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Debt Rattle August 10 2026

Aug 102026
 
 August 10, 2026  Posted by at 10:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  Add comments


Marc Chagall The Cattle Dealer 1912


• Trump Says “We Are Low Keying It” With Iran (ZH)
• Mojtaba Khamenei In Good Health, Video With Him Is Old — Iranian Source (TASS)
• Media Fawning of Senate Candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed Begins (CTH)
• Abdul El-Sayed Makes a Mess on ‘Meet the Press’ (Tim O’Brien)
• Democratic Leaders Embrace the “Fine People” of the DSA (Turley)
• Tucker for President? MAGA Rebels Declare Independence From Israel (Amar)
• What ‘America First’ Really Means (J.B. Shurk)
• Europe Was Once Bigger Than The US Economy. What Happened? (ZH)
• Who Will Judge Anthony Fauci? (Pete McArdle)
• She Called Fauci a Sociopath on CNN, and the Panel Went Nuts (Matt Margolis)
• Trump Has Squandered Republicans’ Typical Advantages In 2 Key Areas (CNN)
• The Unintended Consequences of the Digital Revolution (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya -vs- Margaret Brennan (CTH)
• Abolish the District of Columbia’s Clown Courts (Clarice Feldman)

 


 

 


 


Has the US lost? You’d almost think so.

• Trump Says “We Are Low Keying It” With Iran (ZH)

Iran’s IRGC is holding the line, reiterating that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen to international shipping only after the United States accepts all of its conditions, which we outlined previously. Also, on Saturday Iran’s army spokesman Amir Akraminia stated that Iran’s new protocols in the Strait of Hormuz are “irreversible” and shall not be thwarted by the US. “The United States has no choice but to accept the existing situation; otherwise, it will incur costs far greater than those it has faced in the past,” Akraminia said.


On Sunday, a fresh report in The Wall Street Journal states the obvious – that President Trump has fewer and fewer options and is being squeezed, with any opportunity to declare ‘victory’ and make swift exit more elusive than ever, given Washington would have to make huge compromises, including lifting sanctions and paying war compensation to Tehran. Nearly six months ago when the war started, many non-interventionist critics accurately predicted the quagmire and catch-22 the US now finds itself in.

“For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said,” WSJ writes.

“But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things,” the report adds.

In a parallel vein to this scaled-back, lower grade conflict, President Trump has freshly told Axios in a brief interview that “We are low keying it” in the Persian Gulf. This comes after a week ago he called off ‘planned’ ‘harder’ attacks on Iran, which may have been just a bluff all along. Tehran didn’t blink, and it continues to press for maximal demands – as if to put ‘maximum pressure’ right back on Washington.

“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump claimed. According to more from Axios:

He stressed that Iran “is in very bad shape” economically and has no money to pay its troops. The U.S. naval blockade has exacerbated the Iranian regime’s economic crisis, Trump said. At the same time, Trump said that with oil down to slightly over $75 a barrel, U.S. consumers are feeling less pain from the war. Ironically, this is simply a return to administration talking points which defended the early days and weeks of a war that officials constantly touted would be ‘swift’ and limited.

The US hope was that Iran and its economy would just collapse from within, the masses would take to the streets, and the government of the Ayatollah would be overthrown. This has proven delusional time and again.

Instead, what we see happening is Washington being forced to move its bases back from front line areas in the Gulf, and officials including Trump himself constantly retreating from stated goals, objectives, and red lines. This is on display once again in the Sunday Axios interview:

Read more …

There are no security reasons that force them to show old videos. Pure BS.

• Mojtaba Khamenei In Good Health, Video With Him Is Old — Iranian Source (TASS)

A video of Mojtaba Khamenei that was earlier released by the mass media had been shot before he became Iran’s Supreme leader, but he is now in good health and avoids appearing in public due to security considerations, an Iranian source told TASS. “This is an old video. It was made before he became [Supreme] leader,” he said, adding that his health condition is now quite good. “He is in good health and the only reason why he is not seen in public is security reasons,” he stressed.


Earlier, the Iranian Mehr agency released a video featuring Mojtaba Khamenei talking to a group of people who are listening to him attentively. Neither the date nor the venue of the event were indicated. Mojtaba Khamenei became Iran’s Supreme leader after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in a missile attack after the United States and Israel’s aggression against Iran.

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Democrats seek Muslims to engender power.

You will have a president named Mohamed. And that’s the end of America.

• Media Fawning of Senate Candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed Begins (CTH)

Extreme leftists and white, female, overeducated, urban communists have one primary prism: how Obama-ish is their candidate? Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama are supported by the Muslim Brotherhood directly. Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama campaigned for Senate in the mid-term election (BO ’06, ES ’26), and both Barack Obama and El-Sayed planned to run for higher office in 2nd year of their freshman term as senator.


The media now begin their fawning endeavor as the Muslim Brotherhood backed Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed tries to moderate himself in the image of Barack Hussein Obama. I find it a little revealing that El-Sayed’s wife is a doctor who refuses to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients (cash only), as El-Sayed campaigns on Medicare for all. Of course, don’t look for the media to point this out during questioning. Notice also the Middle East nations that El-Sayed criticizes (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan) are the Mid-East nations who have pushed back or banned the Muslim Brotherhood. This is very revealing for those who walk the political deep weeds. By the way, he’s a paper doctor; a Phd, not an MD. WATCH:

[Transcript] – KRISTEN WELKER: And joining me now is Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. Dr. El-Sayed, welcome to Meet the Press.

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Thanks for having me.

KRISTEN WELKER: Thank you so much for being here and congratulations. Let’s talk about your victory this week. You narrowly defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens. And when you actually add up all of the votes, the vote totals that went to Stevens and Mallory McMorrow, a majority of voters actually ended up voting for candidates who are more moderate than you. So how do you win over those voters who voted for someone else?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, thank you, Kristen. Really, we’re just grateful for everybody who participated. And the overwhelming recognition of the vote tallies is that 500,000 more Democrats voted than did Republicans in that election. And if that happens, we are going to win in a landslide. Now I know that we had it out with a very tough primary. There were a lot of issues that were discussed and differences that were identified and fixated on. But I will tell you this, that all of us agree that our differences are far smaller than what we agree on.

And what we agree on is that Donald Trump has been an existential threat to our democracy. He is costing us jobs. He is costing us more at almost every aspect of our lives, whether it’s our gas, our groceries, or our health care, and that Mike Rogers is going to be nothing more than a rubber stamp on Donald Trump’s disastrous economic and foreign policies. And so this is an opportunity for us to come together to mend fences, to build together the coalition that is going to defeat Mike Rogers in November and defeat Trumpism over the next two years.

KRISTEN WELKER: Well, let me ask you about some news that we’re learning this morning. Local outlets reporting that you spoke to former President Barack Obama on the phone. I know you’re not going to give me every detail of the call. But what was the crux of his message to you, Dr. El-Sayed?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, Kristen, you’re right. I like to keep private conversations private. But it was a really warm and inspiring conversation. I’ve got to be honest with you. I never saw myself ever able to run for public office. I literally told former President Bill Clinton that at my college graduation, in which I was the senior speaker and he was the main speaker. And I then watched the next year Barack Hussein Obama run for and win the presidency. I watched him serve with a level of class, a level of elegance that we could only pine for now. So I really enjoyed the conversation. I was grateful for his advice. It was very warm and very inviting. And I know that he knows the critical role that Michigan is going to play in holding Trump accountable, in winning back the Senate, and in building forward the future that we need.

KRISTEN WELKER: Is he going to campaign with you, Dr. El-Sayed?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, I really hope so. And it was a really good conversation about what we need to do to be able to win. And obviously, this is somebody who knows a lot about winning Michigan.

KRISTEN WELKER: And just to be clear, do you anticipate he’ll show up on the campaign trail with you? Is that one of the broad topics you all discussed?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, we talked a lot about what it’ll take to win. Obviously, his presence here in Michigan would mean so much to the coalition that helped elect him. So I hope that we get to campaign together.

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Democrats + DSA + Muslims.

• Abdul El-Sayed Makes a Mess on ‘Meet the Press’ (Tim O’Brien)

Clean up in aisle 4! Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed just made a mess in an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press, and let’s just say his handlers have some fixing to do. One of El-Sayed’s signature issues is “Medicare for All.” It’s an issue that El-Sayed loves to mention but doesn’t like to talk about in detail. One reason is that it’s not good for sound bites. Once you get into the details of Medicare, it gets complex, bureaucratic, and boring. None of those things work well in media interviews. But there are other reasons he’d rather not talk at length about his health coverage ideas, and it became clearer when Welker pressed him on it.


Calling him “Doctor,” Welker told El-Sayed that everyday Americans worry that to make Medicare universal would mean tax hikes for everyone, not just the rich. El-Sayed dismissively tried to give Welker a quick sound bite in the hope she’d move on when he said, “As I’ve said across this campaign, I am for taxing billionaires their wealth.” But Welker wasn’t done. She said, “What about people who make less than a billion and less than a million dollars?” El-Sayed responded:

“So, for the average person, when you look at your W2, if you’re an employee who gets paid every two weeks or four weeks, after you pay your taxes, the next biggest check that comes off the top of your pay stub is to your health insurance company. So, imagine instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million a year, instead you paid a little bit more in taxes for healthcare that you wouldn’t lose if you lost your job or turned 26 or got married or got divorced.

I think all of us would be a lot more interested in that kind of a system if we knew that our healthcare would be free at the point of care and would be free without having to worry about losing it, in general.So, there’s an opportunity here, I think, to trade what we give to a big corporation, who gets to decide who we get to see and who we don’t, for a little bit more paid into FICA. And I think that’s a trade that’s worth making. I think the broader public understands that that’s a trade worth making considering how many people are holding medical debt, a third of all Michigan households right now.”

Welker reinforced her earlier point, saying, “Just to be very clear, you’re describing this trade-off. You are effectively acknowledging that people making less than a million dollars could see their taxes go up. I just want to be very clear.” His non-answers to her questions were a de facto confirmation of Welker’s suspicions. What El-Sayed said pretty clearly was to trust the government more than your insurance company, and that yes, your taxes will go up under his plan.

Something that rarely comes up when “Medicare for All” is discussed is what Medicare does not cover. Anyone who’s turned 65 and applied for Medicare knows that Medicare is hardly an apples-to-apples replacement for the kind of health insurance you may have gotten through your employer.

Medicare does not automatically include eye care, dental care, and certain prescription coverage. If retirees pay more, and most do, they can enroll in a Part C or Medicare Advantage plan that covers more. But even there, Medicare Advantage is only one option and may not be as good as your existing health insurance. Some opt not to go with Medicare Advantage, instead going with a more expensive Medigap or another alternative plan that they feel is closer to what they’re used to.

As for El-Sayed’s comments that by paying the government more for your Medicare, you’re not paying some private health insurance company, that’s often not true at all. Medicare Advantage plans and other supplemental plans are usually administered by private health insurance companies, and so you likely still would be lining the coffers of some private insurance company. What all of this means is that while El-Sayed wants Americans to think they’re getting health insurance comparable to what they’ve had, and all they need to do is pay the government more in the form of higher taxes, that’s likely not what it would look like in practice.

Welker also asked him about his BFF, Hasan Piker, who’s been right at his side throughout this campaign. Walking a political tightrope, El-Sayed sought to distance himself from Piker’s words but not from the pathetic Piker himself.

During that same interview with Welker, El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker’s comments when he said that “America deserved 9/11.” When Welker asked the senatorial candidate for comment, he told her that Piker’s comments were “dumb.”

Of course, it was a dumb statement and of course I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. So yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11, but you know, to sit here and play gotcha politics with a dumb thing somebody said out of context that they disavowed themselves — to say, ‘Oh well, what does that mean about what you think?’ I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do, rather than this idea that we’re so stuck in cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020, but we seem to want to bring back, El-Sayed said. The leftist news site Politico had a slightly different take on El-Sayed’s comments:

El-Sayed’s comments are a stark difference from his interview with POLITICO earlier this year in which he declined to denounce Piker’s views in what he called a “gotcha game.””I’m not here to disavow people’s views,” El-Sayed said at the time. “This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture — I thought we were over it.”The Napoleonesque Senate candidate would not say one way or the other whether he’d continue to campaign with Piker, trying like the devil to get Welker to change the subject, saying that it doesn’t matter who he campaigns with. He said he’s “a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to.”

Politico wasn’t buying it, reporting that “El-Sayed’s embrace of Piker, who he said he believes is ‘critical’ for Democrats to embrace, has drawn criticism — from Republicans and Democrats alike.” On yet another front, former first lady “Dr. Jill Biden” once had a press secretary named Michael LaRosa. On Aug. 8, LaRosa bucked his party and publicly endorsed Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in his bid to become Michigan’s next senator.

