that surrounds us with specific citation for what has taken place. What I just explained to you above is not conspiracy theory, it is admitted fact that anyone can look upon. Yet….
Have you seen this mentioned anywhere? Have you seen this called out by anyone in Congress? Have you seen anyone in media (ally or adversary) call this out? Have you seen any member of the Judicial Branch stand up and say wait, what is taking place is not okay? Have you seen a single candidate for elected office point this out? Have you seen anyone advising a candidate to point this out?
This is our current status. It is not deniable. The truth exists regardless of our comfort.
Not a single person in power will say openly what has taken place. They are scared of the Fourth Branch. The evidence of what has taken place is right there in front of our face. The words, actions and activities of those who participated in this process are not deniable, in fact most of it is on record.
There are only two members of the Gang of Eight who have existed in place from January 2007 (the real beginning of Obama’s term, two years before he took office when the Congress flipped). Only two members of the G08 have been consistently in place from January of 2007 to right now, today. All the others came and went, but two members of the Gang of Eight have been part of that failed and collapsed oversight throughout the past 15 years, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.
♦ TECHNOLOGY – On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions. In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data. Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception. Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.
We have a recent frame of reference for the “U.S. data collection network” within the NSA. Through the allied process the Five Eyes nations all rely on the NSA surveillance database (U.K, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.) The NSA database provides the digital baseline for intelligence operations in defense of our allies. The portals into the NSA database are essentially an assembly of allies in like-minded ideological connection to the United States.
Unfortunately, there have been some revelations about the NSA database being used to monitor our allies, like in the example of Germany and surveillance on Angela Merkel’s phone. As long as “the good guys” are operating honorably, allies of the United States can feel confident about having protection from the NSA surveillance of global digital data. We warn our friends if we detect something dangerous etc.
The U.S. has nodes on communication pipelines to intercept and extract data. We have also launched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of satellites to conduct surveillance and gather up data. All of this data is fed into the NSA database where it is monitored (presumably) as a national security mechanism, and in defense of our allies.
However, what about data collection or data networks that are outside the NSA database? What do our enemies do? The NSA database is just one intelligence operation of digital surveillance amid the entire world, and we do not allow access by adversaries we are monitoring. So what do they do? What do our allies do who might not trust the United States due to past inconsistencies, ie. the Middle East?
The answers to those questions highlight other data collection networks. So, a brief review of the major players is needed.
♦ CHINA – China operates their own database. They, like the NSA, scoop up data for their system. Like us, China launches satellites and deploys other electronic data collection methods to download into their database. This is why the issues of electronic devices manufactured in China becomes problematic. Part of the Chinese data collection system involves the use of spyware, hacking and extraction.
Issues with Chinese communication company Huawei take on an added dimension when you consider the goal of the Chinese government to conduct surveillance and assemble a network of data to compete with the United States via the NSA. Other Chinese methods of surveillance and data-collection are less subversive, as in the examples of TicTok and WeChat. These are Chinese social media companies that are scraping data just like the NSA scrapes data from Facebook, Twitter and other Silicon Valley tech companies. [ Remember, the Intelligence Branch is a public-private partnership. ]
♦ RUSSIA – It is very likely that Russia operates their own database. We know Russia launches satellites, just like China and the USA, for the same purposes. Russia is also very proficient at hacking into other databases and extracting information to store and utilize in their own network. The difference between the U.S., China and Russia is likely that Russia spends more time on the hacking aspect because they do not generate actual technology systems as rapidly as the U.S. and China.
The most recent database creation is an outcome of an ally having to take action because they cannot rely on the ideology of the United States remaining consistent, as the administrations ping-pong based on ideology.
♦ SAUDI ARABIA – Yes, in 2016 we discovered that Saudi Arabia was now operating their own intelligence data-gathering operation. It would make sense, given the nature of the Middle East and the constant fluctuations in political support from the United States. It is a lesson the allied Arab community and Gulf Cooperation Council learned quickly when President Obama went to Cairo in 2009 and launched the Islamist Spring (Arab Spring) upon them.
I have no doubt the creation of the Saudi intelligence network was specifically because the Obama administration started supporting radical Islamists within the Muslim Brotherhood and threw fuel on the fires of extremism all over the Arab world.
Think about it., What would you do if you were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Oman or Yemen and you knew the United States could just trigger an internal uprising of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek your destruction?
Without a doubt, those urgent lessons from 2009, 2010, 2011 triggered the formation of the Arab Intelligence Network as a network to defend itself with consistency. They assembled the network and activated it in 2017 as pictured above.
♦ Israel – Along a similar outlook to the Arab network, no doubt Israel operates an independent data collection system as a method of protecting itself from ever-changing U.S. politics amid a region that is extremely hostile to its very existence. Like the others, Israel launches proprietary satellites, and we can be sure they use covert methods to gather electronic data just like the U.S. and China.
As we have recently seen in the Pegasus story, Israel creates spyware programs that are able to track and monitor cell phone communications of targets. The spyware would not work unless Israel had access to some network where the phone meta-data was actually stored. So yeah, it makes sense for Israel to operate an independent intelligence database.
♦ Summary: As we understand the United States Intelligence Branch of government as the superseding entity that controls the internal politics of our nation, we also must consider that multiple nations have the same issue. There are major intelligence networks around the world beside the NSA “Five-Eyes” database. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel all operate proprietary databases deploying the same tools and techniques for assembly.
