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Debt Rattle November 3 2026

Nov 032026
 
 November 3, 2026  Posted by at 10:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  Add comments


Vincent van Gogh Seine with Pont de Clichy 1887


• Forcing Function (James Howard Kunstler)
• Iran’s Supreme Leader Floats More US Talks In Rare Overture (ZH)
• 15 Sweeping Actions Trump Took To Tighten Election Security (John Solomon)
• Alaska’s Decoy Scandal Brings Back the Usual Suspects (Turley)
• Is Abdul El-Sayed’s Campaign Imploding? (Margolis)
• The Nail in the Coffin of El-Sayed’s Campaign (Matt Margolis)
• End the Democrats’ Horror Movie (J.B. Shurk)
• The Jungle Devours Europe (J.B. Shurk)
• Zelenskyy Outlines Clouded Threats to Trump (CTH)
• AI Reality Check Triggers $2 Trillion Tech Stock Rout (RT)
• The Erasure of Western Civilization Accelerates (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

Today’s the midterms, the day everyone’s been working their way up to for ages. That means starting tomorrow we no longer have to talk about Al-Sayed, or Mary Peltola, two Dan Sullivans, Haley Stevens etc. At least, we can hope that. We can hope they fade back into the background where they belong.


And we should hope there still will be a United States worth saving. Which, I’ve said it before, should not have senators named Abdul nor Presidents named Mohamed. Names like that belong in muslim nations, and the USA is a Christian nation. It was founded as one and it always has been, ever since. And you can’t be both, as a country.

That one of the two main parties is turning its back on its own country is not a good sign. They let in some 15 miilion people through the southern border in the Biden years alone, looking to irrevocably change the country. But to do that a solid majority would have to agree it’s what they want. Instead nobody asked even the question. Because they know people wouldn’t agree.

The US is in danger. Not from outside forces, but from the inside. Europe kind of has the same problems. Where people like Marine Le Pen and Alice Weidel stand up against globalist forces there -luckily it’s the two biggest nations in Europe-, in America it’s Donald Trump. Who has dodged ten years of attacks, including with bullets..

What comes after Trump? The “democrats” will not cease atttacking. Can JD and Marco muster enough inner Trump to fight them off?

The US is in danger. The free world as a whole is.

 

 


Read this before you go vote.

“Where Enlightenment philosopher Descartes said, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ the Communist says, ‘I’m right, therefore I’m in charge.’ — Data Republican on X

• Forcing Function (James Howard Kunstler)


Credit: Kevin Sorbo

It was supposed to be an election, but the event we’re in is actually an attempt to overthrow the government. The coup is underway. It’s a turnstile into the next phase of this Fourth Turning. We know who the perps are. They have outed themselves. They have declared war on the republic on video. Is there any other remedy except to arrest the bums, take them off the game board, and stuff them into a courtroom?


And how might that happen? First of all, who are they? At the operational level, a gang of a thousand or so bureaucrats, retired bureaucrats, current and ex-military officers, politicians, lawfare artists and their accomplice judges, billionaire activists, and not a few non-citizen hostiles working through a constellation of well-funded NGOs and lesser groups, partnered-up with the Democratic Party to give them the aura of legitimacy.

Their plan is to cheat like hell in the election tomorrow, rendering the outcome inconclusive and contestable in order to foment enough civil unrest to force the president to declare an emergency — triggering a sequence of actions to, in turn, declare the president and his administration illegitimate and pass off authority to a select handful of state governors such as Newsom (CA), Pritzker (IL), Spanberger (VA), Whitmer (MI), Polis (CO), and Hochul (NY), and then hold a new constitutional convention to radically change the structure of the government to establish permanent one-party rule.

One big reason for staging the coup is that many of the plotters’ heroes and leaders have already committed many crimes against the nation and the people, and are afraid of finally being held accountable for them. They don’t want to lose their fortunes, their power, their status, and end up in prison. These would be former presidents Obama and Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Comey and many many other familiar names. Some of these may still be active in the current shenanigans.

The lower level operational plotters only became known very recently: Danielle Reiff (former USAID, the Democracy Renewal Group); Paul Zeitz (Renew to Thrive); Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mike Smith (National Security Leaders for America); Erica Chenoweth (Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the United Democracy Alliance); Julia Roig (The Horizon’s Project and Partners Global); her husband, Enrique Roig (former USAID / State Department official (Renew American Democracy, RAD); Ezra Levin, Leah Greenberg, and Matt Traldi (Indivisible).

Who elected them the bosses of our outfit? In fact, they are wannabe commissars, eager to push the rest of us around. They came up through a bureaucratic ecosystem of commissars. They are creatures of it. It’s all they know. We have seen their like before in the governments of the old Soviet Union and its spinoffs.

They are in company with another layer of better-known coup plotters outside and above the NGO orbit. Norm Eisen, head lawfare ninja who has been involved in every Deep State hoax of the past decade, including RussiaGate, the Ukraine Impeachment, the J-6 op and the House Committee that pretended to investigate it, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and most of the frivolous lawsuits engineered through the two years of Trump 2.0. Marc Elias is the election lawfare ninja who has engineered and organized much of the ballot fraud in at least four recent national elections. Mary McCord is a former FBI and DOJ executive officer, also involved in every hoax and attempted subversion since 2016. Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) are also active plotters.

Senator Elissa Slotkin, involved in the setup for Maidan coup in Ukraine, 2014, when she worked for Veep Joe Biden, happened to be in Poland about a month ago. You might have noticed over the weekend that an attempted coup was staged there by forces seeking to bring Poland under tighter EU control — to give up their currency (the Zloty) for the Euro, and to open up their border to “migrants.” The coup in Poland has apparently failed. But, at the same time that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium are exploding in riots starring their migrants. Is the coup in America an extension of what looks like an international effort to overthrow Western Civ? Kinda smells like it.

So, these birds are daring President Trump to exercise his maximum executive power. Seems to me that Mr. Trump has the will to take them on. Let them make their move. Let them attempt to foment riots here post-election. The president and his agency heads at the DOJ, FBI, and Homeland Security already have probable cause (reasonable, fact-based belief) that a crime is being committed, or is about to be committed, by certain persons in a particular place. The plotters have laid it all out in Zoom calls that they foolishly believed were not recorded and email memoranda that were not supposed to get loose.

And keep in mind that the President also happens to be Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, in case things get spicy. Arrest these plotters for seditious conspiracy (18 U.S.C. § 2384), insurrection (18 U.S.C. § 2383), advocating overthrow of the government (18 U.S.C. § 2385), and conspiracy to defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. § 2385). If they have done any of this plotting in concert with persons associated with foreign governments, charge them with treason (18 U.S.C. § 2381) and misprision of treason (knowing of it and failing to report it) (18 U.S.C. § 2382).

