How Sending Out Food Stamp Benefits Early Could Cause Another Problem In A Few Weeks

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

As I’ve written before, the government shutdown is a perfect demonstration of our politicians participating in partisan showmanship, with poor people as the victims of their theater. As individual states desperately attempt to take care of the people depending on them by sending out food stamp benefits early, the theater in Washington DC continues, completely unconcerned about the havoc being wrought.

Regardless of your thoughts about people who are on government assistance, it’s incontrovertible that people are seeing the rug yanked out from under their feet quite suddenly. Here are some numbers:

That’s a whole lot of Americans who are dealing bigtime stress right now.

Food stamp benefits are going out early.

A number of states are issuing food stamp benefits early due to the government shutdown. They’re doing this over concern that if the shutdown continues, they won’t be able to issue the payments in February.

But the early payment comes with a sobering warning. A press relief from the state of Michigan said:

For food assistance clients, Michigan will begin issuing February benefits on Saturday, Jan. 19. Clients who don’t receive their benefits on that date should receive the funds the following week. That means the 1.2 million Michigan residents who receive food assistance will have benefits to feed their families in February even if the partial federal government shutdown continues.

The early food assistance benefits are not additional benefits and there will be no food assistance payments in February. MDHHS strongly encourages families to budget the funds they receive in January so they can meet their food needs through the entire month of February. (source)

Another warning, more bluntly worded, came from an official in Pennsylvania.

Carmen Rodriguez, a Camden County Freeholder and Liaison to the Department of Health and Human Services, has a warning for anyone who uses the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. She says don’t blow through the money.

“It is very important for people to understand that this is an early payment. You are not going to get more money later,” Rodriguez said.

“This is you getting your February allotment for Food Stamps today.” (source)

So, to be perfectly clear, many people who receive food assistance are getting an early payment that must see them through until March, at which time officials hope the shutdown will have ended and things will go back to normal. That’s a 6-week time period that people will need to cover with a payment that really isn’t that big. (If you’re curious how much money people are getting on food benefits, I found this calculator. )

Read this article for tips on buying food to get you through an extended period of tough times.

School lunch programs are also being hard hit

About the saddest thing I’ve seen so far regarding the shutdown is the fact that school lunch programs are now rationing out food to the kids. This is a big problem for some children whose only meal of the day comes from the school cafeteria. 29.7 million children eat meals that are funded by the National School Lunch Program, which is funded by the USDA.

Add to this the fact that even more kids now qualify for free lunches because their parents are furloughed from government jobs.

A school district in North Carolina took to Facebook to announce that their lunch program was now conserving food through “minimum levels.”

Due to the Federal Government Shutdown, lunch menus in Vance County Schools have been revised to a minimum level to conserve food and funding.

Starting the week of January 21, minimum level means: one main dish, bread, two vegetables, one fruit and milk.
No fresh produce will be included, except at elementary schools as part of the Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Program. This program will be decreased to two days each week. (source)

My hope is that if this continues, the schools will set up some kind of way to accept food donations for hungry kids. I know that nobody wants to see children going without at least one balanced meal per day.

What to do if you’re affected

If you are affected by the government shutdown in some way, you’re going to need to make some changes to get through this situation. With the folks in Washington playing an elaborate game of Chicken, there’s no telling how long this sh*tshow will continue.

This article provides detailed information on how to feed your family during difficult times. So if you’re without a paycheck or trying to make your benefits stretch, the advice there may help you a lot. In situations like this, remember that nothing is guaranteed – you have to make anything you buy stretch as far as possible.

There are also instructions in the article on how to get my PDF, The Flat Broke Cookbook: Thrifty Meals & Shopping Tips for Tough Times, for FREE (no questions asked) if you’ve found yourself in a bad situation.

You’re going to have to tighten up your budget, change your eating habits, and be creative to get through this. And hopefully, once it’s over, you’ll have gained some new tools to help you get better prepared for a similar situation in the future. Because regardless of how much the folks in DC say they’re there to help you, they are only there to help themselves. This will happen again and one day, eventually, the benefits and government jobs simply won’t be coming back.

Keep in mind that if this shutdown continues, there will be a trickledown effect. Businesses in Washington, DC are already seeing their revenue drop because no one has the money to eat out or shop. State and county jobs that are federally funded will soon be affected. This is not going to stop with only the people who are federal government employees or who are on welfare.

If you’re in a position to help your neighbors, now would be a great time to do so.

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Schiff Vows To Investigate Disputed Trump-Cohen Story As BuzzFeed Doubles Down

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), still licking his wounds from getting grounded by President Trump last week, has vowed to “absolutely” investigate a BuzzFeed News report that President Trump directed his former personal attorney to lie to Congress about a potential Trump Tower Moscow project that never materialized – despite special counsel Robert Mueller’s office claiming the report is untrue

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Schiff told CBS‘s “Face The Nation” after being asked whether he would investigate the allegations. 

“Congress has a fundamental interest in two things. First, getting to the bottom of why this witness came before us and lied, and who else was knowledgeable that this was a lie,” Schiff added. 

The California Democrat also suggested that Mueller disputed the BuzzFeed report because he might want to use Cohen as a witness in future prosecutions, and “wanted to make sure that the public didn’t have the perception that he was saying more than he was saying, at least to the special counsel.” 

BuzzFeed, meanwhile, has doubled down after editor-in-chief Ben Smith and reporter Anthony Cormier both stood behind their reporting in a Sunday interview with CNN.

“I have further confirmation that this is right. We are being told to stand our ground. Our reporting is going to be borne out to be accurate, and we’re 100 percent behind it,” Cormier told CNN‘s Brian Stelter, adding “The same sources that we used in the story are standing behind it, and so are we.”

That said, Cormier deflected when asked about documents that his colleague, Jason Leopold, said he had seen while formulating the report. He was also hazy on what Cohen specifically told Mueller’s team, or what Trump allegedly told Cohen. 

 

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Jamaica’s 37-Company Exchange Was 2018’s Best Performing Stock Market

The Jamaican stock exchange, unknown to most of the world and which is open for trading only three and a half hours a day, was 2018’s best performing stock market.

The exchange – which started 50 years ago, by Edward Seaga, a Jamaican Harvard graduate who worked as a record producer in the 1950s and 1960s – saw its main index up 29% during 2018, the most among 94 national benchmarks according to Bloomberg . Over the last five years, Jamaica’s impressive market returns are even more pronounced: Jamaican stocks are up almost 300%, more than quadrupling the next national benchmark and outperforming the S&P 500 nearly seven times.

The blistering ascent of the local stock market took place despite real growth in Jamaica averaging less than 1% over the last four years; in 2018, growth in Jamaica was expected to come in at 1.7%. However, the small size of the local market has kept it relatively insulated from the broader economy, and helped Jamaican equities move as quickly as they have. As a result, the total value of the 37 stocks on the main index is less than $11 billion.

And now, capital is starting to trickle into Kingston as it tries to reinvent itself as a financial hub. Paul Simpson, a 36-year-old banker and investor in Kingston told Bloomberg:  “Clearly, capital goes where it’s comfortable. To see capital coming here means people must be comfortable.” That, or they are simply hoping to recreate past returns.

The floor of the Jamaican stock exchange

The financial industry in the country is located mostly in the neighborhood of New Kingston. It isn’t a tourist destination like Negril and it isn’t impoverished, like Trench Town. Instead, it’s an area where you’ll find Porsche dealerships and Starbucks.