The geopolitical conflict that has always existed has now shifted into a digital battle-space. The Intelligence Agencies from these regions are now operating as the backbone of the government that uses them, and has become dependent on them. [<- Reread that].
Once you accept the digital-era intelligence apparatus of China, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, The United States and Israel, are now the primary national security mechanisms for stabilization of government; then you accept the importance of those intelligence operations.
Once you understand how foundational those modern intelligence operations have become for the stability and continuity of those governments…… then you begin to understand just how the United States intelligence community became more important than the government that created it.
From that point it is then critical to understand that domestic intelligence operations are underway to monitor the electronic communication of American citizens inside our own country. YOU are under surveillance. The parents who confront school boards are under surveillance. The political operatives inside the FBI are monitoring everyone who comes onto the radar, that is why the National School Boards Association asked the White House, then the DOJ, to have the FBI start targeting parents. Are things making sense now?
♦ Public Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazened they have made public admissions.
The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):
[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”
Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.
Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.
When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.
The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.
The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.
Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.
What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.
July 26 (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.
Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.
The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)
The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives.
In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize against domestic enemies.
After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. Simultaneously the mission of the intelligence community now encompassed monitoring domestic threats as defined by the people who operate the surveillance system.
The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the network of President Barack Obama did.
The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons (we should never have allowed to be created) and turned those weapons into political tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation.
Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.
This is the scale of corrupt political compromise on both sides of the DC dynamic that we are up against. Preserving this system is also what removing Donald Trump is all about…. And like I said in the precursor, I doubt Donald Trump fully comprehends the motives of his opposition.
Alex Jones references the 3200+ page National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 which is riddled with mentions of purging the U.S. Military from their newly defined “extremism”, as well as tasking various government agencies such as the GAO and FBI with surveilling as well as tracking “sources of funding” of extremist groups.
The Democrat coverup of Jan. 6, deadly Afghanistan withdrawal, woke military policies, vaccine mandates/injuries underway ahead of Republicans retaking majorities in Congress.
BREAKING: Schiff files amendment to NDAA that would conceal any info collected by the U.S. military for use in congressional investigations or court proceedings.
Massive attempted coverup of enormous proportions and preemptive power grab to prevent GOP oversight next year: pic.twitter.com/Htz60R5OXC
SEC. 529. Authority of military judges and military magistrates to issue military court protective orders.
(a) Judge-issued military court protective orders.—Chapter 80 of title 10, United Stated Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new section:
IMPORTANT NOTE: Here is what is contained in Chapter 80 of Title 10:
Ҥ 1567b.Authority of military judges and military magistrates to issue military court protective orders
“(a) Authority to issue military court protective orders.—The President shall prescribe regulations authorizing military judges and military magistrates to issue protective orders in accordance with this section. A protective order issued in accordance with this section shall be known as a ‘military court protective order’. Under the regulations prescribed by the President, military judges and military magistrates shall have exclusive jurisdiction over the issuance, appeal, renewal, and termination of military court protective orders and such orders may not be issued, appealed, renewed, or terminated by State, local, territorial, or tribal courts.
“(b) Enforcement by civilian authorities.—
“(1) IN GENERAL.—In prescribing regulations for military court protective orders, the President shall seek to ensure that the protective orders are issued in a form and manner that is enforceable by State, local, territorial, and tribal civilian law enforcement authorities.
“(2) FULL FAITH AND CREDIT.—Any military court protective order shall be accorded full faith and credit by the court of a State, local, territorial, or tribal jurisdiction (the enforcing jurisdiction) and enforced by the court and law enforcement personnel of that jurisdiction as if it were the order of the enforcing jurisdiction.
“(3) RECIPROCITY AGREEMENTS.—Consistent with paragraphs (1) and (2), the Secretary of Defense shall seek to enter into reciprocity agreements with State, local, territorial, and tribal civilian law enforcement authorities under which—
“(A) such authorities agree to enforce military court protective orders; and
“(B) the Secretary agrees to enforce protective orders issued by such authorities that are consistent with section 2265(b) of title 18.
“(c) Purpose and form of issuance.—A military court protective order—
“(1) may be issued for the purpose of protecting a victim of an alleged covered offense, or a family member or associate of the victim, from a person subject to chapter 47 of this title (the Uniform Code of Military Justice) who is alleged to have committed such an offense; and
“(2) shall include—
“(A) a finding regarding whether such person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of such alleged victim;
“(B) a finding regarding whether the alleged victim is an intimate partner or child of such person; and
“(C) if applicable, terms explicitly prohibiting the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury against such intimate partner or child.
“(d) Burden of proof.—In determining whether to issue a military court protective order, a military judge or military magistrate shall make all relevant findings by a preponderance of the evidence. The burden shall be on the party requesting the order to produce sufficient information to satisfy the preponderance of the evidence standard referred to in the preceding sentence.
“(e) Timing and manner of issuance.—A military court protective order may be issued—
“(1) by a military magistrate, before referral of charges and specifications to court-martial for trial, at the request of—
“(A) a victim of an alleged covered offense; or
“(B) a Special Victims’ Counsel or other qualified counsel acting on behalf of the victim; or
“(2) by a military judge, after referral of charges and specifications to court-martial for trial, at the request of qualified counsel, which may include a Special Victims’ Counsel acting on behalf of the victim or trial counsel acting on behalf of the prosecution.
“(f) Duration and renewal of protective order.—
“(1) DURATION.—A military court protective order shall be issued for an initial period of up to 180 days and may be reissued for one or more additional periods, each of which may be up to 180 days, in accordance with paragraph (2).
