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Debt Rattle September 25 2026

Sep 252026
 
 September 25, 2026  Posted by at 7:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  Add comments


William Blake Europe Supported by Africa and America 1796


• Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump From Banning 3 Outlets From White House (JTN)
• You’re Not Going to Believe the Stunt CNN Pulled (Moran)
• The Funeral of CNN (Eric Florack)
• Panic At CNN As Paramount Seeks Elon Musk Equity Investment (ZH)
• CNN Insiders Are Panicking Over This Bombshell Development (Matt Margolis)
• 60 Percent of Polled Democrats Would Support a Military Coup (Turley)
• AfD Now The Most Popular Party In Key Western German State (RMX)
• Europeans Should Overthrow Their ‘Ruling Class’ (J.B. Shurk)
• Queen Ursula’s New ‘Boyfriend’ Should Make Putin Smile (Rachel Marsden)
• Canada and UK Could Merge War Chests To Fight Russia (RT)
• Trumps “Russian sanctions” Destroyed German Car Industry (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Check Out McDonald’s $13.5 BILLION Modernization Plan (Stephen Green)
• Milei Calls UN a Caste of Parasites, Signs a Major Deal with US (Anderson)
• London May Become De Jure Party To Ukraine Conflict (TASS)
• This Story of a Black Woman Found Dead by Hanging (Tim O’Brien)

 

 

 

 


Haven’t found any Xi articles that stood out. But we know he’s here.

“Ruling restores CNN, MSNOW and Politico’s access until case is resolved.”

• Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump From Banning 3 Outlets From White House (JTN)

A federal judge ordered President Donald Trump early Thursday to restore White House access to CNN, MSNOW and Politico, temporarily blocking his bid to ban them from accessing the executive mansion. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, said the news outlets had met the “high bar” for a preliminary injunction and that White House must “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” their access. The three outlets sued the White House earlier this week after Trump banned them from the White House over their coverage of his administration.


The lawsuit argues that presidents have long had adversarial relationships with reporters and haven’t always agreed with what the press is reporting, but the “Constitution protects the liberty and property interests that news organizations and White House reporters have in their press credentials and the access those credentials afford them to cover the White House for the benefit of the public.”

After an initial hearing Wednesday afternoon, Kelly kept the ban in place while he weighed both sides of the case but seemed skeptical of the administration’s arguments that the outlets’ coverage of the Iran war and ballroom construction could amount to a national security risk.

In the wee hours of the morning Thursday, however, he issued a ruling granting a 14-day injunction, ruling the White House needed clear standards for revoking media access and that the national security grounds cited for last Friday’s action were “so vague it hardly does the trick.”

Read more …

“After a Judge Allowed Them Back in the White House ..”

• You’re Not Going to Believe the Stunt CNN Pulled (Moran)

A Trump-appointed judge granted CNN, MSNOW, and Politico temporary access to the White House again following their banishment by Donald Trump for reporting “fake news.” The ruling granted a 14-day temporary restraining order requiring the White House to restore access for the media outlets.


U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly published his ruling early Thursday, about 1:30 a.m. ET. Just four and a half hours later, at 6 a.m., CNN reporter Betsy Klein and a photojournalist tried to enter the White House. Naturally, since the guards had almost certainly not received any guidance from the press office about the middle-of-the-night ruling, they barred Klein and the photojournalist from entry.

“There was no reason provided for the refusal,” CNN wrote on its website, “and CNN will continue to try to gain access as regular business hours start.” Another CNN producer entered the White House “after 6:00 AM,” according to the network. “It was not immediately clear why the person had been able to access the building.”

Actually, it was very clear. CNN wanted to lead its story on the judge’s ruling, making it seem like the Trump White House was defying the law. “How dare you not give entry to our journalists at 6 a.m.!” It was a transparently stupid gambit that inadvertently shows why Trump wanted to ban them. The hypocrisy is appalling.

A few minutes later, the other CNN employee was given access to the building, probably after word reached the guards at the gate that their press passes had been restored. I am not generally in favor of banning the media from anywhere. They’re going to write their story regardless of whether you hate them or not. “Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel,” Mark Twain supposedly said. Trump should follow that advice more often.

Judge Kelly cited the urgent needs of a “free press” and ordered the 78 journalists’ credentials returned for at least two weeks while further litigation plays out. He rejected the administration’s national security argument out of hand. “The Court is skeptical — at least on this record — that Defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes,” Kelly wrote in an eight-page ruling issued just before 1 a.m. Eastern.

“Nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns. Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was ‘banning’ Plaintiffs from the White House — instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs’ reporting,” the judge added.

Politico: “The judge noted that the administration provided no support for its assertion that any of the disputed stories contained classified information or actually damaged national security and said some of the reporting was months or years old, belying claims the administration’s claims of urgency by the administration. Kelly also said the White House appeared to have violated the constitutional due process rights of the journalists by failing to give them advance notice that concerns about their reporting could lead to cancellation of their passes.

Theodore Boutrous Jr., the lead attorney for the news organizations, welcomed Kelly’s order and the speed with which he issued it. “This is a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process and the rule of law,” Boutrous said in a statement. “We greatly appreciate the court’s swift action.” In addition to citing the specious national security claims, Kelly noted that the reporters had no advance warning that their press passes would be pulled.

“The ‘general rule’ is that ‘individuals must receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before the Government deprives them’ of a constitutionally protected interest,” Kelly wrote in his ruling. Trump had no chance of maintaining his ban on the media outlets. Hypocrisy isn’t “just cause” to yank a reporter’s credentials, nor are bias and inaccuracy. The First Amendment is a plain-language constitutional amendment, and case law backs it to the hilt.