While it’s rare for an embedded Democrat operative to so publicly break ranks like this, LaRosa made it crystal clear on the X platform why he was backing Rogers: “I won’t defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the alternative was worse, deserved what happened to her…. Her only crime was showing up to work that morning.”

All this adds up to a bad day on at least one Sunday show for the upstart candidate who is starting to look like the Michigan version of Graham Platner without the Nazi tattoo, the sexting, and all the other sex stuff. Judging him by the company he keeps, his refusal to distance himself from some seriously anti-American actors, and his clunky responses to straightforward questions, it’s clear that he’s got tougher days ahead. The truth is that the Sunday shows are very kind to Democrats. If he couldn’t hit a figurative home run in his first interview with Welker since winning his primary race, he’s got some weaknesses and vulnerabilities that the Rogers campaign and Republicans can exploit more fully in the coming months.

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Big Tent, Small Space: “Nothing says “Big Tent Party” like a good Communist pogrom.”

The nonsense is getting serious.

• Democratic Leaders Embrace the “Fine People” of the DSA (Turley)

Hasan Piker, a close ally of Abdul El-Sayed, is calling for “Marxist-Leninist” punishment for those who criticize Michigan’s Democratic senatorial candidate. As radicals and anti-Semites like Piker flood the Democratic Party, establishment figures are struggling to justify their alliance with extremist candidates. Ironically, Democrats are now fulfilling the false narrative that they used against President Donald Trump after the Charlottesville protests. They are maintaining that there are “many fine people” in the DSA despite their seeking to destroy our constitutional system, open our borders, defund the police, and embrace virtual anarchy.


Now, some of these fine people are calling for moderates to be purged as radicals take over the Democratic Party. In 2017, the media manufactured a controversy by suggesting that Trump had praised neo-Nazis and Klansmen in 2017 as “fine people” in Charlottesville. It was demonstrably false, but became the accepted truth in the media. In reality, Trump condemned the neo-Nazis, and the statement about “fine people on both sides” was in reference to the people on both sides of the debate over the removal of historic statues.

That narrative took on an added hypocrisy when some of the loudest voices later endorsed a candidate with an actual Nazi tattoo who allegedly assaulted women, mocked wounded veterans, and praised terrorists. However, he promised to deliver Maine and bring figures like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren back to power.

Anti-Semites and communists are not “fine” additions to any party. Hasan Piker is not a “fine person” in any universe. He has said that the United States deserved the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and prominently displays a picture of the collapsing Twin Towers. He has downplayed the murders and rapes of innocent Israelis on Oct. 7th and called one Jewish man who challenged him a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog.” Figures like Harris and Buttigieg brush off El-Sayed’s allies, including Mohammad Baqer Qazwini, a prominent Muslim cleric who gave a sermon that called for followers to vote for El-Sayed while also calling upon them to pray for the death of President Donald Trump and to celebrate the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Then there is the Democratic House candidate in New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a prison abolitionist who boasted how she wiped her hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin. Chevalier and other DSA candidates are being welcomed in the Democratic Party despite anti-American views and a DSA platform calling for the destruction of our constitutional system, including scrapping the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the Senate. Many are also overwhelmingly anti-Israel, with many, like Piker, displaying virulent anti-Semitism.

When asked about the extreme agenda of these candidates, Schumer and others repeat the mantra that they need to win in the upcoming elections. In other words, the DSA is opposed to the core institutions and values of this country, but it could be useful in returning them to power. What is interesting is that the establishment does not appear to care what these radicals represent for their party, but the radicals care deeply about what the establishment represents. This week, former DNC Vice-chair David Hogg told establishment figures that the “Big Tent” of his party is not big enough for them. He and other moderates have to go.

When asked about Democratic moderates, Hogg replied, “They don’t have the right values.” Piker has even grander plans for our post-constitutional republic, calling for mass arrests, demanding pledges from establishment figures to “arrest and prosecute every prominent member of the Trump administration” who engaged in what he views as corruption as well as “every ICE agent who committed crimes on the job.” Piker also wants to purge any Democrats who do not support El-Sayed, calling them “haters” who deserved to be punished:

“There are haters in our ranks. Notice how whenever someone comes out and says, ‘Yeah that’s actually a bad association,’ immediately it’s weaponized by the Republicans. You can’t be out here saying like, ‘Oh, I’m a centrist Democrat. And I think Abdul is a bridge too far.’ That must be punished.” Piker, who likes to parade around in a Mao jacket, seems to be longing for the good old days of party purges under Stalin and his contemporaries in the Comintern.

He notably accused critics of the sin of “factionalism.” Since the Jacobins of the French Revolution, factionalism has been the scourge of revolutionaries. In my book, Rage and the Republic, I discuss the difference between the American and French Revolutions. Where James Madison saw factions as a natural part of a democratic system, the Jacobins sought them as a traitorous and reactionary element. Madison saw compromise as the best solution to factions, while the Jacobins saw the guillotine as the final solution.

Piker is right out of that Jacobin tradition, calling moderate Democrats “Koch payroll ‘liberals’” and “irredeemable.” (Notably, the Jacobins also pushed for some of the same DSA demands such as a unicameral legislature). Of course, conservatives can show the same intolerance for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), but there is an added menacing element to communists calling for mass expulsion or punishment of moderates from their party. It is chillingly familiar.

Mao regularly purged the Communist Party of those not following the party lines, declaring, “Serious offenders should be punished by law, and when they are Party members they should also be dealt with according to Party discipline.” Establishment figures continue to use the “Big Tent” narratives to brush off questions about the radical agenda and associations of these candidates. The only thing that they have in common is the desire for power. Once these candidates win, figures like Schumer will discover that this tent is not nearly as big as they think.

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Presidential hopeful on the right?

“A widening split on the American right is turning Trump’s old base into open opposition, with Israel at the center of the rupture..”

• Tucker for President? MAGA Rebels Declare Independence From Israel (Amar)

Almost since US President Donald Trump started his second and final term, the movement that brought him to power twice has been fracturing. Now there is a full break among Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters. Its essence is simple: There are those who continue to identify MAGA with Trump, and on the other side of a widening chasm, those who remain loyal to MAGA but believe that Trump has not. The rebels say Trump has betrayed the cause and want to save MAGA – and thus the US – from Trump.


There are no official structures yet to what the MAGA dissidents call their movement, but it does have a de facto leader – popular journalist and podcast host Tucker Carlson. It was at Tucker’s all-American place in Maine that the MAGA schism was made official. There, several key figures of the evolving MAGA-against-Trump group met, and in effect, raised the standard of rebellion. Not literally, but in the shape of an X post by former US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (with 5.4 million followers). It featured a carefully composed picture of a merry rebel crew, including, apart from herself, Joe Kent, former counterterrorism tsar under Trump, Representative Thomas Massie, a long-term conservative Trump opponent, and Carlson, sitting at the head of the table.

Within days after the post, Carlson released a video manifesto with the title “It’s Time to Save America” on his own Tucker Carlson Network social media channel (with 5.2 million subscribers on YouTube). Within one day, it had over a million views on YouTube alone. In a rhetorical master class for the podcast age, Carlson sketched the American present as a dead-end of extraordinary decadence and degradation, a loss of reality among the establishment, and “paralysis and looting.”

He also predicted that change is inevitable if Americans want to avoid the “end-of-everything,” either by nuclear war or uncontrolled AI. He warned that even preventing this apocalypse by timely political action could produce great violence, that is, a revolution. And finally, he presented his alternative to both the end of the world and wild upheaval in ten concise points. Ranging from “fairness” to “unity,” his ten points were more a clarion call for national renewal than a concrete policy outline, with aims general enough to form a broad consensus, as he acknowledged.

Much of his ten points read like MAGA 2.0, that is, without Trump, as observers noted. On issues such as physical and mental health, the need for the economy to make actually useful things instead of just surveillance tech, weapons of war, and financial gimmicks, the beauty of the American landscape and architecture in need of restoration, Carlson’s impassioned pleas echoed the conservatism that is one root of the MAGA phenomenon.

Ultimately, what will be more important is where things differ: One of Carlson’s points was about sovereignty, or as he defined it, being “free from outside influence.” It is this point that provides the key to all the others. The ten points are, in essence, a declaration of independence, not just from any outside influence, but from Israel and its powerful US lobby. Carlson directly named them as forming one of America’s worst problems. For starters, he did not simply attack a selfish upper class whose members behave as if they were kings, above the rules of law and ethics. He called it the “Epstein class,” with reference to the late convicted pedophile, alleged suicide victim, self-declared Rothschild representative, and close associate of alleged Israeli rapists and intelligence.

Carlson also correctly linked the Iran War – a “strategic disaster” worse than Vietnam, as another realistic American recently stated – to “bribery or threat or both by Israel.” Equally plausibly, he accused Israel of committing genocide – like Nazi Germany, he said – and protested against continuing US support. Finally, the activities of lobbies, with that of Israel not alone, but in the lead, “gives the lie to the idea of representative democracy,” according to Carlson, because where lobbyists make the decisions, the voters do not.

In short, Carlson made the point that America’s worst military defeat in living memory, its support for – and really, participation in – an ongoing genocide, and its loss of sovereignty and democracy are all due, either entirely or to a large extent, to the US establishment’s perverse and deeply unpatriotic relationship to Israel. Politically, this amounts to an arguably long overdue declaration of war against the Zionist state’s aggressive influence operations.

And the message has gotten through. Haaretz, Israel’s ‘liberal’ paper of record, rapidly dedicated a long opinion piece to Carlson, accusing him of – surprise, surprise – “anti-Semitism.” This is an absurd smear, but expected. Systematically misrepresenting criticism of Israel, a genocidal apartheid state, as hatred of Jews is an old, stale Zionist tactic. Carlson certainly isn’t naïve. Even in his ten points, he anticipated being called a “Nazi” and shrugged it off.

But Haaretz does get one thing right. For Carlson and his growing movement, “Israel and its American supporters also represent a central source of the [MAGA] movement’s betrayal [by Trump].” Or, put differently, Carlson represents an American conservatism that has the courage to identify, name, and attack America’s insane dependence on a tiny yet immensely subversive and violent rogue state.

There is, no doubt, much idealizing and even nostalgia in Carlson’s image of American history and the West. And those wishing to be woke about an arch-conservative will find rich pickings. But that is futile and dull, because it is not the point that matters. What matters is that US polls have consistently shown a great, unprecedented groundswell against Israel. A new book on Israel’s US lobby is about to come out and is making a massive splash. The tide is turning.

Fellow MAGA rebel Joe Kent let it slip that Tucker-for-president is an option. Third parties are a difficult proposition. Yet Haaretz for one is worried, and from a Zionist point of view, it should be. And that is very good news.

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“Economic security is national security.”

• What ‘America First’ Really Means (J.B. Shurk)

I have a dream that American farmers, drillers, miners, industrialists, and manufacturers produce everything that American consumers need. I have a dream that anything worth building is built in America, that any job worth doing is done in America, and that anything worth buying can be found and shipped within the United States.


Why did we allow ourselves to be convinced that Americans should make only a few select things and buy everything else from foreign markets? Why did we allow politicians and Wall Street investors to convince us that “free trade” requires slave labor from faraway lands? Why did we spend a century ensuring safer work environments and more dependable wages for our skilled tradesmen only to export those jobs to adversarial nations that care nothing about worker safety or providing above-subsistence standards of living? Why did we fight a Cold War in defense of freedom only to subsidize Chinese communism? Why do we regulate ourselves to death in the name of “fighting global warming,” while China and India inflict the worst environmental damage on the planet?

Prove these statements wrong: There is no worker on the planet more capable than an American. There is no nation of people more innovative than the United States. There is nothing that Americans import from other nations that Americans can’t discover, create, grow, or produce on their own. There is no country on the planet with more educational infrastructure than the United States. There is no country on the planet with a greater incentive to defend its way of life.

I believe that Establishment politicians and multinational investment firms sold us a bill of goods when they told us that “free trade” deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, would provide American households greater prosperity. I believe that those politicians and Wall Street investors lied when they told us that the United States would become a “service economy” and that blue-collar workers would find personal fulfillment as customer service representatives, real estate agents, telephone operators, data technicians, and software coders.

I believe that politicians and Big Ag corporations lie when they insist that only illegal aliens are willing to sweat in farm fields. I believe that politicians who ignore federal law by establishing “sanctuary cities” and NGOs that aid and abet human smuggling into the United States lie when they say that some jobs are “too dirty” for Americans to take. I believe Establishment politicians and Wall Street titans have spent fifty years lying to the American people about the kinds of jobs that Americans should do.