That ought to take the starch out of them. To this point, President Trump has been notably scrupulous in dealing with his political enemies, while they have employed every conceivable underhanded tactic, including attempted assassination. Their effrontery is monumental. The battlespace is prepared. Better believe the Gray Champion is moving to meet them there.

Read more …

Translation: Iran knows about the post-Nov. 3 deadline, so it suggests talks, thereby binding Trump’s hands.

Piece of advice: stop reacting to whoever claims to speak for the ayatollah.

Refuse to talk to a phantom. It’s been too long without any proof of life.

If that pisses off the IRGC, all the better.

• Iran’s Supreme Leader Floats More US Talks In Rare Overture (ZH)

Oil is tumbling in the wake of a somewhat rare headline out of Tehran Iranian President Pezeshkian says the Supreme Leader has granted the government some authority on dialogue, ISNA reports


OIL FALLS TO INTRADAY LOW, BRENT TRADES NEAR $106/BBL This marks some of the most significant confirmation yet that the Supreme Leader – who has been in hiding and not seen in public since the assassination of his father upon the opening of Operation Epic Fury – is still ‘open’ to a negotiated solution to the war. It has long been speculated that he and the more ‘hardline’ IRGC and affiliated officials are against talks and are preparing for war.

Presdient Trump too has signaled he wants to give diplomacy more time, amid reports that Israel’s Netanyahu is lobbying for more military action. Newsquawk notes of the immediate reaction in markets: Risk-on trade seen as reports Iran’s Pezeshkian said the Supreme Leader has granted the government some authority on dialogue got wider airing; downside in oil and the Dollar, with upside in US equity futures, Treasuries and spot gold.

Earlier in the morning a report in the NY Post included some of the details related to ongoing indirect dialogue:

• Earlier, sources said Iranian negotiators left the Doha talks on Sunday, but not due to difficulties in negotiations, with a draft proposal circulated for feedback and a follow-up meeting possible. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baghaei also said the compression of Tehran’s seven-day proposal into two days is a sign of goodwill and that “America must make a decision”, which added modest pressure to the complex.

• It was also reported earlier today that Iran had reportedly conveyed seven conditions to Qatar for reaching an agreement with Washington, including lifting the US blockade of Iranian ports, according to Kyodo citing a senior Iranian official. Tehran is said to be willing to adopt a flexible position on nuclear issues if an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is reached, although significant differences remain as the US seeks simultaneous nuclear concessions.

Still, time is running out and Trump is threatening to “bring the hammer” on Iran; however, there’s still no articulated end game or what a ‘misson accomplished’ moment might look like, amid fears that Washington could be settling in for another ‘forever war’ – despite ‘assurances’ from admin officials like JD Vance.

* * *

Brent crude futures fell to $108.41 a barrel, while WTI slipped below $100 this morning, after Axios reported that President Trump favored giving diplomacy with Tehran more time before launching another round of “Epic Fury.” Separately, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Tehran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if the Trump administration accepts its demands.

“Oil prices eased on Monday, with Brent down 2.8% at about $110/bbl and WTI down 3.3% at $100.67/bbl, as hopes for diplomatic progress tempered the geopolitical premium embedded in crude following October’s rally. Iranian and Qatari officials have held three consecutive days of talks aimed at ending the conflict with the US and Israel,” UBS markets analyst Nana Antiedu wrote in a brief note earlier today.

Brent’s Friday gains have been erased ahead of the US session. There were other reports that Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he wanted diplomacy with Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that no decision had been made on new attacks on Iran and that Trump preferred a diplomatic resolution.

Read more …

“His opponents call him a threat to democracy, but his adherents point to thousands of illegal voters on rolls, missing or lost ballots, phony candidates propped up to confuse voters and say Trump’s actions actually improve the integrity of the election process.”

• 15 Sweeping Actions Trump Took To Tighten Election Security (John Solomon)

When President Donald Trump delivered a national address from the White House East Room in July, he promised sweeping actions to address long-standing election vulnerabilities that had been swept under the rug for years.


He revealed that U.S. spy agencies had known for years that American ballot counting machines had vulnerabilities that could be exploited by foreign powers. Similarly, the intelligence community has long been aware that China has vacuumed up 220 million American voter files and put itself in a position to meddle in future elections.

He also disclosed that the Homeland Security Department, by matching voter registrations with government databases, had identified tens of thousands of suspected foreigners who had improperly made it onto voter rolls. Some had even cast ballots.

The message: Election security is national security
Although Democrats in general have painted Trump as suppressing the vote of allegedly disenfranchised people, in the weeks that ensued, the Trump administration’s two-year effort to improve election integrity, grow the confidence of the American voting public and batten down the hatches on election security has come into clear focus. Here are the top 15 actions taken so far:

• The Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department have now prosecuted, arrested, or convicted more than 200 noncitizens or foreigners who illegally voted or illegally registered to vote in federal elections. It’s the largest in history, and it is a talking point that liberal activists often claim was a mere conspiracy theory. Results show near-daily arrests and court filings that show such fraud is more common than Democrats wanted to admit.

• War Secretary Pete Hegseth took steps to protect military voters by making it easier for military members and their families to vote. Hegseth ordered a one-day, military-wide voting stand-down day in October of each federal election year so that service members can register, request, and submit ballots in elections.

• The War Department also has closed loopholes in the absentee ballot application process that allowed purported U.S. citizens living overseas but have never lived in the United States to unlawfully get the same privileges reserved for service members abroad.

• The Department of Health and Human Services took steps to address numerous cases of nursing home residents who were taken advantage of by bad actors trying to steal their ballots or influence their votes. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz issued nationwide guidance that made clear that vulnerable nursing home residents have the right to vote, to decline to vote, and to receive voting assistance from a trusted person. The goal was to keep activists inside such nursing facilities from interfering with or coercing nursing home residents to vote a certain way.

• U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon moved to keep private student data out of the hands of partisan NGOs that were using it to target students for voting. That included a “Dear Colleague” letter reminding all state and local education agencies that if they share private student data with partisan NGOs they are violating federal law and will lose their federal funding.

• The Department of Justice, under Attorney General Todd Blanche, recently opened an inquiry into Facebook billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg having requested information from nonprofits he funded.

• DOJ is also seeking details about the use of state private motor vehicle data to allegedly help give Democrats an advantage in get-out-the-vote drives dating to 2020.