“(2) EXPIRATION AND RENEWAL.—Before the expiration of any period during which a military court protective order is in effect, a military judge or military magistrate shall review the order to determine whether the order will terminate at the expiration of such period or be reissued for an additional period of up to 180 days.
“(3) NOTICE TO PROTECTED PERSONS.—If a military judge or military magistrate determines under paragraph (2) that a military court protective order will terminate, the judge or magistrate concerned shall direct that each person protected by the order be provided with reasonable, timely, and accurate notification of the termination.
“(g) Review of magistrate-issued orders.—
“(1) REVIEW.—A military judge, at the request of the person subject to a military court protective order that was issued by a military magistrate, may review the order to determine if the order was properly issued by the magistrate.
“(2) STANDARDS OF REVIEW.—A military judge who reviews an order under paragraph (1) shall terminate the order if the judge determines that—
“(A) the military magistrate’s decision to issue the order was an abuse of discretion, and there is not sufficient information presented to the military judge to justify the order; or
“(B) information not presented to the military magistrate establishes that the military court protective order should be terminated.
“(h) Due process.—
“(1) PROTECTION OF DUE PROCESS.—Except as provided in paragraph (2), a protective order authorized under subsection (a) may be issued only after reasonable notice and opportunity to be heard and to present evidence, directly or through counsel, is given to the person against whom the order is sought sufficient to protect that person’s right to due process.
“(2) EMERGENCY ORDERS.—A protective order on an emergency basis may be issued on an ex parte basis under such rules and limitations as the President shall prescribe. In the case of ex parte orders, notice and opportunity to be heard and to present evidence must be provided within a reasonable time not to exceed 30 calendar days after the date on which the order is issued, sufficient to protect the respondent’s due process rights.
“(i) Rights of victim.—The victim of an alleged covered offense who seeks a military court protective order has, in addition to any rights provided under section 806b (article 6b), the following rights with respect to any proceeding involving the protective order:
“(1) The right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of the proceeding and of any change in the status of the protective order resulting from the proceeding.
“(2) The right to be reasonably heard at the proceeding.
“(3) The right to appear in person, with or without counsel, at the proceeding.
“(4) The right be represented by qualified counsel in connection with the proceeding, which may include a Special Victims’ Counsel.
“(5) The reasonable right to confer with a representative of the command of the accused and counsel representing the government at the proceeding, as applicable.
“(6) The right to submit a written statement, directly or through counsel, for consideration by the military judge or military magistrate presiding over the proceeding.
“(j) Restrictions on access to firearms.—
“(1) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law—
“(A) a military court protective order issued on an ex parte basis shall restrain a person from possessing, receiving, or otherwise accessing a firearm; and
“(B) a military court protective order issued after the person to be subject to the order has received notice and opportunity to be heard on the order, shall restrain such person from possessing, receiving, or otherwise accessing a firearm in accordance with section 922 of title 18.
“(2) NOTICE TO ATTORNEYS GENERAL.—
“(A) NOTICE OF ISSUANCE.—Not later than 72 hours after the issuance of an order described in paragraph (1), the Secretary concerned shall submit a record of the order—
“(i) to the Attorney General of the United States; and
“(ii) to the Attorney General of the State or Territory in which the order is issued.
“(B) NOTICE OF RECISSION OR EXPIRATION.—Not later than 72 hours after the recission or expiration of an order described in paragraph (1), the Secretary concerned shall submit notice of such recission or expiration to the Attorneys General specified in subparagraph (A).
“(k) Treatment as lawful order.—A military court protective order shall be treated as a lawful order for purposes of the application of section 892 (article 92) and a violation of such an order shall be punishable under such section (article).
“(l) Command matters.—
“(1) INCLUSION IN PERSONNEL FILE.—Any military court protective order against a member shall be placed and retained in the military personnel file of the member, except that such protective order shall be removed from the military personnel file of the member if the member is acquitted of the offense to which the order pertains, it is determined that the member did not commit the act giving rise to the protective order, or it is determined that the protective order was issued in error.
“(2) NOTICE TO CIVILIAN LAW ENFORCEMENT OF ISSUANCE.—Any military court protective order against a member shall be treated as a military protective order for purposes of section 1567a including for purposes of mandatory notification of issuance to Federal and State civilian law enforcement agencies as required by that section.
“(m) Relationship to other authorities.—Nothing in this section may be construed as prohibiting—
“(1) a commanding officer from issuing or enforcing any otherwise lawful order in the nature of a protective order to or against members of the officer’s command;
“(2) pretrial restraint in accordance with Rule for Courts-Martial 304 (as set forth in the Manual for Courts-Martial, 2019 edition, or any successor rule); or
“(3) pretrial confinement in accordance with Rule for Courts-Martial 305 (as set forth in the Manual for Courts-Martial, 2019 edition, or any successor rule).
“(n) Delivery to certain persons.—A physical and electronic copy of any military court protective order shall be provided, as soon as practicable after issuance, to the following:
“(1) The person or persons protected by the protective order or to the guardian of such a person if such person is under the age of 18 years.
“(2) The person subject to the protective order.
“(3) To such commanding officer in the chain of command of the person subject to the protective order as the President shall prescribe for purposes of this section.
