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Debt Rattle August 17 2026

Aug 172026
 
 August 17, 2026  Posted by at 10:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


Pablo Picasso Self portrait 1896


• “US Can’t Bomb Its Way To Victory ” (Scotiabank)
• Ukraine Celebrates Launching Largest Attack Drone Swarm of the War (CTH)
• Not Winning? Just Change the Rules (Victor Davis Hanson)
• This Might Be the Most Brutal Diagnosis of AOC You’ll Ever Hear (Margolis)
• Jen Psaki Calls Karoline Leavitt a Liar (Teri Christoph)
• A Love Letter to Karoline Leavitt (Scott Pinsker)
• Fauci Refuses Senate Appearance (Fox)
• 2026 Midterms Very, Very Tight Election – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
• Newsom’s High Speed Train to Nowhere is Not Arriving Anytime Soon (Turley)
• War On Rowling Continues (Sans Facts) (Christian Toto)
• It’s Spelled ‘Turkey,’ Not ‘Türkiye” (A.J. Christopher)

 


 

 


 


Who says they can? Why would you say that? When they’re not trying?! What’s your point?

• “US Can’t Bomb Its Way To Victory ” (Scotiabank)

Bessent said Friday that Washington would announce unprecedented economic-isolation measures next week, warning that the coming pressure campaign would be unlike anything “seen in the history of economic isolation on a country.”For clarity on Bessent’s upcoming economic-isolation operation against Iran, Derek Holt, head of Capital Markets Economics at Scotiabank in Toronto, provided clients with an assessment in which Bessent’s warning could signal a move well beyond sanctioning shadow tankers and refiners, toward dismantling the entire financial network supporting Iranian oil exports.


Holt explained: WHAT COULD BESSENT MEAN? What could Bessent do to economically isolate Iran further that has “never been seen”?

• Target China and India: China is the main buyer of Iranian oil and is involved in undermining US sanctions. The US sanctions some individual Chinese entities and, in April, announced sanctions against Chinese “Teapot” refineries (here). The US could step up its actions by sanctioning all Chinese banks, this time including large institutions, and blocking their access to the US and global financial systems. That would push China further away from the SWIFT system and block access to correspondent and other forms of banking. It could block access to US dollar funding markets. This would very likely enrage China and risk multiple forms of retaliation and escalation.

• Broaden the scope of sanctions on Iran: This would extend the scope to any global group, company or entity involved in buying, financing, insuring or shipping Iranian oil. Looking at you, global banks, currency exchanges, commodity traders, shippers, etc. Actions under this category would aim to entirely thwart the sale of oil from Iran to China in yuan and its conversion into dollars and other currencies via exchange houses in Iran and elsewhere. You target other Middle Eastern nations facilitating this trade by blocking their access to dollar funding and global banking markets, such as Dubai’s one-foot-in-and-one-foot-out stance on the war, which continues to facilitate Iranian transactions. Dubai fancies itself a financial center; you destroy such ambitions.

• Target Iranian crypto assets: This Treasury announcement last month targeted individuals and entities under a specific Iranian person’s name. The US could broaden this action to include freezing access to all Iranian global holdings of crypto, gold, real estate, foreign accounts, etc.

• Target global ports: Any foreign port that facilitates trade and transactions with shipping companies that transited Iranian ports could be targeted.

He continued: “And there may well be other creative options in scale and scope. The broad point is to escalate the economic and financial blockade of the Iranian economy and financial system by enveloping all parts of the global economy, namely China, and the global financial system that allow Iran to continue to sell oil and access funding markets.” Would it work? I’m not sure. Iran knows suffering. Iran is used to being a pariah. Iran still has friends in low places. Iran has its own means of escalating, including unleashing unspeakable terror.

The consequences to the global economy and financial system could also limit or entirely thwart the chances of success. I’m sure they know the risks, but Treasury would sharply amplify tensions with China and India and could potentially cripple individual banks while not ruling out increased systemic risk within the broader financial system. Cutting off access to dollar funding markets could destabilize major players in the financial system. The spillover effects through a complicated web of connections shouldn’t be treated lightly.

The US is finally getting that it can’t just bash and bomb its way to victory against Iran. I’m not sure it gets the limitations and risks that could be associated with escalating broader measures at an all-encompassing global level. It could well take a bungled war that the US and Israel entered without much thought, without a strategy and without an exit plan, while not consulting Congress or allies, and compound the missteps even further and potentially more seriously.”

For context, China buys more than 90% of Iran’s oil exports, making it the most likely target in any effort by Bessent to cut Tehran’s energy revenues. But the escalating economic war would carry significant risks. Sanctions on large Chinese companies or financial institutions could escalate tensions with Beijing ahead of a planned meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping. Also removing discounted Iranian crude from the global market could also tighten supplies and push already elevated Brent and WTI prices higher.

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How absurd and idiotic is the “news” coming out of Kiev?

As I’ve said a thousand times.

“It’s like me telling you that right now there’s a gorilla in your bathtub playing chess, and all your neighbors believe it.”

