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Debt Rattle June 4 2026

Jun 042026
 
 June 4, 2026  Posted by at 9:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  Add comments


Herbert James Draper A Deep Sea Idyll 1902(?!)


• Trump Says He’d Like To Meet Iran’s New Supreme Leader (ZH)
• Iran’s War Math Still Doesn’t Add Up (David Manney)
• IRGC Says Trump Ongoing Talks Narrative ‘Not Reality (ZH)
• “Next Month, Next Quarter, Next Year” (Schwartz)
• Tulsi Gabbard Gives Us a Heartfelt Update on Her Husband’s Health (Anderson)
• Day 2: Rubio Enters a Hostile Clown Show (Sarah Anderson)
• Marco Rubio Went to Capitol Hill Today, and the Smackdown Was Brutal (Anderson)
• Marco Rubio Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee (CTH)
• Supreme Court AGAIN Rules in Favor of Alabama’s Pro-GOP Map (Salgado)
• Just How Crazy Mamdani’s Housing Scheme Really Is (Spencer)
• Why Is Ukraine So Eager To Start A New War? (Vitaly Ryumshin)
• SpaceX Reportedly Targets $135 IPO Price (ZH)
• Is This a Sign a Supreme Court Vacancy Is Coming Soon? (Margolis)
• COVID-19 Was Spread Intentionally on Multiple Continents (Korsgaard)

 


 

 


 


“After three days their military was virtually wiped out. And then if you read the New York Times you think they‘re doing fantastically.”

“It’s good if they‘re confused, and the Iranians are confused..”

• Trump Says He’d Like To Meet Iran’s New Supreme Leader (ZH)

After US-Israeli strikes assassinated the last longtime Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, President Trump says he would like to meet the new one. Trump said he “would like to meet” Iran’s Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, in an interview published Wednesday. In surprising remarks, Trump told the New York Post’s Pod Force One: “I would like to meet him, and we probably will meet at some point, depending on how it all works out.” Trump reasoned that “They’ve already agreed they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon” – suggesting this could be the basis for new direct diplomatic engagement.


And yet the Iranians have already for years consistently stated they were never intent on achieving a nuclear bomb. All recent high level US intelligence community assessments have tended to support the claim that Iran was not seeking a nuke before the attacks of June as well as March into April, under Operation Epic Fury. But Trump has also dismissed the intelligence, insisting that Iran was ‘very close’ before the US-Israeli interventions. While Trump is now expressing openness to meeting the Ayatollah – who is said to be in hiding and only having limited, low-tech communications with his officials, for fear of being tracked by the CIA or Mossad – the Supreme Leader himself has not voiced a desire for such a meeting.

Tehran at this moment doesn’t appear in the mood for ‘talking’ – and has lately said it is ready to let its military retaliation and response do the ‘negotiating’. The US President once again made claims about the text of the possible agreement. He claimed that “Iran has agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons.” –Bloomberg This seems another element of confused messaging from the White House, which has many times denounced the Ayatollah and his regime as ‘murderous’ and ‘evil’ and a ‘tyrant’ – and yet now Trump apparently wants to sit down with him for tea time or something.

Trump in the NY Post interview actually addressed the general atmosphere of confusion and contradictions from his administration, and from him personally. “It’s good if they‘re confused, and the Iranians are confused,” Trump stated. He added: “But no, it‘s just the way I am. It changes. I could leave here, I could give you an answer, and then in 20 minutes go into the Oval Office and I’ll realize my answer is now incorrect. Facts change and things change quickly.” In this context, he went on to defend the controversial decision to go to war in the first place, saying it could not have been delayed as Iran was on the brink of having a nuclear weapon.

“I couldn‘t, I know because this is too important. If I did that, they would have had a nuclear weapon. They would have had a nuclear weapon two weeks after the B-2 bomber struck. So if I did that, they would have had a nuclear weapon.” Trump: “He’s missing a lot of different parts.” He again in the interview called it a necessary “excursion” – saying, “They‘re not going to have a nuclear weapon, lots of other good things are going to happen.” From the interview, on the question of boots on the ground in Iran… “You don‘t need boots on the ground right now. We wiped out much of their military with just bombing.

After three days their military was virtually wiped out. And then if you read the New York Times you think they‘re doing fantastically.” Trump elsewhere addressed the controversial Axios report which said Trump ‘steamrolled’ Israeli PM Netanyahu in a phone call. Per Bloomberg, “Trump said he swore at Benjamin Netanyahu in a call this week as the president tried to deescalate fighting in Lebanon and keep peace talks with Iran on track.” “I did,” Trump said, acknowledging he chastised his ally. “I wouldn\t say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, ` you know.”

Read more …

“Tehran tried to create a spectacle, while Washington created a result.”

• Iran’s War Math Still Doesn’t Add Up (David Manney)

Reckless, stupid, crazy, or crazy like a fox. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps managed to check the first three boxes Tuesday night, but it never came close to checking the fourth.Iran fired ballistic missiles toward Kuwait and Bahrain, where American forces and regional partners help hold the line in a region Tehran keeps trying to bully. U.S. Central Command said two missiles fired toward Kuwait fell short or broke apart in flight, while U.S. and Bahraini forces intercepted three missiles aimed at Bahrain.American forces also knocked down Iranian drones threatening civilian shipping and struck an Iranian military ground-control station on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz. From the South China Morning Post:


Two Iranian missiles shot at Kuwait fell short or broke apart in-flight, several ballistic missiles aimed at regional targets failed and three missiles heading for Bahrain were intercepted, US Central Command said. Since the conflict began in late February, Iran has repeatedly attacked targets in Bahrain and Kuwait, where US military bases are located. Central Command said US forces also downed Iranian drones targeting civilian shipping in regional waters and carried out strikes on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz in response to the attempted attacks by Iran.