Similar to China, over the past decade, the country’s financial sector assets have tripled and its number of financial institutions have multiplied by a factor of eight.

It gets better: the World Bank now ranks Jamaica as the sixth best nation for ease of starting a business. Economist Uma Ramakrishnan, the IMF’s Jamaica mission chief said that “If I could hold a megaphone and tell investors now’s the time, I’d do it.”

Still, before US hedge funds start arriving with dreams of massive alpha, the limitations of local stocks are pronounced, especially when one considers the small size of the market. Additionally, the shares available to the public are limited as many of the companies are mostly owned by large institutions and conglomerates. Like with Japanese government bonds, it is commonplace for some stocks not to trade for days and the number of unchanged stocks on a daily basis often outnumbers both gainers and losers.

In other words, in a world desperate for liquidity, Jamaica may not be your best bet.

Which is also why the managing director of the exchange, Marlene Street Forrest, is working on improving its logistics. Trades now settle in two days instead of three to comply with international standards and the exchange is looking to introduce market making this year. Margin accounts and short selling are both also on the agenda for the coming year  – yes, there is no way to short stocks right now, and in a throwback to more normal times there are no HFTs or ETFs (there are no Jamaican stocks in U.S. ETFs, even those tracking “frontier” countries such as Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, the most emerging of the emerging markets).

Still, the market is growing: there are 20 new IPOs scheduled for this year, and while the exchange evolving, as things often go in the islands, it’s doing it at its own pace. 

“We ensure that we are going to get it right before we move,” Street Forrest said. 

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The News About Fake News Is Fake

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

In the last few days I was looking around for stories that could illustrate what fake news actually is, and I had a nice collection, but then last night Robert Mueller of all people clarified what exactly fake news is better than I could have. At first the BuzzFeed crew that was caught staring straight into the headlights has a feeble response (what exactly was untrue in our article?), but was silenced by the WaPo of all publications: Mueller’s team said every bit of the article was false.

And still I wonder if people now understand better what fake news is. Which I think has a lot to do whit the fact that the term was monopolized by a section of US media as meaning things that had to do with Trump, more or less exclusively. That way, when Trump accused these same media of publishing fake news, they knew their loyal readers wouldn’t believe him.

But in reality they’ve been at it ever since Trump entered US politics, and they dug in ever deeper into their anti-Donald trenches, first for political reasons, later for profit (nothing sells like Trump in America today). And in the process, especially since they published umpteen pieces a day on the topic, they had to use unproven and biased allegations and innuendo. There was never enough real news to go around to feed the monster they created. That’s how we got Russiagate.

Still, of course, like me, you want to know how fake news is recognized, how ‘experts’ tell it apart from real news. Well, despair no more. An actual professor researched it, and was quoted by the New York Times last week, which doesn’t publish fake news, it says. I got to say, personally, I found this highly enlightening.

Older People Shared Fake News on Facebook More Than Others in 2016 Race

The authors were careful in defining “fake news,” a term that has been weaponized by many, including President Trump, to dismiss real news they dislike. “Reasonable people disagree about where to draw the line and we were very conscious of those issues,” Professor Guess said.

As a result, they assembled a limited list of sites that reliably published fake content, based on various sources, including reporting from BuzzFeed News. As best the researchers could tell, the list did not include any websites associated with Russian disinformation efforts, according to Professor Guess. The Facebook and survey data came from a group of about 3,500 people whom the authors tracked during the 2016 election in order to better understand the role social media played in political discourse.

They found that Republicans and those who identified as “very conservative” tended to share the most news from questionable sources. But that tendency may have less to do with ideology and more to do with what those articles said: Users tend to share stories they agree with and the fake news sites were disproportionately pro-Trump, the authors said.

So the researchers distinguish fake news from real news, but they don’t tell us -or the NYT doesn’t- what methods they use to tell the two apart. They do tell us that what Trump calls fake news is merely real news he dislikes. It’s funny how people say that so easily, and never think they themselves might do just that.

“..a limited list of sites that reliably published fake content..” sounds intriguing, but not convincing. That this list partly comes from BuzzFeed is hilarious in view of Mueller’s indictment of BuzzFeed’s article about Trump instructing Michael Cohen to lie. Other than that, the article doesn’t really say much. But luckily Quentin Fottrell, personal finance editor at MarketWatch, elaborates (free advice: Quentin, stick to your trade!)

His article caught my eye because whereas the NYTimes piece talked about older people sharing more fake news, Quentin adds that it’s about Republican older people. And that I find hard to believe. At least without proof; I wouldn’t want to jump to such conclusions based on fake news. Let’s see how far I can get:

Why Republican Baby Boomers Are More Likely To Share #Fakenews On Facebook

So why are Republican baby boomers more likely to share fake news on Facebook? One theory: As they didn’t grow up with technology, they may be more susceptible to being fooled.

That one sentence says a lot about this entire ‘study’. It even sounds fake to me. Because while I can see the “less exposed to tech” issue to an extent, I see no reason why Republican baby boomers would be fooled more easily by technology than their Democrat peers.

[..] Andrew Guess, an associate professor at Princeton University, and his colleagues disseminated an online survey to 3,500 people in three waves throughout the 2016 campaign. Of the respondents, 1,331 in the initial wave agreed to share their Facebook profile data, which allowed researchers to analyze the age and political affiliations of those people who were more likely to spread fake news.

The results showed that 90% of these users actually did not share misleading or fake articles and only 8.5% shared one or more fake news articles. A plurality, 18%, of the Facebook users who shared the fake stories were both self-identified Republicans and over the age of 65, the authors concluded, and these individuals shared nearly seven times as many fake news articles as respondents in the youngest age group, ranging in age from 18 to 29.

I had to look at this a few times. Here’s what I think it says:

  • They ‘studied’ 3,500 people in 3 waves, of which the initial one was larger than 1,331 people, since that is the segment of the first wave who shared their Facebook data (we assume not all did).

  • 90% of these 1,331, or 1,198 people, shared nothing at all (no fake news).

  • 8.5% of the 1,331, or 114 people, did share fake news stories. 18% of those 114 (so 18% of 8.5%), or 20 people, were self-identified Republicans over the age of 65.

  • Therefore 20 people out of 3,500, or 0.57%, were older Republicans who shared fake news (as it was defined by the survey). There are probably even more people in that target group suffering from dementia than the 0.57% who shared fake news. So what are we looking at here?

  • You could argue that it’s really 20 people out of 1,331, but that’s still only 1.5%. Meaningless.

  • These 20 people shared 7 times as many fake news pieces as young people. That may be true, but they also shared more than 99.43% of people their own age. Does this still mean anything at all to you?

Quentin delights us with some more data;

Another possible explanation: Older Americans may have felt particularly passionate and entrenched in their political views and, therefore, ideological. For instance, the most ideological members of Congress shared news stories on their Facebook pages more than twice as often as moderate legislators between Jan. 2, 2015, and July 20, 2017, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center study, which examined all official Facebook posts created by and for members of Congress in this period.

If you ask me, it’s peculiar to make statements about politics that heap ordinary Americans together with politicians, but at least that paragraph doesn’t say Republicans are more likely than others to [fill in your preference]. But then we’re off to the races again:

[..] What’s more, baby boomers are more likely to be conservative and ideological, according to data crunched by Pew. “In both 2015 and 2016, about one in 10 baby boomers identified as conservative Republicans— the highest percentages dating back to 2000,” researchers Shiva Maniam and Samantha Smith wrote for Pew. “In both years, conservative Republicans made up the largest single partisan and ideological group among boomers.”