• Ukraine Celebrates Launching Largest Attack Drone Swarm of the War (CTH)

Approximately six days from now I will share a great deal of information on World War Reddit. I took the insert picture about a week ago as a Ukraine drone struck a venue 500 meters from my location. Suffice to say, I’m not reporting information to you based on propaganda media, seriously skewed alt-media or misinterpreted/intercepted Telegram channel discussion; there’s an information war on that platform also.


Almost everything being told, shared and sold about the Russia vs Ukraine conflict is entirely made-up nonsense that has zero basis in reality. My goal has been to find out why there is this much effort toward twilight-zone level propaganda being pushed by unified interests in western media. Honestly, it’s beyond crazy. According to Ukraine/NATO media, and probably soon to be shared by President Trump, “Russia suffered 42,860 battlefield casualties in July, its highest monthly losses since January 2025.” This type of stuff is so far beyond silly no one can figure out where they come up with the ideas for the rates.

In media headlines you might have read that Ukraine is celebrating the biggest launch of drones against Russia in a single day, Sunday. The Russian media counter by saying they have shot down 822 drones, with 600 of them targeting the Russian capital of Moscow. Inside Russia, none of this stuff is happening; however, the govt of Putin finds some sort of purpose/value (personally I think it is just Russian humor) in countering the Ukraine nonsense by accepting the claim and then reiterating it in their claims of interception.

It’s all an illusion. First, the illusion makes it look like Russia is under bombardment (western happy), and then the Federation flips the script (it is indeed a script) and uses the claim as evidence of their exceptional capabilities at interception of the non-existent. If you are suddenly cross-eyed, yes, that’s the level of crazy I’m talking about.

(VIA CBS) – Ukraine launched hundreds of drones across Russia Sunday, killing at least six people in one of Kyiv’s largest aerial attacks of the war. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that it had destroyed 822 Ukrainian drones overnight. Some 600 drones were detected headed toward the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, with a third of those destroyed over the Moscow region itself. An 83-year-old man was killed after a Ukrainian drone hit a private home in the Moscow region, local Gov. Andrey Vorobyov said. He also confirmed that a Ukrainian attack had sparked a blaze at a Wildberries warehouse in the town of Podolsk.

A drone attack targeted three towns in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, killing five people, local Gov. Yury Slyusar said. The attack, with more than 150 drones, damaged several homes and a railway station and sparked a forest fire. Kyiv has stepped up its attacks on Russia this year, with long-range missiles and swarms of drones increasingly targeting military industries and energy facilities. It has also increasingly pummeled giant Wildberries depots, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise belonging to the Russian online retail giant and bringing the war home to the Russian public nearly four and half years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (read more)

It is accurate that Ukraine drones have hit about a half dozen Wildberries distribution centers. Think about Wildberries as if you combined Amazon with E-Bay. What would life be like in America if a dozen (out of 1,300) Amazon distribution centers caught fire? Well, that’s the sum of the disruption. All those stories of gasoline refineries taken offline(?). More nonsense. Gasoline shortages(?), total gibberish – beyond silly. Beyond the overstated drone attacks all this stuff about military industrial centers, energy facilities and infrastructure being damaged is non-existent. So, why is this such a common thing to read about? Factually, I have no idea. It’s like me telling you that right now there’s a gorilla in your bathtub playing chess, and all your neighbors believe it.

Somewhere there is also a story about a new FP-9 Ukraine ballistic missile about to go into operation (next 60 days). They are supposedly working out an issue with the rocket engines. However, where they are being built is not easy to determine. All indications are in Europe somewhere. The FP-9 is part of a rushed missile and defense system from a company called Fire Point {citation} that is hoped to replace the missing U.S. Patriot Missile (defense) and Tomahawk missile (offense) that Ukraine and Germany have desperately been seeking. As the story is told, the funding comes from Ukraine, the targeting system from Germany and the build operations are taking place somewhere unknown.

I don’t have it all figured out yet, but from what is visible on the surface is there appears to be a plan to drag out the conflict as long as possible, often with as outlandish claims as needed, in order to structure some kind of narrative that will eventually bring Europe -maybe NATO- into a direct combat operation against the Russian Federation.

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“.. the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome—lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster—helped give birth to the socialists.”

• Not Winning? Just Change the Rules (Victor Davis Hanson)

Kamala Harris speaks to AOC one day before the 2024 election

What binds the new Democratic Party to the new democratic socialists is a set of shared issues and values. That is, the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome—lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster—helped give birth to the socialists. But the overriding commonality among those on the new Left is that if they do not get their way, they blame the “system.” Then they seek to change the rules, no matter how hallowed those laws and conventions may have been or how much they themselves benefited from them in the past.


When the Left lost the White House, Congress, and, for the most part, the Supreme Court, it began clamoring to change the system. For left-wing Democrats, that angst also translated into calls to bring in two new blue states, weaponize the FBI and the Justice Department, ally with social media to suppress the news, and spy on congressional representatives. All the socialists and communists did was up the ante in destroying norms by calling for the end of the presidency, the Senate, the border, the police, and the Pentagon.