In a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency, the Revolutionary Guards claimed they had struck the US military installations in response to the strike on Qeshm Island. Give Tehran credit for one thing: it found a way to turn a missile attack into a regional safety demonstration. Kuwait and Bahrain got sirens, nervous families, air defenses, and another reminder that Iran doesn’t only threaten Americans when it lashes out; it threatens every neighbor forced to live near its tantrums. President Donald Trump has kept pressure on Iran while leaving room for talks, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers sanctions relief would require Iran to give up its nuclear activity.

Iran, meanwhile, keeps acting as if leverage means firing expensive hardware into the sky and hoping nobody notices when gravity, air defenses, and American readiness ruin their show. The latest episode followed claims from Iranian sources that Tehran had stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire. President Trump disputed those claims and said talks continued. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has tried to wrap Tehran’s demands in diplomatic language, but missiles aimed toward Gulf neighbors speak more clearly than any prepared statement. Any regime that pauses diplomacy to launch weapons tells the world which tools it trusts the most.

Iran’s leaders seem trapped in the same old loop; they provoke, threaten, launch, miss, deny, and then announce some grand moral victory to whoever still has the patience to listen. The missiles and drones fail, the bases remain, and the regime still expects applause from its propaganda machine. Somewhere in Tehran, somebody probably stamped the operation a success because the printer still had ink. Behind the noise sits a colder reality; Iran’s economy keeps bleeding. Its people keep paying for the ambition of clerics and commanders who confuse defiance with competence.

It’s been rough for the regime’s people; Iran’s Central Bank put year-over-year inflation at 77.2% in May, with daily and general needs up 113.8% from the year before. One would think that leaders with any semblance of sanity and common sense might want fewer missiles and more bread, but Tehran has never shown much talent for learning from the pain it causes its own people.American restraint also deserves notice. U.S. forces answered direct threats without turning the Gulf into a free-fire zone. They destroyed incoming threats, protected American troops, helped partners, guarded shipping, and hit the control node tied to Iran’s aggression.

Tehran tried to create a spectacle, while Washington created a result. Iran’s latest missile show revealed rage, not genius. The IRGC wanted fear and delivered embarrassment, also wanting leverage, and handed Gulf partners another reason to tighten ranks with the United States. It wanted to prove strength and instead proved that American defenses, allied coordination, and steady nerves still carry weight.Crazy like a fox requires cunning. Iran brought fireworks, failure, and the same old appetite for humiliation. It’s past time for the U.S. to put the regime out of its misery and help the Iranian people.

Read more …

IRGC tries to lead the conversation.

• IRGC Says Trump Ongoing Talks Narrative ‘Not Reality (ZH)

State media statement on Wednesday: IRGC-linked Tasnim claims Tehran has frozen all back-channel communication with Washington over Israeli operations in Lebanon, directly contradicting Trump’s assertion that messages are arriving daily from Iran. Tasnim: “Trump’s claim that Iran is confirming the issue is completely different from reality.” Iran’s Foreign Minister is meanwhile articulating that Iran will lay down some new red lines via military strikes, which he has dubbed ‘self-defense’ in nature…


President Donald Trump is still trying to present some bright spots, telling NY Post he believes the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will “resolve itself fairly quickly” and went so far to say he expects to meet with Iran’s supreme leader “at some point.”

Major Attack on Kuwait International Airport: One Dead, 63 Injured
Kuwait International Airport has come under Iranian missile and drone attack on Wednesday, in a significant strike that killed one person and left 63 people injured – according to the country’s health ministry, with several of the victims being seriously wounded. A passenger terminal was directly struck, damaging facilities including diplomatic missions at the airport, Kuwaiti authorities have said. Area hospitals conducted seven major emergency surgeries following the incident, underscoring that it was a mass casualty event.

Kuwaiti defense ministry spokesperson Brig Gen Saud Abdulaziz Al-Atwan described the attack as “criminal Iranian aggression which resulted in significant material damage to the building and injuries.” It confirmed engaging 13 missiles and 17 drones total which were fired from Iran. Civil aviation authorities immediately suspended traffic and transferred arriving flights to separate unaffected airports after “terminal one came under Iranian attacks causing casualties and damage.” The cross-border airport attack came after violent exchanges of fire between the US and Iran, which at first looked like limited one-off incidents, but then became an extended tit-for-tat.

The Overnight Catalyst: US-Iran Exchange Fire in Hormuz
Overnight, the US military deployed a Hellfire missile to disable a tanker attempting to bypass the American blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Following the intercept, American forces engaged in a wider kinetic exchange, stating they repelled subsequent Iranian reprisal strikes across the region and launched retaliatory attacks against military sites on Iran’s Qeshm Island.

In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed it launched a missile and drone barrage targeting the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain – an assertion that Central Command (CENTCOM) has explicitly denied. The IRGC had also sent several missiles on two US bases in Kuwait, which were said to have been intercepted.