Wait. The logic here is that baby boomers are more likely to be conservative and ideological because 1 in 10 baby boomers say they’re conservative Republicans. But that means 9 out of 10 does not. This doesn’t even make a single sliver of sense. Yo, Quentin (and professor Guess), we need some help here.

To be fair, older Republicans share more news in general, and fake news gets caught up in the mix. Members of Congress with very conservative or very liberal voting records both shared news links in about 14% of all their posts, but members with more moderate ideology scores shared links to news stories in just 6% of their posts, Pew found.

That starts out with older Republicans in general and then seamlessly veers into members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, with either very conservative or very liberal voting records. Not fully self-contradictory, but darn close.

There may also be a political explanation: A trickle-down effect from the president’s own remarks about the liberal media. Older Republicans could feel more emboldened by Trump’s comments and, as a result, assume stories that support their causes are accurate.

That’s the first time I explicitly read Quentin saying that fake news is linked to Trump. But other than that, there is no sign that older Democrats don’t feel ’emboldened’ by DNC or Hillary or Pelosi comments just as much as Republicans do by Trump. Quentin and professor Guess only pretend to make a point, but there’s nothing there.

The president has doubled down of late on the view that the mainstream media’s negative coverage of his administration is rooted in bias. “The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and often times false attacks and stories,” Trump said last year.

“Confirmation bias” helps outlandish theories and reports gain traction on social media. And that, psychologists say, is where fake news comes in.

Since there is nothing that indicates one political side is more prone to confirmation bias than the other, fake news will necessarily also occur on both sides. Why you would have psychologists define fake news I don’t know. Oh, and I think that Trump comment makes a lot of sense.

With so much noise on social media, how can people distinguish between rumor and reality? Psychologists say people develop defense mechanisms to cope with an uncertain world early in life, but this also draws people to information that seems to confirm their own beliefs and world views and to ignore reports or opinions that contradict their perceptions.

“At its core is the need for the brain to receive confirming information that harmonizes with an individual’s existing views and beliefs,” said Mark Whitmore, an assistant professor of management and information systems in Kent State University’s business school. “In fact, one could say the brain is hard-wired to accept, reject, miss-remember or distort information based on whether it is viewed as accepting of or threatening to existing beliefs.”

Older Americans may be less likely to question authority

However, many people effectively rationalize the irrational in order to avoid going against values and ideas they were taught by their parents. “Children’s learning about make-believe and mastery becomes the basis for more complex forms of self-deception and illusion into adulthood,” Eve Whitmore said. When people are faced with absurd and conflicting messages, her husband added, “It becomes easier to cling to a simple fiction than a complicated reality.”

[..] Ultimately, however, it may come down to our trust in the internet, rather than institutions or belief systems. “People who have grown up with the internet have experienced things that are not necessarily truthful. They have had experiences on social media or they have witnessed friends dealing with false information, which has made them more skeptical about what they read versus the baby boomers who did not grow up with the internet and have, therefore, limited experience.”

Remember, the article’s headline is “Why Republican Baby Boomers Are More Likely To Share #Fakenews On Facebook”. And then it does absolutely nothing to make that point, but instead goes a very long way to proving that ALL baby boomers do that. Either one of which, first of all, you don’t prove by talking 20 people out of a sample of 3,500, but moreover, secondly, your entire article -strongly- appears to deny.

And do we know what fake news is now, are we any closer to that? Not that I can see. And there’s no way I can say it all in one go, so I’ll get back to this topic. But not before thanking Robert Mueller for defining fake news in his own way. It must have cost him, and the FBI and DOJ, some genuine heartache, but in the end he couldn’t let the entire avalanche of media and Democrats run with such an overtly fake piece of ‘news’. There were calls for Congressional investigations based on it, for crying out loud.

Speaking of which, crying out loud might be what you expect BuzzFeed to do now, but don’t count on it: they got a ton of free publicity, and that’s all the entire fake news cycle has been based on from the start. And if it didn’t kill the New York Times or CNN, why would it kill BuzzFeed? It’s a growth industry. And credibility is overrated.

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“It Feels Apocalyptic” – A Letter From Zimbabwe, Where The Country Remains In Total Shutdown

Zimbabwe is once again at the brink of economic collapse, making a mockery of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s claim that the country is open for business.

As Bloomberg reports,  many shops and factories have shut their doors because of a lack of customers and those that continue to trade are open to haggling over prices to secure hard currency. At an appliance shop in the capital, Harare, a salesman whispers that a Whirlpool Corp. washing machine priced at about $5,000 if paid for electronically will sell for $1,500 in cash, while at a nearby electrical warehouse, a $600 invoice is whittled down to $145 for payment in dollar bills.

But, as OilPrice.com’s Tsvetana Paraskova reports, Zimbabwe is on a three-day nationwide strike and protests are erupting in the streets after the government of the southern African country doubled fuel prices, making gasoline sold in Zimbabwe the most expensive gasoline in the world. 

Via Namibia Economist blog,

We are now in our third day of complete shutdown throughout the whole of Zimbabwe.

Banks are closed, schools are closed, roads are closed in and out of the main towns and transport systems have shut down.

There are no newspapers to be bought, the Internet has been shut down by the government and everything is at a complete standstill.

People are too afraid to move around as a result of the burning of vehicles by vigilante groups and the complete dearth of any updated information or warnings due to the total social media blackout. This means that no WhatsApp messages or photos can be sent, no one can access Facebook or Messenger, and the situation is very tense.

In some centres it almost feels apocalyptic. We have heard gunfire, and before the Internet was closed down, saw pictures of dead and wounded people. It is unclear how many people have died but before the media blackout, it was reported that there had been five deaths and more than 200 people had been arbitrarily arrested.

Elements of the police and military are also involved in ensuring that there is a complete shutdown. People in civilian dress armed with AK-47 rifles have been seen in some areas. It is clear that these are military personnel.

Amnesty International has condemned the military crackdown and has called on the Zimbabwean authorities to ensure restraint by security forces and respect the public’s right to protest.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights reported prior to the blackout that they had received reports of soldiers and police breaking into homes in townships overnight and assaulting suspected demonstrators.

Contacts in the diplomatic corps and the political opposition are also completely in the dark, along with the rest of us.

This morning I spoke to Nelson Chamisa, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance, and it is clear that no one knows what is going on because the entire country has been effectively silenced.

I have also spoken to lawyers regarding the arrest once again of Pastor Evan Mawarire who inadvertently triggered the highly successful #ThisFlag social media protest action in April 2016 because he could no longer afford to pay school fees. This led to his arrest on trumped up charges and his high profile court case. Since then, his activities have been under constant surveillance.

Police officers arrive at his flat this morning in central Harare and took him to the Law and Order section, charging him under a false charge of incitement to commit public violence.

The crisis was precipitated on Sunday (January 13) by President Emmerson Mnangagwa when he announced a shock increase of 200 percent in the fuel price – this in a country with more than 90 percent unemployment and where the struggle to survive escalates daily. Mr Mnangagwa promptly left the country for Russia and has not returned. Reports say that he has gone there to “discuss Russian assistance to modernise the military”.

Right now the situation remains eerie and uncertain. If this goes on for much longer, the humanitarian crisis will escalate. We cannot buy food because the shops are all closed and transport systems have closed down. Most of the hospitals are without essential medicines and also staff because doctors and nurses can’t even get to work.