By 2021, it was time to destroy the southern border and welcome in some 10 million illegal immigrants—without audits, English proficiency, health checks, or the ability to support themselves. Had Kamala Harris been elected in 2024, we would have had another four years and another 5 million illegal aliens. And perhaps America would have gone from 50 million foreign-born residents to 60 million, or about 18% of the population. In this regard, the Left sees California as our most liberal—and most ideal—state and perhaps concludes that the reason is that 28% of its resident population is now foreign-born, with the majority arriving with vast needs for health, education, housing, and food subsidies.

Today, 50% of all births in California are paid for by Medi-Cal, which serves 40% of the population. When second-generation immigrants are added to the foreign-born population, the two groups together comprise roughly 45% of California’s current population. This demographic transformation is one of the most profound in American history and came at a time when traditional civic education stressing assimilation, acculturation, integration, and knowledge of American traditions, history, and values was nearly nonexistent in California public schools.

So one way of achieving radical change was to alter the demography and welcome as many immigrants as possible who, in the first or second generation, might follow the examples of Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

They represent an entirely new sort of immigrant who arrives—or is born to immigrant parents—with both complaints against and dependence on their host country. They can see only the sins of America, never the catastrophes of their homeland that drove them or their parents here. This strange demand to change the rules whenever they do not bode well for angry and aggrieved parties permeates every possible manifestation of the Left but is especially egregious when demanded by immigrants who came originally as uninvited guests but almost immediately damned their magnanimous host.

It is strange for so many new immigrants to act on an elemental desire to reach America—only on arrival to profess that it is full of toxic, sinful people, living and dead. Yet the damned hosts have inexplicably welcomed total strangers like themselves, and have allowed them to share in the freedom, security, and prosperity created by the dead whom the newcomers nonetheless endlessly slander and smear.

If particular minorities statistically did not do as well on the SAT as Asians and whites did on average, the solution was certainly not SAT tutorials in the inner city or K-12 SAT outreach, demands for tougher classes in grammar, math, and analytics, or a return to the melting pot rather than the current salad-bowl tribalist model.

Instead, after the George Floyd riots, the call went out to abolish the SAT entirely—as if there had never been a purpose behind its creation. In fact, merit-based SAT exams were designed in the 1920s and 1930s to allow anyone, regardless of race, gender, region, or class, to enter college through meritorious performance on the tests—and, in particular, to overcome old-boy insider preferences and regional and ethnic prejudices.

Yet when the SAT was mostly abolished for four or five years, higher education thought it had solved the problem of minority underrepresentation. In fact, its racialist war on standards only magnified its dilemmas. The SAT had once informed admissions officers not only about applicants’ qualifications but also whether admitted students could do the work once enrolled. But soon liberal professors learned that many of the newly admitted cohorts lacked the K-12 training necessary to do customary university coursework. Yet if professors maintained their regular courses, requirements, and grading, they might soon be labeled racists once particular minorities were shown to do less well than Asians and whites.

So universities inflated grades. They introduced new remedial and gut courses. And they reduced the required coursework. But again, racialism is never a solution to problems. Instead, it is a catalyst that fuels them—as we have seen with the new notion that plagiarism is not an actionable offense when the culprit can plead victim status, whether a former president of Harvard or a current professor at Cambridge. But there are ancient laws and norms that insist intellectual theft is a crime and should be punished, not rewarded or ignored.

Soon employers noticed that the reading, writing, and analytical skills of graduates from prestigious schools were proving dismal. Alumni complained both that the reputations of their almae matres were in decline and resting on the fumes of the past and that their own children, who had prepared diligently to ensure suitably competitive grades and SAT scores for admission, were being rejected solely on the basis of their race.

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“AOC has spent a decade cultivating an image as the insurgent outsider fighting the establishment. Conway just pointed out what should have been obvious all along: the insurgent outsider has become the establishment, and yet she has nothing to show for it.”

• This Might Be the Most Brutal Diagnosis of AOC You’ll Ever Hear (Margolis)

Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox News’s The Five this week and gave a blunt yet extremely fair assessment of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.): she’s not actually doing her job. v”AOC stands for Always On Camera,” Conway said. “She is a performer, not a reformer. She went to Washington to legislate; that’s her job. She’s a pontificator, not a legislator.”Conway piled on by pointing out that, in four years under President Joe Biden, AOC passed one bill. One.


Conway’s point was simple: if you’re not good at legislating, you find something else to be good at, like living online, playing with your hair, and giggling every time someone asks whether you’d be fit to serve as commander-in-chief. Conway didn’t think that was funny. With the whole world watching, she said, that kind of response would be “embarrassing and a disaster.” Just watch The Brink of War and imagine AOC in a similar situation. You can’t, because she’s an absolute joke. But I digress.