Trump would have had better luck working with King Canute to roll back the tide.

Read more …

CNN gets much more attention than their numbers warrant.

• The Funeral of CNN (Eric Florack)

Turns out the real story about the most mistrusted name in the news, CNN, right now isn’t a ratings slump or a bad quarter, as important as those are to the story. It’s not even Donald Trump banning the network from the White House press room. It’s a funeral — and that’s not me reaching for a snappy headline. It’s almost the exact word being used by people who actually work there.


A Variety report published Sept. 22 describes the mood inside CNN as “like a funeral” in the wake of the settlement that clears the way for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. And once you look at what’s actually converging on the network at once, the metaphor holds up better than most newsroom clichés do.

CNN is getting a new owner, on a short clock. Paramount Skydance is expected to complete its acquisition of WBD by early October, according to reports from KVIA — which means whatever CNN becomes next gets decided by people who didn’t build it.

Leadership is a question mark. Mark Thompson’s future at the network remains unresolved, and Fox News reports that Paramount CEO David Ellison still has to figure out how CNN fits alongside CBS News — two once-fierce competitors about to share a corporate parent, with no clear answer yet on who runs what. Attention, Bari Weiss: I’d not be spending much time unpacking just yet.

Layoffs are coming, and CNN’s own people are saying so. Brian Stelter, still on CNN’s payroll, (why I have no idea) said on air that layoffs and cost-cutting are “almost certainly” coming as Paramount hunts for efficiencies and works off the debt load from the deal, according to CNN’s own transcripts. When the in-house media reporter is narrating his own newsroom’s layoffs on air, that’s not spin — that’s a company bracing for it in real time.

And the audience problem hasn’t gone anywhere. Variety notes CNN’s linear ratings sit well below where they were during Trump’s first term, even as the company has poured effort into building out a digital subscription business to compensate. The cable-news gravy train that used to cover for everything else isn’t pulling its weight anymore.

Here’s the detail that makes the whole thing almost too perfect: this isn’t the funeral of a company hemorrhaging money. WBD had actually projected CNN would pull in roughly $600 million in profit on $1.8 billion in revenue in 2026. So nobody’s burying a corpse. They’re burying the CNN its own employees thought they worked for — the assumptions, the standing, the sense of being untouchable, all going into the ground at once, while the balance sheet, ironically, still looks fine. Traditionally, that’s the description of a company chugging along on a reputation it no longer deserves, if it ever did.

That’s the real story here, and it’s worth stating plainly: CNN isn’t being buried because it lost money. It’s being buried because the business model, the audience, the ownership, the management, and every assumption that defined the network for three decades are all getting interred simultaneously, on the same afternoon, by a company that didn’t build any of it and owes it nothing sentimental.

And the symbolism practically writes itself from here. CNN is about to join the same corporate family as CBS News — a rival network it spent decades trying to beat — while Paramount reportedly contemplates real structural changes to both operations at once. The merger settlement even mandates the creation of a joint News Editorial Independence Board covering both CNN and CBS, which Investing.com reports experts are already warning will be toothless in practice — a supervisory body built mainly to look reassuring on paper.

But now, here’s the part of the eulogy nobody at CNN wants read aloud: underneath the ownership shuffle, the layoffs, and the ratings slide sits one stubborn, well-documented fact. CNN’s left-leaning reporting is the disease. Everything else in this column is just the list of symptoms.

Start with how ordinary Americans actually perceive the network, not how CNN perceives itself. A YouGov survey from May 2026 asked Americans to rate the ideological lean of major outlets and found CNN sitting among the handful of sources most likely to be classified as liberal rather than conservative — in the same company as MS NOW and the New York Times. That’s not Fox News saying it. That’s a general-population poll.

And it’s not a partisan mirage where only Republicans see it. AllSides recently ran a blind bias survey in which participants across the political spectrum rated CNN’s content without knowing whose logo was attached to it. The result: CNN landed at “Lean Left” on their scale — and self-identified Democrats rated it Lean Left too. Independents rated it further left than that. When Democrats, independents, and Republicans all rate the same content as leaning the same direction with nobody’s brand recognition in play, that’s not a smear campaign. That’s a pattern showing up in the copy itself.

I mentioned the issue of trust in the first paragraph. And that’s the tell. The trust numbers tell the same story from a different angle. A June 2025 Pew survey found 58% of Democrats trust CNN while 58% of Republicans distrust it — a near-mirror-image split that a Center for Integrity in News Reporting event later summarized as “both sides see exactly the bias they expect to see, in exactly the outlets they already distrust.”

Read more …

Two different parties talk about panic at CNN.

• Panic At CNN As Paramount Seeks Elon Musk Equity Investment (ZH)

Paramount is weighing whether to bring Elon Musk on as an equity investor in its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a report from Semafor. David Ellison has been sizing up potential investors as he works to lock down financing before the merger closes. Paramount has not said how much money it hopes to raise, and the size of any Musk investment remains undetermined. A Paramount spokesperson declined to comment, and Musk did not respond to a request for comment.


The news prompted panic inside CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Staffers at the network had plenty to worry about before Musk’s name entered the conversation. Layoffs loom over the newsroom, nobody knows who will run the place once Ellison takes the keys, and now the man who took a chainsaw to Twitter’s payroll might own a slice of the operation. “Amazing it comes out now of course,” one CNN source said, pointing to the awkward timing for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who threw his support behind the merger to keep Paramount jobs in his state. “Not good for Gavin!”