This is an unprecedented situation in Zimbabwe and internationally. Even in wartime Europe, the people could get newspapers, transport systems operated, retail outlets were still open and people could communicate.

I cannot send you an e-mail or a photograph – it is a very weird situation.

The only thing we can do at this point is to ask for your prayers as we face this time of escalating fear and uncertainty.

Ben Freeth

Executive Director

Mike Campbell Foundation

Harare, Zimbabwe

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Ocasio-Cortez Refuses To Condemn Anti-Semitism Within Women’s March As Top Dems Cut Ties

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been in Congress for less than a month, and she’s already mastered one of the most vital skills for any career politician: Taking allegations of homophobia/bigotry/racism and turning them right back around on the accuser.

When asked about allegations of anti-Semitism levied at the some of the founders of the Women’s March movement in a stunning clip from an interview at Saturday’s Women’s March, “Democratic Socialist” Ocasio-Cortez refused to renounce her feminist allies, and instead tried to shift the conversation to allegations of anti-semitism in the Trump administration (which has been an outspoken ally of Israel and antagonist of both Iran and ISIS).

When asked about hateful comments made by Women’s March co-chair Tamika Mallory, who called described Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan the “GOAT” during an appearance on “The View” (Farrakhan has a history of making anti-Semitic comments that stretches back decades, and recently provoked controversy by saying he was “anti-termite” when discussing his criticisms of the Jewish people), Ocasio-Cortez said she believed it was important to “center this conversation” before immediately launching an attack on Trump.

“I think that concerns of anti-semitism with this current administration and the White House are absolutely valid.”

In a nod to her belief in “intersectional” feminism, Ocasio-Cortez said we need to make sure we’re protecting the Jewish community and “all who feel vulnerable in this moment” – implying that the Trump Administration is responsible for present feelings of unease in the Jewish community (rather than, say, the aggressive pro-Palestine, anti-Zionism that’s in vogue right now among members of the American left).

 “We need to make sure that we are protecting the Jewish community and all who feel vulnerable in this moment,” she added. “….it’s so important to recognize why all these women are coming together…to make sure the rights of all women are protected and advanced. And so I know in my heart that all of the New Yorkers that are coming down here and downtown are coming in that spirit and not in the other spirit.”

Watch the clip below:

As the Daily Wire’s @RealSaavedra pointed out, Ocasio-Cortez has refused to condemn the march even as top Democrats and the DNC have distanced themselves from the organization and its founders, and several regional Women’s March events that took place on Saturday also explicitly renounced any association with the national organization.

Saavedra also shared this video of Mallory implying that all Jews are white supremacists.

And this video of Ocasio-Cortez ignoring a question shouted by activist Laura Loomer, who asked the Rep. why she stood with people who openly supported the terrorist group Hamas.

Ocasio-Cortez won’t condemn the Women’s March founders or Hamas, but it’s President Trump – who has a Jewish daughter, Jewish son-in-law, Jewish grandkids and a close relationship with the (Jewish) Prime Minister of Israel, and who recently moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, fulfilling a long-standing promise made by American presidents to the Jewish state, who is the real anti-semite. In other words, the logic behind this is roughly equivalent to a Kindergartener’s chants of “I am rubber, you are glue – whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” 

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Doug Casey On The Government Shutdown: “Nobody Is Looking At The Important Thing Here”

Via CaseyResearch.com,

The U.S. government is shut down.

It has been for 28 days now – making it the longest government shutdown in U.S. history by a wide margin. And there’s no telling when it will come to an end.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the media’s having a field day with this. But I can’t help but wonder if this is as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. So I got Doug Casey on the phone to see what he thinks…

Justin: Doug, the U.S. government shutdown is now 28 days old. Are you surprised it’s lasted this long?

Doug: I’m not surprised, but I’m definitely pleased. There have been a number of shutdowns in the past. Sixteen days under Obama. Twenty-one days under Bill Clinton. Five separate shutdowns on Jimmy Carter’s watch. This one, like its antecedents, is no more than a tempest in a toilet bowl – just a nuisance for a small segment of the population. A proper shutdown would include the IRS [laughs].

In this case, the shutdown is because Trump isn’t getting the $5.7 billion he wants for his wall. But this begs the question… should there even be a wall? My answer is “no,” for a number of both practical and philosophical reasons. Keeping illegal aliens out is a good idea. But it would happen naturally if just two things were done.

Point number one, get rid of the welfare benefits that draw the wrong kind of people. During the 19th century, and up to the 1930s, there were absolutely no welfare benefits for immigrants – or anybody else, for that matter. As a result, you attracted opportunity seekers.

Point number two, all U.S. property should be privately owned. Including streets, sidewalks, and parks. That way if they can’t support themselves, or make an arrangement with somebody who will, they would simply have no place to sleep.

No welfare?! No unowned property where vagrants can loiter?! It sounds heartless. But I have no doubt that people like Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, New York’s Mayor DeBlasio, and thousands of other generous public servants would feed, clothe, and shelter them at their own expense.

But in today’s world, the public doesn’t want less government. They want much, much more. Polls show most Millennials favor socialism. So we can look forward to a paradise for the workers and peasants in the new future.

However I’m afraid nobody is looking at the important thing here.

Justin: And what would that be?

Doug: Some rather basic principles. Our topic is not why this shutdown occurred. It’s whether or not the shutdown is a good thing or a bad thing. To answer that question we have to decide to what extent the federal government is necessary. Everybody assumes that it’s always been there, and has always been the behemoth it now is. The average American not only confuses the government with the country – they’re actually two different things – but sees Washington, DC as a fixture in the cosmic firmament.

Let me make what some may feel is an outrageous statement: There’s nothing the government does that couldn’t and wouldn’t be done – vastly cheaper and better – by profit-seeking entrepreneurs. Further, a large part of what the government does is not just unnecessary, but destructive. And wouldn’t be done at all in a free market.

So, let’s look at a few departments that have been affected by this shutdown, and see how important they are to the conduct of life in the United States. Obviously this isn’t even scratching the surface. A proper discussion would take years. But it’s worth taking a few minutes here because the average American – forget about the average European – hasn’t even considered the concept.

My view is optimistic and hopeful. Basically, all the departments that have been shut down should actually be abolished wholesale. They serve no useful purpose. If they are useful, they should be privatized.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] is an excellent example of this. Right now, 95% of its employees have been furloughed.

And I’m all for NASA in principle, or at least what it does. I’m a big fan of space exploration. But even though NASA is full of competent, high-IQ people, it’s run like the post office, or a DMV, or the military. It’s degenerated into a typical cost-plus government bureaucracy.

SpaceX, Blue Origin, and many other companies are proving that the private sector can do anything that NASA does – faster, cheaper, and better. Why? Because they’re not constrained by politics. They necessarily have to operate in a sustainable, efficient, innovative way. Because they’re doing it for profit. Which means they’re trying to create capital, not consume it.

Apart from that, the U.S. government is manifestly bankrupt. Soon enough, it won’t even be able to pay the interest on its debt, forget about science projects. That’s going to happen over the next couple of decades. NASA will be left high and dry – last in line for whatever funds there are.

NASA, and similar government enterprises, should be privatized. Either taken public in an IPO, perhaps with most shares distributed to all U.S. citizens, and its employees. Or sold to some company with an interest in space. That would turn it from a cash consuming liability into an asset.

Justin: What federal agencies would be better if taken over by the private sector?