AOC has tried to distance herself from her old positions by claiming her rhetoric from years ago doesn’t reflect where she is today. Conway found that laughable. Five years isn’t ancient history, and she made the point with a sharp comparison: does AOC’s position change with the seasons, too? If it’s raining, does she flip? If it’s October instead of April? Conway called the whole excuse disgraceful, and said both failed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong and AOC had proven themselves untrustworthy to voters.

Conway also gave AOC credit for one thing. She started as a bartender who knocked off longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in a primary nobody saw coming. That, Conway said, was the best thing AOC ever did. Everything since has traded on being the fresh face, the disruptor. But by 2028, AOC will have spent ten years in Washington voting the party line, while also proving herself to be extremely radical. For example, she was also one of only ten Democrats to vote against a resolution condemning the October 7, 2023 attack, just eleven days after it happened.

And Conway wasn’t finished with the receipts. She explained how 2024 was a disaster for AOC’s political brand. Kamala Harris spent over a billion dollars and lost anyway. AOC endorsed Jamaal Bowman in his primary, and he lost. She endorsed Cori Bush, and she lost, too.

Make no mistake about it, Conway’s larger argument wasn’t really about policy. It was about authenticity, or the lack of it. She called AOC a “performative progressive,” someone running “stunts and grunts” to sway voters, rather than legislating on their behalf. Conway doesn’t think Americans are buying it anymore. Voters who tweet first and think third and fourth, she said, will pay a price for it.

She’s right. AOC has spent a decade cultivating an image as the insurgent outsider fighting the establishment. Conway just pointed out what should have been obvious all along: the insurgent outsider has become the establishment, and yet she has nothing to show for it.

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“.. Then Gets Hit With a Brutal Fact Check “

• Jen Psaki Calls Karoline Leavitt a Liar (Teri Christoph)

Well, this is rich. Upon hearing the news that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt would be stepping away from her role at the end of the month to focus on her young family, former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki used the occasion to trash Leavitt and call her a liar. Yes, really, the woman whose inane and repeated “circle back” responses during her own tenure behind the White House briefing podium – she was Biden’s first press secretary – made her a laughingstock both in and outside of Washington, D.C., now wants to lecture Karoline Leavitt about how a press secretary should behave.


Psaki apparently has a show on MS NOW and let loose on the Thursday night episode, saying Leavitt didn’t engage the media “in good faith” and “reshaped” the White House Briefing Room “into her own personal safe space.” “The relationship between the press and the White House is supposed to be adversarial by design,” Psaki said on MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, where she was hired after her performance on then-President Biden’s behalf from 2021 to 2022.

“I mean, the press in the room are supposed to push for more access, for more information. And there are times when it’s absolutely appropriate for the press secretary to push back. But Karoline Leavitt didn’t want to engage in good faith with those reporters and their tough questions. “And so, instead, she did everything she could to reshape that briefing room into her own personal safe space where she rarely had to answer a tough question, hardly ever. I mean, she only briefed once or twice a week, max.”

Psaki wasn’t done there and “accused Leavitt of lying repeatedly in her role and said she only served one man: Trump.”“It’s been about telling the version of the truth according to the serial liar who sits in the Oval Office. Reporters in the room don’t matter. The American people who rely on the reporting from the reporters in the room [don’t] matter, she’s never seen her job as working for the American people as a public servant,” Psaki said, adding she had damaged the job.

As a reminder, Jen Psaki spent years helping sell the fiction that Joe Biden was mentally sharp and physically vigorous, once claiming that the then-78-year-old president was so energetic she sometimes had trouble keeping up with him; even after leaving the White House, she insisted she had never witnessed any diminished capacity. She’s hardly in a position to cast judgment on anyone with that resume. Wid Lyman, an independent journalist who often attended Leavitt’s briefings, served up a brutal fact check on Psaki, revealing that, behind the scenes, the media has appreciated the increased access to the president, describing Leavitt’s entire team as “first class.”

“Jen Psaki recently said the White House press briefing room “has massively changed” under the Trump administration and @karolineleavitt. If you talk to anyone who has worked in media at the White House this is undoubtedly true. Two comments I have heard recently: “There is way, way more going on during this administration compared to the last.” “The entire press team is first-class.” Karoline Leavitt not only fostered a more open atmosphere for multiple types of media in the briefing room, but she also created an environment where her staff was professional and courteous.

The 49 permanent seats in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room are allocated to legacy and major news organizations, but standing room only crowds of unseated journalists regularly attend the briefings. I routinely hear how much more crowded the room is compared to other times. Thank you for the opportunity to give our readers and followers a voice. God bless in all things.”

White House spokesman Davis Ingle had a very simple response to Psaki’s attack on Leavitt: “Jen ‘Circle Back’ Psaki couldn’t hold a candle to Karoline Leavitt.” Leavitt leaves the White House having expanded press access and earned praise even from journalists outside the conservative media bubble. Psaki left after helping hide Joe Biden’s obvious decline from the American people. If she really wants to have a conversation about who disgraced the podium, by all means, let’s have it.