“When it rains…[it pours],” another source said. “It’s really scary given what he did at X and DOGE.” At CBS News, David Ellison installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief after Skydance acquired Paramount, and she has drawn fierce criticism for firing longtime 60 Minutes correspondents and for how she manages the newsroom’s coverage. CNN staffers have watched that saga unfold, and they have taken notes.

Once the merger is complete, David Ellison will control HBO Max, Paramount+, HBO, CBS, CNN, and thousands of film titles. That makes him one of the most powerful figures in American entertainment, and it makes who backs him financially a matter of real consequence. Larry Ellison, David’s father and the founder of Oracle, has personally guaranteed more than $40 billion of the equity financing that makes the acquisition possible. But an investment from Musk would still carry significance.

“An investment from Musk would be a significant vote of confidence in the combined Paramount Warner Bros. from a businessman who also has a devoted retail investor following,” explained Semafor business reporter Rohan Goswami. “A check from Musk or other big financial backers would also give Paramount a more diversified investor base, and reduce Larry Ellison’s financial burden.”

The relationship between the two men runs deep in both directions. Larry Ellison invested in Tesla in 2018 and sat on its board for several years. When Musk took Twitter private in 2022, Ellison invested $1 billion in the deal. “Musk’s dollars and political influence were concerning to Democrats during the 2024 election, given his control of X,” writes Goswami. “The possibility of him having even partial ownership in CNN and CBS would likely raise alarm bells in Washington, even though it is unlikely Musk would have formal input over the company’s operations.”

The news of Musk’s potential involvement comes days after the $110 billion merger cleared its final hurdle. Paramount settled the antitrust lawsuit that California Attorney General Rob Bonta brought against the deal.

Paramount agreed to spend an additional $1.5 billion on domestic production over five years. The company must release 30 films in theaters every year, rising to 32 after the first two years, with at least 20 wide releases, rising to 21, and four independent films each year. If Paramount misses any of those targets, it must sell Miramax Studios and pay $30 million for every film it comes up short. The settlement also forces Paramount to negotiate cable deals separately and commits it to raising domestic production from 5% of all films to 20%, or even 30%, if Congress passes certain tax credits. The settlement also created a News Editorial Independence Board for CBS News and CNN, though nobody has spelled out what powers it will hold. The agreement said nothing about layoffs.

Still, for a newsroom that has spent years telling viewers to fear Elon Musk, the prospect of him buying in carries a certain poetry.

Read more …

Musk investment makes all the sense in the world.

• CNN Insiders Are Panicking Over This Bombshell Development (Matt Margolis)

According to a report from Semafor on Wednesday, Paramount CEO David Ellison has considered inviting Elon Musk into the group of investors bankrolling Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. Musk is one of several deep-pocketed names on Ellison’s list, and nobody knows yet how big a slice he’d take. But any slice at all would hand the man the left loves to hate a piece of both CNN and CBS News. You can almost hear the fainting couches creaking.


And as soon as the news hit, the freakout began. Inside CNN, staffers were already bracing for layoffs and fretting over who will run the network once Ellison takes over, sources told The New York Post, and the Musk report only fed that dread. One CNN source couldn’t resist pointing out the timing and took a swipe at Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), who backed the merger because he feared Paramount would leave the state and take thousands of jobs with it. “Amazing it comes out now, of course,” the source said. “Not good for Gavin!”

Former CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta apparently couldn’t find any words at all:


It’s easy to see why the newsroom is sweating. Larry Ellison, David’s father, already holds a major stake in CBS and Paramount and counts President Trump as a friend and ally. David Ellison reportedly sat down with Trump at the White House earlier this year. And, as the Post notes, there’s precedent to suggest that CNN should expect significant changes after the merger. At CBS News, Bari Weiss – who was made editor-in-chief by David after his company Skydance acquired Paramount – has faced serious blowback for axing longtime “60 Minutes” correspondents and her oversight of newsroom coverage.

Larry Ellison has supported Musk – the world’s richest person – throughout his many business endeavors, investing $1 billion in his takeover of X, formerly known as Twitter, and serving on Tesla’s board of directors for years. An investment from Musk could help boost the image of the newly-combined company in the eyes of investors, since the South African billionaire has a dedicated investor following.

And it gets better. Under its settlement with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Paramount agreed to set up independent editorial boards for CBS News and CNN, though the company hasn’t explained what authority those boards will actually have. Now picture Musk with a seat on one of them. Better yet, both. I’d pay good money to see the faces around the table at that first meeting. And I’d love to see him walk into CNN’s headquarters with a sink.


CNN has spent the better part of a decade operating as a far-left propaganda outlet. Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter because he believed legacy media gatekeepers had too much power over what Americans could see and say. If even a sliver of that attitude makes it into CNN’s newsroom, the network could finally be dragged toward something resembling balance.

Grab the popcorn, because this is going to be a blast to watch.

Read more …

Democrats->Democracy-> Military coup.

• 60 Percent of Polled Democrats Would Support a Military Coup (Turley)

It appears that nothing says “saving Democracy” like a good old-fashioned military coup. A new survey from the Center for Strategic Politics found that 59 percent of Democrats would favor a military coup to remove President Donald Trump from office. All it took was four years out of power for these Democratic voters to embrace a coup d’état to negate the results of the last election. What is particularly chilling is that many of these voters still portray themselves as defending democracy by calling for a military takeover. It is akin to supporting drive-by shootings to combat gun violence. That is not the only shocker in this survey.