GCC Blasts ‘Cowardly Attacks’
Serous damage and chaos at Kuwait International Airport: The Gulf Cooperation Council has in response slammed Iran for their “ongoing aggression” against member states Bahrain and Kuwait, denouncing the “cowardly attacks on civilian objects” which mark a “dangerous and unprecedented escalation.” But Tehran is not backing down and is instead issuing further hardline warnings and threats, per Al Jazeera citing state media:

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says retaliatory strikes “should serve as a lesson” for the United States after it fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Kuwait and Bahrain. While Iran’s foreign ministry is warning that the overnight US assault on Qeshm Island continues a severe breach of the ceasefire, President Trump is saying that “conversations between us have been going on continuously” – in reference to the Iranians.

Read more …

By Molly Schwartz, cross-asset macro strategist at Rabobank

• “Next Month, Next Quarter, Next Year” (Schwartz)

In a tense Congressional Hearing before the foreign relations committee, Marco Rubio defended the Trump Administration’s war in Iran, praising the success of US military operations destroying Iranian military and nuclear facilities. He also said that a deal with Iran could happen “today, tomorrow, or next week.” However, the recent military escalations between the US and Iran, the refusal of Israel and Hezbollah to cooperate, and reports of Pezeshkian’s resignation — leaving Iran in the hands of the IRGC — mean that a deal seems to lie more on the horizon of next month, next quarter, or maybe even next year.


Our base case that we see passage through the Strait disrupted for at least three more months still stands as we have yet to see any tangible headlines to suggest an accelerated timeline. The negotiations currently lie in Iran’s hands, as Bloomberg reports Iran’s Mehr news saying that “officials in Tehran are discussing their ‘final text’ to send to the US.” One might be hesitant to truly deem this text as “final” (if it even exists), as it may be more of a “final_v3.doc”, or a “final_FINAL_v6.doc”, or even a “final_FINAL_totallyforrealthistime.doc”.

The most promising resolution right now is that the IRGC remains in power, but enriched uranium is handed over to an executor, like China, though we have yet to see any confirmed updates that this is a feasible solution that Iran would actually agree to at this juncture. The extended 60-day ceasefire is still ongoing, while both the US and Iran are dedicated to keeping the Strait closed and exchanging fire. CENTCOM posted on X today to show off the USS Abraham Lincoln enforcing the US blockade, which has apparently redirected 122 vessels to “ensure compliance.”

Yesterday, Trump slammed Vulcan’s Hammer on the AI industry, signing an executive order, “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security.” The executive order lauds how the administration has “unleashed tremendous technological growth and economic investment in AI by slashing the bureaucratic constraints that the prior administration placed on America’s AI developers and researchers, and by instead encouraging AI innovation and accelerating responsible AI adoption across government and industry.”

Part of the executive order is intended to support the AI industry, seeking to utilize AI in federal cybersecurity programs, and utilize AI models (potentially Mythos?) to pinpoint vulnerabilities. However, the order also seeks to impose new restrictions, likely in response to the emergency meeting triggered by Mythos a few months ago. This includes lots of classified processes and frameworks to make sure that an evil AI model, the likes of that in a Philip K. Dick novel, doesn’t usurp the American government as the presiding force leading the world’s global hegemon (or more likely, making sure these models can’t be used to hack into sensitive government websites).

The process is referred to as a “voluntary framework” so that AI developers can submit their new models to the government 30 days before release to the public. Though the order also clarifies that “nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models.”

Read more …

“Both Tulsi and Abraham are in our prayers.”:

• Tulsi Gabbard Gives Us a Heartfelt Update on Her Husband’s Health (Anderson)

On Tuesday morning, outgoing Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard posted a video on social media to let her followers know that her husband, Abraham Williams, was having surgery. She appears to be standing outside the hospital.


“Good morning. We’re getting ready to head into the hospital now for Abraham’s surgery,” Gabbard says. “And I just wanted to take a moment to say ‘thank you’ with all of our hearts to all of you who have shared such beautiful messages and prayers and well wishes for Abraham. We’re truly humbled and so grateful to be surrounded by so much aloha from all of you during this tough time. Aloha.”

Here’s the video:

While Gabbard hasn’t posted an update since, her father, Mike Gabbard, who is a state senator in Hawaii, did post on X on Tuesday afternoon to let followers know that “Abraham is out of surgery and all went well.” He included a beautiful picture of the couple.

If you’ll recall, back in May, Gabbard announced that she was resigning from her position as DNI to spend more time with her husband who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. “Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she said after thanking the president for the opportunity. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”

Williams, who keeps a fairly low profile, is actually a cinematographer, photographer, and filmmaker, and the two met in 2012 when he did some work for her congressional campaign. Both are avid surfers, and he eventually proposed to her on a surfboard. They were married in April 2015 in Hawaii.

He’s been by her side through her time in Congress, multiple political campaigns, and her time spent in the Donald Trump administration. She calls him her “rock” and best friend.

“Abraham has been my rock throughout our eleven years of marriage — standing steadfast through my deployment to East Africa on a Joint Special Operations mission, multiple political campaigns and now my service in this role,” she wrote in her resignation letter last month. “His strength and love have sustained me through every challenge. I cannot in good conscience ask him to face this fight alone while I continue in this demanding and time-consuming position.”

Personally, I have to add that I’ve been a big Tulsi fan for years — she won me over in 2019 when she owned Kamala Harris during a primary debate when they were both running for president. I hate that we are losing her as a public servant for now, but I am glad she is able to take the time to support her husband as he fights this battle. Both Tulsi and Abraham are in our prayers.