Doug: The United States Department of Agriculture [USDA]. It has about 100,000 employees and spends about $140 billion a year. Those are amazing numbers, considering that only 1 to 2% of the U.S. population works in agriculture. Its useful functions – crop reporting, bio research and such – should be privatized. Of course all crop subsidies, price controls, planting limits, and the like should be abolished. They basically put farmers – especially politically well-connected ones – on welfare. And create distortions in the market.

The Department of Homeland Security should be abolished. In particular the Transportation Security Administration [TSA], one of their many divisions.

If airline security is necessary – if it actually makes sense to screen people before they get on planes – it should be the job of the airlines, not the government. Airlines shortsightedly offloaded the responsibility and cost of maintaining security to the taxpayer. But the costs should be reflected in the cost of flying. Air travelers who actually use this service – if that’s what it is – should pay for it. But it’s probably not necessary in today’s world of secured cabins.

What kind of middle-aged people – 60,000 of them – are willing to wear costumes and go through the dirty laundry of their fellow citizens, and interrogate them, for $15 an hour? It’s ridiculous and degrading theater.

Speaking of flying, the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] should be privatized. In particular its critical Air Traffic Control division, which is always a generation or two behind in its technology. That’s not going to improve, because funding from a bankrupt government will be increasingly sparse.

*  *  *

Tomorrow, we’ll share part 2 of our conversation, where Doug and I look at what the shutdown could mean for the National Park System as well as the Department of Defense. If you enjoy these discussions, you’ll definitely want to get your hands on our book: Totally Incorrect 2. It’s Doug’s most controversial book yet… as well as a vital guide for surviving the changes happening in America today. This book isn’t available anywhere else right now. Learn how to get your copy right here.

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The Media Wildly Mischaracterized That Video of Covington Catholic Students Confronting a Native American Veteran

LMPartial video footage of students from a Catholic high school allegedly harassing a Native American veteran after the anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday quickly went viral, provoking widespread condemnation of the kids on social media. Various media figures and Twitter users called for them to be doxed, shamed, or otherwise punished, and school administrators said they would consider expulsion.

But the rest of the video—nearly two hours of additional footage showing what happened before and after the encounter—adds important context that strongly contradicts the media’s narrative.

Far from engaging in racially motivated harassment, the group of mostly white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm and restrained despite being subjected to incessant racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse by members of the bizarre religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites, who were lurking nearby. The BHI has existed since the late 19th century, and is best describes as a black nationalist cult movement; its members believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites, and often express condemnation of white people, Christians, and gays. DC-area Black Hebrews are known to spout particularly vile bigotry.

Phillips put himself between the teens and the black nationalists, chanting and drumming as he marched straight into the middle of the group of young people. What followed was several minutes of confusion: The teens couldn’t quite decide whether Phillips was on their side or not, but tentatively joined in his chanting. It’s not at all clear this was intended as an act of mockery rather than solidarity.

One student did not get out of Phillips way as he marched, and gave the man a hard stare and a smile that many have described as creepy. This moment received the most media coverage: The teen has been called the product of a “hate factory” and likened to a school shooter, segregation-era racist, and member of the Klu Klux Klan. I have no idea what he was thinking, but portraying this as an example of obvious, racially-motivated hate is a stretch. Maybe he simply had no idea why this man was drumming in his face, and couldn’t quite figure out the best response? It bears repeating that Phillips approached him, not the other way around.

And that’s all there is to it. Phillips walked away after several minutes, the Black Hebrew Israelites continued to insult the crowd, and nothing else happened.

You can judge for yourself. Here is video footage of the full incident, from the perspective of the black nationalists. Phillips enters the picture around the 1:12 mark, but if you skip to that part, you miss an hour of the Black Hebrew Israelites hurling obscenities at the students. They call them crackers, faggots, and pedophiles. At the 1:20 mark (which comes after the Phillips incident) they call one of the few black students the n-word and tell him that his friends are going to murder him and steal his organs. At the 1:25 mark, they complain that “you give faggots right,” which prompted booing from the students. Throughout the video they threaten the kids with violence, and attempt to goad them into attacking first. The students resisted these taunts admirably: They laughed at the hecklers, and they perform a few of their school’s sports cheers.

It was at this moment that Phillips, who had attended a nearby peace protest led by indigenous peoples, decided to intervene. He would later tell The Detroit Free Press that the teenagers “were in the process of attacking these four black individuals” and he decided to attempt to de-escalate the situation. He seems profoundly mistaken: The video footage taken by the black nationalists shows no evidence the white teenagers had any intention of attacking. Nevertheless, Phillips characterized the kids as “beasts” and the hate-group members as “their prey”:

“There was that moment when I realized I’ve put myself between beast and prey,” Phillips said. “These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that.”

Again, all the evidence suggests that Phillips got it backward.

He also claimed that he heard chants of “build the wall.” While I cannot rule out the possibility that some of the kids indeed chanted this—those who were wearing MAGA hats are presumably Trump supporters—I did not hear a single utterance of the phrase in the nearly two hours of video footage I watched. Admittedly, the kids do a lot of chanting and it’s not always possible to tell what they are saying. Their stated explanation is that they engaged in a series of school sports chants: That’s what one student told a local news reporter. His account largely tracks with the video.

“We are an all-male school that loves to get hyped up,” said this student. “And as we have done for years prior, we decided to do some cheers to pass time. In the midst of our cheers, we were approached by a group of adults led by Nathan Phillips, with Phillips beating his drum. They forced their way to the center of our group. We initially thought this was a cultural display since he was beating along to our cheers and so we clapped to the beat.” According to this student, the smiling student was grinning because he was enjoying the music, but eventually became confused, along with everyone else. (Indeed, multiple people can be heard to shout, “what is going on?”)

It would be impossible to definitively state that none of the young men did anything wrong, offensive, or problematic, at some point, and maybe the smiling student was attempting to intimidate Phillips. But there’s shockingly little evidence of wrongdoing, unless donning a Trump hat and standing in a group of other people doing the same is now an act of harassment or violence. Phillips’ account, meanwhile, is at best flawed, and arguably deliberately misleading.

Unless other information emerges, the school’s best move would be to have a conversation with the boys about the incident, perhaps discuss some strategies for remaining on perfect behavior at highly charged political rallies—where everybody is recording everything on a cell phone—and let that be the end of it.

The boys are undoubtedly owed an apology from the numerous people who joined this social media pile-on. This is shaping up to be one of the biggest major media misfires in quite some time.

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Smart Glasses, Neural Computers, Self-Driving Cars: What’s “The Next Big Thing” After Smartphones

If the recent slump in Apple stock has proven one thing, it is that the smartphone is no longer “the next big thing”. But as we enter a new year, one in which Apple shareholders expect much more innovation from Tim Cook than just more buybacks, that leaves one important question not only for investors, but also for entrepreneurs: what, exactly, is the “next big thing” going to be?

The Wall Street Journal recently tried to answer this question, laying out four startups that they see as potentially usurping not only the popularity, but the profit potential of what smartphones once did for companies like Apple and Samsung. The first company they talked about was Magic Leap. They make augmented reality glasses and their investors include Alphabet Inc. and Saudi Arabia‘s main wealth fund. Their product, bug-eye like glasses, has only been released to software developers so far.

The glasses lay images over the real world similar to some smartphone augmented reality products that have been developed. So far, they have been designed specifically for use by gamers and neurosurgeons. The company has raised $2.4 billion and carries a valuation of $6.4 billion.