The economy of the United States did not surpass that of the United Kingdom until the third year of WWI in 1916. While the U.K. had been the engine for the global economy for two centuries, America held an inimitable distinction: No other country in the world had maintained higher rates of both intra- and inter-generational mobility. The American Experiment created an ideal environment for innovation, hard work, investment, and private ownership. Individual workers advanced up the economic ladder during their own lifetimes, and their children and grandchildren ascended even farther. In a few generations, farmers became tradesmen who became merchants who became bankers, lawyers, ministers, and politicians. Respect for private property and a rejection of European social castes made America a land of opportunity.

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in a rigged Christmas vote in 1913, the American system has been upended. Bankers created a monopoly for themselves to manipulate the value of the American dollar. They, in turn, set the monetary system down a path toward inevitable decoupling from the gold standard. Dollar-printing (and government spending) decreased the value of personal savings and artificially juiced the currency-denominated value of homes, stocks, and other assets — effectively transferring wealth from the poorest Americans to the wealthiest.

As inflation steadily kicked in, central bankers and corporation-controlled politicians looked for ways to limit the rising costs of American goods. They artificially increased demand for the dollar by linking it to oil revenues, offshored American manufacturing to low-wage or slave-wage foreign nations, decreased the quality of finished products, and replaced small businesses with a handful of multinational corporate monopolies. Each of these “band-aids” has preserved Wall Street’s internal mechanisms for generating profits, while destroying the engine of American ingenuity and the physical infrastructure of American industry, manufacturing, and real economic growth.

The end result has been that — in charts and graphs — America has appeared to maintain an advanced economy that has consistently grown through the decades, even though its industrial towns have collapsed into rusty graveyards. If you separate the economy of the United States into two separate lines on a graph — one for Main Street businesses across the country and one for multinational businesses running Wall Street — it becomes obvious that small American businesses have had no growth (or negative growth) for decades. While the costs of their raw materials, employees, government regulations, and taxes have continued to rise, their profits have dwindled.

The engine of American growth in the real economy has been sputtering and dying, while artificially inflated valuations of Wall Street assets have been disguising America’s economic infirmity. Wall Street has become the Potemkin economy hiding America’s loss of industrial strength. This is no way for a superpower to endure. The United States cannot survive if it is dependent on communist China for chemicals, medicines, circuit boards, electrical components, clothing, machinery, and furniture.

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That took barely a decade…

• Europe Was Once Bigger Than The US Economy. What Happened? (ZH)

The United States and the European Union are the two largest Western economies of the 21st century. Over the past two decades, however, their economic trajectories have diverged significantly.This line chart below, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, tracks the gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU and U.S. economies from 2006 to 2026 using the latest figures available from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s World Economic Outlook. Figures for 2026 are forecasts.


The Early Rise and Fall of the EU
The 15-member European Union was established in 1993 from precursor organizations such as the European Communities. In 2004, 10 new member states joined, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. Aided by the addition of these new member states, along with strong British and German economies, the EU s total GDP reached $19.3 trillion in 2008. This represented 131% of the U.S. economy that year, which stood at $14.8 trillion. The euro also reached an all-time high in June 2008 at roughly $1.55. The table below shows the size of the EU economy relative to the U.S. economy from 2006 to 2026.

The global financial crisis and Great Recession changed the European Union’s fortunes.

The newly expanded bloc faced severe challenges as several member-state governments struggled to service their debts or rein in large structural deficits. These countries included eurozone members Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Through a combination of multilateral bailouts and austerity measures, the EU weathered the crisis. However, in the years that followed, the 28-member bloc s aggregate GDP contracted, and the $18.3 trillion U.S. economy surpassed it in 2015. Part of the decline in dollar-denominated GDP also reflected changes in exchange rates as the euro weakened against the U.S. dollar.

Brexit and the Years of Decline
Further challenges followed. In a June 2016 referendum, British voters narrowly chose to make the United Kingdom the first country to withdraw from the European Union. The Brexit process culminated in the UK s formal withdrawal in January 2020. Losing the UK dealt another blow to the EU’s aggregate economy. Although the country had never joined the eurozone, it was the EU ]’s second-largest member economy. Combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit helped push the bloc’s GDP down to $15.5 trillion in 2020, roughly where it had stood a decade earlier. A

s the UK economy has struggled through much of the 2020s, some in London have begun to float the possibility of rejoining the EU. Other European countries, including Albania and Montenegro, remain potential future entrants to the bloc.

The Post-Pandemic Divergence
Since the pandemic, the U.S. and European Union have followed very different trajectories. Despite inflation and high interest rates, the U.S. economy rebounded strongly from COVID and is forecast to reach $32.4 trillion in 2026. Meanwhile, the EU has faced a combination of rising Chinese industrial competition and an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With economic heavyweight Germany facing protracted stagnation, the EU s GDP is forecast to reach $23 trillion in 2026.

That leaves the EU economy at just 71% the size of the U.S. economy, a sharp reversal from its position in 2008. Exchange rates account for part of the shift, but weaker growth and a series of economic shocks have also contributed to the widening gap.

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“Reading excerpts from Anthony Fauci’s ill-advised diary, it’s clear above all that he’s a money-grubbing, narcissistic liar.”

• Who Will Judge Anthony Fauci? (Pete McArdle)

Reading excerpts from Anthony Fauci’s ill-advised diary, saved on government servers, it’s clear to me above all that he’s a money-grubbing, narcissistic liar.Fauci helped fund the Wuhan Level 4 Virology Lab, knowing full well that the lab was tinkering with bat viruses. And when the Chinese Communist lab loosed COVID-19 upon the world, wee Tony felt two overwhelming urges: the immediate urge to cover his butt, and a burning and probably lifelong desire for the little rat to finally become a big cheese.


So Fauci lied about the virus’s origins, and pressured other spineless scientists to agree that the “novel,” i.e., never before seen, virus came from some Wuhan local enjoying bat soup or a pangolin hero, and not the obvious source, a nearby Fauci-funded virology lab. To believe that, you’d have to be a Democrat, one of their media handmaidens, or a complete moron, but I repeat myself.After all, those folks are all fond of fairy tales, telling us it’s fine for men to beat up female athletes, Muslims were instrumental in founding America, ObamaCare lets you keep your doctor and your plan, and Joe Biden’s Stage 4 prostate cancer was only recently discovered.

Having dodged all accountability for helping create COVID-19, Fauci then set about becoming, in his own words, “one of the most recognizable persons in the world.” Napoleon much, Tony?In this he was successful, making stuff up left and right, changing the common meaning of words, and becoming fabulously wealthy in the process. Estimates are that while millions were dying from COVID, 7-8 million dollars somehow found their way into Tony’s pocket. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Fauci first stated – correctly — that masks wouldn’t prevent the spread of an airborne virus. Then he backtracked, saying that it was a necessary white lie, so the rubes wouldn’t cause a mask shortage for health professionals. Now, masks became absolutely necessary for everyone. In fact, two masks were better than one. As a dentist for forty-three years, I was outraged by Fauci’s mask theater, knowing that the paper masks I wore daily had pores big enough for any virus to get through, N-95 masks (which allow 5% of small particles like viruses to go through) made it hard for me to breathe, and only a moron would walk around wearing two masks.

Fauci then made up the six-foot “social distancing” and “no handshake” rules and again, a sneeze can send saliva twenty-eight feet or so, and the Wuhan Flu was acquired by breathing viral aerosols, not skin-to-skin contact. Feeling his power and fame growing, Fauci then got serious about running things. He and his “public health” pals shut down the country and then, with the avid support of Democrats frothing at the mouth to take down President Trump, crashed the economy and arbitrarily determined winners and losers.

Winners were government workers who got paid whether they worked or not; big box stores (I painted and landscaped my entire new home during the pandemic); rubber glove and medical mask producers; teachers unions whose members were paid for (not) remotely learning, liquor stores; the mostly peaceful and mask-exempt rioters of BLM, and the despicable fake-news media, loudly trumpeting body counts and blaming it all on Trump. And all the while, rivers of sweet, sweet moolah flowed into Dr. and Mrs. Fauci’s bank accounts.

Losers were the poor nursing home patients in states where the likes of “Handy Andy” Cuomo forced such facilities to accept patients regardless of COVID status, small business owners, movie theaters, museums, music venues, churches, synagogues, and mosques, folks who were denied routine medical and dental care and later paid the price, people suffering from anxiety who became full-fledged hypochondriacs and, after manually disinfecting their groceries, lit St. Fauci votive candles; and most of all, kids.

During the pandemic, the smallest and most vulnerable among us were denied proper education, normal social development, and even being out in the great outdoors. All this unnecessary and inestimable damage to our children — for a disease which killed Americans who were, on average, seventy-eight years old and had multiple comorbidities! St. Fauci wasn’t done, though. He forced a vaccine on Americans that failed to prevent either catching COVID or transmitting it — by definition, a failed vaccine — but did cause countless deaths and severe illnesses, countless because no one in the public-health hierarchy was much interested in counting them or informing the public. As a health professional, I was one of the first people (double) vaccinated, before coming down with COVID. Twice.

Did my vaccinations lessen the severity of my disease? Totally conjectural, something impossible to prove since the virus was constantly mutating and is currently just another flu bug. And despite mounting perhaps the worst pandemic response in recorded history, Little Lord Fauci somehow found time to chat up known intellectuals Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts, have “friendship-building” dinners with so-called journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and attend a pro baseball game with two pals when no one else was allowed admittance, a game where he both took his mask off to talk to his friends and threw possibly the lamest first pitch in major league baseball history, almost as short and crooked as Fauci himself.

It must have been wonderful for Tony, watching his stature, er… social stature, and net worth grow even as millions of lives were lost, ruined, or damaged. But, sadly, the party’s now over. Anyone with eyes to see now realizes what an evil, selfish, and undoubtedly criminal man Anthony Fauci is. Whoever ran old, senile Joe Biden — Jill? The Chicoms? — certainly agreed with my assessment. They gave Fauci a blanket pardon for any and all crimes he committed during his reign of error. So, who will judge Anthony Fauci for his crimes against humanity?Democrats? Republican politicians? The courts? No, nothing’s going to happen to the incredibly wealthy and still quite popular Anthony Fauci, once the most recognizable name in the world. The Swamp protects its own.

Now, I’m seventy-three, and with multiple comorbidities, I can see the finish line. A deeply flawed man, I just hope that when it comes to my final judgment, the good I did in life outweighs the bad.By this coming Christmas, Anthony Fauci will be eighty-six. And if, like me, you’re outraged at all the damage done by a pencil-pushing bureaucrat who never even treated patients and became fabulously wealthy and popular doing it, relax. Because poor little Tony Fauci surely has tremors, night sweats, and insomnia, pondering his final judgment.

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Why defend him?

• She Called Fauci a Sociopath on CNN, and the Panel Went Nuts (Matt Margolis)

Caroline Sunshine went on CNN’s Newsnight this week and said the quiet part out loud about Dr. Fauci, and as you can imagine, the panel was none too pleased about it. The former Trump 2024 campaign press aide told her fellow panelists that Fauci is a textbook sociopath. “Forget about prosecuting him,” Sunshine said on CNN’s Newsnight. “The guy should be in a mental institution. He’s a textbook sociopath.” Naturally, the room fell apart.


Podcast host Leigh McGowan could only manage a stunned “What?” Sunshine pressed forward anyway, and laid out her diagnosis in clinical terms. “DSM-5 level sociopath who was running our pandemic response, low empathy, ability to inflict pain on innocents, narcissism,” she said. “Are you suggesting that he should be in a mental institution for having an ego?” host Abby Phillip asked, downplaying the charge as something that would describe just about everyone in Washington. The whole misery loves company thing.

But Sunshine’s point had nothing to do with ego. Fauci kept a diary through the darkest stretch of the pandemic, and he filled it with something other than grief for the country he was supposedly serving. “He writes in his diary at the height of the pandemic, when Americans aren’t allowed to see grandma dying of COVID, what is Anthony Fauci writing about? ‘The media is so hot for me.’ ‘I’ve had so many articles written about me.’”

Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary, jumped to Fauci’s defense and reminded the table that she actually worked with him at the White House. “There is one person at this table who worked with Dr. Fauci,” Matthews said. “I was Trump’s deputy press secretary during COVID.” She admitted it was “very frustrating” watching Fauci land magazine covers and TV hits criticizing the administration’s COVID response, but she chalked it up to a novel virus and a government improvising in real time.