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“.. the GOAT of White House Press Secretaries”

• A Love Letter to Karoline Leavitt (Scott Pinsker)

From predicting Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 to nailing the Democrats’ Graham Platner bait-and-switch a month before everyone else, my predictive hit rate is among the best in the punditry biz. (And just this week, 48 hours after I hailed AOC’s “woke” pivot as a PR masterstroke, she shot to the top of the prediction markets. Booyah!) No, I haven’t gotten everything right, but to be fair, I’ve taken some very yuuuge swings. (Go big or go home, amiright?)

I’d guesstimate my accuracy is about 75%. But one of my proudest prognostications was less a prediction than an observation: Almost immediately, I hailed Karoline Leavitt — the youngest White House press secretary in history — as a frickin’ rockstar, and the greatest to ever serve President Trump.From March 18, 2025:

“We’re now eight weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, and two things are perfectly clear: 1) His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is an absolute rockstar. 2) The mainstream media hates her.

The difference between Karoline and, say, Sean Spicer — Trump’s original press secretary — is night and day. Look, I don’t want to be unkind to Spicer, but her charisma, charm, and intellectual dexterity leave him in the dust. It’s the difference between chicken salad and chicken [EXPLETIVE].

Personally, I think she’s the best press secretary President Trump’s ever had”It took the rest of the media a little bit longer to catch up. People forget, but Leavitt was initially dismissed as a dumb blonde bimbo who only got the job ‘cause she’s young and hot.

Ain’t that a kick in the head: Within 20 months, Karoline Leavitt went from an “airhead” to irreplaceable! Yet her biggest legacy will be how she transformed the position of White House press secretary. Pre-K.L. and post-K.L. are gonna be night and day. What once was an afterthought is now a PR priority. She turned White House press secretary into a prestige position.In the past, it was hit and miss. Sometimes, the White House press secretary was competent; sometimes, he/she wasn’t. Either way, nobody gave it much thought. (And at least one president clearly prioritized DEI box-checking over PR talent.)

But the era of appointing uncharismatic lumps such as Robert Gibbs, Jay Carney, Karine Jean-Pierre, and Dee Dee Myers to the position is over. It’ll NEVER happen again. That’s because Leavitt redefined the political — and personal — utility of being White House press secretary. It’s a byproduct of our media age: Voters consume content in quick bites, conflict sells, and viral moments are manna from heaven. Some of the top conservative podcasters and media personalities (including Charlie Kirk) had to manufacture conflict by traveling to college campuses, debating left-wingers, and uploading the most viral encounters to YouTube.

Kirk and others invested in this strategy because it moved the needle — repeatedly.But the White House press secretary doesn’t have to travel anywhere. Whenever she wants, she can go to the podium, whack reporters around like a piñata, and become an instant social media sensation.It’s an ambitious politician’s passport to fame and stardom!

Pre-K.L., someone such as Scott Jennings would have had no interest in being the White House press secretary. Why would he? He’s already kicking [tush] on CNN as the network’s top conservative counterweight; why deal with the headache of pushy left-wing reporters? Why hitch your wagon to the lame-duck Trump administration when you’re doing just fine on your own? (CNN pays him with real money, y’know.) Now, it’s a very real possibility — because Karoline Leavitt went from MEETING the press to BEATING the press.

With the D.C. press corps’ blistering hatred of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, the purpose of the White House press secretary changed out of necessity. The goal, after all, of the mainstream media wasn’t to report “without fear or favor,” but to cheerlead for the Democrats and undermine the Republicans. In such a climate, a by-the-books, dispassionate PR presentation would be a disaster.You can’t treat a bad-faith question like a good-faith question. It just doesn’t work. Which is why Karoline Leavitt didn’t try:

The purpose of the position has changed. Instead of serving as the media’s punching bag, Leavitt reversed the equation, flipped the narrative, and leveraged the media’s idiocy to punctuate her own political points — manufacturing viral moments by the barrelful. Best of all, she instinctively mirrored her boss’s ethos: Trump is a fighter; so is Leavitt. If you come after Trump with a hammer, he’ll fire back with a torpedo. His tolerance for stupidity is famously thin.Same goes for Leavitt.

Plus, she had fun with the gig. Her joy was genuine; it leaped through the screen. Whether the next press secretary is Scott Jennings, Kari Lake, Spencer Pratt, or someone else, Leavitt created the blueprint that her successor will surely follow.Post-K.L., the primary job of a Republican White House press secretary is to produce viral moments by out-sparring D.C. reporters. Each day you’re behind the podium, your goal is the same: Defend the president by excoriating his detractors — and exposing their left-wing bull[feces]. It’s now a debating position, not an information desk.

Which, in all honesty, is way more fun: Not too many elite political talents would sign up to be the media’s punching bag ‘til the end of 2028… but getting two solid years of primo media facetime? Going one-on-one against America’s most famous journalists? Your top moments uploaded to X? Smashing reporters on a daily basis? Hooboy! The media is our perfect foil. Just 28% of Americans trust it — and for Republicans, it’s just 8%. We couldn’t ask for a better enemy. Post-K.L., the position of White House press secretary could elevate a current media star such as Scott Jennings to the next level for superstardom.