A company called Focals by North has raised $140 million for their glasses, priced at $999. Their glasses – a throwback to Google’s ill-fated Google Glass – have the capability to display text messages, driving directions and other simple items by using hologram like images beamed into the eyes of the wearer. 

On the smaller side, Paradromics is a company that has only raised $25 million. The startup is looking into the burgeoning industry of brain/computer interfaces, where an electronic device actually reads the neurons firing in the user’s brain and tries to translate them into information that can be processed by a computer. Like Magic Leap, these types of startups are primarily focused on the medical field to begin with. Paradromics aims to build a device the size of a nickel that connects to the cortex and can control prosthetic limbs or help blind people see. While these uses are years away, there is optimism that the technology could evolve.

Finally, the obvious: the smart car. Many people believe that the autonomous vehicle is going to be the next digital platform. In fact, we just wrote an article  about how cars will soon be collecting data on their drivers and sending that back to their parent companies, where it can be sold. While companies like Tesla and Waymo are focused on retrofitting current vehicles to become autonomous vehicles, start up Zoox, which has raised $790 million and is valued at $3.2 billion, is trying to build an autonomous vehicle from the ground up. In fact, the vehicle may not even include a steering wheel.

Regardless, with the recent reality check for Apple shareholders and the saturation of smartphones being pushed to the limit – there is no question that the race to evolve technologically is officially on. 

via RSS http://bit.ly/2W7En2T Tyler Durden

A Satirical Dream: Trump’s 2019 State Of The Union Address

Authored by Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com,

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, the First Lady of the United States, and my fellow Americans:

It’s been another year since your president has stood before you to, once again, deliver yet another State of the Union address.

Tonight, however, will not be the standard fare.  Instead of half-truths and false optimism, I am going to set aside all that in order to say what I believe is true.

Dear citizens, we now stand a crossroads and we must choose.  We must choose if we are to move forward and deal with the real problems facing our nation, or to progress as a country of corruption; whether to return to our roots as an honorable republic – a nation of laws,  or to continue our decline into lawlessness and the abyss.

Slightly more than two years ago, I was elected by patriotic Americans to make our nation great again. Through the votes of those Americans, we defeated a corrupt globalist puppet who has served at the whim of a global banking elite set on world domination.

Former President Dwight Eisenhower warned  of an ever growing military industrial complex and John F. Kennedy identified secret societies operating as asystem which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations” and in ways that were “repugnant in a free and open society”.

There is a quote often attributed to one of our nation’s founders and earliest presidents, Thomas Jefferson, which states:

Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, banks and corporations will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

And another quote most commonly attributed to a founding father of international finance, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who said:

Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws

Now, whether or not these exact quotes were, in fact, said by these men, they still reflect certain truths throughout history.

In our own nation, what began over one century ago, with the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, through the dishonest weights and measures of Fractional Reserve Banking, has decimated the purchasing power of our currency, and through exponentially-grown debt has, indeed, enslaved our nation’s children on the land of our ancestors.

Moreover, by means of banker subsidized wars around the world and a sinister agenda of global conquest through what is known as the Hegelian Dialectic, sovereign nation states are now held hostage by a small but powerful cabal in control of the Bank of International Settlements.

These banking elites are beholden only to themselves as they seek to establish what they have called a New World Order.

Since the assassination of John F. Kennedy and followed by the Nixon Shockthat removed America’s currency from the gold standard, thus began the decline of our nation’s manufacturing base, as military engagements were openly, and covertly, executed around the globe.

Furthermore, over the past four decades, our educational system was subverted in order to dumb down our citizenry, and governmental welfare programs were expanded until now, today, the majority of American citizens have been lulled into a contented slumber via phony prosperity, faux money, fake news and an arbitrarily immoral code of political correctness.

Through the financial acquisition and consolidation of the nation’s media outlets and entertainment venues, and via the steady barrage of consistent and hypnotic electronic programming, the globalists have hypnotized a majority of American voters to abandon their vigilance to our founding principles; and our borders.

Affirmation of rights derived from natural law, honesty, morality, self-reliance, equality of opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and limited government has now, through the degrading indoctrination of Cultural Marxism, been subordinated to counterfeit concerns over bathroom rights, skin color, and genitalia.

Before the globalists can destroy America, they must first eradicate our identity.  And, this, my fellow Americans, goes to the very heart of our current gridlock in our nation’s capital which has resulted in our longest government shutdown in history.

Can a nation exist without borders?  The answer to that question is, of course, “no”; because borders are necessary to geographically separate ideologically disparate countries of separate peoples and from each respective nation’s code of laws, economic system, and currency.

But you see, this is not in the best interest of the global financial elite who desire one world order.  If one looks to history they will see how slavery is rooted in economics, and this, dear citizens, is what they, who would be our rulers, desire.

Whether delivered by crony capitalism, communism, collectivism, leftism, socialism, or by any other name, it’s always the same:  An elite few who deceive the useful idiots within any population with promises of utopia and equality; yet always resulting in a short-lived wicked paradise for those select few and, invariably, delivered by means of poverty, death, and despair.

I stand before you tonight, not as a politician, but as your president; a former international businessman envisioning a multilateral world of sovereign nations cooperating through fair trade and mutual respect for law and order. I seek to reestablish American liberty, her traditions of innovation and excellence; a beautiful city, shining.

But, my political opponents – those who favor globalism, seek only power and control through centralization, regulations, and unjust laws designed to stifle individual achievement, autonomy, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Today, my fellow Americans, the wall on our southern border is a line in the sand between those who stand with me and those who desire global hegemony.  For, you see, out of the chaos of a world in turmoil, the international elite seek to establish order.

One world under them. A world without borders.

Senator Chuck Schumer has recently stated that a wall won’t work while lamenting my proposed $5.7 billion of taxpayer funds.  He also called me a liar because I have said Mexico will pay for the wall.  So I ask you, my fellow Americans, do you believe Chuck actually cares about your money?

If he did, he would realize that Mexico will pay for the wall by keeping their citizens in their own country instead of on America’s welfare rolls.

Besides, if Senator Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats, and their globalist handlers, truly believed a great big, glorious wall on our southern border wouldn’t work, they’d allow me to build it.  Then, if it was ineffective, they could use the failure against me in 2020. But that’s not happening.  Do you know why? It’s because they all know a wall will work in assuring America’s sovereignty.  That’s why.

The Bible’s First book of Kings, in chapter three, tells of two prostitutes who recently birthed children. When one woman’s baby died, she stole the other mother’s child.  When the matter was taken up with King Solomon, he instructed the women to cut the sole surviving baby in half. Of course, the child’s real mother spoke up first to prevent that madness.  In so doing, Solomon knew it was the real mother who spoke first and who had the child’s best interests at heart.

This story speaks to motives and to honor.

I seek to protect America’s borders in order to secure the future of America’s children.  Yet, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, other Democrats, and their globalist handlers, are willing to sacrifice the United States, and her progeny, for the sake of playing politics and power games.

And what do I mean when I say these politicians are serving their globalist “handlers”?  Well, follow the money; and where the money is, there is power.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the passing of the Patriot Act, the Global Technocrats have ceaselessly constructed an online framework of gatedoors and checkpoints ranging from facial recognition software, social media censorship, and a dystopian panopticon of total surveillance.

Even as whistleblowers like Edward Snowden revealed the violations of American’s Fourth Amendment rights as, over the same period of time, law enforcement agencies were militarized all across this land.