Read more …

Not his first clown rodeo…

• Day 2: Rubio Enters a Hostile Clown Show (Sarah Anderson)

“Is this the Foreign Affairs Committee, or is this a circus?” That quote from Secretary of State Marco Rubio pretty much sums up what happened on Wednesday morning when he testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the FY27 Department of State Budget Request. In case you missed it, this is Rubio’s second day of hearings on Capitol Hill, and what he’s had to deal with so far today makes yesterday look tame. These Congress critters aren’t serious people. On Tuesday, I joked that it’s more like “Democrats, who were supposed to be asking questions, talked at Rubio and complained about everything Donald Trump does without giving the secretary a chance to respond.”


Wednesday was more of that — this isn’t even a hearing, Rubio said — but the “questioning” went beyond foreign policy, whether it was the lady criticizing the secretary’s shoes or the guy playing video upon video of Donald Trump’s so-called “cognitive decline.” I’ve never seen anything like it. Again, I’m just going to have to let the video clips speak for themselves because I don’t even know how to explain it anymore than saying “Congress is a clown show.”

Where to even start? Here’s Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.) getting mad that Rubio didn’t mention Ukraine in his opening remarks and talking to the secretary like he’s a toddler. For what it’s worth, Keating was one of the first to speak, and I guess this set the tone for the entire “circus.” This is only a short clip, but there was a lot of yelling.

Next, I’ll go with the most ludicrous of interactions: Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) spending his entire five minutes playing videos of Trump “sleeping” during his “North Korea-style” Cabinet meetings and proof of his “cognitive decline,” and Rubio’s rightfully incredulous response. The secretary joked that Lieu fancies himself a medical expert and went on to explain how the president has more energy than people much younger than him and how he calls him at all hours of the night. Pop your popcorn. This one’s good:

Then there was Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) who felt the need to use her time talking about who won the 2020 election and… Rubio’s shoes. Seriously.

One congresswoman said her bit, which included calling Rubio the “overlord” of Venezuela, and then she simply got up and left before he could respond. Here’s his response:

As I’m writing this, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Penn.) is calling Rubio a “comedy show” because he’s trying to answer her questions. This is giving me a headache — I can only imagine how the secretary feels. I’d share some of the actual substance that was discussed, but, well, there wasn’t much. With few exceptions, the only time Rubio actually got to answer any questions was when the Republican members of the House allowed him some of their time to do so. It was pretty shameful.

The hearing is actually still going on, and there’s another one on Wednesday afternoon — I’ll take one for the team and watch that too and bring you any noteworthy sound bites — but I think this gives you an idea of how things have gone. I’ll end on a fun note. Rubio continued his run of using rap lyrics during his public appearances. Today, it was a line from Kanye West’s “Stronger.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t take my previous advice and use “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” but I was still amused.

Read more …

Much more coming.,.

• Marco Rubio Went to Capitol Hill Today, and the Smackdown Was Brutal (Anderson)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made his way back to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs on the FY27 Department of State Budget Request. It went as these things usually do: Democrats, who were supposed to be asking questions, talked at Rubio and complained about everything Donald Trump does without giving the secretary a chance to respond. And he, as he usually does, handled it with intelligence, wit, and… actual information with context.


Honestly, it’s almost boring at this point — I believe Rubio thinks so too. After finishing his opening remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he ended with, “So anyways, I look forward to your questions. At least that’s what it says here. I’m not sure if I really look forward to your questions. I look forward to probably half your questions.” A couple of things I noted: The Democrats must have gotten together and decided they’d all coordinate when talking about Iran. Nearly every single one referred to it as “Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran.” (You can’t see me, but I’m rolling my eyes.)

I also noted that these Democrats love to talk about how many people have allegedly died due to the end of USAID and the restructuring of how we handle humanitarian aid around the world — for what it’s worth, their numbers are false — but they seem to turn a blind eye to the people who die at the hands of the regimes in countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, as well as at the hands of narco-terrorists, cartels, and criminal groups around the globe, and get mad that the United States is intervening to stop this. You can’t have it both ways, but I digress. Let’s get to a few highlights from the hearings.

The biggest smackdown of the day was when Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) decided to accuse Rubio of partying the night away while JD Vance was working on negotiations with Iran. She kept talking about him being at some “party” with President Trump. Rubio asked her what party she was referring to, but she couldn’t quite come up with an answer and continued with her accusations, asserting that while he was at this party, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff — two people who were never confirmed for this by the U.S. Congress, she says — were doing his job. The secretary did not take that sitting down.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! I know your staff wrote up this cute statement for TikTok, but it’s not true. And it’s not real. That’s not what happened,” Rubio said. He explained that he was not at a party; he was on the phone constantly with all parties involved and “co-located with the president in the midst of a high stakes negotiation so that I could immediately inform him about events occurring halfway around the world.”

For what it’s worth, I believe she’s referring to the UFC fight in Miami. Trump made an appearance, and Rubio was there with some of his children, but it was widely reported that the secretary spent most of the night on the phone and keeping the president updated on what was going on in the Middle East. Here’s the video. This exchange is a must-watch:

I’m not going to get too deep into everything the Congress critters talked about, but I do want to highlight a few more important exchanges, like this one in which Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) made up a bunch of stuff about Iran that was giving me Kamala Harris word salad vibes.