According to the Center, roughly six in 10 (59%) Democrats polled said they would feel “very positive” or “somewhat positive” if the US military removed Trump and seized control of the American government. The vast majority, of course, would be happy if Trump were impeached and removed from office (87%) or ousted by his cabinet via the 25th Amendment (84%).


The survey also shows the same overwhelming support for socialism in the new Democratic Party. What is surprising is the support for public ownership of industries. That includes almost half (46%) supporting public ownership and operation of grocery stores. Almost 40 percent support public ownership and operation of restaurants. (39%). I have previously said that I do not recognize the current Democratic Party as someone raised in a politically active and liberal Democratic family. I first became estranged from the party over the radical shift from a pro-free speech party to one that supported censorship and speech curtailment.

Despite many who claim that the Democratic Socialists represent a small fraction of the party, these polls show a consistent and growing majority in support of socialism. The addition of support for a military coup shows the manifestation of a rage addiction in America. Democratic leaders are now calling for trashing core constitutional institutions or values. When some of us criticized moves to pack the Supreme Court, leaders like Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom accused us of engaging in mere “nostalgia.”

It is the same “nostalgia” that leaves many of us shocked at the support for a military coup. On our 250th anniversary, we face yet again Benjamin Franklin’s warning that this is a Republic if we can keep it.

Read more …

“The AfD party has seen an incredible rise in Germany’s most populous state in the latest sign western Germans are turning away from establishment parties..

“…in a national vote..”

So far we’ve been looking at local elections..

And in the former East..

But this includes the West now.

• AfD Now The Most Popular Party In Key Western German State (RMX)

The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is known for its strength in the east of the country, but its popularity in Western Germany is also only growing, including in the country’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia.


This latest Forsa poll points to incredible growth of the AfD in a very short time in the voter-rich Western German state. It is now the most popular party in the entire state when measuring a national vote and would earn 24 percent of the vote.


Meanwhile, the Christian Democrats (CDU) fell four points to 22 percent, the lowest value Forsa has ever recorded for the party in the state. The previous low was 23 percent in December 2021. However, in order to avoid confusion, it must be noted that the Forsa poll asked two very distinct questions. One question asked voters in North Rhine-Westphalia how they would vote at the federal level and also how they would vote at the state level. At the state level, voters in North Rhine-Westphalia would still back the CDU over the AfD; however, the CDU’s advantage over the AfD has narrowed to just seven percentage points ahead of the April state election.


For Minister-President Hendrik Wüst, the drop in support for his CDU party comes at an especially sensitive time. Wüst recently became the only top CDU politician who called for the government to begin the process of investigating a possible ban of the AfD party. He is also seen a strong contender to replace Merz as chancellor.

The latest figures show that if a state election were held this Sunday, the CDU under Wüst would receive 29 percent, down from 32 percent in Forsa’s April survey. The AfD has risen two points to 22 percent. The gap between the two parties has therefore fallen from 12 to seven points in just a few months.

About a year ago, however, the lead was far larger, at 22 percentage points. In July 2025, 38 percent of respondents favored the CDU while the AfD stood at a mere 16 percent. While this may be of some consolation to Wüst that he is still more popular than the CDU federal branch, the fact that the AfD is now leading in the state at the federal level represents a massive sea change in German politics.

North Rhine-Westphalia is one of the most diverse of all of Germany — outside of the city-states like Berlin — featuring 35 to 38 percent of the population with a migration background. It is also a state with numerous industries hit hard by Germany’s ongoing economic downturn.

The three recent state elections in eastern Germany have become a “turning point” for the CDU after a sharp setback in Saxony-Anhalt, the party’s failure to enter the state parliament in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern two weeks later, and disappointing results in Berlin. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was “deeply shocked” about the vote in Saxony-Anhalt and spoke of consequences. He also noted that he took responsibility for the election outcomes but would not resign the chancellorship or his role as chairman of the CDU party.

The question now is whether widespread dissatisfaction with Merz will continue to weaken the CDU’s prospects across Germany.

Read more …

“Why fight Russia when foreigners are invading Europe?”

• Europeans Should Overthrow Their ‘Ruling Class’ (J.B. Shurk)

War fever is ramping up again across Europe. This has happened several times in the four and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, usually coinciding with important national elections — particularly those in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Poland, and Germany — when certain domestic political parties have been demonized as “pro-Putin” and “security threats” to the rest of Europe. The war drums also get loud whenever increased military budgets are being debated within the governments of the Scandinavian and Baltic states, Finland, Germany, and Poland, as well as the European Commission. The ebb and flow of political battle cries against the Russian Federation track closely with Europe’s electoral and parliamentary calendars.


It is no coincidence that the German government decided to announce five days before Saxony-Anhalt’s September 6 elections that Russia was responsible for a small drone discovered at the Leipzig/Halle Airport over a month earlier. Although the drone carried an explosive charge, the device caused no damage and sat at the airport unnoticed for many hours on August 4. When Germany accused Russia of perpetrating the “attack” four weeks later, Berlin presented no real evidence for its conclusions.

Nevertheless, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and national leaders across Europe immediately declared solidarity with Germany and condemned Russia’s “hybrid war” on “European Union soil.” To many observers, Berlin’s finger-pointing appeared timed to dampen momentum for the “Alternative for Deutschland” political party, which German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the European Establishment have defamed as “Nazis” and “Russian puppets.” If that was Merz’s goal — to stave off election defeat for his political allies by falsely accusing his opponents of being Russian tools and spies — it did not work. The AfD decisively won the September 6 election in Saxony-Anhalt, and support for the pro-national sovereignty political party continues to surge across Germany.