Sunshine was not buying the excuse. “You couldn’t keep him off TV,” she said. “You were in the press office. You would know.” Even Phillip could not resist a jab of her own, suggesting Fauci might have been drinking his own Kool-Aid. Sunshine turned that line right back on the panel. “You all in the media, you were in love with him,” she said. “You were in love with a narcissist. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you guys.”


Here’s the thing: None of what Sunshine said is wrong. We know what Fauci’s diary entries say. They aren’t the private notes of a public health official managing a national crisis with the good of the nation in mind. They’re more like the confessions of a man drunk on his own celebrity. This guy tracked his magazine covers. He counted his headlines. He measured his own importance in press clips while hospitals kept grieving families away from relatives dying of COVID-19. He even detailed his efforts to profit from the pandemic with cash awards.

Those entries also undercut the image Fauci spent years building. He cared more about protecting his own reputation than telling Americans the truth, including about where the virus came from in the first place. Fauci spent years treating the lab leak theory as a fringe conspiracy, only to watch his credibility collapse once his own communications and diary entries surfaced. Sunshine said an uncomfortable truth, and the CNN panel could not handle hearing it out loud. That reaction tells you everything about how deep the media’s investment in protecting him still runs.

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View from the left. Who insist they’re winning.

• Trump Has Squandered Republicans’ Typical Advantages In 2 Key Areas (CNN)

President Donald Trump’s political stature is so poor right now that he has squandered the Republican Party’s advantage on two major issues that almost always favor the GOP: the economy and national security. A Reuters-Ipsos poll this week showed Democrats and Republicans virtually tied on “war, foreign conflicts and terrorism.” The GOP led on that issue by 11 points after the 2024 election. Today, 37% of US adults say Democrats have a better approach, compared to 36% who say the GOP does.


Fox News polling a couple weeks back showed something very similar: On national security, 50% of registered voters preferred the GOP, to 48% who preferred the Democratic Party. That’s compared to a 12-point edge for Republicans in January, before the Iran war. Both recent findings are within the margin of error. But the numbers even being that close is basically unheard of. Fox polling has regularly tested how registered voters compare the two parties on terrorism and national security. Until the Iran war, Democrats had never even been within double-digits of the Republican Party on either issue.

Republicans have also led consistently on national security in Gallup polling. Democrats only nosed ahead on that issue once in the 21st century: in 2007. Gallup’s data on which party is better on “international terrorism and military threats” has been even more lopsided in the GOP’s favor. Across 22 polls conducted since a year after 9/11, Democrats have led on that issue only once — again, in 2007 — and most of the time Republicans led by double-digits. And then there’s the economy.

The most recent Fox survey showed Democrats leading on that issue by nine points, 54%-45%. That was the biggest Democratic advantage since 2006, when they led by 20 points. And when they took a lead on the economy back in April, it marked the first time they were ahead since 2010, shortly after the 2008 financial crisis that began during the George W. Bush administration. CNN polling back in May showed a closer split between the two parties on the economy, with 35% of adults preferring Democrats, compared to 33% who preferred the GOP. The poll previously asked people to choose between congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats. The last time Republicans didn’t lead on that question was 2009.

The numbers on both fronts seem to illustrate that Trump greatly miscalculated the fallout from launching the Iran war — as well as other controversial policies like his global tariffs. By launching the tariffs, he effectively took ownership of whatever became of the economic picture. Then he compounded negative public sentiment by basically shrugging off any responsibility to address Americans’ inflation concerns. Now he’s contending with a still-stagnant economic picture, with the economy shedding 23,000 jobs in July. Americans don’t love Democrats; in fact, the blue side remains pretty unpopular in polls. So the fact that they’ve apparently taken a lead on the economy really says something.

And the national security numbers might be even more striking — because Democrats hardly ever even compete with Republicans on the topic. Just as education and health care almost always favor Democrats, national security and defending the homeland are almost always signature GOP issues, and lopsidedly so. That remained true even when Bush launched wars in the Middle East that gradually became pretty unpopular. Trump, though, seems to have botched the Iran war so badly that Americans suddenly see Democrats on equal footing with the GOP — in terms of issues on the GOP’s own turf.

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“We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records ..”

• The Unintended Consequences of the Digital Revolution (Paul Craig Roberts)

I have always assured readers that in the anti-human digital age, whoever controls the data base controls the “truth,” which will be, and already is, an orchestration serving elite agendas.


Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, an online open encyclopedia that serves to demonize those who speak outside of the official narratives, agrees with me. Sanger in an interview last Friday with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung said that Wikipedia’s lack of an adequate governance structure allowed “specific ideological viewpoints” to shape its content, turning the online encyclopedia into a “globalist, academic, secular and progressive” consensus.

“Wikipedia was recognized early on as an important propaganda organ.” Jews use it to demonize Israel’s critics, and Sanger reports “what we know as fact, based on all sorts of evidence, is that the CIA has already edited Wikipedia.” “Wikipedia is already compromised. That’s clear,” Sanger admitted. He went on to say the ideological bias embedded in Wikipedia is now being amplified because large language models increasingly rely on its content as a reference source when answering factual queries.

The digital revolution and its offshoot artificial intelligence have created the perfect Orwellian memory hole. I and numerous others have documented books and articles with URLs to online sources only to experience that within a few days of publication the sources no longer exist. This could not happen in print and analogue days. There were huge numbers of sources for every source reference in libraries, newspaper morgues, and private collections. It was impossible to erase reference sources.

The digital revolution rests on the Internet which developed as an open system. This means it can never be secure. Already security concerns are everywhere. The day has already passed that a username and a password sufficed. Now you have to have a code sent by text or email. Then a passkey, and sometimes also voice and face recognition, both of which AI can produce to impersonate you. Scammers progress faster than security, and once quantum computers appear encryption is useless.

The reality with with which we are faced is that information no longer exists in multiple print form. Information no longer exists in material form. It exists somewhere electronically in the cloud. One electromagnetic force can wipe it out, and malefactors and mistakes can erase it.

We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records. Imagine if that is your bank. What happens to your access to your accounts? Can you pay your bills? Is your automobile insurance cancelled? Do you face foreclosure on your mortgage? Possibly businesses are creating backup systems of some kind, but as they also are digital they too will fail.

The digital revolution was the creation of people devoid of capability to imagine unintended consequences. They are building for us a house of cards. When it collapses, so will organized society. It is merely a matter of time.

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I don’t think he keeps a diary.

• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya -vs- Margaret Brennan (CTH)

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much”…
Slowly she builds her performance outrage, methodically working through the talking points afore her. Full dramatic acting on display. Lips pursed, bladed eyebrows angled, contempt tone triggered and the intent obvious.


NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya appears on CBS Face the Nation to discuss Mexican poop lettuce, Mexico poop peppers, Illegal Alien measles spread and the weaponized information from health ‘administrators’ around the COVID-19 vaccine. Obviously, with Media Patron Saint Anthony Fauci facing scrutiny, Margaret Brennan defends Fauci as she would if the Lightbringer, Chicago Jesus was disrespected. Combative video and Transcript below:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Good morning to you, doctor.

NIH DIRECTOR DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA: Good morning.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And we should mention you are also helping to run the CDC until the new director is sworn in as well.

DR. BHATTACHARYA: Until next Wednesday, yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Until next Wednesday. So let me ask you about a number of things that I think people at home are worried about, particularly around the food supply. The cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Mexico is now in 15 states. There were two deaths this week due to it. Yesterday, USDA issued an alert for a range of products that may have salmonella, including meat and poultry. 27 states are affected by salmonella, possibly linked to jalapeños, but cilantro, red onion, avocado, also listed in the CDC notice. Albertsons, a grocery store, just recalled some items. There’s risk of salmonella in eggs in Texas, according to the CDC, and then you have the screwworm outbreak affecting beef. This is overwhelming for someone going into a grocery store right now. Why do they seem out of control?

DR. BHATTACHARYA: Well, the- the cyclospora outbreak is larger than in normal years. I mean, in normal years there actually is a- cyclospora cases. The- the two deaths that you mentioned, they happened in late July- late- late June, early July, before we identified this source. And so, folks that are listening, can rest assured, the CDC and the FDA are working hard to trace back exactly where these outbreaks are occurring from, intervening with the- the sort of suppliers to make sure that they don’t- and doing recalls to make sure that the disease doesn’t- the, you know, condition doesn’t spread. I mean, it’s tough. You go to grocery store, you buy lettuce, and you say, “Okay, can I buy the lettuce?”

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“The impetus for the absurd White House ballroom decision is the desire to hamstring the President in all things large or small. “

• Abolish the District of Columbia’s Clown Courts (Clarice Feldman)

Article III of the Constitution allows Congress to establish courts below the Supreme Court, which includes federal District and Circuit Courts. If Congress can establish them, it can abolish them. In 1801, in the waning days of John Adams’ presidency, Congress did just that and abolished the district and circuit courts of the District of Columbia.


These two courts display widespread intransigent partisanship and demonstrably poor scholarship, exemplified by this week’s ruling on the new White House construction. Given the difficulty of removing so many bad judges in these two courts by impeaching them, it’s time to repeat John Adams’ move: Abolish these courts. Cases that normally would be heard in them should be assigned to courts elsewhere. The case which most showcases the lunacy of the D.C. courts is National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States v. National Park Service, et al. As is often the case in poorly reasoned opinions, the author substitutes words for reason.

As you may know, the old East Wing of the White House which, among other things, contained underground security facilities (bunkers, bomb-shelters, and military and medical infrastructure), presidential offices and some minimal public meeting spaces, was torn down and construction begun on a replacement with a larger number of more modern offices and a ballroom to provide a larger, much-needed entertainment and meeting space, better security facilities, and protection against drone attacks. Up to now, rented tents and outdoor porta potty facilities have had to be utilized for state events, and the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Ball surely underscores the need for a safe venue for such things.

Except for the congressional appropriation for the upgraded secure facilities in this new wing, the remainder of the cost is being borne by private contributions to the National Park Service, which is administering these funds. But this is hate Trump city, and Alison Hoagland, a board member of the National Trust, said that she takes monthly walks past the White House and that the aesthetics of the new construction would cause her harm.

In the real world, monthly aesthetic harm to one person’s delicate sensibilities would not upend a needed improvement to the White House grounds, which are exempt by its terms from the National Historic Preservation Act (which establishes the Trust). The litigation has been long and involved back-and-forth court rulings between the district and circuit courts. The courts have now finally agreed the below-ground construction would not be halted, but this week ruled the above-ground work must be, even though that is a structural impossibility and a security (and aesthetic) nightmare.

The first question that every court must decide before proceeding further in any case is whether or not it even has jurisdiction to hear and decide the matter. The majority opinion doesn’t get to this until page 30 of its opinion, and then, for all its flowery verbosity, it got it wrong, just as the dissenting judge notes:

“…the district court had no jurisdiction because the Trust has no standing to stop construction at the White House. The ballroom is also likely within the President’s authority to make improvements to the Executive Residence at the White House. Finally, the balance of equities overwhelmingly favors the government. The district court elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby over the government’s security interests in the ballroom and the security risks of leaving an open construction site at the President’s home and office.”

In assessing the balance of equities between Ms. Hoagland’s claimed aesthetic harms and the needs of the White House, Judge Rao shows the Court “improperly glossed over, ignored or discounted the government’s evidence demonstrating the security harms from construction of the ballroom.” Nor could it, as Rao noted, “compensate for the slight aesthetic harm by resorting to hyperbole and its view of the legal merits. Every day the project is delayed increases the security risk according to declarations from senior military and Secret Service officials. Moreover, the creation of the above-ground ballroom “will alleviate security vulnerabilities that currently impact large events involving the President.”

As a practical matter, the underground and above-ground facilities cannot be separated out at this point. “The Secretary of the Army has further explained why the underground national security facilities cannot be adequately protected by the concrete slab and modest topping structure allowed by the district court’s injunction… The ballroom’s dimensions and structure are essential for security. According to the Secretary, “[t]o provide adequate subterranean protection without” the “height and mass” of the ballroom, “engineers would need to dig impractically deep.”

…The ballroom provides a critical “dual-layered system” of protection for the national security facilities, “comprising a sacrificial outer cover coupled with a hardened inner structural element.” …Corroborating the Secretary’s account, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has similarly described how the “height and mass” of the ballroom “provide crucial, physical layers to shield” the national security facilities.

The height of the ballroom will also provide an “essential elevated platform to engage and neutralize aerial systems,” such as drones, that pose an increasingly serious threat to White House security. …There is no dispute that the Secretary’s declaration and the Army Corps memorandum are authentic, credible, and “go[] to the heart of the contested issue,” so it would be “inconsistent with this court’s own equitable obligations to pretend that [they] do[] not exist.”