And then there was Sen. Chris “Margaritas in El Salvador” Van Hollen, who seemed oddly nervous during the entire thing — possibly because he remembers how Rubio owned him last time they did this. If you’ll recall, he told Rubio he regretted voting for him, and Rubio replied, “Your regret voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job.” Van Hollen started out by saying that Trump’s entire foreign policy was a “dumpster fire” and then went on to spew a bunch of leftists lies about, well, pretty much everything. Anyway, here are a couple of their exchanges for your viewing pleasure.

Something else Rubio tried to hammer home to these people during these hearings is that the State Department is doing what’s in the United States’ best interests. It’s all common sense, but as we know, many Democrats lack that. I’ll leave you with a few of those videos.

Read more …

” Just like Q-Anon advocate Mike Flynn recently taking a job that pays him $100,000/month to lobby for the Republic of Srpska (aka ‘Serb Republic’..”

• Marco Rubio Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee (CTH)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The U.S. Senate as a whole and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee specifically, have lost millions of dollars wealth for themselves and their families as a result of Rubio eliminating USAID. As a consequence, while they cannot publicly showcase that specific motive for opposition, the committee as a whole is not happy about losing a substantial portion of their stakeholder interests.


The families of all the senate committee members exist inside the think tanks, NGOs, political orgs, PACs and lobbyist companies for various foreign governments. Just like Q-Anon advocate Mike Flynn recently taking a job that pays him $100,000/month to lobby for the Republic of Srpska (aka ‘Serb Republic’, for advice, counsel and introductions), so too all the family members of the senate leverage their DC connections to foreign governments for personal gain.

Thus, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now being questioned by the very Senators he has defunded. Yes, Michael Flynn signed an agreement within the Trump administration not to lobby for foreign governments; but that was only a paper promise. That’s one of the reasons why it is more than a little silly for people to mention Flynn’s name as a potential DNI nomination.

Read more …

“.. we can’t be sure the activist District Court won’t try again and waste more time and money.”

• Supreme Court AGAIN Rules in Favor of Alabama’s Pro-GOP Map (Salgado)

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 2 intervened again to confirm its previous ruling that will allow Alabama to move forward with a map eliminating racial gerrymandering. In Allen v. Milligan, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that Alabama is right to redraw its congressional map to eliminate race-based districts, just as it ruled in Louisiana v. Callais and Allen v. Caster. The Voting Rights Act does not allow race-based gerrymandering, the Court previously ruled, and that still holds true in spite of an activist District Court.


The reality is that judicial activists are mad because the map is likely to favor Republicans once it is drawn constitutionally and not based on voters’ skin color. Democrats have spent decades convincing many black Americans that Republicans are racist (when the opposite is more true), and now Dems are seeing that effort backfire in more than one state. This is a purely partisan fight. SCOTUS cited Callais in its Allen v. Milligan ruling, as that was the original decision this year clarifying how to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Below are excerpts from the majority ruling:

After Callais, we vacated District Court injunctions that prevented the State of Alabama from using a congressional map that it enacted in 2023. See Allen v. Caster, 608 U. S. ___ (2026). The District Court had held that the State’s map violated §2 because it had only one district in which black voters were a majority and did not include an additional ‘[b]lack-opportunity’ district… Two weeks after we vacated its injunction, the District Court entered another injunction on largely the same grounds…

The District Court also failed to follow our instruction in Callais that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns… The State has also made a strong showing of irreparable harm and that the equities and public interest favor it. We have repeatedly cautioned that lower federal courts should not ‘alter the election rules on the eve of an election.’ So this was all a waste of taxpayer money again to make the Supreme Court reiterate what it already ruled.

To be honest, if Republicans would simply comply with the law instead of bowing to every idiotic, anti-law ruling from activist judges, it would save vast amounts of time and money. The reason judges have been issuing outrageous rulings thick and fast recently is that they know Republicans will even ignore the Constitution itself to comply with the court rulings. The GOP keeps assuring Americans they have to act thus or they’ll “set a bad precent” for Democrats, but after two centuries of Democrats violating every law and court ruling they wish, that’s not a convincing argument.

In Alabama’s case, the Supreme Court had already ruled for the new map — so why on earth would the contrary decision of a District Court matter? Fortunately, the Supreme Court rightly intervened again, but we can’t be sure the activist District Court won’t try again and waste more time and money.

Read more …

If there’s one place that can claim the title Capital of Capitalism, it’s New York City.

So of course it draws in the opposite too, becaue opposites attract. But they do not match.

• Just How Crazy Mamdani’s Housing Scheme Really Is (Spencer)

They voted for him, and so they have him, but that doesn’t mean that even New Yorkers are thrilled to see the systematic destruction of what was once the greatest city in the world. More of them voted for the young, handsome, dynamic candidate than for the sleazy retread corruptocrat Andrew Cuomo or the clownish Curtis Sliwa, but that doesn’t mean that New Yorkers are collectively ready to don Mao jackets and start singing the praises of the five-year plan. Mamdani’s audacious scheme to socialize New York City housing is already coming in for severe criticism.


One sign that some New Yorkers are aware of what Mamdani is really all about was an unsigned editorial in the New York Post on Monday. The Post Editorial Board wrote that Mamdani’s “‘Block by Block’ plan to build 200,000 subsidized apartments entails a lot of handwaving, magical thinking and reliance on ‘responsible stewards’ . . who have been failing to manage the real-estate portfolios they already have.” Mamdani promises that “if ‘community land trusts, nonprofits or even the tenants themselves’ control the city’s housing stock, these miracle-workers will ‘expand New Yorkers’ access to safe, stable, and affordable homes.’”