• The DOJ put state election officials on notice: if they violate federal election laws, they will be held accountable. That prompted an effort by some states and liberal activists to try to block such warning letters.

• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s team at the Census Bureau is proposing a major overhaul for the 2030 Census to make sure that the number of US citizens are properly counted, avoiding repetition of mistakes from the 2020 Census. That mistake yielded least 5 erroneous Democratic House seats

• Homeland’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has gotten out of the business of censoring Americans’ political speech that it considered disinformation and returned the focus to ensuring state and local election officials have the tools that they need to keep our elections safe.

• CISA issued an historic report exposing the vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems and outlining commonsense mitigation strategies to ensure that election results are not impacted by manipulation or “glitches.”

• The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has analyzed millions of publicly available voter files and identified tens of thousands of suspected foreigners who actually cast ballots. That has led to the enforcement crackdown by the DOJ, the FBI, and Homeland Security.

• FEMA has conditioned over a billion dollars of Homeland Security grant money on election security measures – like post-election manual audits of paper ballots and making sure the number of ballots cast does not surpass the number of voters in the election.

• Homeland Secretary Markwayne Mullin has made referrals to the DOJ regarding vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems that count votes on QR Codes and barcodes. DOJ is reviewing this information to determine if those systems comply with federal law or can be maliciously exploited.

• Trump has made the SAVE system at USCIS available at no cost to state and local election officials, enabling states to identify and scrub nearly 500,000 dead people from voter rolls.

Read more …

If this goes against ‘the real’ Dan Sullivan, how ugly will it get?

• Alaska’s Decoy Scandal Brings Back the Usual Suspects (Turley)

Marc Elias is back. The notorious Democratic lawyer who played a critical role in the 2016 Russia hoax is again in the news. His law firm has been identified by the New York Times as part of the expanding scandal involving Democratic effort to confuse voters in Alaska with a decoy candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan.


For those familiar with Elias’s checkered history, this is a case of rounding up the usual suspects.

The scandal involving Democratic candidate Mary Peltola has quickly snowballed this week. A New York Times blockbuster investigative report quotes former staff who claim she knew of a cynical effort by her own campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to confuse voters by recruiting and fielding a decoy “Dan Sullivan” candidate in the race against incumbent Sen. Daniel S. Sullivan (R-Alaska). State and federal investigations are now unfolding, with dozens of federal subpoenas raining down on Alaska.

The effort to get voters to cast mistaken ballots is grossly unethical and, even in these rage-filled times, a uniquely disgraceful scheme. Peltola and the Democratic Party had long denied any involvement in the other Sullivan’s candidacy. So when the Times produced evidence that she allegedly knew, and that Democratic staffers and lawyers had been deeply involved from the beginning, many of us were surprised — that is, until the name “Marc Elias” emerged. Then it made more sense.

The Elias Law Group was already in the news this election cycle for threatening reporters with defamation lawsuits if they kept asking questions about the health of former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina. Earlier, Elias caused a stir during an unsuccessful Democratic gerrymandering effort, raising the idea that Democratic leaders could abolish the entire Virginia government after courts blocked their attempted radical redistricting plan.

The fact that figures such as Peltola and Cooper wanted to be associated with any law firm headed by Elias is itself an indictment of their judgment and standards. Despite his losses in cases such as National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, Elias is still a favorite of many on the left thanks to his aggression and partisan fervor. The controversies that make him notorious to many make him popular with others.

Elias was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it secretly funded the infamous Steele Dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy theory. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was later indicted but acquitted for making a false statement to the FBI.)

Clinton campaign officials lied to reporters during the 2016 campaign, denying any involvement in the Steele Dossier. Journalists discovered the truth after the election — that the Clinton campaign had hidden payments for the dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said that when he tried to report the story, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’”

Times reporter Maggie Haberman later observed that “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” The Federal Election Commission ultimately sanctioned the Clinton campaign for the subterfuge.

While raising money as the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy, Elias’s group has been involved in gerrymandering and efforts criticized as seeking to invalidate Republican votes, including unsuccessful efforts to challenge Democratic electoral losses.

In Maryland, Elias’s team supported another abusive gerrymandering scheme that a court found not only violated Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the proposed map “subverts the will of those governed.” One media site accused Elias and his group of “making millions off gerrymandering efforts” while publicly denouncing Republican gerrymandering.

In 2024, Elias’s legal team was also accused of pushing “to bar third-party presidential candidates — including Cornel West — from swing state ballots where they might siphon votes” from Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Likewise, the New York Times reported that the Elias firm’s work “on behalf of a Soros-funded PAC in Texas … was opposed by a left-leaning election watchdog as undermining laws intended to limit the influence of major donors.”

His group’s work for New York’s redistricting effort was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters and also effectively negating Republicans’ votes. In 2024, the Chief Judge of the Western District of Wisconsin criticized the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”

Now, Elias’s group is linked to the decoy scandal in Alaska, which allegedly aimed to make voters cast mistaken ballots. What distinguishes lawyers involved in this type of voter disruption is less their talent as their willingness. There are simply some things that most lawyers will not do.

There is also a difference in how lawyers are treated in such controversies. It often seems that election controversies involving Republican lawyers are more likely to end with bar charges and disbarments. Take John Eastman, the former Trump lawyer disbarred in California after a state bar panel found that he had pushed unfounded legal theories and conspired to obstruct the electoral vote count on Jan. 6, 2021.

Although I publicly disagreed with Eastman’s theories, I opposed the effort to disbar him as setting a dangerous precedent for lawyers seeking to advance novel or unpopular theories of recovery or liability. After all, lawyers on the left routinely advance dubious theories, including some that are more ideologically than legally driven. Such controversies rarely rise to the level of disbarment, especially when more appropriate sanctions are available, ranging from reprimands to fines.

Eastman is currently asking the Supreme Court to overturn his disbarment. It is unlikely that Elias Law Group or Peltola’s lawyers will face similar disbarment efforts — nor should they, in my view, unless they were involved in criminal conduct. But the disparate treatment afforded to counsel in this country by party remains a growing concern. What draws a shower of bar complaints for Republican lawyers brings a windfall of clients for Democratic lawyers.

The New York Times has produced sources alleging that lawyers for Peltola’s campaign were involved in this effort, even though they previously told a federal court that they “lack knowledge or information” and “deny any allegation about those purposes.” Such filings and statements could raise ethical or even criminal questions in investigations at both the state and federal levels.

Meanwhile, though, tens of thousands of voters in Alaska have already cast ballots that included the decoy Sullivan candidate. This could result in a nasty fight in Congress if Peltola prevails in the vote count. And when it happens, that is where we will find Marc Elias in his element.