Similarly contrived “national security” incidents arose before elections in Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Moldova. Pro-European Union parties accused Russia of election interference, economic sabotage, or even imminent attack, while framing opposing parties as Russian assets. In the case of Romania, the E.U.-aligned courts annulled the 2024 presidential election due to spurious allegations of “Russian meddling.”

While European politicians predictably drag out the Russian bogeyman before every election, they seem to be ratcheting up their scaremongering in anticipation of the midterm elections in the United States. President Trump has made no secret of his belief that the Russia-Ukraine War is a stupid and unnecessary conflict that would have never happened had he been in office in 2022. For two years, he has attempted to end it. With the exception of Slovakia (and Hungary before former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat), European governments appear committed to an expanded war with Russia in the near future.

Just last week, President Trump asked Ukraine’s holdover-president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to refrain from attacking Russian oil refineries in an effort to stabilize global markets. After agreeing to do so, Zelenskyy did just the opposite and announced Ukraine’s use of NATO-supplied missile systems to target Russian facilities, an action presumably meant to provoke Russia into targeting NATO members directly. Ominously, Ukrainian “journalist” and Zelenskyy confidant Dmytro Gordon recently announced, “Literally within days, something will happen that will give us great hope.…I can’t say what it is — it’s a military secret. But I know that in the coming days…something will happen that will give the nation wings. I know this.”

Gordon’s promise that “something will happen” seems to be an open secret throughout Europe. European Commission officials are encouraging all four-hundred-fifty million European citizens to stockpile water, food, and medicine in preparation for war. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has told the Bundestag that war is coming, and Chancellor Merz has successfully worked around prior legal limits on — and substantially increased — defense spending, while acknowledging that Germany is “already in conflict with Russia.”

Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are expanding the size of their respective militaries and implementing broader conscription programs. French President Emmanuel Macron has reportedly informed political leaders that war with Russia has arrived, and the British government is furiously revising its war manuals, organizing civil defense exercises, and preparing for large-scale military conscription, including the activation of retired servicemembers up to the age of sixty-five. In the last week, the United Kingdom’s top ten newspapers have published over two-hundred-fifty articles about the likelihood of war with Russia.

Read more …

“Von der Leyen’s public courtship of Mark Carney says as much about Europe’s weakness as it does about Canada’s leverage..”

• Queen Ursula’s New ‘Boyfriend’ Should Make Putin Smile (Rachel Marsden)

European Commission president and unelected de facto “queen” of Europe, Ursula von der Leyen, can’t get enough of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Her annual “State of the European Union” address last week should have been called “State of my crush on Mark Carney.” It seemed to transform into one giant excuse to gush about him while he sat in front of her, as she mused aloud to “Dear Mark” about her vision of some kind of “associate EU membership” for Canada. It reminded me of a kid back in grade school who once did an entire speech on “seals” in French class, just so he could constantly repeat the French translation of the subject, “phoques,” at a rate of once per sentence.


“President Metsola, Prime Minister Carney, Honorable Members,” she began. “Mark, your presence here is a symbol of the enduring friendship between our people. Our cultural, historical and personal links run deep within the fabric of our societies.” That’s what we used to call a group date to hide your crush. Only the group here consists of Canada’s 41 million people and the EU’s 452 million. “Dear Mark,” she continued. “I said we must urgently reimagine our partnerships… We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world. And we will now build our shared future as well.”

Carney may be glad that ocean she speaks of is there, as it seems to be perhaps the only thing preventing her from camping out on his front lawn at this point. For his part, Carney has made it clear that he’s playing the field, and that any commitment is welcome in that context.“We’re not looking to become a member of the European Union,” Carney said, unequivocally. “What we are looking – and will begin discussions for – is a unique alliance between Canada and the European Union.” In other words, he isn’t looking to flee Trump’s 51st state threat in favor of Canada willingly being the EU’s 28th.

No one in their right mind can blame him. You have to think that Carney – the former central banker of both Canada and the UK, and the onetime head of the G20’s Financial Stability Board in Basel – knows an economic basket case when he sees one. And it’s one thing to hang out, have a good time, and fill your boots. But it’s quite another not to have the total freedom to just zip up and peace out when the next inevitable self-imposed meltdown comes along. Which is at about the rate of one a week, at this point.

A lot of the EU’s problems come down to a lack of accurate foresight and an inability to prioritize by coordinating their agenda with existential reality. Had European leaders been more adept at doing so, they might not need Carney to stand there in front of the EU Parliament and explain that it’s okay not to kiss Washington’s behind to their own detriment. Or that dating around allows for a more chill approach to all relationships.Until recently, anyone adopting this position in either Canada or Europe would immediately be subject to a proctology exam, accused of being some kind of secret tool of the Kremlin. EU officials have repeatedly warned that fragmentation and multipolarity that de-centers the Washington-led agenda hinders Western unity to the benefit of rival powers such as Russia.

But Carney is basically saying that it benefits any country to pursue strategic non-alignment. He’s cutting deals with Europe and with BRICS countries. He said to a standing ovation at Davos earlier this year that it was important to be “pragmatic in recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values. We are engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait for a world we wish to be.”

This isn’t a guy who’s into nation-building beyond his own. Ursula may think that she’s acquiring Canada and its resources for Europe, but she’s also importing, first and foremost, a political instinct that the bloc has long lacked. Carney is now articulating – to resounding applause – a position that, until recently, was far more closely associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s worldview than the one that orbits around Washington.