However, the Post points out that “programs that do all this are so old and tired that Mamdani’s Gen Z policy experts appear never to have heard of them, maybe because the experiments had already failed when they were building fantasy housing projects out of Legos.”

Indeed. If socialists learned from experience, there would be no more socialists. There is system on the planet that has been tried so many times and failed just as many times, and yet constantly gains new young adherents who don’t know how bad socialist regimes really have been, or would care if they did know, because in their youthful arrogance, they’re sure they’re going to do right this time what their elders kept doing wrong. Mamdani is going to be the world’s first socialist to build a society. Sure, and he is also going to sprout wings and fly to Mars.

Mamdani announced, of course, that he planned to seize rental properties from landlords who have not maintained them properly — in the judgment of none other than Mamdani and his cronies. He then intends to hand over ownership of those properties to “community land trusts” and “non-profits.”

Oh yeah, that’ll fix everything. As foredoomed as this idea is as any sort of real solution to New York’s housing problems, it has long been high on Mamdani’s to-do list. Intifada on the Hudson: The Selling of Zohran Mamdani shows how he has made socialized housing schemes a centerpiece of his program ever since he entered politics. “People often ask,” Mamdani wrote on Dec. 3, 2020, “what socialists mean when we say we want to ‘decommodify’ housing. Basically, we want to move away from a situation where most people access housing by purchasing it on the market & toward a situation where the state guarantees high-quality housing to all.”

One of Mamdani’s leading critics, New York City Council member Vickie Paladino, explains what’s really going on here: “The properties will then be turned over to nonprofits. This is no small detail. This is in fact the whole point. The idea here is to build up Zohran’s DSA-connected nonprofits with a multibillion-dollar portfolio of hard assets — New York City real estate. This portfolio could theoretically reach into the hundreds of billions or even the trillions, depending on how aggressive they get. Now these highly political nonprofits would become the new land barons of New York, complete with all the political clout, leverage, and reach that goes along with it. It would be a true nightmare scenario.”

Mamdani’s housing scheme would thus be a great leap forward for securing socialist control of New York City for the indefinite future. Also, once his Marxist comrades control New York City’s housing market, who will actually get the housing? Not political undesirables, i.e., patriots. Instead, the lucky recipients will be Muslim migrants, including an unknowable number of criminals and jihadis, and others who will help the leftist/Islamic alliance stay in power.

It will all work wonderfully — until, that is, Mamdani and his friends run out of other people’s money. The Post points out that “Community Development Corporations, non-profit groups that own and manage ‘deeply affordable’ apartments, have been around for decades, and are barely managing to keep themselves afloat as it is. CDCs operate more than 200,000 subsidized city housing units, and face the same problems as private landlords: rising costs (especially insurance), unsustainable debt, deferred maintenance and nonpaying tenants. Turns out that removing the ‘profit’ line from a balance sheet by getting rid of private ownership doesn’t repeal the laws of math when costs run higher than income.”

It isn’t going to be any different this time around. New Yorkers who have already caught on to Mamdani can only hope that enough of their fellow city residents will catch on to tbe truth about this smooth socialist before he does too much damage.

Read more …

“Why Kiev is reviving fears of a northern front despite little evidence of military preparations..”

Ukraine has become a money making casino. First for Zelensky and his gang, but now for politicians from everywhere.

They need one thing for sure: war. So they can order weapons, real or not

• Why Is Ukraine So Eager To Start A New War? (Vitaly Ryumshin)

For the first time in a long while, Belarus has again found itself at the center of the Ukraine conflict. For more than a month, Vladimir Zelensky has been warning Ukrainians about a supposed threat from the north. Minsk, he claims, is preparing to enter the war and he’s even threatened Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with either a pre-emptive strike or a kidnapping in the style of Nicolas Maduro. The rhetoric has now reached the point where Zelensky has ordered preparations for the circular defense of cities in Ukraine’s northern regions, including Kiev itself. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron has called Lukashenko for the first time since 2022, apparently to persuade him not to enter the conflict.


The problem is that nothing visible is happening on the Belarusian side of the border. There’s no mobilization and no unusual concentration of Belarusian forces and no redeployment of Russian units. The only recent event that could be stretched into a military signal was last week’s Russian-Belarusian nuclear exercise. But even that took place in the Osipovichi district, in the center of Belarus, and was more about strategic deterrence than any ground operation against Ukraine. The more obvious question is why Lukashenko would want to join the military operation at all. Such a move would be wholly out of character for him and would run against the geopolitical role he has tried to carve out for Belarus.

Lukashenko has always sought to preserve room for maneuver and he kept doing so after 2020, when he became de facto persona non grata in the West, and even after the conflict escalated in 2022. In the Ukrainian crisis, Belarus has remained largely a passive observer and that arrangement has suited Moscow. For Russia, he’s a valuable diplomatic asset, not a military one. Of course, a repeat of the February 2022 thrust towards Kiev may sound tempting in theory. But with all due respect to Belarus, its army is not suited to the role of battering ram, especially in conditions of modern warfare dominated by drones and constant surveillance. Could the reverse be true? Perhaps Zelensky is preparing to strike Belarus first, overthrow Lukashenko and open a second front against Russia.

His pointed invitation to the fugitive opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya gives this theory a certain surface logic, but the military reality makes it deeply implausible. The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ last major offensive operation was the incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region. To mount it, Kiev gathered around 30,000 troops, weakening its positions in Donbass and losing large areas there as a result. Even then, the operation failed to produce a decisive strategic outcome. A serious attack on Belarus would require far more resources. Since then, Ukraine’s army has weakened further and its present ceiling is local counter-attacks in Donbass, so it’s in no position to open a major new front.