Read more …

After today no more Abdul?

• Is Abdul El-Sayed’s Campaign Imploding? (Margolis)

Two days before Election Day, Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign looks like it’s imploding. That’s a stunning development, because campaigns are typically heavily controlled operations.


“Every word. Every image. Every debate quip,” Spencer Pratt noted last month. “Everything, down to the color of the font you choose, is calculated to invoke a specific feeling, and most of the time, it’s easy to decipher what the campaign is trying to convey with these choices, and that is the goal.” Pratt added, “You don’t get to choose everything that happens in the campaign, but you do THINK about everything that happens in a campaign and choose your strategy for presenting it to the public or spinning it.”

What’s happening with El-Sayed’s campaign right now defies every bit of that. A Sunday unity event meant to make peace between El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), the rival he narrowly beat in a bitter August primary, has collapsed into a public feud on the eve of the election. The cause? El-Sayed won’t denounce a blatantly antisemitic ad.

The New York Times laid out the mess on Saturday. “Ms. Stevens and Dr. [sic] El-Sayed, who have been publicly quarreling for days about Israel, were initially expected to attend the Sunday event together, part of an effort by Representatives Debbie Dingell of Michigan and James E. Clyburn of South Carolina to broker a peace between the two Democrats days before a critical election.

It was unclear if Ms. Stevens, who lost to Dr. [sic] El-Sayed by less than a percentage point in a bitter August primary, would abide by his request that she stay away from the event.But by Saturday night, it appeared that the late-hour push by Democratic leaders to bridge the rift between Dr. [sic] El-Sayed, a progressive, and Ms. Stevens, a moderate, may have badly backfired.

Democrats in Michigan were left to confront how little they had to show for a three-month push to coalesce after one of the state’s most bruising primary races in memory. And Democrats across the country were anxiously wondering if the bickering between Dr. [sic] El-Sayed and Ms. Stevens might sink his chances in a race that could determine control of the Senate.

When the Times starts openly fretting that Democrats could lose the Senate over a temper tantrum, you know things have gotten ugly. Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) organized Sunday’s event specifically to bring the two camps together. Stevens set one condition for showing up on Sunday. El-Sayed had to denounce a viral ad from Rebellion PAC that shows a couple who can’t afford groceries because of Israel. El-Sayed’s campaign didn’t make the ad, but prominent Democrats haven’t stopped calling on him to condemn it.

And yet he’s refused. Speaking to reporters after a rally in Sterling Heights, outside Detroit, El-Sayed made his feelings about Stevens’ attendance clear. “I don’t want any distractions,” he said. Pressed about the ad and his fight with Stevens, El-Sayed dug in deeper. “It seems as though other folks are more interested in making this race about things that it’s not about,” he insisted.

Sorry, but an ad blaming Jews for grocery prices isn’t a distraction. It’s the whole story. Even Clyburn’s camp isn’t playing along. Clyburn said Saturday he had “no idea” whether Stevens would show up, and his adviser Antjuan Seawright made it plain who was running the show. “This is not Abdul’s event. … The invitation still stands,” Seawright said.

A party that can’t get its own Senate nominee to condemn open Jew-hatred has a much bigger problem than one disastrous weekend in Michigan. But this stuff shouldn’t be happening this close to the election. It feels like an implosion.

Read more …

“The trouble started with a blatantly antisemitic ad from Rebellion PAC, a group supporting El-Sayed, that pins high grocery prices on American financial support for Israel.”

• The Nail in the Coffin of El-Sayed’s Campaign (Matt Margolis)

The feud between Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has been simmering for a while now, and this weekend it exploded in spectacular fashion.


Stevens lost to El-Sayed in a heated Democrat primary and, like a good party soldier, endorsed him afterward. But the two never stopped clashing over one particular issue. Stevens is staunchly pro-Israel. El-Sayed has thrown his support behind Gaza and regularly attacks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

The truce between them was fragile from the start, and Democrat leaders tried their hardest to hold it together. On Friday, Stevens announced she had accepted an invitation from Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) to join El-Sayed at a Detroit church service. Clyburn and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) organized the Sunday event for one purpose: to get the two camps in the same room and patch things up before Election Day.

It didn’t last. The trouble started with a blatantly antisemitic ad from Rebellion PAC, a group supporting El-Sayed, that pins high grocery prices on American financial support for Israel. El-Sayed had an easy out. All he had to do was condemn the ad. Instead, he refused and brushed off the whole controversy as a distraction.

“It seems as though other folks are more interested in making this race about things that it’s not about,” he insisted. So the unity summit collapsed. Stevens still went to church in Detroit on Sunday alongside Mike Rogers, the Republican running against El-Sayed. For a Democrat who had endorsed El-Sayed just months earlier, that alone would have been a stunning rebuke.


Ahh, but there’s more… Soon after the service, Stevens posted a video to X endorsing Mike Rogers for the U.S. Senate. Hey, Michigan. As you may have seen, our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Abdul [El-Sayed], said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away,” Stevens said. “And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.”

Stevens clearly felt she couldn’t pretend to back the antisemitic El-Sayed anymore, and she aimed at the company he keeps. “I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign,” she continued. “I do not stand with Hasan Piker, who gets trafficked on our college campuses.”Piker, the far-left streamer, has built a huge following among young leftists with his relentless anti-Israel commentary. Citing a friend who reminded her that education is on the ballot, Stevens turned to what Michigan’s kids are watching.

“And what our students see, what our children see, and who we are as Michiganders is not hate and is not, what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now,” she said. She was careful to stress that she hasn’t switched teams. “I’m still a very proud Democrat,” Stevens added.


This is a huge sucker punch to the El-Sayed campaign, and it’s a devastating blow that was entirely self-inflicted. He could have ended the controversy with a single sentence. Instead, he doubled down on antisemitism. The fallout could be enormous. Stevens built real support across Michigan during her primary run, and plenty of those voters share her views on Israel. Michigan elections often hinge on crossover Democrats and independents, and Stevens just handed every one of them permission to vote for Rogers.

Bigotry against Jews is still bigotry, and thankfully, there are still some in the Democrat Party who get that. Their numbers have shrunk, and their party keeps testing their patience. But every time one of them puts conscience ahead of a party label, it proves that the line between right and wrong still means something, and that decent voters can still find each other across the aisle.

Read more …

Two excellent pieces by Shurk.

“The Democrat party is a monster that must be defeated.”