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Marc Chagall The Cattle Dealer 1912


• Trump Says “We Are Low Keying It” With Iran (ZH)
• Mojtaba Khamenei In Good Health, Video With Him Is Old — Iranian Source (TASS)
• Media Fawning of Senate Candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed Begins (CTH)
• Abdul El-Sayed Makes a Mess on ‘Meet the Press’ (Tim O’Brien)
• Democratic Leaders Embrace the “Fine People” of the DSA (Turley)
• Tucker for President? MAGA Rebels Declare Independence From Israel (Amar)
• What ‘America First’ Really Means (J.B. Shurk)
• Europe Was Once Bigger Than The US Economy. What Happened? (ZH)
• Who Will Judge Anthony Fauci? (Pete McArdle)
• She Called Fauci a Sociopath on CNN, and the Panel Went Nuts (Matt Margolis)
• Trump Has Squandered Republicans’ Typical Advantages In 2 Key Areas (CNN)
• The Unintended Consequences of the Digital Revolution (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya -vs- Margaret Brennan (CTH)
• Abolish the District of Columbia’s Clown Courts (Clarice Feldman)

 


 

 


 


Has the US lost? You’d almost think so.

• Trump Says “We Are Low Keying It” With Iran (ZH)

Iran’s IRGC is holding the line, reiterating that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen to international shipping only after the United States accepts all of its conditions, which we outlined previously. Also, on Saturday Iran’s army spokesman Amir Akraminia stated that Iran’s new protocols in the Strait of Hormuz are “irreversible” and shall not be thwarted by the US. “The United States has no choice but to accept the existing situation; otherwise, it will incur costs far greater than those it has faced in the past,” Akraminia said.


On Sunday, a fresh report in The Wall Street Journal states the obvious – that President Trump has fewer and fewer options and is being squeezed, with any opportunity to declare ‘victory’ and make swift exit more elusive than ever, given Washington would have to make huge compromises, including lifting sanctions and paying war compensation to Tehran. Nearly six months ago when the war started, many non-interventionist critics accurately predicted the quagmire and catch-22 the US now finds itself in.

“For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said,” WSJ writes.

“But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things,” the report adds.

In a parallel vein to this scaled-back, lower grade conflict, President Trump has freshly told Axios in a brief interview that “We are low keying it” in the Persian Gulf. This comes after a week ago he called off ‘planned’ ‘harder’ attacks on Iran, which may have been just a bluff all along. Tehran didn’t blink, and it continues to press for maximal demands – as if to put ‘maximum pressure’ right back on Washington.

“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump claimed. According to more from Axios:

He stressed that Iran “is in very bad shape” economically and has no money to pay its troops. The U.S. naval blockade has exacerbated the Iranian regime’s economic crisis, Trump said. At the same time, Trump said that with oil down to slightly over $75 a barrel, U.S. consumers are feeling less pain from the war. Ironically, this is simply a return to administration talking points which defended the early days and weeks of a war that officials constantly touted would be ‘swift’ and limited.

The US hope was that Iran and its economy would just collapse from within, the masses would take to the streets, and the government of the Ayatollah would be overthrown. This has proven delusional time and again.

Instead, what we see happening is Washington being forced to move its bases back from front line areas in the Gulf, and officials including Trump himself constantly retreating from stated goals, objectives, and red lines. This is on display once again in the Sunday Axios interview:

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There are no security reasons that force them to show old videos. Pure BS.

• Mojtaba Khamenei In Good Health, Video With Him Is Old — Iranian Source (TASS)

A video of Mojtaba Khamenei that was earlier released by the mass media had been shot before he became Iran’s Supreme leader, but he is now in good health and avoids appearing in public due to security considerations, an Iranian source told TASS. “This is an old video. It was made before he became [Supreme] leader,” he said, adding that his health condition is now quite good. “He is in good health and the only reason why he is not seen in public is security reasons,” he stressed.


Earlier, the Iranian Mehr agency released a video featuring Mojtaba Khamenei talking to a group of people who are listening to him attentively. Neither the date nor the venue of the event were indicated. Mojtaba Khamenei became Iran’s Supreme leader after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in a missile attack after the United States and Israel’s aggression against Iran.

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Democrats seek Muslims to engender power.

You will have a president named Mohamed. And that’s the end of America.

• Media Fawning of Senate Candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed Begins (CTH)

Extreme leftists and white, female, overeducated, urban communists have one primary prism: how Obama-ish is their candidate? Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama are supported by the Muslim Brotherhood directly. Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama campaigned for Senate in the mid-term election (BO ’06, ES ’26), and both Barack Obama and El-Sayed planned to run for higher office in 2nd year of their freshman term as senator.


The media now begin their fawning endeavor as the Muslim Brotherhood backed Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed tries to moderate himself in the image of Barack Hussein Obama. I find it a little revealing that El-Sayed’s wife is a doctor who refuses to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients (cash only), as El-Sayed campaigns on Medicare for all. Of course, don’t look for the media to point this out during questioning. Notice also the Middle East nations that El-Sayed criticizes (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan) are the Mid-East nations who have pushed back or banned the Muslim Brotherhood. This is very revealing for those who walk the political deep weeds. By the way, he’s a paper doctor; a Phd, not an MD. WATCH:

[Transcript] – KRISTEN WELKER: And joining me now is Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. Dr. El-Sayed, welcome to Meet the Press.

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Thanks for having me.

KRISTEN WELKER: Thank you so much for being here and congratulations. Let’s talk about your victory this week. You narrowly defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens. And when you actually add up all of the votes, the vote totals that went to Stevens and Mallory McMorrow, a majority of voters actually ended up voting for candidates who are more moderate than you. So how do you win over those voters who voted for someone else?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, thank you, Kristen. Really, we’re just grateful for everybody who participated. And the overwhelming recognition of the vote tallies is that 500,000 more Democrats voted than did Republicans in that election. And if that happens, we are going to win in a landslide. Now I know that we had it out with a very tough primary. There were a lot of issues that were discussed and differences that were identified and fixated on. But I will tell you this, that all of us agree that our differences are far smaller than what we agree on.

And what we agree on is that Donald Trump has been an existential threat to our democracy. He is costing us jobs. He is costing us more at almost every aspect of our lives, whether it’s our gas, our groceries, or our health care, and that Mike Rogers is going to be nothing more than a rubber stamp on Donald Trump’s disastrous economic and foreign policies. And so this is an opportunity for us to come together to mend fences, to build together the coalition that is going to defeat Mike Rogers in November and defeat Trumpism over the next two years.

KRISTEN WELKER: Well, let me ask you about some news that we’re learning this morning. Local outlets reporting that you spoke to former President Barack Obama on the phone. I know you’re not going to give me every detail of the call. But what was the crux of his message to you, Dr. El-Sayed?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, Kristen, you’re right. I like to keep private conversations private. But it was a really warm and inspiring conversation. I’ve got to be honest with you. I never saw myself ever able to run for public office. I literally told former President Bill Clinton that at my college graduation, in which I was the senior speaker and he was the main speaker. And I then watched the next year Barack Hussein Obama run for and win the presidency. I watched him serve with a level of class, a level of elegance that we could only pine for now. So I really enjoyed the conversation. I was grateful for his advice. It was very warm and very inviting. And I know that he knows the critical role that Michigan is going to play in holding Trump accountable, in winning back the Senate, and in building forward the future that we need.

KRISTEN WELKER: Is he going to campaign with you, Dr. El-Sayed?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, I really hope so. And it was a really good conversation about what we need to do to be able to win. And obviously, this is somebody who knows a lot about winning Michigan.

KRISTEN WELKER: And just to be clear, do you anticipate he’ll show up on the campaign trail with you? Is that one of the broad topics you all discussed?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, we talked a lot about what it’ll take to win. Obviously, his presence here in Michigan would mean so much to the coalition that helped elect him. So I hope that we get to campaign together.

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Democrats + DSA + Muslims.

• Abdul El-Sayed Makes a Mess on ‘Meet the Press’ (Tim O’Brien)

Clean up in aisle 4! Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed just made a mess in an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press, and let’s just say his handlers have some fixing to do. One of El-Sayed’s signature issues is “Medicare for All.” It’s an issue that El-Sayed loves to mention but doesn’t like to talk about in detail. One reason is that it’s not good for sound bites. Once you get into the details of Medicare, it gets complex, bureaucratic, and boring. None of those things work well in media interviews. But there are other reasons he’d rather not talk at length about his health coverage ideas, and it became clearer when Welker pressed him on it.


Calling him “Doctor,” Welker told El-Sayed that everyday Americans worry that to make Medicare universal would mean tax hikes for everyone, not just the rich. El-Sayed dismissively tried to give Welker a quick sound bite in the hope she’d move on when he said, “As I’ve said across this campaign, I am for taxing billionaires their wealth.” But Welker wasn’t done. She said, “What about people who make less than a billion and less than a million dollars?” El-Sayed responded:

“So, for the average person, when you look at your W2, if you’re an employee who gets paid every two weeks or four weeks, after you pay your taxes, the next biggest check that comes off the top of your pay stub is to your health insurance company. So, imagine instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million a year, instead you paid a little bit more in taxes for healthcare that you wouldn’t lose if you lost your job or turned 26 or got married or got divorced.

I think all of us would be a lot more interested in that kind of a system if we knew that our healthcare would be free at the point of care and would be free without having to worry about losing it, in general.So, there’s an opportunity here, I think, to trade what we give to a big corporation, who gets to decide who we get to see and who we don’t, for a little bit more paid into FICA. And I think that’s a trade that’s worth making. I think the broader public understands that that’s a trade worth making considering how many people are holding medical debt, a third of all Michigan households right now.”

Welker reinforced her earlier point, saying, “Just to be very clear, you’re describing this trade-off. You are effectively acknowledging that people making less than a million dollars could see their taxes go up. I just want to be very clear.” His non-answers to her questions were a de facto confirmation of Welker’s suspicions. What El-Sayed said pretty clearly was to trust the government more than your insurance company, and that yes, your taxes will go up under his plan.

Something that rarely comes up when “Medicare for All” is discussed is what Medicare does not cover. Anyone who’s turned 65 and applied for Medicare knows that Medicare is hardly an apples-to-apples replacement for the kind of health insurance you may have gotten through your employer.

Medicare does not automatically include eye care, dental care, and certain prescription coverage. If retirees pay more, and most do, they can enroll in a Part C or Medicare Advantage plan that covers more. But even there, Medicare Advantage is only one option and may not be as good as your existing health insurance. Some opt not to go with Medicare Advantage, instead going with a more expensive Medigap or another alternative plan that they feel is closer to what they’re used to.

As for El-Sayed’s comments that by paying the government more for your Medicare, you’re not paying some private health insurance company, that’s often not true at all. Medicare Advantage plans and other supplemental plans are usually administered by private health insurance companies, and so you likely still would be lining the coffers of some private insurance company. What all of this means is that while El-Sayed wants Americans to think they’re getting health insurance comparable to what they’ve had, and all they need to do is pay the government more in the form of higher taxes, that’s likely not what it would look like in practice.

Welker also asked him about his BFF, Hasan Piker, who’s been right at his side throughout this campaign. Walking a political tightrope, El-Sayed sought to distance himself from Piker’s words but not from the pathetic Piker himself.

During that same interview with Welker, El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker’s comments when he said that “America deserved 9/11.” When Welker asked the senatorial candidate for comment, he told her that Piker’s comments were “dumb.”

Of course, it was a dumb statement and of course I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. So yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11, but you know, to sit here and play gotcha politics with a dumb thing somebody said out of context that they disavowed themselves — to say, ‘Oh well, what does that mean about what you think?’ I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do, rather than this idea that we’re so stuck in cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020, but we seem to want to bring back, El-Sayed said. The leftist news site Politico had a slightly different take on El-Sayed’s comments:

El-Sayed’s comments are a stark difference from his interview with POLITICO earlier this year in which he declined to denounce Piker’s views in what he called a “gotcha game.””I’m not here to disavow people’s views,” El-Sayed said at the time. “This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture — I thought we were over it.”The Napoleonesque Senate candidate would not say one way or the other whether he’d continue to campaign with Piker, trying like the devil to get Welker to change the subject, saying that it doesn’t matter who he campaigns with. He said he’s “a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to.”

Politico wasn’t buying it, reporting that “El-Sayed’s embrace of Piker, who he said he believes is ‘critical’ for Democrats to embrace, has drawn criticism — from Republicans and Democrats alike.” On yet another front, former first lady “Dr. Jill Biden” once had a press secretary named Michael LaRosa. On Aug. 8, LaRosa bucked his party and publicly endorsed Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in his bid to become Michigan’s next senator.