Nor would it make strategic sense. Any escalation with Belarus would risk creating another 1,000-kilometer front stretching across Ukraine’s northern flank, with direct threats to Kiev. However odious the Kiev regime may be, it can’t fail to understand this. That’s why the current escalation around the ‘Belarusian question’ should be understood politically, not militarily.

The timing is telling. Zelensky began to raise the alarm just as relations between Minsk and Washington showed signs of thawing. In March, the US eased sanctions on Belarus and Washington spoke of reopening its embassy. There was even talk of a possible Lukashenko visit to America and a meeting with Donald Trump. For Kiev, this is dangerous because Zelensky may fear that the eloquent Belarusian leader could charm Trump and persuade him to increase pressure on Ukraine to bring the conflict to an end. Lukashenko might also secure further sanctions relief, potentially turning Belarus into a hub for the transit of American goods to Russia.

From Kiev’s point of view, that scenario must be prevented. Hence the effort to present Minsk as an imminent threat, because if Belarus can be cast once again as Russia’s military accomplice rather than as a possible diplomatic channel, any US-Belarusian rapprochement becomes far harder to sustain.

Domestic politics may also be driving Zelensky’s rhetoric. Since late April, the noose of a corruption scandal has been tightening around his circle and the latest revelations from the ‘Mindich tapes’ have led to formal charges against Zelensky’s closest aide, Andrey Yermak. For the first time, the name ‘Vova’ has appeared in case materials, alongside the mysterious ‘R1’, the anonymous owner of one of the mansions in the ‘Dynasty’ housing cooperative, where, by a happy coincidence, Zelensky’s closest friends had planned to live. I

n such conditions, inflating a new military threat is politically useful as it allows Zelensky to tell Ukrainians that the gravest crisis is still ahead, and that he remains the horse that cannot be changed midstream. But the old ‘Russian card’ is wearing thin in the fifth year of hostilities. Ukrainians are tired, mobilized society is fraying, and endless emergency politics no longer works as it once did. So now Kiev is reaching for the ‘Belarus card’. Will it work? Probably not. At most, it may buy Zelensky a little time, a little fear, and a little more room to maneuver, but as a strategy, it’s thin gruel. Or to put it more appropriately, it is worthy only of a carrot, and a dry one at that.

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“..As Morningstar says valuation should be halved..”

• SpaceX Reportedly Targets $135 IPO Price (ZH)

Last week, Elon Musk called Bloomberg’s “SpaceX Said to Cut IPO Value” story “false,” marking the latest clash between Musk and the MSM over coverage of his companies. Reuters has released a new report, which, based on sources, says SpaceX is planning an IPO at a price of $135 per share, aiming to raise a record $75 billion by selling about 555.6 million shares at an estimated $1.75 trillion valuation. SpaceX’s roadshow is expected to begin Thursday, with a potential Nasdaq debut under the ticker SPCX on June 12. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA, Citigroup, and JPMorgan are leading the deal.


Sources said the IPO is “structured as an all-primary offering,” which means the proceeds will go to SpaceX rather than existing shareholders. Musk will reportedly be subject to a 366-day lock-up period. At a $1.75 trillion valuation and projected 2025 booking revenue of $18.67 billion, SpaceX would trade at roughly 94 times trailing sales. The company also reported a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025, compared with a prior-year profit, with Starlink internet as the major profit engine.

Beyond Reuters’ reporting, there was a separate report from Morningstar analysts stating that SpaceX’s valuation should be less than half of the $1.75 trillion figure, and closer to $780 billion. Morningstar equity analyst Nicolas Owens wrote in a note that his team “doesn’t see Grok as one of the leading AI labs today,” adding: “We think the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have opportunities to buy the stock at more attractive levels after the IPO.” Polymarket odds for “SpaceX IPO closing market cap above ___ ?” currently stand at 89% for a market cap above $1.8 trillion.

Read more …

“..when a growing cohort of conservative judges is crafting opinions designed to get attention, it tells me they sense something is in the air ..”

• Is This a Sign a Supreme Court Vacancy Is Coming Soon? (Margolis)

Speculation about a Supreme Court vacancy has been running hot pretty much since Trump returned to office. With midterm elections this fall potentially reshaping President Donald Trump’s grip on the judiciary, much of the chatter has centered on Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. However, sources close to both say neither has plans to retire this year. Allegedly.


Here’s the thing: Supreme Court justices rarely telegraph a retirement months in advance. When a justice decides to step down, the announcement tends to arrive quietly and suddenly, usually in late spring or early summer as the Court’s term winds down. Denials at this point aren’t proof. Here’s what might tell you considerably more: Conservative appellate judges across the country are behaving as though a vacancy is imminent.

A growing number of federal appeals court judges are issuing high-profile opinions that legal observers describe openly as auditions for the Supreme Court. The tactics are calculated and unmistakable. Some judges are using sharp language, adopting rhetoric designed to catch President Trump’s attention. Others are recording video dissents, a media-savvy move that ensures their opinions travel well beyond the courthouse and into conservative legal circles, including the White House orbit.