Still, Carney is singing from the EU’s hymn book on Ukraine and Russia right now. He’s also literally negotiating for Canada to get some defense manufacturing revenues from the EU’s massive fear-driven spending spree on its defense security blanket. It’s not hard to see a profit motive here. Nor in the fact that he’s literally pitching for Europe to replace Russian natural resources with Canadian equivalents.

So right now, Canada and Russia are positioned as competitors on the global economic playing field. At least for the time being. But that won’t always be the case once he’s secured the bag. Carney – now officially the most popular prime minister in Canadian history at 70% approval – got himself into that position by ditching right-left ideology for pragmatism. He could turn out to be an important interlocutor for Russia with the West. Someone who’s blunt, action-oriented, and doesn’t much honestly care what you do as long as it doesn’t annoy him. Ursula is clearly smitten with Carney. And if her new boyfriend ends up showing Europe how to be a little less cliquey about engaging with the rest of the world, then perhaps there’s hope for us all yet.

Read more …

Trump as peacemaker?!

• Canada and UK Could Merge War Chests To Fight Russia (RT)


The Rockettes

Canada and the UK are considering merging two major military financing initiatives to help European NATO members and other Kiev backers finance their military buildup against Russia, the CBC reported on Wednesday, citing anonymous officials. In recent years, European NATO nations have increasingly accused Moscow of preparing an attack on members of the US-led military bloc, using the alleged threat to justify bloated military budgets. Moscow has denied any such intention.


Canada is leading plans for the Defense, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), while the UK is pushing for the Multilateral Defense Mechanism (MDM). Both initiatives are intended to make it easier for allied states to finance military purchases and expand arms production. In July, Carney failed to entice then-UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to join the DSRB as a founding member. However, Burnham’s government is more aligned with Canada on the issue, the CBC reported, citing an anonymous Canadian official.

Ottawa is confident the two countries will reach a deal to combine their initiatives into a joint institution, the Canadian Press reported last week, citing a senior Canadian official. So far, Ottawa’s DSRB has attracted support from Albania, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Türkiye, and Ukraine. The Netherlands, Finland, and Poland have backed the UK’s MDM. The plans come as NATO countries escalate their military spending. Last year, following pressure from US President Donald Trump, bloc members agreed to invest 5% of their GDP annually in their militaries and defense-related areas by 2035.

In the meantime, European NATO members have increasingly touted the Russian threat to militarize and prepare the continent for a potential war with Moscow, all while insulating the US from the consequences of such a conflict. “European elites… now seek to frighten their populations with a mythical Russian threat,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists at a BRICS summit earlier in September, stressing that Moscow has “no grounds for any conflict with Europe.”

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Not true. He probably simply doesn’t understand.

• Trumps “Russian sanctions” Destroyed German Car Industry (Paul Craig Roberts)

German automakers announce 100,000 job cut. Germany’s largest union concludes German auto industry “faces the risk of total collapse” from the energy shortage caused by Trump’s “Russian sanctions” and war against Iran for Israel. Volkswagen’s stock price has fallen 75%. German auto plants are moving to produce armaments for Israel, indicating the Israelization of another economy.


The question naturally arises: Why did German governments sell out Germany in order to support stupid policies of the White House Fool? Meanwhile the price of diesel fuel in the US has risen 76% from one year ago. The price of Washington’s subservience to Netanyahu will continue to rise. Will Americans show their acceptance of these unnecessary costs on November 3?

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Lovin’ It?

• Check Out McDonald’s $13.5 BILLION Modernization Plan (Stephen Green)

McDonald’s has a problem — several, actually.


The worst might be how inflation eroded the company’s decades-old value proposition. The return of Value Menu items brought back some customers — but not enough — and many franchisees balked at selling items that proved to be money-losers. Maybe the weirdest is that Motley reported that tiny little rival Burger King, a chain with a perennial identity crisis/inferiority complex, is “resurgent” against the Arches.

With all that, U.S. store traffic is in the hole, the stock is down by about 22% for the year, and there are no easy outs. Or at least there aren’t any inexpensive outs. During Wednesday’s Investor’s Day, McDonald’s — when shares fell an additional 4.8% — announced a 10-year, $13.5 billion-with-a-b modernization plan to turn things around. I don’t know yet if I’m lovin’ it, but I am intrigued. Let’s take a look.

And Another Thing: McDonald’s also took the beef tallow out of the deep fryers 30-plus years ago and still refuses to put it back. And no, I’ll never shut up about how the company ruined what were once the world’s most reliably perfect French fries.

There are technical, financial aspects to the company’s “NEXT” plan. But if they bored me to near death (and they did), then it’s a sure thing you’ll be even less interested. So let’s get to the important stuff — namely, how McDonald’s thinks it can improve its food and service.

The smartest move might prove to be “Developing and rolling out new products,” as Axios put it, “including hand-breaded chicken and new protein-based items geared toward GLP-1 users.” McDonald’s nuggets were show-stoppers when the company introduced them [checks watch] 45 freakin years ago, but the competition caught up and surpassed them ages back. Any improvement would be welcome.

But focusing on GLP-1 users is brilliant, and possibly a nice way to boost margins. GLP drugs are almost certainly here to stay, but there’s more to them than just some new menu items. Targeted food items can sometimes command a price premium, which is nice for the bottom line. But GLP-1 users also have reduced appetites. So McD could shrink the portions, keep the price in line with the old value proposition, and still improve margins.