“The only impediment to the Democrats’ complete takeover of the Judiciary is the Supreme Court — or, more accurately, the stalwart defense of the Constitution coming from the jurisprudence of Justice Thomas and Justice Alito.”

• End the Democrats’ Horror Movie (J.B. Shurk)

It seems morbidly appropriate that America’s midterm elections come right after Halloween. What the Democrat Party offers voters this year is the culmination of many decades of cultural rot, psychopathy, and anti-Americanism. It feels as if we’re in the middle of a scary movie, doesn’t it? Are we hanging from the edge of a cliff? Yes. Are there evil monsters chasing us down? Yes. Does it seem as if every choice we make could be our last? Yes.


What the Democrat Party has become is truly horrific. Like Frankenstein’s monster, its political body is comprised of dead parts: Islamic supremacy, racial grievance, class warfare, cultural Marxism, cultish communism, child sacrifice, child mutilation, sexual deviance, and pagan gods. Everything the Democrats celebrate today is disgusting, gruesome, and deserving of an R-rating.

A lot of Americans have drifted from the Democrat to the Republican Party over the last few decades. It is apt that the two Republican presidents of the last century that Republican voters rate most highly — President Reagan and President Trump — both spent parts of their lives as members of the Democrat Party.

There was a time when Republicans and Democrats were not so different. President Kennedy’s low-tax, pro-manufacturing policies were very similar to Trump’s economic growth agenda today. Kennedy Democrats included anti-communist military veterans who would feel right at home in this century’s Republican Party.

Blue-collar workers who once identified as Democrats have realized that President Trump’s MAGA-fied Republican Party is the only party interested in supercharging the number of industrial and manufacturing jobs in the United States. Democrats (including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and communist darling Bernie Sanders) once campaigned for secure national borders and against illegal immigration — the very things that they demonize today.

What does it say about the Democrat Party that it has abandoned almost every salient belief that it once held dear? Democrats used to defend free speech, no matter how offensive the language. Now they censor dissenting points of view and justify the use of violence to stop “hate speech.”

Democrats used to believe that a person’s character is more important than the color of that person’s skin. Now they obsess over skin color and treat white people as second-class citizens. mDemocrats used to champion equality of opportunity for women. Now they punish high school girls who object to being forced to change in the same locker rooms as confused boys and ridicule girls who refuse to compete against boys in girls’ sports.

The Democrat Party used to include a huge number of hunters, military veterans, and other Americans who accepted the responsibility of self-defense. Now Democrats vilify gun owners as if they were domestic terrorists while protecting violent criminals who use weapons against innocent Americans.

The Democrat Party used to include a huge number of practicing Catholics, devout Protestants, and observant Jews. It included thoughtful scholars such as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose report on black poverty recognized marriage as the lynchpin to social mobility. It included cultural groups, civic organizations, and clubs that promoted strong, healthy families.

Now Democrats dismiss marriage and the nuclear family as vestiges of “patriarchy” and “white supremacy.” They use their power over legal associations and medical boards to promote the castration and mutilation of children. Many Democrats promote promiscuity and sexual fetishization as “healthy” lifestyles and not-so-subtly endorse incest, bestiality, and pedophilia.

At what point does it not become obvious that the Democrat Party has become the “safe space” for grotesque evils? When an illegal alien rapes and/or murders an American girl, Democrats in public office and Democrats working as “journalists” show more compassion for the rapist/murderer than they do for the broken victim.

This is monstrous, abhorrent, anti-American behavior that I would not have thought possible thirty years ago. Most of us remember a time when Americans took care of and protected other Americans. We beat back those who threatened our peace, and we hunted monsters that hurt American children. Now Democrats describe the monsters among us as victims and ignore the dead American girls and their suffering American families altogether. What a ghoulish, soulless party the Democrats have become.

Last week, an illegal alien from Mexico used a sledgehammer to damage an Iwo Jima monument in Quantico, Virginia, and during his act of desecration, the foreigner beheaded one of the statues depicting American marines’ utmost sacrifice in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War. The Battle of Iwo Jima was one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history, and three of the men depicted in that monument never came home. Decapitating a hero’s likeness is an act of hatred against America and disrespect for all American veterans.

Nevertheless, Democrat politicians and Democrat “journalists” ignored the story as much as possible, and when forced to acknowledge it, Democrats blamed the incident on a generic “Virginia man,” as if the crime were a minor act of vandalism of no significance.

This is how little respect Democrats have for American heroes, American history, and American sacrifice. Democrats in office and Democrats in newsrooms write glowing propaganda in defense of foreign nationals who have no business being in the United States, but they completely disregard the vile acts of destruction that monsters perpetrate against American citizens and their cherished symbols.

We also know that if Democrats regain Congress and the presidency, the worst is yet to come.

President Obama and President Biden are responsible for over two-thirds of the district court judges currently on the bench. This is why some federal judge is always inventing laws or parts of the Constitution that do not exist or usurping Article II powers that belong to President Trump. The only impediment to the Democrats’ complete takeover of the Judiciary is the Supreme Court — or, more accurately, the stalwart defense of the Constitution coming from the jurisprudence of Justice Thomas and Justice Alito.

Democrats have made no secret of their plans to get rid of the Senate filibuster should they achieve a simple governing majority. With fifty Democrat senators and a Democrat in the White House in January 2029, they will unleash a barrage of legislation and finish the “fundamental transformation” of the United States government that began in earnest during Obama’s presidency.

Democrats will recognize the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as new states, adding four more Democrat senators to the upper chamber. Democrats will once again open America’s borders to foreign invasion and grant mass amnesty and citizenship to any foreigner in the world. By doing so, Democrats will greatly expand the number of Democrat voters and obtain an insurmountable supermajority in the House of Representatives.

As they have repeatedly promised, Democrats will add at least six new justices to the Supreme Court, ensuring complete ideological control over the federal judiciary. In three quick moves, the Democrat Party will successfully erect a one-party political system with permanent power over the federal government — indistinguishable from the monopoly power that the Chinese Communist Party has enjoyed since 1949.

That’s how fast Islamo-communism and the European Union’s brand of totalitarian globalism will take over the United States if Americans don’t fight back. We know what happens then. Democrat Senator Elissa Slotkin and her collaborators have promised to lock up Trump supporters. Democrat Senator Adam Schiff and Democrat Senator Chris Murphy promise to censor political dissent on social media — effectively killing the First Amendment.

The Democrat-controlled IRS, FBI, and DOJ will once again persecute us as “potential domestic terrorists.” Democrats will kill the Second Amendment and come for our firearms. Democrats will use taxpayer dollars to fund their Antifa paramilitary and NGO armies and direct them to burn down cities and attack Americans. Democrats will celebrate the assassination of Charlie Kirk and incite their followers to murder more of us.