While it’s rare for an embedded Democrat operative to so publicly break ranks like this, LaRosa made it crystal clear on the X platform why he was backing Rogers: “I won’t defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the alternative was worse, deserved what happened to her…. Her only crime was showing up to work that morning.”

All this adds up to a bad day on at least one Sunday show for the upstart candidate who is starting to look like the Michigan version of Graham Platner without the Nazi tattoo, the sexting, and all the other sex stuff. Judging him by the company he keeps, his refusal to distance himself from some seriously anti-American actors, and his clunky responses to straightforward questions, it’s clear that he’s got tougher days ahead. The truth is that the Sunday shows are very kind to Democrats. If he couldn’t hit a figurative home run in his first interview with Welker since winning his primary race, he’s got some weaknesses and vulnerabilities that the Rogers campaign and Republicans can exploit more fully in the coming months.

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Big Tent, Small Space: “Nothing says “Big Tent Party” like a good Communist pogrom.”

The nonsense is getting serious.

• Democratic Leaders Embrace the “Fine People” of the DSA (Turley)

Hasan Piker, a close ally of Abdul El-Sayed, is calling for “Marxist-Leninist” punishment for those who criticize Michigan’s Democratic senatorial candidate. As radicals and anti-Semites like Piker flood the Democratic Party, establishment figures are struggling to justify their alliance with extremist candidates. Ironically, Democrats are now fulfilling the false narrative that they used against President Donald Trump after the Charlottesville protests. They are maintaining that there are “many fine people” in the DSA despite their seeking to destroy our constitutional system, open our borders, defund the police, and embrace virtual anarchy.


Now, some of these fine people are calling for moderates to be purged as radicals take over the Democratic Party. In 2017, the media manufactured a controversy by suggesting that Trump had praised neo-Nazis and Klansmen in 2017 as “fine people” in Charlottesville. It was demonstrably false, but became the accepted truth in the media. In reality, Trump condemned the neo-Nazis, and the statement about “fine people on both sides” was in reference to the people on both sides of the debate over the removal of historic statues.

That narrative took on an added hypocrisy when some of the loudest voices later endorsed a candidate with an actual Nazi tattoo who allegedly assaulted women, mocked wounded veterans, and praised terrorists. However, he promised to deliver Maine and bring figures like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren back to power.

Anti-Semites and communists are not “fine” additions to any party. Hasan Piker is not a “fine person” in any universe. He has said that the United States deserved the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and prominently displays a picture of the collapsing Twin Towers. He has downplayed the murders and rapes of innocent Israelis on Oct. 7th and called one Jewish man who challenged him a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog.” Figures like Harris and Buttigieg brush off El-Sayed’s allies, including Mohammad Baqer Qazwini, a prominent Muslim cleric who gave a sermon that called for followers to vote for El-Sayed while also calling upon them to pray for the death of President Donald Trump and to celebrate the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Then there is the Democratic House candidate in New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a prison abolitionist who boasted how she wiped her hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin. Chevalier and other DSA candidates are being welcomed in the Democratic Party despite anti-American views and a DSA platform calling for the destruction of our constitutional system, including scrapping the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the Senate. Many are also overwhelmingly anti-Israel, with many, like Piker, displaying virulent anti-Semitism.

When asked about the extreme agenda of these candidates, Schumer and others repeat the mantra that they need to win in the upcoming elections. In other words, the DSA is opposed to the core institutions and values of this country, but it could be useful in returning them to power. What is interesting is that the establishment does not appear to care what these radicals represent for their party, but the radicals care deeply about what the establishment represents. This week, former DNC Vice-chair David Hogg told establishment figures that the “Big Tent” of his party is not big enough for them. He and other moderates have to go.

When asked about Democratic moderates, Hogg replied, “They don’t have the right values.” Piker has even grander plans for our post-constitutional republic, calling for mass arrests, demanding pledges from establishment figures to “arrest and prosecute every prominent member of the Trump administration” who engaged in what he views as corruption as well as “every ICE agent who committed crimes on the job.” Piker also wants to purge any Democrats who do not support El-Sayed, calling them “haters” who deserved to be punished:

“There are haters in our ranks. Notice how whenever someone comes out and says, ‘Yeah that’s actually a bad association,’ immediately it’s weaponized by the Republicans. You can’t be out here saying like, ‘Oh, I’m a centrist Democrat. And I think Abdul is a bridge too far.’ That must be punished.” Piker, who likes to parade around in a Mao jacket, seems to be longing for the good old days of party purges under Stalin and his contemporaries in the Comintern.

He notably accused critics of the sin of “factionalism.” Since the Jacobins of the French Revolution, factionalism has been the scourge of revolutionaries. In my book, Rage and the Republic, I discuss the difference between the American and French Revolutions. Where James Madison saw factions as a natural part of a democratic system, the Jacobins sought them as a traitorous and reactionary element. Madison saw compromise as the best solution to factions, while the Jacobins saw the guillotine as the final solution.

Piker is right out of that Jacobin tradition, calling moderate Democrats “Koch payroll ‘liberals’” and “irredeemable.” (Notably, the Jacobins also pushed for some of the same DSA demands such as a unicameral legislature). Of course, conservatives can show the same intolerance for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), but there is an added menacing element to communists calling for mass expulsion or punishment of moderates from their party. It is chillingly familiar.

Mao regularly purged the Communist Party of those not following the party lines, declaring, “Serious offenders should be punished by law, and when they are Party members they should also be dealt with according to Party discipline.” Establishment figures continue to use the “Big Tent” narratives to brush off questions about the radical agenda and associations of these candidates. The only thing that they have in common is the desire for power. Once these candidates win, figures like Schumer will discover that this tent is not nearly as big as they think.

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Presidential hopeful on the right?

“A widening split on the American right is turning Trump’s old base into open opposition, with Israel at the center of the rupture..”

• Tucker for President? MAGA Rebels Declare Independence From Israel (Amar)

Almost since US President Donald Trump started his second and final term, the movement that brought him to power twice has been fracturing. Now there is a full break among Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters. Its essence is simple: There are those who continue to identify MAGA with Trump, and on the other side of a widening chasm, those who remain loyal to MAGA but believe that Trump has not. The rebels say Trump has betrayed the cause and want to save MAGA – and thus the US – from Trump.


There are no official structures yet to what the MAGA dissidents call their movement, but it does have a de facto leader – popular journalist and podcast host Tucker Carlson. It was at Tucker’s all-American place in Maine that the MAGA schism was made official. There, several key figures of the evolving MAGA-against-Trump group met, and in effect, raised the standard of rebellion. Not literally, but in the shape of an X post by former US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (with 5.4 million followers). It featured a carefully composed picture of a merry rebel crew, including, apart from herself, Joe Kent, former counterterrorism tsar under Trump, Representative Thomas Massie, a long-term conservative Trump opponent, and Carlson, sitting at the head of the table.

Within days after the post, Carlson released a video manifesto with the title “It’s Time to Save America” on his own Tucker Carlson Network social media channel (with 5.2 million subscribers on YouTube). Within one day, it had over a million views on YouTube alone. In a rhetorical master class for the podcast age, Carlson sketched the American present as a dead-end of extraordinary decadence and degradation, a loss of reality among the establishment, and “paralysis and looting.”

He also predicted that change is inevitable if Americans want to avoid the “end-of-everything,” either by nuclear war or uncontrolled AI. He warned that even preventing this apocalypse by timely political action could produce great violence, that is, a revolution. And finally, he presented his alternative to both the end of the world and wild upheaval in ten concise points. Ranging from “fairness” to “unity,” his ten points were more a clarion call for national renewal than a concrete policy outline, with aims general enough to form a broad consensus, as he acknowledged.

Much of his ten points read like MAGA 2.0, that is, without Trump, as observers noted. On issues such as physical and mental health, the need for the economy to make actually useful things instead of just surveillance tech, weapons of war, and financial gimmicks, the beauty of the American landscape and architecture in need of restoration, Carlson’s impassioned pleas echoed the conservatism that is one root of the MAGA phenomenon.

Ultimately, what will be more important is where things differ: One of Carlson’s points was about sovereignty, or as he defined it, being “free from outside influence.” It is this point that provides the key to all the others. The ten points are, in essence, a declaration of independence, not just from any outside influence, but from Israel and its powerful US lobby. Carlson directly named them as forming one of America’s worst problems. For starters, he did not simply attack a selfish upper class whose members behave as if they were kings, above the rules of law and ethics. He called it the “Epstein class,” with reference to the late convicted pedophile, alleged suicide victim, self-declared Rothschild representative, and close associate of alleged Israeli rapists and intelligence.

Carlson also correctly linked the Iran War – a “strategic disaster” worse than Vietnam, as another realistic American recently stated – to “bribery or threat or both by Israel.” Equally plausibly, he accused Israel of committing genocide – like Nazi Germany, he said – and protested against continuing US support. Finally, the activities of lobbies, with that of Israel not alone, but in the lead, “gives the lie to the idea of representative democracy,” according to Carlson, because where lobbyists make the decisions, the voters do not.

In short, Carlson made the point that America’s worst military defeat in living memory, its support for – and really, participation in – an ongoing genocide, and its loss of sovereignty and democracy are all due, either entirely or to a large extent, to the US establishment’s perverse and deeply unpatriotic relationship to Israel. Politically, this amounts to an arguably long overdue declaration of war against the Zionist state’s aggressive influence operations.

And the message has gotten through. Haaretz, Israel’s ‘liberal’ paper of record, rapidly dedicated a long opinion piece to Carlson, accusing him of – surprise, surprise – “anti-Semitism.” This is an absurd smear, but expected. Systematically misrepresenting criticism of Israel, a genocidal apartheid state, as hatred of Jews is an old, stale Zionist tactic. Carlson certainly isn’t naïve. Even in his ten points, he anticipated being called a “Nazi” and shrugged it off.

But Haaretz does get one thing right. For Carlson and his growing movement, “Israel and its American supporters also represent a central source of the [MAGA] movement’s betrayal [by Trump].” Or, put differently, Carlson represents an American conservatism that has the courage to identify, name, and attack America’s insane dependence on a tiny yet immensely subversive and violent rogue state.

There is, no doubt, much idealizing and even nostalgia in Carlson’s image of American history and the West. And those wishing to be woke about an arch-conservative will find rich pickings. But that is futile and dull, because it is not the point that matters. What matters is that US polls have consistently shown a great, unprecedented groundswell against Israel. A new book on Israel’s US lobby is about to come out and is making a massive splash. The tide is turning.

Fellow MAGA rebel Joe Kent let it slip that Tucker-for-president is an option. Third parties are a difficult proposition. Yet Haaretz for one is worried, and from a Zionist point of view, it should be. And that is very good news.

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“Economic security is national security.”

• What ‘America First’ Really Means (J.B. Shurk)

I have a dream that American farmers, drillers, miners, industrialists, and manufacturers produce everything that American consumers need. I have a dream that anything worth building is built in America, that any job worth doing is done in America, and that anything worth buying can be found and shipped within the United States.


Why did we allow ourselves to be convinced that Americans should make only a few select things and buy everything else from foreign markets? Why did we allow politicians and Wall Street investors to convince us that “free trade” requires slave labor from faraway lands? Why did we spend a century ensuring safer work environments and more dependable wages for our skilled tradesmen only to export those jobs to adversarial nations that care nothing about worker safety or providing above-subsistence standards of living? Why did we fight a Cold War in defense of freedom only to subsidize Chinese communism? Why do we regulate ourselves to death in the name of “fighting global warming,” while China and India inflict the worst environmental damage on the planet?

Prove these statements wrong: There is no worker on the planet more capable than an American. There is no nation of people more innovative than the United States. There is nothing that Americans import from other nations that Americans can’t discover, create, grow, or produce on their own. There is no country on the planet with more educational infrastructure than the United States. There is no country on the planet with a greater incentive to defend its way of life.

I believe that Establishment politicians and multinational investment firms sold us a bill of goods when they told us that “free trade” deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, would provide American households greater prosperity. I believe that those politicians and Wall Street investors lied when they told us that the United States would become a “service economy” and that blue-collar workers would find personal fulfillment as customer service representatives, real estate agents, telephone operators, data technicians, and software coders.

I believe that politicians and Big Ag corporations lie when they insist that only illegal aliens are willing to sweat in farm fields. I believe that politicians who ignore federal law by establishing “sanctuary cities” and NGOs that aid and abet human smuggling into the United States lie when they say that some jobs are “too dirty” for Americans to take. I believe Establishment politicians and Wall Street titans have spent fifty years lying to the American people about the kinds of jobs that Americans should do.