“(o) Definitions.—In this section:
“(1) CONTACT.—The term ‘contact’ includes contact in person or through a third party, or through gifts,
“(2) COMMUNICATION.—The term ‘communication’ includes communication in person or through a third party, and by telephone or in writing by letter, data fax, or other electronic means.
“(3) COVERED OFFENSE.—The term ‘covered offense’ means the following:
“(A) An alleged offense under section 920, 920a, 920b, 920c, or 920d of this title (article 120, 120a, 120b, 120c, or 120d of the Uniform Code of Military Justice).
“(B) An alleged offense of stalking under section 930 of this title (article 130 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice).
“(C) An alleged offense of domestic violence under section 928b of this title (article 128b of the Uniform Code of Military Justice).
“(D) A conspiracy to commit an offense specified in subparagraphs (A) through (C) as punishable under section 881 of this title (article 81 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice).
“(E) A solicitation to commit an offense specified in subparagraphs (A) through (C) as punishable under section 882 of this title (article 82 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice).
“(F) An attempt to commit an offense specified in subparagraphs (A) through (C) as punishable under section 880 of this title (article 80 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice).
“(4) MILITARY JUDGE AND MILITARY MAGISTRATE.—The terms ‘military judge’ and ‘military magistrate’ mean a commissioned officer of the armed forces who is a member of the bar of a Federal court or a member of the bar of the highest court of a State and who is certified to be qualified, by reason of education, training, experience, and judicial temperament, for duty as a military judge or magistrate by the Judge Advocate General of the armed force of which the officer is a member.
“(5) PROTECTIVE ORDER.—The term ‘protective order’ means an order that—
“(A) restrains a person from harassing, stalking, threatening, or otherwise contacting or communicating with a victim of an alleged covered offense, or a family member or associate of the victim, or engaging in other conduct that would place such other person in reasonable fear of bodily injury to any such other person;
“(B) by its terms, explicitly prohibits—
“(i) the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force by the person against a victim of an alleged covered offense, or a family member or associate of the victim, that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury;
“(ii) the initiation by the person restrained of any contact or communication with such other person;
“(iii) any other behavior by the person restrained that the court deems necessary to provide for the safety and welfare of the victim of an alleged covered offense, or a family member or associate of the victim; or
“(iv) actions described by any of clauses (i) through (iii).
“(6) SPECIAL VICTIMS’ COUNSEL.—The term ‘Special Victims Counsel’ means a Special Victims’ Counsel described in section 1044e and includes a Victims’ Legal Counsel of the Navy.”.
(b) Clerical amendment.—The table of sections at the beginning of such chapter is amended by adding at the end the following new item:
“1567b. Authority of military judges and military magistrates to issue military court protective orders.”.
(c) Implementation.—The President shall prescribe regulations implementing section 1567b of title 10, United States Code (as added by subsection (a)), by not later than one year after the date of the enactment of this Act.
SEC. 529A. Countering extremism in the Armed Forces.
(a) In general.—Part II of subtitle A of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new chapter:
The twaddle that comes out of the White House is deep right now. When our tottering president isn’t out enjoying a bike ride and falling down because Putin put gum in his stirrup so that he couldn’t get his foot out to steady himself, he is assembling a colorful team of Frisco-style professionals highly qualified in the field of transition to guide us through the vicissitudes of war, plague and famine that are swirling around the entire globe right now. (“Frisco” is the name the city loves to hate, so I chose it intentionally for a city I once found beautiful.)
The LGBTQRS+++ hip chick that is the president’s talking mop at the press secretary’s podium spent her morning yesterday assuring us all that we are experiencing a “period of transition” right now — something I am sure she has much experience with — going from times of economic strength in which the vast majority of us are doing great into even better times. Thank goodness for people who can guide us through transition to understand what we are going through and where we will end up, which will be — if we follow MoJoe & Co. — coming out the opposite sex from whatever we we were when we came into this world:
The primary accomplishment of Team Biden by the end of his one term that has somehow managed to be even more divisive than Trump will be to recolor the flag behind her with prettier inclusive rainbow stripes than the binary red and white that it historically displays. Until then, at least, we now know what “Build Back Better” looks like. According to Jean-Pierre, we are already there and clearly moving into even better times.
It would be my own analysis, on the other hand, that if she and her colleagues don’t see a recession anywhere in sight, I can recommend an eye doctor for all of them. Their own Dr. Powell Fauci Magoo, who, incidentally, was also Trump’s White House physician, doesn’t seem to be serving them well. In the very least, I recommend they step outside the White House for a few moments to escape the curling rings of herb smoke that cloud their vision and take a look around. Perhaps I can provide a guided tour for her, though I am sure she will hallucinate some deep state of Democratic delusions she wants to see so that her trip is not as bad as mine or yours is and is about to be:
What is the true state of the disunion?
While we continue to hear, albeit less confidently now, about the economy being strong, what I see is that the economy has rarely looked worse in numerous ways. Obviously, I am not smoking the right stuff to enjoy the “economy as it ought to be” trip; but here is what I see in black and white when not blinded by so many pretty colors swimming around my head as MoJoe & Co. apparently see in theirs.
First, I note that increasingly a number of voices in the financial press — some mainstream, some not — are starting to hum along to my familiar tune — not very loudly or clearly yet, BUT they are starting to pick it up:
Everything else is imploding and has been for months.
At least, some people can see the obvious that it does not pay to see when your job (or next term) depends on your convincing everyone they are seeing something else.
Phoenix presents as evidence the rather sharp decent of Walmart and Amazon into the ashes of retail.