Three more items, also courtesy of Axios, with my notes in brackets:
• Modernizing stores with features like lockers for delivery and pickup. [Lovin’ this one.]
• Adopting a new AI-powered ordering system nicknamed Archy. [Inevitable; we’ll have to wait and see if it’s worthwhile.]
• Retraining millions of workers through what global chief people officer Tiffanie Boyd described as the largest upskilling effort in the brand’s history. [McDonald’s has never been Waffle House frightening, but now the company wants to aim for Chick-fil-A good. Awesome.]

Shares are up a bit today as investors have had a chance to digest yesterday’s news. But here’s where NEXT gets tricky.

McDonald’s says the improvements — I didn’t list all of them — will cost the company $5 billion through 2030, and an additional $8.5 billion through 2036. And according to one of those more technical items I thought I could spare you, Motley says corporate “has just $4.3 billion in current assets.” There’s almost certainly no way from here to 2036 without significantly more debt, and McDonald’s already has about $40 billion worth. But you know what the company could do in short order and at relatively little cost to help turn things around? That’s right: Put the tallow back in the deep fryers.

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UN=globalists.

• Milei Calls UN a Caste of Parasites, Signs a Major Deal with US (Anderson)

Argentine president Javier Milei did not hold back when speaking at the United Nations on Wednesday. As a matter of fact, he used some language that we don’t typically hear in that setting, but he was spot on. He called the UN “a useless organization that only serves to feed a caste of fatally arrogant parasites disguised as well-intentioned bureaucrats.” To its face. Well done, sir.


Milei said that while the organization’s original mission of resolving conflict peacefully and promoting freedom was noble, “today, regrettably, it is time to acknowledge that, in practice, that sacred covenant has been broken.” He cited examples like gender agenda, environmental extremism, and unchecked immigration, along with the “genocide” of COVID-19 restrictions.

During the pandemic, bodies under the auspices of this house put themselves before scientific evidence and the sovereignty of nations and promoted forced lockdown policies throughout the world. Where some allege a public health policy error, we see a global experiment in social control disguised as science. And when a state wearing public health blinkers deprives its population of the right to work, to receive an education, and to bid farewell to their dead, this results in millions of avoidable deaths. There is a word for it: genocide.

“Those who were supposed to guarantee collective security and human rights failed in their task. They allowed chaos, violence, and international terrorism to flourish,” he continued. “The alleged defenders of human rights have sheltered bloodthirsty dictatorships and regimes that stone women in the streets; they have systematically voted against Israel while remaining silent in the face of Islamic terrorism and the genocide of Christians in Africa.” He also pointed to something more personal: the lack of resolution in the Malvinas Islands sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom:

Fifty years ago, this same assembly adopted Resolution 3149, urging the parties to refrain from introducing unilateral changes while the dispute remained unresolved. Fifty years later, the situation has not changed. Today, the Sea Lion project is moving toward oil extraction on the Argentine continental shelf — specifically in the North Malvinas Basin — under British licenses that Argentina rejects as illegal and illegitimate.

This leads me to ask: What is the use of a resolution if, for decades, the opposing party can act in direct contradiction to it, leaving the resolution sitting in the archives, intact yet powerless against reality? There is no shortage of words or resolutions; what is missing is consequences. For an institution that fails to make its voice carry weight in actual events loses the most important thing of all: its authority,” the Argentine president accused.

That is why Malvinas is not only an issue between Argentina and the United Kingdom. It also raises a question about this organization’s ability to enforce its own resolutions. “Faced with the UN’s impotence, we made a decision,” he said, stating that Argentina would not wait for the UN or the world and would take matters into its own hands.

Among other things, Milei talked about how Argentina is aligned with the West, the United States, and Israel, and not the UN’s woke agenda. He also opposed state control of AI and said the world must embrace it, seemingly backing up Donald Trump’s thoughts on the matter. “Where many see a threat, we see a frontier,” he said. “Artificial intelligence, or superintelligence, as President Donald Trump calls it, could multiply our productivity by orders of magnitude that we still do not understand.”

He finished with his famous catchphrase “¡Viva la libertad, carajo!” or “Long live freedom, dammit.” While Milei was ripping the UN a new one, his Minister of Foreign Affairs Pablo Quirno joined U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in signing the Andes-Atlantic Corridor, what the State Department calls a “joint initiative to strengthen and modernize infrastructure linking Argentina’s vital economic sectors to major Atlantic ports and Western markets.”

In other words, unlike the UN, they were getting stuff done. The ultimate goal of the initiative is to promote more mineral, oil, and gas exports; create a Western Hemisphere supply-chain hedge, and allow U.S. firms to become the bidders and suppliers. The State Department’s statement specifically mentions the two countries strengthening cooperation on transportation, the energy sector, the minerals sector, and the digital sector.

According to the State Department, “The Corridor will help unlock billions of dollars in investment, expand opportunities to U.S. companies, and strengthen supply chains for critical minerals and energy, including lithium, copper, oil, and gas. It is the first Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment Corridor in the Western Hemisphere, deepening U.S.-Argentine economic integration and connecting investors to opportunities across Argentina’s energy, mining, infrastructure, and technology sectors.”

It added that Milei’s economic reforms have helped create this opportunity, “which will expand economic cooperation and provide financing of up to $7 billion by 2027.”

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“Sergey Ryabkov pointed out that Moscow’s position on the matter had been set out in detail in a note recently handed to the British charge d’affaires in Russia..”

“They are risking their own security..”