The economy of the United States did not surpass that of the United Kingdom until the third year of WWI in 1916. While the U.K. had been the engine for the global economy for two centuries, America held an inimitable distinction: No other country in the world had maintained higher rates of both intra- and inter-generational mobility. The American Experiment created an ideal environment for innovation, hard work, investment, and private ownership. Individual workers advanced up the economic ladder during their own lifetimes, and their children and grandchildren ascended even farther. In a few generations, farmers became tradesmen who became merchants who became bankers, lawyers, ministers, and politicians. Respect for private property and a rejection of European social castes made America a land of opportunity.

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in a rigged Christmas vote in 1913, the American system has been upended. Bankers created a monopoly for themselves to manipulate the value of the American dollar. They, in turn, set the monetary system down a path toward inevitable decoupling from the gold standard. Dollar-printing (and government spending) decreased the value of personal savings and artificially juiced the currency-denominated value of homes, stocks, and other assets — effectively transferring wealth from the poorest Americans to the wealthiest.

As inflation steadily kicked in, central bankers and corporation-controlled politicians looked for ways to limit the rising costs of American goods. They artificially increased demand for the dollar by linking it to oil revenues, offshored American manufacturing to low-wage or slave-wage foreign nations, decreased the quality of finished products, and replaced small businesses with a handful of multinational corporate monopolies. Each of these “band-aids” has preserved Wall Street’s internal mechanisms for generating profits, while destroying the engine of American ingenuity and the physical infrastructure of American industry, manufacturing, and real economic growth.

The end result has been that — in charts and graphs — America has appeared to maintain an advanced economy that has consistently grown through the decades, even though its industrial towns have collapsed into rusty graveyards. If you separate the economy of the United States into two separate lines on a graph — one for Main Street businesses across the country and one for multinational businesses running Wall Street — it becomes obvious that small American businesses have had no growth (or negative growth) for decades. While the costs of their raw materials, employees, government regulations, and taxes have continued to rise, their profits have dwindled.

The engine of American growth in the real economy has been sputtering and dying, while artificially inflated valuations of Wall Street assets have been disguising America’s economic infirmity. Wall Street has become the Potemkin economy hiding America’s loss of industrial strength. This is no way for a superpower to endure. The United States cannot survive if it is dependent on communist China for chemicals, medicines, circuit boards, electrical components, clothing, machinery, and furniture.

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That took barely a decade…

• Europe Was Once Bigger Than The US Economy. What Happened? (ZH)

The United States and the European Union are the two largest Western economies of the 21st century. Over the past two decades, however, their economic trajectories have diverged significantly.This line chart below, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, tracks the gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU and U.S. economies from 2006 to 2026 using the latest figures available from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s World Economic Outlook. Figures for 2026 are forecasts.


The Early Rise and Fall of the EU
The 15-member European Union was established in 1993 from precursor organizations such as the European Communities. In 2004, 10 new member states joined, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. Aided by the addition of these new member states, along with strong British and German economies, the EU s total GDP reached $19.3 trillion in 2008. This represented 131% of the U.S. economy that year, which stood at $14.8 trillion. The euro also reached an all-time high in June 2008 at roughly $1.55. The table below shows the size of the EU economy relative to the U.S. economy from 2006 to 2026.

The global financial crisis and Great Recession changed the European Union’s fortunes.

The newly expanded bloc faced severe challenges as several member-state governments struggled to service their debts or rein in large structural deficits. These countries included eurozone members Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Through a combination of multilateral bailouts and austerity measures, the EU weathered the crisis. However, in the years that followed, the 28-member bloc s aggregate GDP contracted, and the $18.3 trillion U.S. economy surpassed it in 2015. Part of the decline in dollar-denominated GDP also reflected changes in exchange rates as the euro weakened against the U.S. dollar.

Brexit and the Years of Decline
Further challenges followed. In a June 2016 referendum, British voters narrowly chose to make the United Kingdom the first country to withdraw from the European Union. The Brexit process culminated in the UK s formal withdrawal in January 2020. Losing the UK dealt another blow to the EU’s aggregate economy. Although the country had never joined the eurozone, it was the EU ]’s second-largest member economy. Combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit helped push the bloc’s GDP down to $15.5 trillion in 2020, roughly where it had stood a decade earlier. A

s the UK economy has struggled through much of the 2020s, some in London have begun to float the possibility of rejoining the EU. Other European countries, including Albania and Montenegro, remain potential future entrants to the bloc.

The Post-Pandemic Divergence
Since the pandemic, the U.S. and European Union have followed very different trajectories. Despite inflation and high interest rates, the U.S. economy rebounded strongly from COVID and is forecast to reach $32.4 trillion in 2026. Meanwhile, the EU has faced a combination of rising Chinese industrial competition and an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With economic heavyweight Germany facing protracted stagnation, the EU s GDP is forecast to reach $23 trillion in 2026.

That leaves the EU economy at just 71% the size of the U.S. economy, a sharp reversal from its position in 2008. Exchange rates account for part of the shift, but weaker growth and a series of economic shocks have also contributed to the widening gap.

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“Reading excerpts from Anthony Fauci’s ill-advised diary, it’s clear above all that he’s a money-grubbing, narcissistic liar.”

• Who Will Judge Anthony Fauci? (Pete McArdle)

Reading excerpts from Anthony Fauci’s ill-advised diary, saved on government servers, it’s clear to me above all that he’s a money-grubbing, narcissistic liar.Fauci helped fund the Wuhan Level 4 Virology Lab, knowing full well that the lab was tinkering with bat viruses. And when the Chinese Communist lab loosed COVID-19 upon the world, wee Tony felt two overwhelming urges: the immediate urge to cover his butt, and a burning and probably lifelong desire for the little rat to finally become a big cheese.


So Fauci lied about the virus’s origins, and pressured other spineless scientists to agree that the “novel,” i.e., never before seen, virus came from some Wuhan local enjoying bat soup or a pangolin hero, and not the obvious source, a nearby Fauci-funded virology lab. To believe that, you’d have to be a Democrat, one of their media handmaidens, or a complete moron, but I repeat myself.After all, those folks are all fond of fairy tales, telling us it’s fine for men to beat up female athletes, Muslims were instrumental in founding America, ObamaCare lets you keep your doctor and your plan, and Joe Biden’s Stage 4 prostate cancer was only recently discovered.

Having dodged all accountability for helping create COVID-19, Fauci then set about becoming, in his own words, “one of the most recognizable persons in the world.” Napoleon much, Tony?In this he was successful, making stuff up left and right, changing the common meaning of words, and becoming fabulously wealthy in the process. Estimates are that while millions were dying from COVID, 7-8 million dollars somehow found their way into Tony’s pocket. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Fauci first stated – correctly — that masks wouldn’t prevent the spread of an airborne virus. Then he backtracked, saying that it was a necessary white lie, so the rubes wouldn’t cause a mask shortage for health professionals. Now, masks became absolutely necessary for everyone. In fact, two masks were better than one. As a dentist for forty-three years, I was outraged by Fauci’s mask theater, knowing that the paper masks I wore daily had pores big enough for any virus to get through, N-95 masks (which allow 5% of small particles like viruses to go through) made it hard for me to breathe, and only a moron would walk around wearing two masks.

Fauci then made up the six-foot “social distancing” and “no handshake” rules and again, a sneeze can send saliva twenty-eight feet or so, and the Wuhan Flu was acquired by breathing viral aerosols, not skin-to-skin contact. Feeling his power and fame growing, Fauci then got serious about running things. He and his “public health” pals shut down the country and then, with the avid support of Democrats frothing at the mouth to take down President Trump, crashed the economy and arbitrarily determined winners and losers.

Winners were government workers who got paid whether they worked or not; big box stores (I painted and landscaped my entire new home during the pandemic); rubber glove and medical mask producers; teachers unions whose members were paid for (not) remotely learning, liquor stores; the mostly peaceful and mask-exempt rioters of BLM, and the despicable fake-news media, loudly trumpeting body counts and blaming it all on Trump. And all the while, rivers of sweet, sweet moolah flowed into Dr. and Mrs. Fauci’s bank accounts.

Losers were the poor nursing home patients in states where the likes of “Handy Andy” Cuomo forced such facilities to accept patients regardless of COVID status, small business owners, movie theaters, museums, music venues, churches, synagogues, and mosques, folks who were denied routine medical and dental care and later paid the price, people suffering from anxiety who became full-fledged hypochondriacs and, after manually disinfecting their groceries, lit St. Fauci votive candles; and most of all, kids.

During the pandemic, the smallest and most vulnerable among us were denied proper education, normal social development, and even being out in the great outdoors. All this unnecessary and inestimable damage to our children — for a disease which killed Americans who were, on average, seventy-eight years old and had multiple comorbidities! St. Fauci wasn’t done, though. He forced a vaccine on Americans that failed to prevent either catching COVID or transmitting it — by definition, a failed vaccine — but did cause countless deaths and severe illnesses, countless because no one in the public-health hierarchy was much interested in counting them or informing the public. As a health professional, I was one of the first people (double) vaccinated, before coming down with COVID. Twice.

Did my vaccinations lessen the severity of my disease? Totally conjectural, something impossible to prove since the virus was constantly mutating and is currently just another flu bug. And despite mounting perhaps the worst pandemic response in recorded history, Little Lord Fauci somehow found time to chat up known intellectuals Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts, have “friendship-building” dinners with so-called journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and attend a pro baseball game with two pals when no one else was allowed admittance, a game where he both took his mask off to talk to his friends and threw possibly the lamest first pitch in major league baseball history, almost as short and crooked as Fauci himself.

It must have been wonderful for Tony, watching his stature, er… social stature, and net worth grow even as millions of lives were lost, ruined, or damaged. But, sadly, the party’s now over. Anyone with eyes to see now realizes what an evil, selfish, and undoubtedly criminal man Anthony Fauci is. Whoever ran old, senile Joe Biden — Jill? The Chicoms? — certainly agreed with my assessment. They gave Fauci a blanket pardon for any and all crimes he committed during his reign of error. So, who will judge Anthony Fauci for his crimes against humanity?Democrats? Republican politicians? The courts? No, nothing’s going to happen to the incredibly wealthy and still quite popular Anthony Fauci, once the most recognizable name in the world. The Swamp protects its own.

Now, I’m seventy-three, and with multiple comorbidities, I can see the finish line. A deeply flawed man, I just hope that when it comes to my final judgment, the good I did in life outweighs the bad.By this coming Christmas, Anthony Fauci will be eighty-six. And if, like me, you’re outraged at all the damage done by a pencil-pushing bureaucrat who never even treated patients and became fabulously wealthy and popular doing it, relax. Because poor little Tony Fauci surely has tremors, night sweats, and insomnia, pondering his final judgment.

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Why defend him?

• She Called Fauci a Sociopath on CNN, and the Panel Went Nuts (Matt Margolis)

Caroline Sunshine went on CNN’s Newsnight this week and said the quiet part out loud about Dr. Fauci, and as you can imagine, the panel was none too pleased about it. The former Trump 2024 campaign press aide told her fellow panelists that Fauci is a textbook sociopath. “Forget about prosecuting him,” Sunshine said on CNN’s Newsnight. “The guy should be in a mental institution. He’s a textbook sociopath.” Naturally, the room fell apart.


Podcast host Leigh McGowan could only manage a stunned “What?” Sunshine pressed forward anyway, and laid out her diagnosis in clinical terms. “DSM-5 level sociopath who was running our pandemic response, low empathy, ability to inflict pain on innocents, narcissism,” she said. “Are you suggesting that he should be in a mental institution for having an ego?” host Abby Phillip asked, downplaying the charge as something that would describe just about everyone in Washington. The whole misery loves company thing.

But Sunshine’s point had nothing to do with ego. Fauci kept a diary through the darkest stretch of the pandemic, and he filled it with something other than grief for the country he was supposedly serving. “He writes in his diary at the height of the pandemic, when Americans aren’t allowed to see grandma dying of COVID, what is Anthony Fauci writing about? ‘The media is so hot for me.’ ‘I’ve had so many articles written about me.’”

Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary, jumped to Fauci’s defense and reminded the table that she actually worked with him at the White House. “There is one person at this table who worked with Dr. Fauci,” Matthews said. “I was Trump’s deputy press secretary during COVID.” She admitted it was “very frustrating” watching Fauci land magazine covers and TV hits criticizing the administration’s COVID response, but she chalked it up to a novel virus and a government improvising in real time.

Sunshine was not buying the excuse. “You couldn’t keep him off TV,” she said. “You were in the press office. You would know.” Even Phillip could not resist a jab of her own, suggesting Fauci might have been drinking his own Kool-Aid. Sunshine turned that line right back on the panel. “You all in the media, you were in love with him,” she said. “You were in love with a narcissist. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you guys.”