Bill “the Dud” Dudley, a former New York Fed chief and one-time vice chair of the Fed’s money-printing FOMC, says with a friendly smile, “Welcome To The Recession.” For a moment there, it almost sounded like he agreed with me that a recession is already here, but in typical bansker safety-net style he adds “in another 12-18 months.” Still, that is better eyesight than can be found in the White House. He, at least, is certain the blurry blob he sees up ahead is a recession, and for a Fed guy he’s speaking rather out of turn:
While the Fed’s forecasts have become more plausible over time, I see several reasons to expect a much harder landing. Much like Wile E. Coyote heading off a cliff, the US economy has plenty of momentum but rapidly disappearing support. Falling back to earth will not be a pleasant experience.
That’s hardly anywhere near as comforting as Jean-Pierre. I think I’ll have what she’s having.
Just to be clear, Dudley states,
If you’re still holding out hope that the Federal Reserve will be able to engineer a soft landing in the US economy, abandon it. A recession is inevitable within the next 12 to 18 months.
So, not only can some people see a recession up ahead, but they are certain that it is “inevitable” and that a soft landing is a dream to be abandoned.
The determining factors for the quality of our landing that Dudley lays out (the reasons we had better hope they line Powell’s runway with lots of bouncy houses and foam to soften the landing) are as follows:
First, persistent price increases have forced the Fed to shift its focus from supporting economic activity to pushing inflation back down. (“The central bank’s employment mandate is now subservient to its inflation mandate.”)
Second, the new focus on price stability will be relentless. (“Fed officials recognize that failing to bring inflation back down would be disastrous.”)
Third, the current economic expansion is uniquely vulnerable to a sudden stop. (“It’ll take time and a considerable monetary policy tightening to reduce demand and for that to translate fully into weaker production of goods and services. But when that time comes, the production adjustment is likely to be abrupt…. As inflation outstrips wage growth, the personal savings rate has plummeted, from 26.6% in March 2021 to 4.4% this April, significantly below its long-run average. No wonder consumer sentiment has fallen to levels last reached in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and Google searches for the word “recession” are hitting new records.”)
Finally, economic history points to a hard landing. (“The Fed has never tightened enough to push up the unemployment rate by 0.5 percentage point or more without triggering a recession.”)
In other words, this:
Biden and his talking mop on the other hand assured us that “recession is not inevitable” and is nowhere in sight. That is because, like the coyote, they forgot to look right beneath themselves. Oops.
Some others also see a recession as “inevitable” and see happening in the near term as “more likely than not”:
Since people are not inclined to take my word for it, let my have a Nobel economist (I realize they cannot usually see a recession until it is behind them) reiterate the points for me as he did earlier this week:
Biden, on the other hand, assured everyone on the same day that another prize of an economist, Larry Summers, assured him “there’s nothing inevitable about a recession.” Never mind that even Summers did say a recession now looks highly likely … but just not … “inevitable.”
Over the weekend, Nomura became the first bank to place the recession squarely within 2022.
The Atlanta Fed, meanwhile, is now prognosticating the 2nd quarter of 2022 closes with precisely zero economic growth, which will still leave us in a trough that began last quarter. If that is the case, then GDP will have continued to scrape along a ceiling that is 1.5% lower than GDP was at the start of the year, now half a year gone by, meaning we entered and remained in a GDP trough since the start of the year.
Nomura believes a mild recession starting in Q4 2022 is now more likely than not (ZH: expect the mood to deteriorate further as “mild” eventually becomes “jarring”)…. Consumers are experiencing a significant negative sentiment shock, energy and food supply disruptions have worsened and the outlook for foreign growth has deteriorated. All these factors will likely contribute to the expected downturn.
Amazing. People are starting to look up and see what has been obvious all around them for months now and are finally whipping up the courage to say what they are seeing.
Nomura believes the Fed will skid right on past the QT stopping point as predictably as Wile E. Coyote skids past the cliff edge. Biden believes, if you don”t look down, what’s down there can’t hurt you. Of course that was what he believed when he was out riding his bike, too.
Goldman Sachs is another bank that now joins those who are humming the same tune to say, at least,
We now see recession risk as higher and more front-load…. We are increasingly concerned that the Fed will feel compelled to respond forcefully to high headline inflation and consumer inflation expectations.
How “front-load[ed]” they don’t say. They, of course, expect it to be shallow and clear up like a short cloudburst.
Piper Sandler … shows that the typical bear market follows the start of a recession with a delay of 95 days, and eventually exhaust itself with an average total drawdown of 40% which means that current recession probably already started some time in March:
Wall Street bets are growing that the U.S. economy tumbles into a recession next year as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates at the fastest pace in two decades in order to cool scorching-hot inflation. Bank of America Global Research strategists have ratcheted up the odds of an economic downturn to 40% in 2023…. “Our worst fears around the Fed have been confirmed: They fell way behind the curve and are now playing a dangerous game of catch up.”
OK. Well, none of the banks, except the Atlanta Fed, are quite with me yet, but they are all getting closer and closer by the day.
Now that the experts are lining up on the recession side of the fence, let’s look at a short list of major weaknesses I see in the US economy that are screaming recession is here or near:
The auto industry remains a wreck
In a recent article titled “The Real GDPig was a Whole Lot Uglier than it Looked!” I dug deep beneath the Bureau of Economic Asininity’s surface GDP numbers to reveal how the auto industry has been in a long slouch and was, contrary to overt claims by the BEA, a major factor in pulling the economy down last quarter and the quarter before. There was something I noted, based on loads of evidence from the BEA, that was seriously wrong with the BEAs claims about automobiles driving GDP up in Q4 and then down in Q1, probably because the industry is in such disarray that BEA doesn’t know how to sort out the anomalies in its own numbers.