After leaving D.C., Karoline Leavitt will have plenty of options. If Fox News is wise, it’d load a Brink’s truck and make her an offer — as should CNN, Newsmax, and the major networks. She’d also be a helluva pick-up for The Daily Wire (assuming they could afford her). Or she could launch a digital network of her own, a la Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Megyn Kelly. She has the name I.D. and political credibility to draw millions of eyeballs right out of the gate. Everyone knows her; everyone respects her. She’s about to be the hottest free agent in all of political media!

Or maybe she’ll take some time off and be a full-time momma for the next few years. Lord knows she’s earned the right to rest — and focus on her babies. She’s still only 28. Because, unlike most members of the media, she doesn’t have to strike when the metal is hottest. We won’t forget her — and her career won’t suffer. She can afford to take her time. Because she’s simply too talented. Congratulations, Karoline. You’re the GOAT of White House press secretaries. You were so damn good, you changed how the entire game is played. We salute you.

And it was the easiest prediction of my career.

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Lock him up until he’s there?!

• Fauci Refuses Senate Appearance (Fox)

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday declined a request to voluntarily appear before a second Senate panel, opening another front in Republicans’ investigations into the former public health official’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. An attorney for Fauci rejected the request from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, arguing that compelling Fauci to testify again after his contentious July 29 Senate hearing would “impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes.”


Johnson has been conducting a parallel investigation into Fauci and the federal government’s response to COVID-19, including the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. The refusal comes after Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines last week to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times during the July hearing. Committee chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., has sought to send the contempt referral directly to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia, bypassing a full Senate vote.

“It’s a good legal discussion, and we will make those legal points to DOJ in sending the referral over,” Paul told Fox News Digital ahead of last week’s contempt vote. At issue is whether Fauci can invoke the Fifth Amendment after former President Joe Biden issued him a preemptive pardon before leaving office. Paul has argued that Biden’s pardon removed Fauci’s risk of federal prosecution and therefore undermined his basis for refusing to answer lawmakers’ questions. Fauci and his attorneys have disputed that position.

Paul has spent years investigating Fauci’s role in the government’s response to COVID-19 and has accused the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director of funding “risky” research that led to an alleged lab leak of the COVID-19 virus in China. Paul has repeatedly called for Fauci to be prosecuted.

Johnson’s subcommittee has separately obtained records related to Fauci and the government’s pandemic response. Fox News Digital previously confirmed that the Department of Health and Human Services sent the subcommittee a copy of Fauci’s pandemic-era cellphone. The broader Homeland Security panel also received more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary before his July hearing.Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson’s office to ask whether he intends to subpoena Fauci following the refusal. Fox News Digital also sought reaction from Paul’s office and asked Fauci attorney David Schertler whether Fauci would comply with a subpoena compelling his testimony.

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“It’s going to get much worse before the Midterms. As I said, these people don’t care about the country..”

• 2026 Midterms Very, Very Tight Election – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is out with a new report (more than 100 pages) that takes a deep dive on the “2026 Midterm Elections” in November. Armstrong says, “The computer is showing this is going to be a very, very tight election. It’s a 50/50 deal where we didn’t see either party coming in with a landslide. The bottom line looks like the Democrats can take the House, but not the Senate. So, you will have a 50/50 divided government. You are going to get a lot of the crazies on the Democrat side. Even the conservative Democrats are getting very nervous. You recently had (Democrat) James Carville talking about how the party is going to split, which was our forecast in 2024.


So, this is where we are heading. By the Dems taking the House, you will see all kinds of investigations, there will be another impeachment of Trump, etc. They will be real obstructionists. They don’t give a crap about the country. If Trump says the sky is blue, they have to say it’s red. This is the way politics degenerated.”The implications for the Democrats will be long lasting and not in a good way. Armstrong says, “If the Democrats take the House, they will basically make this a real shit fight. Our computers show for 2028 something very, very interesting. I have never seen it do this, and it’s showing the Democrats will lose dramatically. On the Republican side, it shows they win even slightly above 70%.

You take the two favorites from both sides, which would be Vice President Vance against AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), Vance would blow her out, yes. I think the Democrats need to take the House to show the world how screwed up they really are. There will be a check against them from Trump and the Senate. They can do an impeachment, but the trial has to be in the Senate, and it’s not going to go anywhere. . .. It’s going to get much worse before the Midterms. As I said, these people don’t care about the country. This has turned into a bloodsport. This is part of what the computer has been projecting. By 2032, we are looking at the collapse of Republican forms of government.”

On the war in Ukraine, Armstrong says, “I am not optimistic. It looks like it goes off the boards by 2030 or so. Even the EU looks like it’s going to collapse after 2029 and break up again.” With the Iran war, Armstrong says, “China is using Iran to drain our resources, which has happened. It takes two to three years to replace the missiles. Taiwan is up in arms saying to the US, you don’t have the fire power to protect us. . .. You see the same thing with Russia and Ukraine. They say Russia is weak. They can’t take Ukraine, and Ukraine has seriously weakened Russia. That is what Ukraine is doing. That’s the whole purpose of this, and that was to drain Russia. Iran is doing the same thing to America.”