Here’s the thing: None of what Sunshine said is wrong. We know what Fauci’s diary entries say. They aren’t the private notes of a public health official managing a national crisis with the good of the nation in mind. They’re more like the confessions of a man drunk on his own celebrity. This guy tracked his magazine covers. He counted his headlines. He measured his own importance in press clips while hospitals kept grieving families away from relatives dying of COVID-19. He even detailed his efforts to profit from the pandemic with cash awards.

Those entries also undercut the image Fauci spent years building. He cared more about protecting his own reputation than telling Americans the truth, including about where the virus came from in the first place. Fauci spent years treating the lab leak theory as a fringe conspiracy, only to watch his credibility collapse once his own communications and diary entries surfaced. Sunshine said an uncomfortable truth, and the CNN panel could not handle hearing it out loud. That reaction tells you everything about how deep the media’s investment in protecting him still runs.

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View from the left. Who insist they’re winning.

• Trump Has Squandered Republicans’ Typical Advantages In 2 Key Areas (CNN)

President Donald Trump’s political stature is so poor right now that he has squandered the Republican Party’s advantage on two major issues that almost always favor the GOP: the economy and national security. A Reuters-Ipsos poll this week showed Democrats and Republicans virtually tied on “war, foreign conflicts and terrorism.” The GOP led on that issue by 11 points after the 2024 election. Today, 37% of US adults say Democrats have a better approach, compared to 36% who say the GOP does.


Fox News polling a couple weeks back showed something very similar: On national security, 50% of registered voters preferred the GOP, to 48% who preferred the Democratic Party. That’s compared to a 12-point edge for Republicans in January, before the Iran war. Both recent findings are within the margin of error. But the numbers even being that close is basically unheard of. Fox polling has regularly tested how registered voters compare the two parties on terrorism and national security. Until the Iran war, Democrats had never even been within double-digits of the Republican Party on either issue.

Republicans have also led consistently on national security in Gallup polling. Democrats only nosed ahead on that issue once in the 21st century: in 2007. Gallup’s data on which party is better on “international terrorism and military threats” has been even more lopsided in the GOP’s favor. Across 22 polls conducted since a year after 9/11, Democrats have led on that issue only once — again, in 2007 — and most of the time Republicans led by double-digits. And then there’s the economy.

The most recent Fox survey showed Democrats leading on that issue by nine points, 54%-45%. That was the biggest Democratic advantage since 2006, when they led by 20 points. And when they took a lead on the economy back in April, it marked the first time they were ahead since 2010, shortly after the 2008 financial crisis that began during the George W. Bush administration. CNN polling back in May showed a closer split between the two parties on the economy, with 35% of adults preferring Democrats, compared to 33% who preferred the GOP. The poll previously asked people to choose between congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats. The last time Republicans didn’t lead on that question was 2009.

The numbers on both fronts seem to illustrate that Trump greatly miscalculated the fallout from launching the Iran war — as well as other controversial policies like his global tariffs. By launching the tariffs, he effectively took ownership of whatever became of the economic picture. Then he compounded negative public sentiment by basically shrugging off any responsibility to address Americans’ inflation concerns. Now he’s contending with a still-stagnant economic picture, with the economy shedding 23,000 jobs in July. Americans don’t love Democrats; in fact, the blue side remains pretty unpopular in polls. So the fact that they’ve apparently taken a lead on the economy really says something.

And the national security numbers might be even more striking — because Democrats hardly ever even compete with Republicans on the topic. Just as education and health care almost always favor Democrats, national security and defending the homeland are almost always signature GOP issues, and lopsidedly so. That remained true even when Bush launched wars in the Middle East that gradually became pretty unpopular. Trump, though, seems to have botched the Iran war so badly that Americans suddenly see Democrats on equal footing with the GOP — in terms of issues on the GOP’s own turf.

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“We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records ..”

• The Unintended Consequences of the Digital Revolution (Paul Craig Roberts)

I have always assured readers that in the anti-human digital age, whoever controls the data base controls the “truth,” which will be, and already is, an orchestration serving elite agendas.


Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, an online open encyclopedia that serves to demonize those who speak outside of the official narratives, agrees with me. Sanger in an interview last Friday with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung said that Wikipedia’s lack of an adequate governance structure allowed “specific ideological viewpoints” to shape its content, turning the online encyclopedia into a “globalist, academic, secular and progressive” consensus.

“Wikipedia was recognized early on as an important propaganda organ.” Jews use it to demonize Israel’s critics, and Sanger reports “what we know as fact, based on all sorts of evidence, is that the CIA has already edited Wikipedia.” “Wikipedia is already compromised. That’s clear,” Sanger admitted. He went on to say the ideological bias embedded in Wikipedia is now being amplified because large language models increasingly rely on its content as a reference source when answering factual queries.

The digital revolution and its offshoot artificial intelligence have created the perfect Orwellian memory hole. I and numerous others have documented books and articles with URLs to online sources only to experience that within a few days of publication the sources no longer exist. This could not happen in print and analogue days. There were huge numbers of sources for every source reference in libraries, newspaper morgues, and private collections. It was impossible to erase reference sources.

The digital revolution rests on the Internet which developed as an open system. This means it can never be secure. Already security concerns are everywhere. The day has already passed that a username and a password sufficed. Now you have to have a code sent by text or email. Then a passkey, and sometimes also voice and face recognition, both of which AI can produce to impersonate you. Scammers progress faster than security, and once quantum computers appear encryption is useless.

The reality with with which we are faced is that information no longer exists in multiple print form. Information no longer exists in material form. It exists somewhere electronically in the cloud. One electromagnetic force can wipe it out, and malefactors and mistakes can erase it.

We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records. Imagine if that is your bank. What happens to your access to your accounts? Can you pay your bills? Is your automobile insurance cancelled? Do you face foreclosure on your mortgage? Possibly businesses are creating backup systems of some kind, but as they also are digital they too will fail.

The digital revolution was the creation of people devoid of capability to imagine unintended consequences. They are building for us a house of cards. When it collapses, so will organized society. It is merely a matter of time.

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I don’t think he keeps a diary.

• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya -vs- Margaret Brennan (CTH)

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much”…
Slowly she builds her performance outrage, methodically working through the talking points afore her. Full dramatic acting on display. Lips pursed, bladed eyebrows angled, contempt tone triggered and the intent obvious.


NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya appears on CBS Face the Nation to discuss Mexican poop lettuce, Mexico poop peppers, Illegal Alien measles spread and the weaponized information from health ‘administrators’ around the COVID-19 vaccine. Obviously, with Media Patron Saint Anthony Fauci facing scrutiny, Margaret Brennan defends Fauci as she would if the Lightbringer, Chicago Jesus was disrespected. Combative video and Transcript below:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Good morning to you, doctor.

NIH DIRECTOR DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA: Good morning.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And we should mention you are also helping to run the CDC until the new director is sworn in as well.

DR. BHATTACHARYA: Until next Wednesday, yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Until next Wednesday. So let me ask you about a number of things that I think people at home are worried about, particularly around the food supply. The cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Mexico is now in 15 states. There were two deaths this week due to it. Yesterday, USDA issued an alert for a range of products that may have salmonella, including meat and poultry. 27 states are affected by salmonella, possibly linked to jalapeños, but cilantro, red onion, avocado, also listed in the CDC notice. Albertsons, a grocery store, just recalled some items. There’s risk of salmonella in eggs in Texas, according to the CDC, and then you have the screwworm outbreak affecting beef. This is overwhelming for someone going into a grocery store right now. Why do they seem out of control?

DR. BHATTACHARYA: Well, the- the cyclospora outbreak is larger than in normal years. I mean, in normal years there actually is a- cyclospora cases. The- the two deaths that you mentioned, they happened in late July- late- late June, early July, before we identified this source. And so, folks that are listening, can rest assured, the CDC and the FDA are working hard to trace back exactly where these outbreaks are occurring from, intervening with the- the sort of suppliers to make sure that they don’t- and doing recalls to make sure that the disease doesn’t- the, you know, condition doesn’t spread. I mean, it’s tough. You go to grocery store, you buy lettuce, and you say, “Okay, can I buy the lettuce?”

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“The impetus for the absurd White House ballroom decision is the desire to hamstring the President in all things large or small. “

• Abolish the District of Columbia’s Clown Courts (Clarice Feldman)

Article III of the Constitution allows Congress to establish courts below the Supreme Court, which includes federal District and Circuit Courts. If Congress can establish them, it can abolish them. In 1801, in the waning days of John Adams’ presidency, Congress did just that and abolished the district and circuit courts of the District of Columbia.


These two courts display widespread intransigent partisanship and demonstrably poor scholarship, exemplified by this week’s ruling on the new White House construction. Given the difficulty of removing so many bad judges in these two courts by impeaching them, it’s time to repeat John Adams’ move: Abolish these courts. Cases that normally would be heard in them should be assigned to courts elsewhere. The case which most showcases the lunacy of the D.C. courts is National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States v. National Park Service, et al. As is often the case in poorly reasoned opinions, the author substitutes words for reason.

As you may know, the old East Wing of the White House which, among other things, contained underground security facilities (bunkers, bomb-shelters, and military and medical infrastructure), presidential offices and some minimal public meeting spaces, was torn down and construction begun on a replacement with a larger number of more modern offices and a ballroom to provide a larger, much-needed entertainment and meeting space, better security facilities, and protection against drone attacks. Up to now, rented tents and outdoor porta potty facilities have had to be utilized for state events, and the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Ball surely underscores the need for a safe venue for such things.

Except for the congressional appropriation for the upgraded secure facilities in this new wing, the remainder of the cost is being borne by private contributions to the National Park Service, which is administering these funds. But this is hate Trump city, and Alison Hoagland, a board member of the National Trust, said that she takes monthly walks past the White House and that the aesthetics of the new construction would cause her harm.

In the real world, monthly aesthetic harm to one person’s delicate sensibilities would not upend a needed improvement to the White House grounds, which are exempt by its terms from the National Historic Preservation Act (which establishes the Trust). The litigation has been long and involved back-and-forth court rulings between the district and circuit courts. The courts have now finally agreed the below-ground construction would not be halted, but this week ruled the above-ground work must be, even though that is a structural impossibility and a security (and aesthetic) nightmare.

The first question that every court must decide before proceeding further in any case is whether or not it even has jurisdiction to hear and decide the matter. The majority opinion doesn’t get to this until page 30 of its opinion, and then, for all its flowery verbosity, it got it wrong, just as the dissenting judge notes:

“…the district court had no jurisdiction because the Trust has no standing to stop construction at the White House. The ballroom is also likely within the President’s authority to make improvements to the Executive Residence at the White House. Finally, the balance of equities overwhelmingly favors the government. The district court elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby over the government’s security interests in the ballroom and the security risks of leaving an open construction site at the President’s home and office.”

In assessing the balance of equities between Ms. Hoagland’s claimed aesthetic harms and the needs of the White House, Judge Rao shows the Court “improperly glossed over, ignored or discounted the government’s evidence demonstrating the security harms from construction of the ballroom.” Nor could it, as Rao noted, “compensate for the slight aesthetic harm by resorting to hyperbole and its view of the legal merits. Every day the project is delayed increases the security risk according to declarations from senior military and Secret Service officials. Moreover, the creation of the above-ground ballroom “will alleviate security vulnerabilities that currently impact large events involving the President.”

As a practical matter, the underground and above-ground facilities cannot be separated out at this point. “The Secretary of the Army has further explained why the underground national security facilities cannot be adequately protected by the concrete slab and modest topping structure allowed by the district court’s injunction… The ballroom’s dimensions and structure are essential for security. According to the Secretary, “[t]o provide adequate subterranean protection without” the “height and mass” of the ballroom, “engineers would need to dig impractically deep.”

…The ballroom provides a critical “dual-layered system” of protection for the national security facilities, “comprising a sacrificial outer cover coupled with a hardened inner structural element.” …Corroborating the Secretary’s account, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has similarly described how the “height and mass” of the ballroom “provide crucial, physical layers to shield” the national security facilities.

The height of the ballroom will also provide an “essential elevated platform to engage and neutralize aerial systems,” such as drones, that pose an increasingly serious threat to White House security. …There is no dispute that the Secretary’s declaration and the Army Corps memorandum are authentic, credible, and “go[] to the heart of the contested issue,” so it would be “inconsistent with this court’s own equitable obligations to pretend that [they] do[] not exist.”

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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle August 10 2026

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  • August 10, 2026 at 10:19 am #247008
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    Marc Chagall The Cattle Dealer 1912 • Trump Says “We Are Low Keying It” With Iran (ZH) • Mojtaba Khamenei In Good Health, Video With Him Is Old — Iran
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle August 10 2026]

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