The auto industry has also been a major factor in the superheated CPI reports because scarcity due to lack of production has been driving up prices. Many tried to claim the auto industry was turning around, using it as a sign that the negative GDP print in Q1 was a one-off. I did not believe evidence bore that out, and that has turned out now to be the case:
The S&P Global Sector PMI™ revealed that Automobiles & Auto Parts sector output contracted worldwide for a second successive month amid the sharpest reduction in new orders since the COVID-19 pandemic and renewed supply disruptions linked to the pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war.
While that is a global production situation, it doesn’t look any better in the US:
The U.S. light-vehicle market doesn’t appear to be in the best health. While many automakers now opt against issuing monthly sales reports, those that still do are posting some pretty brutal numbers. This does not bode well for an industry that seemed pretty certain that 2022 would be its recovery year.
Manufacturers are still warning about supply constraints and an inability to manufacture at full scale. The auto industry has always been a major component in GDP and is continuing to pull it down. Some economists thought the industry would start getting back up to cruising speed this quarter. That does not appear to have been the case.
As for sales volume, most automakers were posting double-digit declines for the month of May. Overall, the seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of sales (SAAR) for May fell dropped to a crippling low of 12.81 million, according to Motor Intelligence. That’s to be contrasted against April’s 14.6 million units and over 17 million average from May of 2021…. “The market faces a real risk of turning negative from 2021.”
Well, that just doesn’t sound good at all, and that was the area where the optimists were most expecting some reprieve after the negative Q1 GDP print, which they chose to believe was the anomaly, rather than accept the idea that the high GDP increase in the quarter before was the clear outlier from the trend.
Retail remains a mixed bag
In another recent article titled “The Retail Apocalypse was Bloodier than it Looked,” I similarly described how the retail industry was a much bloodier picture than what many economists were making of it. It seemed like major retailers got ready to throw a party and one one came. Last quarter they stocked up all they could and remained laden with inventory from imports that are mistakenly thought to subtract from GDP, but that is a misunderstanding of how they are merely reconciled back out of other GDP inputs in which they are embedded.
This quarter major retailers are threatening to unload, and that is seen by some as possible hope for a boom in retail; but at what price?
America’s top retailers messed up – particularly the ones that focus on durable goods rather than groceries. Most of them released their earnings reports last month, saw shares take a beating and moved on….
Then, the mega-retailer [Target] did something no one was expecting. On Tuesday, Target told investors it anticipated a profit margin more around 2%. It would slash prices on certain goods and cancel incoming orders. It’s highly unusual for a company to slash its profit expectations within weeks of its earnings report.
Target said in its Tuesday press release that the profit slash comes from a need to “right-size” inventories. People aren’t buying items like televisions, outdoor furniture and kitchen appliances like they were last year….
It’s all leading to what Forbes’ Madeline Halpert called “markdown mania,” and not just at Target. Gap is hawking $60 leggings for just $12. Target is selling televisions for 25% off and patio sets at a 52% markdown….
The demand for random crap suddenly vanished, taking everyone by surprise.
It is hard to imagine how massive price slashing to near-zero profit margins to unload inventory no one wants to buy is going to prove to be a positive for GDP! As reported in the headlines, GDP is measured in inflation-adjusted dollars, so I suppose the impact of the mess in retail inventories and sales will depend on how much prices are slashed and how successfully that gets consumers to pick up the unwanted merchandise. Regardless of how it impacts the GDP number, this extreme dislocation clearly speaks of a badly broken economy, not one humming along like a new car … or like new cars used to hum along. Sounds more like one that’s humming my tune.
Why does this matter? Well, for a simple but critical reason: if one year ago we saw the hyperinflationary start of the bullwhip effect, we have entered the terminal phase of the “bullwhip effect”, where plunging inventory-to-sales ratios reverse violently higher, where supply chains unclog suddenly and rapidly amid a sudden chill in the economy, and where prices for so-called “core” goods collapse almost overnight, even as non-core prices (food and energy) explode even higher.]
Something is broken. Likely it means that backlogged inventory arrived all at once a day late and many dollars short for the retailer. Lest you think I’m the only one who is struggling to rightly understand the peculiarities here, let me quote the expert in the article:
To end, I’d like to emphasize that the vibes are abruptly off and no one really knows what’s happening.
That’s a mess, not strength. That is log jams clearing through the ports then jamming up in warehouses, causing aberrations in how things are reported. Dysfunctional is not strong. Even executives at the…
Gartner supply chain conference in Florida this week … were confused and not feeling very zesty…. Transportation managers canceled orders in early 2020 predicting a recession, then found their hastiness left shelves empty and consumers furious. Now that they’ve built back up, customers aren’t buying anymore and their balance sheets are destroyed. The whiplash is baffling.
The truth is retail sucks so bad right now that even the retailers have no idea what to make of it, neither do the shippers. It’s just baffling whiplash. “Destroyed balance sheets” are not the stuff of strong economies. What we have is a trainwreck or a shipwreck, and retailers and shippers alike are struggling to figure out what to do with it and what it really means.