Just as technological breakthroughs in computing and the proliferation of “smart” communication and entertainment devices gave rise to government spying, it was not a very large leap of understanding to see how easy it would be too blackmail and control not only citizens, but government administrators, politicians, officials, and even judges around the globe:

Is it any wonder why border laws are not enforced throughout the wealthy “democratic” nations of the world?  Or why U.S. politicians pass legislation against the will of those who voted for them?  Or why Chief Justice John Roberts passed the unconstitutional Obamacare mandate by calling it a tax?

Dear citizens, I now fully understand Senator Chuck Schumer’s warning to me in his MSNBC interview on January 3rd, 2017 when he said:

Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.

Today’s modern manifestation of George Orwell’s INGSOC party, led by loyal uniparty U.S. Democrats and Neocon Republicans, have sought to control private lives, consolidate power, and restrict personal freedoms by weaponizing healthcare, welfare, FISA Courts, illegal immigration, anti-gun initiatives, and they’ve even made Vladimir Putin into a modern day incarnation of Orwell’s imaginary and infamous scapegoat, Emmanuel Goldstein.

Today, the same people who have accused me of being homophobic, zenophobic, and islamophobic – have embraced a fraudulent special counsel investigation by which they now see imaginary Russians hiding in the shadows of every corner.

From the time I announced my candidacy for President of the United States, I was ridiculed by the political establishment, Hollywood, and the Corporate Mainstream Media.  When it appeared that I could win, the U.S. Intelligence Agencies, under President Obama, spied on my campaign and set up members of my team for a grand scheme of entrapment arranged by former CIA Director, and perjurist, John Brennan; even as corrupt high-ranking officials in the FBI, like James Comey, arranged for Hillary Clinton’s crimes to be swept under the political rug.

This phony Russian election hacking narrative then, in turn, provided cover for the Elite Powerbrokers to censor the free internet, allowed Barrack Obama to sign into law a “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act”, let former National Security Advisor Susan Rice feloniously unmaskofficials in my administration, and forced my newly –appointed National  Security Advisor, Mike Flynn, to resign; even as my new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, was intimidated into recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

Sessions’ recusal, of course, led to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint his former FBI co-conspirator, Robert Mueller, to investigate me.

Over the last two years of my administration, the Russia investigation has dominated the headlines of media corporations owned by international financial elite, and comprising ninety percent of all news media outlets throughout our nation.

We now know today the phony Russian dossier was fake opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Campaign.

Still, two years later, the investigation continues.  And consider what has occurred over the last two years:  Every time news stories broke regarding what has become known as Spygate, Crossfire Hurricane, FISA Abuse, Fusion GPS, or the phony Russian Dossier – Mueller and Rosenstein would, in response, indict innocent Russians who would never see the inside of a courtroom, arrest my private attorney, or indict someone else affiliated with me like Carter Page, Paul Manafort, General Flynn, and others.

On February 16, 2018 Mueller and Rosenstein charged thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian groups for meddling in U.S. elections. In that press conference, Rosenstein said the indictment contained NO allegations of collusion by members of my campaign or my administration.  Rosenstein also assured the nation there was NO “determination that elections were influenced as a result of Russian activities”.

But, two days later, when conservative radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, on February 18, 2018, and conflated the Russian Investigation with President Obama’sspying on my campaign, what happened next?

Two days after that, special counsel Mueller charged the son-in-law of a Russian oligarch who was an acquaintance of someone who once did business with someone who once chaired my campaign for a few months.

Innuendo, accusations, headlines and sound bites. Move, countermove. Punch and counter punch.

On April 3rd, 2018 reports of an August 2017 memo surfaced in the media showing illegal collusion between Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  The violation of special counsel law was in Rosenstein’s intentionally vague court filing with no specifics of facts to be investigated.  In essence, the memo revealed Rosenstein gave Mueller a blank check to investigate me illegally, and endlessly.  At the time, there were those in the media calling for both Rosenstein and Mueller to terminate the investigation.

So what happened next?

Less than a week later, in a manner unprecedented in all of American history, the FBI raided the office and residence a sitting president’s personal attorney.

On June 7th, 2018 a top senate intelligence staffer was charged in a leak case where a New York Times reporter’s records were seized.  The very next day, in another vain attempt to add marginal credibility to his floundering quest, Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed a fresh witness tampering indictment against my former campaign chair Paul Manafort and Russian citizen Konstantin Kilimnik.

Innuendo, accusations, headlines and sound bites. Move, countermove. Punch and counter punch.

That same month, after the release of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on Hillary Clinton’s e-mail investigation, five FBI officials were revealed to have colluded against me but none of their illicit actions were said to have been politically motivated. This, even though one of the agents exclaimed “viva le resistance”  after my election win. That agent was later hired by special counsel Robert Mueller.

On the same day the Inspector General’s report was released, New York’s attorney general sued the Donald J. Trump Foundation, myself, and others, in order to dissolve the foundation for “persistent illegal conduct” over more than a decade.

Innuendo, accusations, headlines and sound bites. Move, countermove. Punch and counter punch.

Also the very next day after the FBI’s “den of thieves” were revealed in the IG Report, my former Campaign Chair, Paul Manafort, had his house arrest revoked and was sentenced to prison  for alleged witness tampering.

Innuendo, accusations, headlines and sound bites. Move, countermove. Punch and counter punch.

And on it goes; even after it was revealed that U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, abused the power of his office by threatening to subpoena the calls and texts of Congress in order to obstruct the Legislative Branch’s constitutionally mandated oversight of the DOJ and FBI.

In July of 2018, in an effort to divert publicity away from the Capitol Hill testimony of disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, and to subvert my efforts toward peace with Russia, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the Mueller Investigation’s single indictment of Twelve Russian intelligence officers for alleged election hacking in 2016.

Innuendo, accusations, headlines and sound bites. Move, countermove. Punch and counter punch.

Even though by August of 2018, it had become clear Obama’s former CIA Director John Brennan was the mastermind behind Spygate and many more media outlets were reporting it was Hillary Clinton and U.S. intelligence officials who colluded with Russians and others to entrap me.

Even though a former FBI agent who “is ashamed of what the FBI has become” found it “absolutely preposterous”  that Deputy Director Rod Rosenstein was still in his position knowing that he signed off on the final FISA application to spy on me; especially in light of my then Attorney General having to recuse himself from the case.

So I ask you tonight, my fellow Americans: 

Why is Hillary Clinton’s payment to Fusion GPS not under investigation by Mueller and Rosenstein?

Why has the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice downplayed, and even covered-up, Mrs. Clinton’s illegal use of private servers when she was President Obama’s Secretary of State, and the obstruction of justice involved with her illegally deleted e-mails?

Why hasn’t former President Obama, former Secretary State Hillary Clinton, former FBI director Robert Mueller and former attorney general Eric Holder been called into account yet regarding the Uranium One scandal Why?  Especially when it involved the sale of a large percentage of America’s uranium deposits to Russia, the same country for which these same criminals have accused me of collusion.

It is because they believe themselves to be above the law.

These same criminals who created ISIS to destabilize the middle-east and create a mass migration crisis designed to destabilize the western nations of the northern hemisphere.  All of these criminals are puppets on strings pulled by those now creating anarchy so as to sift the nations into a New World Order.

The elite bankers have sown seeds of economic chaos, including the subprime mortgage crisis a decade ago, only to be bailed out; which, in effect, transferred their debts onto the backs of the American taxpayers.  Debts, I might add, which were incurred as result of these same banker’s malicious malfeasance and greed.