• London May Become De Jure Party To Ukraine Conflict (TASS)

The United Kingdom is providing the Kiev regime with “increasingly multifaceted support and assistance,” thereby risking becoming a de jure party to the Ukraine conflict, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters. According to him, by providing the Kiev regime with “unrestrained and increasingly multifaceted assistance and support,” London is directly violating “a number of legally and politically binding documents, both bilateral and multilateral.” “The UK has thereby put itself on the verge of transitioning from a de facto party to the conflict to a de jure party,” Ryabkov said.


“We are issuing the strongest possible warning to the United Kingdom about the consequences of further escalation,” he said. “They are risking their own security,” he noted. The senior diplomat pointed out that Moscow’s position on the matter had been set out in detail in a note recently handed to the British charge d’affaires in Russia. “Unfortunately, we are having great difficulty breaking through the layers of their own illusions, delusions and prejudices to explain some basic things,” he said, referring to contacts with UK counterparts.

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“Watch How Fast the Media Disappears This Story of a Black Woman Found Dead by Hanging..”

• This Story of a Black Woman Found Dead by Hanging (Tim O’Brien)

American media have certain templates for certain types of news stories. Any time a black person is found dead by hanging, the default assumption is that it was murder, it was racially motivated, the killer or killers were white men, and no one wants to talk about it… as they talk incessantly about it.


When a story like this breaks, leftists automatically jump into a time machine and, for all intents and purposes, transport themselves to a time and place where fellow Democrats wore white hoods and “lynched” black people for no other reason than that they were black. The only glitch in the leftists’ time machine is that for some reason it mistakenly changes the political affiliation of the Democrat killers to Republican. The fact is that stories like this almost never break. Or should I say they never break? And so, the left has to make them up.

Remember when black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace had a crew member report that he found a garage-door pull rope tied in the shape of a noose? This happened on June 21, 2020, at Talladega Superspeedway. The pull cord made national news and became the center of an FBI investigation, if you can believe it. Two days later, the FBI determined that Wallace was not the target of a hate crime and that the same knotted pull rope had been in that particular garage space since the October 2019 Talladega race weekend, long before Wallace’s team was ever assigned to that space. False alarm.

This is how the news media ran with that story on the basis of absolutely no facts.


The reason stories like this gain so much traction so quickly is that the demand for this sort of racism from the left vastly outstrips supply. Not even two weeks ago, my colleague Benjamin Bartree reported on another viral story that once again proved to be based on unfounded assumptions that required leftists to ignore the actual facts involved. “Squad member Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass., she/her pronouns in bio) came out September 10 with a banger of an X post, weirdly lamenting the ‘strange fruit’ hanging from trees — presumably referencing black lynching victims based on the context — across the country and ‘demanding a federal investigation NOW so we can stop modern-day lynchings,’” Benjamin wrote. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) jumped on the bandwagon with her own take on X.


X users, through Community Notes, quickly corrected AOC and Pressley, simply by reading up on the actual deaths, something the esteemed congressional reps failed to do. What they found was that, “While the letter cites 10 hanging cases in 2026, local law enforcement and medical examiners have ruled the majority as suicides, including the cases of Juliana Nzita and Kyle Bassinga. Only one case is currently being investigated as a homicide.”

Even then, it was not clear that the one homicide under investigation was racially motivated or that it would ultimately be deemed a homicide. Once again, the demand for this sort of racism significantly exceeds the supply.So, what do you think will happen with this story out of Jackson, Miss.?

That’s where law enforcement authorities say that a black woman, eventually identified as Tasia Fortune (29), was found hanging from a tree. The horrific scene was discovered behind an abandoned home on August 3. How do you think the news media and the left reacted at first? Doesn’t this crime check all the boxes? Black woman, Mississippi, hanging.from.a.tree.

If the early years of the Southern Poverty Law Center represent your glory days, this story is a dream come true. Imagine what you can do with this. I mean the story writes itself. It had to be white men motivated by race, right? Maybe they even wore those white hoods. If you’re an aspiring leftist reporter, you get to use words and terms like “lynching,” “Jim Crow,” and “Deep South.” And you get to entertain where in your home office you’re going to hang that Pulitzer.

Except none of that was true. The actual story — you know, the truth — is that Jackson police say that so far, they’ve arrested two of three suspects in the case and both of them are black men. On Sept. 22, they arrested Earnest Lloyd Jr. (25), after earlier apprehending Jarques Ratliff (51) on allegations that they committed the crime.


According to the Associated Press (AP), police have said the accused men had some sort of “association” with Fortune, so this likely wasn’t a random crime, and the men face murder charges. AP reported that Fortune was a mother of four and a Kentucky native who had lived in Jackson for roughly 10 years prior to her death.

Christy Spivey is Fortune’s mother. She has done numerous media interviews in which she has said her daughter had hit on hard times and was often homeless. At the time of Fortune’s death, her mother had no idea where she was even living. Spivey said her daughter had been trying to turn things around and perhaps start a cleaning business before her time on earth was cut short. None of the facts in this case detract from the real tragedy involved.

And so, regardless of how this case proceeds from this point forward, the one thing we pretty well know is that, once again, the demand for this sort of racism greatly outpaces the supply. What do you think will happen to this story now? Do you think the national media will give it the same attention they were planning to give it? Or do you think they’ll drop it before that third arrest is made?

That’s what I thought, too. And we all know the reason. If leftists can’t racially demonize their intended targets, it’s not news.

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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle September 25 2026

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  • September 25, 2026 at 7:49 am #250604
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    William Blake Europe Supported by Africa and America 1796 • Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump From Banning 3 Outlets From White House (JTN) • You’re Not
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle September 25 2026]

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