Avoid this horror movie. Vote Republican on Tuesday.

Read more …

“Half a billion Europeans should be able to defend themselves.”

“Europe does not create new things; it steals (and taxes) America’s innovation and ingenuity. Europe does not build things; it depends on China for industrial output and manufacturing. Europe does not produce enough energy; even while declaring Russia its enemy, much of Europe depends upon Russian oil and gas to survive.”

• The Jungle Devours Europe (J.B. Shurk)

The European Union has over four-hundred-fifty million people. The non-E.U. nations of Europe — including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova, and Albania but excluding Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Turkey — have another hundred million people. Combined, Europe has over two hundred million more people than the United States and over four hundred million more people than the Russian Federation. As an “associate member” of the E.U., Canada would give Europe another forty million bodies.


There is no reason why Europe should struggle to defend itself with this kind of population advantage. In fact, it is downright embarrassing that it depends on Americans from the other side of the ocean to secure its borders when the United States (with its significantly smaller population) has military obligations throughout the world. It has been eighty years since the Second World War, and somehow the European Establishment still hasn’t figured out how to survive without American money and muscle.

Professors and pundits toss out all kinds of reasons why this is the case: The Europeans were saddled with debt and destruction after two continental wars within thirty years and had to rebuild much of their infrastructure and manufacturing capacity. As the Soviet Union and the U.S.-led allies carved up post-war Europe, the Cold War froze the continent in a state of transition for the next half-century. U.S. political leaders embraced America’s transformation into a global empire with global responsibilities. Peace in post-WWII Europe seemed fragile, and parts of Europe appeared broken; two generations had been lost to war and depression, and a sense of nihilism extinguished much of the early-twentieth-century exuberance that pervaded the continent before the First World War.

All of this is true. Still, there is no excuse for the continent to be struggling with the responsibilities of political sovereignty four generations after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Josep Borrell, the E.U.’s former high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said in a speech four years ago, “Europe is a garden. We have built a garden.” After a heavy pause, he then observed, “The rest of the world…is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle. The jungle could invade the garden. The gardeners should take care of it.”

Political leaders from around the world took umbrage at Borrell’s condescending view of non-European nations and saw in his garden/jungle demarcation the residual bigotry of European colonialism.

Aside from his rather tone-deaf description of Europe, though, Borrell’s view of the continent seems anachronistic. European greatness hasn’t existed for more than a century. Most of the noble houses have fallen, while most of the extant aristocrats live in obscurity.

Europe does not create new things; it steals (and taxes) America’s innovation and ingenuity. Europe does not build things; it depends on China for industrial output and manufacturing. Europe does not produce enough energy; even while declaring Russia its enemy, much of Europe depends upon Russian oil and gas to survive. Europe does not mine anything; it depends upon child slaves in Africa to do its heavy lifting. Europe does not have babies; it depends upon mass immigration for population replacement.

Europe does not generate real economic growth; it depends upon central bank magic tricks, investment bank commissions, and government spending to conjure the illusion of a functioning economy. Finally, Europe does not defend itself; it depends upon NATO, which is to say that it depends upon the United States of America to protect its half a billion people from real and imagined enemies.

If Europe is a “garden,” it is because the rest of the planet allows it to exist as one. It would have no vegetation if the “jungle” did not supply it with imports; it would have no “gardeners” if America did not secure Europe’s lands and keep trespassers out.

The United States is the only reason that Europe is not part of the “jungle” today. Americans have subsidized Europe’s economy for eighty years by allowing Europe to enjoy the advantages of one-way tariffs against U.S. manufacturers and the security umbrella of America’s military might. Europe survives because of the kindness of strangers living in towns across America.

This one-sided relationship cannot continue as it has for most of the last century. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her Eurocentric friends in Brussels, Berlin, London, and Paris believe that their “garden” should remain the focus of the world. They believe that their “climate change” fanaticism should drive economic regulation around the globe. They believe that their International Criminal Court should be the planet’s chief arbiter of “justice.” They believe that their multicultural, cosmopolitan, Marxist-socialist brand of globalism should become a kind of secular religion for all nations. In essence, Europe wants to force the “jungle” to play by its rules.

But this is not how the “law of the jungle” operates.

The lions, elephants, hippos, and hyenas don’t have any use for Brussels bureaucracy. They see no need to bow down to unelected Queen Ursula or to respect her “European values.” They do not cripple their food supplies out of misplaced devotion to “global warming” gods. They do not outlaw oil and gas exploration, bankrupt refineries, or shutter nuclear power plants while depending upon adversaries and enemies to keep the lights on and the heat flowing. They do not outsource their security to jungle predators with the misguided expectation of not becoming prey.

The jungle doesn’t stop at the garden’s entrance just because the old empires from the last millennium like to pretend that they still matter.

In the capitals of Europe, incompetent gardeners continue to insist that everything will be fine just as soon as they can expel disruptive forces such as Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump. So long as they can censor social media platforms, Europe’s gardeners will be able to disseminate the “proper narratives” to the masses. So long as they can force “green energy” regulations on China, India, Russia, and the United States, Europe’s gardeners will be able to regulate markets and limit the jungle’s economic growth. So long as they can replace their own people with foreign immigrants, Europe’s gardeners will be able to sufficiently “divide and conquer” their own populations.

But you cannot invite the jungle into the garden and expect the garden to survive. The jungle grows fast, and the garden requires too much attention. Without the means to beat back the jungle, the garden is eventually overrun.

This is Europe’s last chance at survival. If it does not put down its ideological obsessions and pick up the tools needed for real economic growth, Europe will be impoverished. If it does not relinquish its love for bureaucratic regulation and free its workers so that they may prosper, Europe will become irrelevant. If it does not give up its “rules-based” delusions and build walls for its own defense, Europe will be devoured.

The jungle does not care that old cathedrals, monuments, and palaces exist all over Europe. The jungle does not care about Europe’s past glories. Europe is just another place for the jungle to conquer next.

Half a billion people should have a say about Europe’s future. They should not have to follow Queen Ursula, Chancellor Merz, President Macron, Prime Minister Burnham, or Prime Minister Carney down the path toward extinction. They should not have to watch their economies implode while the gardeners promise them nothing but “climate change” austerity and nuclear war with Russia. The people of Europe should not have to behave as statues for the gardeners while everything around them is destroyed.

For eighty years, Europe’s leaders have failed to bring peace and prosperity to the continent. For the garden to live, the gardeners must go.