My dear citizens, it is also these same bankers who plan to become the founding fathers of the new and improved centralized and cashless world system.

This is why we’ve seen eight Federal Reserve interest rate hikes since my election in 2016.

The International Financial elite WANT the American economy to collapse.  In fact, they NEED it to collapse, because out of chaos comes order.

This also explains why the globalists are now lusting after the guns of law-abiding American citizens.

My fellow Americans, the globalists cannot allow you to defend yourselves against the tyranny of the state. It’s because this would inhibit their plans of establishing their New World Technocracy.

In his 1991 book, “Behold a Pale Horse”, former United States Naval Intelligence Briefing Team member William Cooper warned of a secret initiative by our Central Intelligence Agency.  In this sinister plan, described by Cooper near three decades ago, a project called “Orion” was revealed whereby drugs and hypnosis were to be used on mental patients coerced into shooting children in schools. The plan was to inflame the antigun lobby and cause middle class Americans to beg their government “protectors” into obliterating the 2nd Amendment.

– Cooper, Milton William. (1991). “Behold a Pale Horse”, Light Technology Publications, page 225

And, look what’s happened since that time.  So many school shootings; and always occurring in similar ways.

First, there is some sort of an active drill, either scheduled or ongoing, and then shots are fired.

Within hours, the murderer is reported to be extremely troubled, if not insane, under psychiatric care and on psychotropic drugs, as several people claim they all “saw it coming”, or, in some instances, saying they are completely surprised that the person they knew could massacre so many.

Next, prophetic postings placed prior on social media by the shooter are revealed. Of course, these are never discovered until it’s too late.  Most commonly, an AR-type or similar semi-automatic will have been used with the necessary large-capacity magazines.  This is because both semi-automatics and large-capacity magazines are highly coveted targets in the sites of the politicians and globalists hiding behind their own armed security on Capitol Hill and at the United Nations.

And finally, we all know what happens next: The political establishment types like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and others, all circle like methamphetamine -addled chickens clucking about “doing something” so “it never happens again”.

My fellow Americans, don’t be fooled. This has happened according to plan and right on schedule.

In the aftermath of the Sandyhook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama issued 23 executive actions and proposed 19 legislative actions.  After the Virginia Tech shooting new rules were passed that allowed the Social Security Administration to provide information to the gun background check system of people with “mental disabilities”. After Vegas and Parkland, it was bump-stocks.

Do you see a pattern?

But even more sinister is how the captive media will use these types of crisis events to change the national conversation away from the Democratic Party embarrassments that perform poorly in focus group polling and in the media.

For example, immediately prior to the midterm elections last fall, Brett Kavanuagh’s Supreme Court nomination process revealed the Democrats as lying rats and fools. That was when the captive media quickly switched channels to show the slow-motion Latin American invasion.  But when that backfired as well, what happened next?  An anti-semitic white nationalist shot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh and a Republican, with “Make America Great Again” stickers on his white van, was arrested for mailing explosive devices to my most prominent political opponents.

REALLY, people?  REALLY?

Well, my point is that many Americans today are very gullible.  And predictable too. Or at least the loony liberals who swallow ersatz pretense more vigorously than starving vegans ingurgitating Tofurky on Thanksgiving.

So what happened next?  Of course, the Democrats won the House and here we are now with the longest government shutdown in American history.

Certainly, these insane loons would have had much more difficulty winning if not for the never-ending propaganda spewed forth by the captive media, the bias of Google searches, and the censorship of social media platforms.

But you see, my dear Americans, it’s no different than the way the Russian election-hacking lies have been propagandized over the real collusion of Spygate, Crossfire Hurricane, and FISA abuse.  The captive crony capitalist corporations ceaselessly shill their divisive deception around the world twice while the truth ties its shoes and gets slandered as fake news.

But in spite of all that, I am still here representing those who voted for me; and, even, those who didn’t vote for me.

This is why on Saturday, January 19, 2019 I announced my BRIDGE Act which included two offers to the Democrats in exchange for the $5.7 billion in funds for a border wall. First, I proposed an extension of DACA protections for Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and, secondly, I offered to extend the legal status of Temporary Protected Status holders.

Dear citizens, as you know, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said this was not a good faith effort on my part.

So, in turn, I ask you, my fellow Americans:  What are they offering? What have they brought to the negotiation table in good faith?

Nothing. Only more of the same.

As I stand before you now, in this majestic chamber, speaking on your behalf, addressing your concerns, your hopes, and your dreams – know that your nation is at a crossroads.

Since becoming your president, we’ve rapidly and radically changed the federal judiciary including two, soon to be three, new Supreme Court justices.  We’ve passed tax reform, repealed the individual mandate, and made progress in deregulation in spite of congressional gridlock.  We’ve cut government waste, defeated ISIS, and withdrew from the horrible and unfair Paris Climate Accord.

Over the last year alone, in 2018, we’ve replaced NAFTA with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Deal, ended Obama’s terrible Iran Nuclear agreement, confronted China, increased minority jobs, raised middle class wages, and achieved record oil production.

I have gone forward with a courageous vision and an honorable mission:  To make America great again for all Americans.

With the help of those in the United States Senate, we’ve appointed judges who’ll interpret the Constitution as it was written, and we’ve added more circuit court judges than anyone believed possible.

I’ve defended our Second Amendment and have acted to protect religious liberties.

I’ve made real efforts toward immigration reform – towards ending chain migration and the visa lottery.  And, now, I’m standing strong against the globalist powerbrokers who seek to deny patriotic Americans their wall; a more-than-symbolic line in the sand against southern invaders seeking to make the Democratic Party, and also Islam, great again.

Yes, ranchers have found Islamic prayer rugs on our southern border. This means while TSA agents are fondling your children at airport security gates, men with backpacks are entering this country unchecked, at the invitation of Democratic Party leaders like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

We need a wall on our southern border and, yes, it is a matter of national security.

So, my fellow Americans, I stand here, on your behalf, against those escaping their own shithole countries, in order to turn America into a shithole country like the ones they just left behind.

I stand against a Mainstream Media spewing enough shameless propaganda to cause George Orwell to blush in his grave.

I stand against Democrats and Neocon Republicans, alike, who daily lick the boots of their elite globalist masters while governing against the will of liberty-loving Americans.

I stand against those who are coming for your guns.

I stand against those who would kill your children, as well as other children around the world, in order to consign America to the ash heap of history; and for no other reasons than to satisfy their insatiable greed and lust for power.

I stand for the peace and harmony of the world’s sovereign nations.

Winning will not be easy. On the contrary, it will be hard.  Very hard.

To be sure, it will soon become even more difficult because it’s always darkest before the dawn.

Let the sunlight shine into the dark.  Right now, in this very moment, I am authorizing the release to the general public, all FBI and DoJ documentation having to do with the Russian investigation.

Let all of those on earth see how the bankers nearly stole the world.

My Fellow Americans:  It’s not over.  We’re just getting started.

Be assured the globalists will crash America’s economy prior to the next presidential election in 2020.  They will blame my trade policies and tax reforms.  But it will be the result of Fed tightening.  It’s always the Fed.  It’s always the bankers.

America will never be defined by the greed of international financiers, corporate oligarchs, servile politicians, or a slavish media.

You know who you are. Stay proud. Stay in the fight.

We will not lose.

By God almighty, we will not fail.

Thank you, and God bless America.

via RSS http://bit.ly/2Ho4cZg Tyler Durden