Housing slides
Housing prices and housing sales are already falling as mortgage interest has more than doubled. Consumer sentiment is already at an all-time low. (Hence the need for Jean-Pierre to tell us things are not as bad as they feel right now, and we are transitioning from great economic strength to strength that is even built back better.)
The housing market isn’t at a level that will by itself put us into recession just yet, but it is certainly sliding rapidly that way … and rather all of a sudden, given that Fed interest rates are still on the hot stimulus end of the Fed’s normal scale. That is because mortgage rates our outpacing the Fed’s tweaks, anticipating where things are headed:
The highest share of sellers on record dropped their list price during the four weeks ending June 12 as mortgage rates shot up to levels not seen since 2008….
“The housing market isn’t crashing, but it is experiencing a hangover as it comes down from an unsustainable high,” said Redfin deputy chief economist Taylor Marr. “Housing demand has already cooled significantly to the point that the industry has begun facing layoffs.
“Demand from homebuyers was still extremely high as recently as February, but rates are making it really tough. Going from 3% to nearly 6% almost instantly has scared a lot of people out of the market.”
Prices have stalled and have begun to follow sales down in some areas. Employment in the industry definitely has started to fall. What housing moves now foretell is that, as all the other forces mentioned above drive us quickly into recession, housing will be bringing up the rear to stomp us down deeper, given that housing the biggest GDP drivers in the US economy, being a major factor even in retail sales of all the items that get built into a house, plus all the new furniture that fills the new homes.
So, while the Biden-Powell team are calling all of this a strong and resilient economy, you had better think twice if they try to sell you choice waterfront real estate in Florida. It’s probably not in Miami or on the Gold Coast.
The golden oldie of America’s pride
If America’s economy is looking strong, why is America’s most golden of all cities now referred to in The Atlantic as a “failed city?” Herb Caen, San Francisco’s “beloved old chronicler,” once said that, If he ever got to heaven, he’d look around and say, “It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco.” To read The Atlantic’s description today and many others I’ve read over the past two years, he might say today upon opening his eyes in San Francisco, “I knew I’d wind up in hell.” It’s such pretty beaten up version of the city he once loved that he would only recognize it as some upside down version of the old San Fran.
Says a modern-day liberal chronicler,
Progressive leaders here have been LARPing left-wing values instead of working to create a livable city. And many San Franciscans have had enough.
Today’s scene looks so bad it may finally liberate liberals from their own liberalism. Here, too, the smoke of herb has long circled the heads of those that lead, and look at how colorfully banal it has all become:
On a cold, sunny day not too long ago, I went to see the city’s new Tenderloin Center for drug addicts on Market Street. It’s downtown, an open-air chain-link enclosure in what used to be a public plaza. On the sidewalks all around it, people are lying on the ground, twitching. There’s a free mobile shower, laundry, and bathroom station emblazoned with the words dignity on wheels. A young man is lying next to it, stoned, his shirt riding up, his face puffy and sunburned. Inside the enclosure, services are doled out: food, medical care, clean syringes, referrals for housing. It’s basically a safe space to shoot up. The city government says it’s trying to help. But from the outside, what it looks like is young people being eased into death on the sidewalk, surrounded by half-eaten boxed lunches.
I used to think San Francisco was America’s most beautiful major city — the golden lady in my opinion — even if too liberal for my taste. Not now. Even the people who used to feel privileged to live there want to get out of town and head for the hills … forever. As they do, Californians are taking the values that destroyed their great cities and transporting them like transplanted cancer cells to Idaho, Montana, Colorado and Wyoming so they can wreck all that is beautiful about those places, too, replacing farmlands and ranches with MacMansions and shopping centers in order to do it all over again.
But I digress. Let it suffice for now to say, the picture of San Francisco as it has become is a pretty good metaphor for the US economy as it has become. I’ll leave you, then, with words of the modern-day chronicler above:
During the first part of the pandemic, San Francisco County lost more than one in 20 residents—myself among them. Signs of the city’s pandemic decline are everywhere—the boarded-up stores, the ghostly downtown, the encampments. But walking these streets awakens me to how bad San Francisco had gotten even before the coronavirus hit—to how much suffering and squalor I’d come to think was normal.
Stepping over people’s bodies, blurring my eyes to not see a dull needle jabbing and jabbing again between toes—it coarsened me. I’d gotten used to the idea that some people just want to live like that. I was even a little defensive of it: Hey, it’s America. It’s your choice….
I’d gotten used to the crime, rarely violent but often brazen; to leaving the car empty and the doors unlocked so thieves would at least quit breaking my windows. A lot of people leave notes on the glass stating some variation of Nothing’s in the car. Don’t smash the windows….
A couple of years ago, one of my friends saw a man staggering down the street, bleeding. She recognized him as someone who regularly slept outside in the neighborhood, and called 911. Paramedics and police arrived and began treating him, but members of a homeless advocacy group noticed and intervened. They told the man that he didn’t have to get into the ambulance, that he had the right to refuse treatment. So that’s what he did. The paramedics left; the activists left. The man sat on the sidewalk alone, still bleeding. A few months later, he died about a block away…
In lockdown the beauty became obscene. The city couldn’t get kids back into the classroom; so many people were living on the streets; petty crime was rampant. I used to tell myself that San Francisco’s politics were wacky but the city was trying—really trying—to be good. But the reality is that with the smartest minds and so much money and the very best of intentions, San Francisco became a cruel city. It became so dogmatically progressive that maintaining the purity of the politics required accepting—or at least ignoring—devastating results….