Read more …

“Lukoil Remains a Target Until U.S. Gives Weapons..”

It’s not Ukraine vs Russia.

The “rest of NATO” is attacking the US.

Trump says he doesn’t want Zelensky (read: the West) to attack Russia’s energy. It happens anyway.

• Zelenskyy Outlines Clouded Threats to Trump (CTH)

Against the background of the Oleshky ceasefire, Fox News’ Trey Yingst sat down with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the current situation in the ongoing NATO proxy conflict with the Russian Federation.


Zelenskyy’s recent attacks into Russia, or at least to the extent we can call them ‘Zelenskyy’s attacks’ when we really don’t know what interests are directing the targeting, have been hitting very specific Russian energy infrastructure. Ukraine targeted Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery, and another big refinery in the Samara oblast owned by the Russian state energy giant Rosneft.

Then came another major drone strike. According to ASTRA on November 1, a drone attack targeted the LUKOIL refinery, also known as NORSI, in the city of Kstovo. The facility is among Russia’s five largest oil refineries and has an annual processing capacity of approximately 15–17 million metric tons of crude oil. The NORSI refinery produces gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel, fuel oil, bitumen, and other petroleum products. It is Lukoil’s largest facility.

You can see from the insert (image above) the drone attacks into the city of Kstovo travelled a considerable distance to reach their LUKOIL target. It should also be noted that since the time of the Trump administration’s requests to stop targeting Russian oil refining capacity, Ukraine has actually expanded those attacks specifically targeting refining capacity.

The attacks against Russian oil refining in the Samara region happened at the same time western media attention was following the ceasefire in Oleshky, southern Ukraine. The full geopolitical context here needs to be considered.

Ukraine officials told the Kyiv Independent newspaper they never agreed to a request from President Trump, Emissary Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to pause refinery strikes for 30 days. The raids on Russia restarted during the ceasefire in Oleshky apparently as Zelenskyy sought to take advantage of the media distraction. As a consequence, Kremlin officials said, Kyiv was “simply ignoring” US wishes.

The strikes deep into Russia also restarted immediately following statements last week by Zelenskyy about the full restoration of their ability to use Starlink satellite guidance systems. The timing cannot be simply coincidental.

Last month President Trump lifted US sanctions on Russian diesel in an effort to lower the global impact of rising diesel fuel prices. What Zelenskyy is doing is not only counter to the request from the U.S. administration but is factually counter to the interests of everyone living in Europe including -in the longer term- Ukraine.

The continued strikes against oil refineries only benefit a narrow segment of western financial and banking interests. However, those stakeholders are the same interests attempting to use NATO to expand conflict with Russia and remove the roadblock that President Trump represents.

This sets the stage for Fox News’ Trey Yingst to ask Zelenskyy specifically about the targeting of Russian oil refining against the backdrop of President Trump requesting he stop. Zelenskyy never answers the question, instead he deflects and says if President Trump gives Ukraine patriot missiles, then Ukraine will consider stopping their attacks against Russian oil refineries. WATCH:

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The people behind Zelenskyy, essentially all these western financial interests who operate within NATO, ultimately do not want President Trump and President Putin to form a strategic partnership. Which circles back to the catch-22: Canada, the U.K and Europe are all facing the same problem…. MONEY! Where are they going to come up with the funds to pay for a military investment they have declined to make for the past 50+ years?

It’s not just an issue of finding funds for a standing military, hardware, ships, submarines, aircraft, tanks, heavy and light artillery, missiles and drones etc., they also have to fund the technological capabilities to use and deploy modern weapons. They need advanced manufacturing, steel works, technological guidance systems, large numbers of strategically placed satellites, a space program that includes rockets to put them into orbit, and much, much more.

At scale this is multiple trillions, and that doesn’t include the baseline manufacturing systems needed to create all this independent infrastructure. It’s one thing to say, ‘we will build out our military capacity’, and it’s another thing entirely to actually build it.

Does Canada or Europe even have the human resources (engineering) to create all this infrastructure? Think about it. Then overlay three decades of an energy ideology that expressly limits their capability to even follow through with such an endeavor.

When you really stand back and look at the required level of investment needed, in addition to the time it takes to build all of the ancillary processes that are required to meet such an expressed objective, it really puts the position of the Canadian, British and European opposition to President Trump into context.

What is more feasible? Doing what is required to build-out your own military defense systems; or is it simply easier to get rid of the person who stops you from using the USA as your standing army? 25+ years of Global Warming, Climate Change, Net Zero, Carbon Trading, Carbon Taxing, Build Back Better etc. advocacy, revolves around the singularity of one issue, energy production.

From that baseline the western nemesis of a multi-trillion investment and banking system, built around the destruction of the coal, oil and gas carbon-based energy sector is Russia. Additionally, over the past 10 years as western interests have stopped building oil refining capacity, Russia has expanded oil refining capacity. All ‘modern’ opposition to Russia in the last 25 years, is now culminating…. But the root is something everyone misses. The root commonality of interests is Energy Production and the carbon-trading schemes.

The advocates for the system of dependencies created by the “climate change/net zero” energy processes are the same advocates who have created carbon-trading exchanges. And those same advocates supporting Ukraine are specifically supporting the targeting of Russian energy production vis-a-vis Russian oil refineries.

The British, European and Canadian climate change group (ideology, banking and finance) – what Mark Carney called the “middle powers” – versus the USA, Russia, China, Mexico, South/Central America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. That’s an interesting geopolitical contest.


Russian President Vladimir Putin has inquired about the potential for the U.S. to remove sanctions against Lukoil, a quasi-private energy company based out of Russia. Before, getting too weedy about it, remind yourself of the statements that surfaced during the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, August, 2025.

You might remember that both the U.S and Russia spoke of strategic partnerships surrounding the energy sector. Obviously, this makes sense when we consider the “west” is actually fractured on the topic of energy. There are two competing interests that overlap in the financial side of the issue, the ‘trillions at stake’ aspect.

On one side you have the “climate change” team, those who are fully invested (literally) in the financial mechanisms of the climate change, green new deal, build back better talking points. The Green Energy team in the west. The Paris Climate Treaty and carbon-trading proponents et al.

On the other side you have the pragmatic energy team in the west. These are the Trump-minded and aligned western perspectives that look at oil, natural gas (LNG), clean coal and nuclear technology. These are the “all the above” aligned voices in the more pragmatic view of low-cost energy production and development.

In the middle, between both sides of the fracture, are the banking and finance systems. This is the BIG MONEY play, with the Climate Change team supported by banking ideology inside the city of London, while the Carbon Use team is constantly having to assemble finance and insurance from outside the banking control mechanisms.