Legal scholars watching this pattern say the strategy is deliberate. According to them, these judges understand that Trump values a combative style and public loyalty, and they are writing to reflect those priorities, in hopes of getting noticed by Trump and those advising him before the next vacancy materializes. If an announcement happens, it will be near the close of the current SCOTUS term, which concludes in roughly one month. Inside conservative legal circles, the working assumption is that Trump would move quickly. He reshaped the federal judiciary at a historic rate during his first term and shows no sign of slowing down.

The judges who are positioning themselves for that moment know the terrain. Their opinions zero in on subjects that resonate with Trump’s base, like immigration and cultural disputes, where the federal courts have become a central battleground. Every emphasis in these rulings carries intent. Conservative legal organizations that helped vet Trump’s earlier nominees are tracking this body of work and refining informal shortlists for the next opening. None of this means that a vacancy will happen, but it sure seems like judges are expecting it. Perhaps they know more than we do? It’s very possible.

And, should a vacancy take place this year, there’s very little that Democrats can do to stop it. The elimination of the judicial filibuster removed any real pressure on a Trump nominee to appeal to senators across the aisle. Republican presidents can now prioritize ideological conviction over bipartisan palatability, and judges angling for a nomination understand that calculus perfectly. As for the midterms, while it seems likely that Republicans will hold the Senate, it’s still very much a coin flip at this point. Hopefully, Trump will get the opportunity to secure at least one more seat on the Supreme Court while he still can.

Losing Alito or Thomas will be difficult, but securing a conservative majority for another generation is critical. I have no idea what will happen, but when a growing cohort of conservative judges is crafting opinions designed to get attention, it tells me they sense something is in the air. I’m starting to think that Trump’s next Supreme Court pick may come sooner than most people expect, because the competition for that spot is already well underway.

Read more …

Anyone seen Fauci lately?

• COVID-19 Was Spread Intentionally on Multiple Continents (Korsgaard)

The COVID-19 pandemic is long over. The headlines have shifted to a relentless cycle of bloody invasions and political scandals. It is very tempting to file the years of lockdowns, vaccine tyranny, and assaults on freedom into a folder of “unfortunate history” and never open it again. Most have. But the victims and a few researchers continue to ask questions and demand answers.


How many victims were there? Using U.N. population data, I have calculated that the pandemic years were associated with 20.5 million excess deaths. However, the total “growth loss” was a staggering 32 million people, as fewer babies were born than projected. This makes the pandemic comparable to World War I, which incurred a cost of 15 to 22 million deaths. But while historians have meticulously documented every bullet and bayonet of the Great War, the origin of the pandemic still remains a mystery.

First, we were fed a narrative about the novel coronavirus having a natural origin. For good reasons, many suspected that this was a limited hangout. Then came the second story: catastrophic incompetence—careless Chinese scientists allowed the virus to escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the rest is history. Unlike the narrative of a natural origin, there was some circumstantial evidence supporting the incompetence hypothesis, and many accepted it and moved on.

In my new book, The New September 11th: Solving the COVID-19 Pandemic, I present evidence that the virus was indeed made in a lab, but it did not leak by accident. Instead, suppressed genomic and epidemiological evidence strongly suggests that the virus was released on different continents within months of one another.

What is some of that evidence? In the book, I rigorously analyze all the data and systematically dismantle the false narratives, misdirections, and cover-ups by both Beijing and Washington. To provide the full context in an article is impossible, which is why I wrote the book. However, I will now explain the most important evidence in simple terms and in as few words as possible.

In late December 2019, molecular biologists identified and sequenced the coronavirus for the first time in Wuhan. The strain was young—meaning that it had only circulated for a few weeks [1]. Whether a lab leak or a spillover event at the wet market gave rise to the virus, they are both single-point origin hypotheses: the idea that the virus emerged in one location before spreading across the globe [..]

If the single-point origin holds water, every variant found across the globe is a direct descendant of the original parental strain in Wuhan. But this is not the case. Independent research groups from Italy, Brazil, Morocco, Angola, France, and others have conducted their own investigations into archived biological samples, identifying old strains of the virus long before it had even emerged in Wuhan. This is evidence of multiple viral introductions, a scenario that I have named the Parallel Release in Multiple Environments (P.R.I.M.E.) hypothesis. Here is a brief summary of one of the studies:

While the pandemic was well underway, researchers at the University of Milan began a retrospective search for the virus within their archives [2]. They were prompted by previous studies that had identified the virus before the official timeline and a mysterious increase in a rash now recognized as a COVID-19 symptom. Knowing that pre-pandemic research is a highly controversial matter, the researchers took extreme precautions to avoid cross-contamination and false positives. They, for instance, used 183 control samples (which never turned positive) and performed every stage of the study in physically separate laboratories in a facility that was free from the coronavirus.

Shockingly, multiple pre-pandemic samples were positive for RNA and/or antibodies. The earliest case dated back to September 12, 2019—an eight-month-old boy from Milan whose urine and serum samples were positive for the spike protein and two types of antibodies. This is long before the virus emerged in Wuhan. The researchers also sequenced the genetic material and confirmed that nine of their patients had indeed been infected with the novel coronavirus in 2019. Most shockingly, the strains were old, not young as they were in Wuhan months later. A technique called molecular clock analysis showed that the virus present in Italy had been circulating since mid-summer 2019.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle June 4 2026

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  • June 4, 2026 at 9:37 am #241951
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    Herbert James Draper A Deep Sea Idyll 1902(?!) • Trump Says He’d Like To Meet Iran’s New Supreme Leader (ZH) • Iran’s War Math Still Doesn’t Add Up (D
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 4 2026]

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