If you’re going to die on the street, San Francisco is not a bad place to do it. The fog keeps things temperate. There’s nowhere in the world with more beautiful views. City workers and volunteers bring you food and blankets, needles and tents. Doctors come to see how the fentanyl is progressing, and to make sure the rest of you is all right as you go.
It’ll all get so much better when the water from the parched Colorado River is completely shut off later this summer, driving LA water-mob slobs to storm SF to get their hand’s on some liquid that may soon sell for more than the city’s old gold. The old lady, drowning in wokeness and tears and suffocating in the worn-out wraps of her own regulations and process has been laid to rest in a graveyard of intentional squalor for the sake of the impoverished at a cost of $60,000 per tent space born by the SF taxpayers. I’m sure the tolerance of criminal decline seen in the “smash and grabs” I wrote about at the start of the year for RT.com didn’t help. May she Rest In Rainbows as a testament to all that is dying in liberal, woke Amerika.
Radical leftist insurrectionists breached the Arizona Capitol on Friday night, rioting against the recent SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
As a result of the new decision, Arizona will now enforce pre-Roe abortion laws, which will ban most of these procedures.
The violent mob on Friday against this decision was organized by Planned Parenthood Action Arizona and Radical Women Phoenix. Planned Parenthood tweeted a graphic encouraging activists to “get in good trouble” before the demonstration started.
This all happened while Arizona State Senators were in the building conducting official business. The Gateway Pundit reported that Arizona Senators were evacuated from a vote last night when the left-wing mob became violent.
Arizona Senate Republicans released a statement on Twitter saying,
AZ Sen. Republicans: Public update: pro-abortion protestors violently tried to enter our building. Members/staff/visitors evacuated to a secure location. Law enforcement intervened. Protestors dispersed. While the Senate is now secure & safe, unfortunately smoke/tear gas has spread into our chambers.
The Gateway Pundit has obtained exclusive footage from inside the riot, revealing exactly what happened.
After rallying across the street, the violent mob formed a massive crowd in front of the Senate building. thousands of rioters began punching, kicking, and breaching the Arizona Senate doors. One masked thug managed to kick the doors open, endangering all inside of the building.
Shortly after the violence began, Arizona State Police Officers came out in full riot gear scattering the mob at first. However, rioters continued their uncontrollable behavior, taunting officers, even as the officers geared up with gas masks.
Within minutes, tear gas was fired into the mob and the entire area was cleared. Police continued to sweep the area and fire tear gas rounds at the remaining insurrectionists.
It is unclear if anybody was arrested.
Arizona Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake tweeted a video from inside the Senate building calling this what it is, a “REAL insurrection.” This is domestic terrorism,” tweeted Lake.
Planned Parenthood should be investigated for inciting a riot at the Arizona Capitol and these domestic terrorists need to be punished!
June 23, 2022 at 03:49PM BREAKING: The Supreme court decides on the case between gun owners and New York State.
We reported on The Pete Santilli Show that the Supreme Court would likely rule on numerous cases within the next few days. We were right.
The Supreme court decided against New York’s law that includes strict rules for concealed carry in the state. Prior to this ruling, the state could decide who it wanted to have this right and who it didn’t. We reported on this case moments ago:
New York requires its residents to obtain a license for lawful possession of a firearm, regardless of whether they plan to keep it at home or take it outside. To obtain a license, a licensing officer must determine whether the applicant is of good moral character, lacks a history of crime or mental illness, and that “no good cause exists for the denial of the license.”
Applicants must also have “proper cause” to lawfully conceal carry a handgun—openly carrying a handgun is entirely banned. New York law leaves “proper cause” undefined, but courts have clarified that this standard means one must “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession.”
Merely having the “generalized desire” to conceal carry, according to the courts, “does not constitute ‘proper cause.’”
The justices’ 6-3 decision is expected to ultimately allow more people to legally carry guns on the streets of the nation’s largest cities – including New York, Los Angeles and Boston – and elsewhere. About a quarter of the U.S. population lives in states expected to be affected by the ruling, the high court’s first major gun decision in more than a decade.
The ruling comes as Congress is actively working on gun legislation following recent mass shootings in Texas,New York and California.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that the Constitution protects “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”
In their decision, the justices struck down a New York law requiring people to demonstrate a particular need for carrying a gun in order to get a license to carry one in public. The justices said the requirement violates the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
via The Gateway Pundit
“This decision isn’t just reckless—it’s reprehensible.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul decries Supreme Court decision striking down New York gun law, calling it “frightful in its scope of how they are setting back this nation and our ability to protect our citizens.” https://t.co/VzW5hlXLn6pic.twitter.com/2yt77wrc9q
It was during 
The people behind Obama, those same people now behind Joe Biden, knew from years of strategic planning that ‘radical transformation’ would require control over specific elements inside the U.S. government. Eric Holder played a key role in his position as U.S. Attorney General in the DOJ.
THE TRAP – Many people say that Congress is the solution to eliminating the Fourth and superseding Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. This is an exercise in futility because the Legislative Branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch. The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they too are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.
Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the midterm “shellacking” caused by the Obamacare backlash. Mitch McConnell was Minority Leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his Senate colleagues were getting primaried by an 
Through the advice and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations. Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote. If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination. The president is then blocked from that appointment. This is what happened with President Trump over and over again.
♦ TECHNOLOGY – On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions. In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data. Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception. Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.
The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.
The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.