The Climate Change team have support based on ideology within the finance system. However, the Carbon Use team have the advantage of low-price outputs, global dependency and actual profits as leverage. This is a fight essentially inside the larger energy sector, and we are all very familiar with it because it has been happening for decades.

Read more …

“Investors worry whether hundreds of billions put into AI development will bring the profits companies have promised..”

• AI Reality Check Triggers $2 Trillion Tech Stock Rout (RT)

An estimated $2 trillion in market value was wiped from the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 during October as investors grow increasingly skeptical that enormous spending on artificial intelligence will ever pay off.


On Friday, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.9% in its biggest one-day fall since June. Over the whole month, the Nasdaq shed about 5.2%, its worst showing since March 2025, while the S&P 500 slipped 1.2%, and the Dow – which includes many traditional businesses – still finished October up 1.5%.

Among the hardest-hit companies was Google owner Alphabet, whose shares plunged 12.6% on Thursday in its worst day on record. The slump was triggered by its earnings showing slower growth in search advertising, its core business.

While search advertising revenue still grew 12%, Google executive Philipp Schindler acknowledged that its AI Mode brings in less ad revenue per search than traditional results. At the same time, Alphabet is spending heavily on AI infrastructure, putting further pressure on its cash flow. The company’s net profit also slid 25% year-on-year, largely due to investment-related losses, while Thursday’s share plunge erased nearly $500 billion from its market value.

Amazon reported negative free cash flow of $42.4 billion over the preceding 12 months, largely due to AI investments, with its shares falling 1.4% on Friday. Chipmaker Intel came out worse, plunging 28.6%, its worst day since 1974, after forecasting weaker profits amid trouble in its PC and manufacturing businesses.

Nvidia – which produces powerful chips used to train and run AI systems – slipped 4.2%, becoming the biggest drag on the S&P 500, while rival AMD dropped 10.9%.

Commenting on the slump, Globalt Investments senior portfolio manager Keith Buchanan, described the current state of the market as “scrutinizing” and “discerning”. “Last year was hope. This year is: At the end of day, how does this all work in real-world terms, like how to finance [it] and who gets the economics. Those questions are much more difficult to answer,” he told CNBC.

Enormous spending on AI and data centers has become a staple of US tech giants in recent years. Together, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet are projected to spend more than $700 billion on data centers, computing equipment and other long-term investments in 2026 alone, and much of it is AI-related.

According to various estimates, global AI-related investment is valued at between $900 billion and $2.7 trillion dollars this year, depending on the methodology. Companies are also borrowing more to finance expansion, fueling concerns among investors.

Market analysts meanwhile warn of further near-term losses. Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett expects weakness until mid-November, while Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson says the S&P 500 could fall even further within weeks before recovering by year-end.

Other major tests for the US market are the midterm elections on Tuesday, which could reshape AI regulation, as well as quarterly results from Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Palantir, and Friday’s jobs report.

Read more …

“..the left’s march through the institutions is now undoing classical music..”

In 1999, on the verge of the new millenium, some org (Edge.org?) asked people to name the no. 1 invention/achievement in mankind’s history.

Most said penicillin, moon landing, etc, the obvious things.

One person said: the symphony orchestra.

• The Erasure of Western Civilization Accelerates (Paul Craig Roberts)

Heather Mac Donald is an outstanding reporter and analyst of America’s woke era, which might be America’s last era as wokism is a civilization-killer. Her article, “The Boston Symphony Surrenders,” in the Autumn 2026 issue of City Journal masterfully explains the defeat of Western civilization by DEI.


In previous issues, she lowered the boom on curators of two of America’s most important museums who regard the artistic treasures under their control as racist artifacts and use them as exhibits of white racism. I already knew that Western civilization was drawing its last breath, and her articles convinced me that destruction of the Western belief system was complete.

In her current article she explains that the left’s march through the institutions is now undoing classical music.

In his 12 years as conductor and artistic leader of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons revived the orchestra’s finances with rising ticket sales and earned the love and respect of the orchestra and public. The Boston Symphony had been impoverished by its management class. Mac Donald reports: “In 1965, the BSO had about half a dozen managerial staff serving 100 musicians–a ratio of roughly 14 instrumentalists to every administrator. By 2025, while the orchestra still consisted of about 100 musicians, the ratio of musicians to administrators was close to parity.”

The management class, of course, blamed difficulties on classical music’s lack of wide appeal and in an ill-considered decision hired DEI champion Chad Smith (not the famous rock drummer–he would have been better) as president and CEO of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the autumn of 2023. Less than two and one-half years later Andris Nelsons was removed for opposing subordination of standards to diversity.

Chad Smith’s position is that classical music does not “expansively and inclusively serve our communities.” He said that the orchestra was not serving young people who do not see themselves reflected in classical music. Smith’s enthusiasm was not for artistic merit and performance but for race- and gender-based programing and hiring. Artistic merit rang of white racism. The orchestra should be playing multicultural and multidisciplinary combinations of Arabic, Brazilian, and rap music, not isolating music by Mozart and Beethoven.

Nelsons had introduced some non-classical music into performances, but he was not prepared to sacrifice the core repertoire and artistic performance to “community values” of those with no appreciation for classical music. As for hearing “community voices,” Mac Donald asks the right question: “Isn’t classical music about hearing composers’ voices?”

Chad Smith’s intent of marching through the Boston Symphony is about transforming the orchestra from an artistic achievement into a babel of voices, and Chad Smith regarded Andris Nelsons as in the way of DEI’s war on merit.

The Boston Symphony paid a high price for the diversity that neither the musicians nor the audiences wanted. In 2025 the Leipzig Orchestra voted another 7 year extension of its contract with Nelsons as that orchestra’s chief conductor. Last June Nelsons was presented with Germany’s most prestigious musical award as Conductor of the Year.

Clearly, the board of the BSO consists of weak-minded and weak-willed non-entities who have betrayed a treasure entrusted to their care. DEI is taking another piece of civilization away from us. Hold on to your classical music records, tapes, and CDs as live performances of classical music are on their way out.

Ballet will be the next artistic performance to disappear from Western civilization. Ballet will probably continue to exist only in Russia as America advances down its path to becoming a Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel.

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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle November 3 2026

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  • November 3, 2026 at 10:54 am #254838
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    Vincent van Gogh Seine with Pont de Clichy 1887 • Forcing Function (James Howard Kunstler) • Iran’s Supreme Leader Floats More US Talks In Rare Overtu
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 3 2026]

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