Armstrong says don’t expect the stock market to crash anytime soon as money is flowing into and not out of America. Armstrong also is forecasting a new gold bull market in 2027.

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I did check the date to make sure it’s recent.

• Newsom’s High Speed Train to Nowhere is Not Arriving Anytime Soon (Turley)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been frantically trying to restart a presidential campaign that appears moribund, with polls showing him losing in some states to figures such as Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In his absence, his multibillion-dollar high-speed train also seems to be going nowhere fast. A new report from the state inspector general revealed that the train will be delayed again and that the public is being kept in the dark about ongoing problems with Newsom’s signature project. Oh, and one more thing: the project will run out of money by December 2027.


Benjamin Belnap’s report revealed the project is again running out of money. It found missing details in the project’s 2026 business plan, and concluded that the project will again be out of money by next year. The state has already spent $18 billion, but it will need at least another $18 billion to finish the first segment. It could take roughly $200 billion more actually to complete the original San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line. Even with billions more, the current segment will not be completed until 2034.

Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008 under Newsom’s predecessor after absurdly low cost estimates. Newsom has been a champion of the project. Influential figures and companies stood to make a fortune, and the key was to secure a “buy-in” worth billions, so that it would become increasingly difficult to abandon the project as overruns and delays sent costs soaring. Now the official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and it demands billions more to complete a project delayed by decades. Remember that this entire project was meant to create a rail line of only 171 miles.

One would think that the California voters would be marching to the capital with pitchforks and torches over such breathtaking incompetence and waste. However, they appear to have been conditioned to accept the lowest level of performance from their public officials.

The response of Democratic leaders is crushingly predictable: they are pledging to seek a federal bailout to cover their own incompetence. The Democratic nominee for governor, Xavier Becerra, is promising to fight to get back federal funds that were cut off by the Trump Administration. While promising to seriously review any problems in the project (as if they are not obvious), no one has been held accountable for this financial train wreck. Instead, all Democrats can do is demand that citizens around the country help bail out their boondoogle.

Yet, the Inspector General is describing a failure of leadership where no one is making any real decisions: “Exploration of specific financing mechanisms is a positive step, but because the Authority might run out of funding as soon as December 2027, and the financing strategy the Authority uses has the potential to significantly affect the amount of interest it will need to repay, the Authority and state lawmakers have little time for delay in deciding upon a strategy and implementing it.”

Belknap indicated that those in control are simply shrugging off the problem, noting that “[b]ecause the Authority has thus far not demonstrated a willingness to establish and reinforce a process that ensures accuracy and transparency in project reporting, we have directed our report recommendations to the Board.”

In the meantime, the state will continue to creep along with a project that is sucking billions into a project that has become a national disgrace. Beccera’s pledge to seek bailouts shows that the problem remains the political culture in California. There is little accountability left in a one-party state where companies and individuals have made fortunes off this debacle. The only people being taken for a ride are Californian citizens and it is not the ride that they bargained for.

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What is this? Communiusm? There’s only one possible opinion?

• War On Rowling Continues (Sans Facts) (Christian Toto)

Journalists love to ask two questions spun from the same unhinged premise. Do you support trans women in women’s sports, and do you agree with author J.K. Rowling’s “anti-trans” views?The former bullies athletes for passing Biology 101. The latter targets the Harry Potter author at every possible turn. We’re seeing both in action of late. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is under media assault for sharing a simple truth about men in women’s sports, a fact supported by science at every turn. “She’s MAGA Barbie,” select outlets cry!


Rowling is under a fresh attack from an actor lucky enough to snag a role in HBO Max’s hotly anticipated Harry Potter TV series. Bel Powley, who plays Petunia Dursley in the upcoming series, told The Telegraph that she “strongly disagrees” with Rowling’s position on trans issues.”I strongly disagree with J.K. Rowling’s views on gender. I think that the trans community deserves safety and dignity and respect and total acceptance … but I love Harry Potter. I grew up with the books. I am from that first generation of readers and, again, I love magic and spookiness.”

That’s why Powley took the gig. That, and the paycheck, of course. It’s likely that The Telegraph asked Powley about the Rowling issue and that the actress didn’t bring it up on her own. Either way, it’s part of a larger, disturbing media trend. Reporters describe anyone who doesn’t embrace the whole activist trans agenda as “anti-trans.” And they never ask the person in question to share specifics on what they’re criticizing or recite the actual comments by the “villain” du jour. For Cunningham, that means her critics won’t admit the obvious. Men have clear, distinct biological advantages that don’t vanish if they embrace “womanhood” or take hormones. Cunningham spoke very clearly on the issue. She did so without malice or political rhetoric.

The media and the Left, but we repeat ourselves, targeted her anyway. Rowling also has been very careful in her language on trans issues. She doesn’t wish the trans community harm. Her initial statements on the subject were kind and hardly alienating. She simply understands the need for separate spaces for biological women while acknowledging the physiological differences between male and female athletes. Oh, and she’s faced frequent death threats for sharing her commonsense opinions. Here’s what Rowling wrote in 2020, responding to the very early stages of the Left’s war on the beloved author.

“Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk…I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.” Does that sound cruel or hateful? Hardly. Did Powley read Rowling’s long, personal essay on the subject back in 2020? Has she read it lately? Unlikely.

The same is likely true for John Lithgow. The veteran actor plays Professor Dumbledore in the series, and he, too, has been coaxed into savaging Rowling for her trans views. They’re “inexplicable,” Lithgow said. Has he tried speaking with her directly? She’s a key player behind the scenes of the new HBO Max show.

Why not start there? Has he read everything she’s said on the matter? Where does he agree or disagree? It’s fine to disagree, of course, but he must know the intense cancellation movement she’s faced in recent years. Or does he realize that the “safe” position in Hollywood for anyone, let alone an 80-year-old actor, is to slam Rowling and leave any critical facts out of the conversation? To be fair, the legacy media does just that, too.

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If Washington were the capital of a piece of land named Turkey, someone would do something about it too.

• It’s Spelled ‘Turkey,’ Not ‘Türkiye” (A.J. Christopher)

I noticed that when media outlets write about the country Turkey, they’re now spelling it “Türkiye.” Have you noticed it, too? Did you get the memo on this? Because I sure didn’t.

But apparently the United Nations did. At the request of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the United Nations in June 2022 agreed to use the spelling “Türkiye” to refer to the country. The State Depa
rtment also must have gotten the memo, because in January 2023, it followed suit. Naturally, the Western media was only too happy to play its polished role as court eunuch to Biden’s autopen, and it slipped into the usage of “Türkiye” with nary a peep.

So why did Erdogan make the request? Because “Turkiye” is how the country is spelled in its native Modern Turkish alphabet, and Erdogan’s rebranding of its spelling is part of his larger nationalistic, anti-Western agenda. Erdogan is also well aware of the West’s Achilles’ heel, which is the insatiable addiction of white liberals to pander to anything they feel counters Western influence. Erdogan is a president in name only. In reality, he lords over an increasingly repressive Islamist dictatorship that has been busying itself for over a decade with decoupling from the West and aligning with Russia and Iran. One would think that Western liberals would recoil from taking direct orders from a man who cozies up to the oppressors of women, the murderers of gays, and the architect of the Ukraine invasion.

Ah, but that would require them to stand on their stated principles. And it turns out their stated principles are not really their principles at all. It’s more important for them to denigrate their own culture and language — hence their eager and willing use of the word “Türkiye” – than to make common cause with “workers of the world” or “indigenous communities” or whatever their catchphrase of the week is. White liberals do this effortlessly with other linguistic overlaps as well. This is why they pronounce Spanish-originating words with faux-accents. They’ll pronounce the word Latino as (Lah-TEE-no), and they’ll over-accentuate the double E. Or they’ll pronounce the word Mexico as (Meh-hee-co), and pronounce the X as an H.

Liberals do this partly to brag about how cultured they think they are. They do this partly because they think it makes them sound exotic and diverse. But they do it more so as a direct criticism of the English language and American culture, as if by pronouncing these words with Spanish accents and pronunciations, they are disavowing their own native language as inferior. This is pandering, and it’s embarrassing to watch. It reeks of desperation. And the attempt doesn’t flatter the minority whose rear end the groveling white liberal is desperately trying to kiss. He’s rather insulted. You don’t get into people’s good graces by poorly mimicking their accent. You don’t impress them by flaunting the half a dozen or so words you know of their native language.

One particularly asinine example is that of the Micmac Indians, a Native American tribe in the American northeast, formally changing their name to the Mi’kmaq to appear less “colonial.” The left, of course, duly did what they were told and began using the word Mi’kmaq. It solved none of these Indians’ problems and changed nothing of history, but it made everyone feel woke and special.I find this particular example silly for two reasons. First, let’s be honest. None of us even knew the Micmacs were an Indian tribe until the movie Pet Sematary hit the theaters in 1989. And second, there is nothing colonizing about the spelling of the word Micmac.

Do you know why? Because there was never a written native version of the word which could be “colonized.” Do you know why? Because the Micmac Indians had no written language. That’s why. They were that primitive. And it amuses me that a culture which appropriated the concept of written language from us now tries to dictate to us how to use that language. Sorry, not sorry. I’m spelling it as Micmac. And if you continue to insist on taking the word and making it Mi’kmaq? Fine. You can take that word back. And I will take back electricity and indoor plumbing and modern medicine and literacy and the wheel.

The worst, though, is when white liberals do this with Islam. It starts, again, with their pronunciation of the word itself. In English, we pronounce it as (IZ-lam). But the pandering white liberal will try to adapt an Arabic accent and pronounce it as (Is-LAHM). It’s subtle, but it’s unmistakable when you hear them do it. And it sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Because it’s such shameless pandering. But they have to outdo each other to show whose most woke. And so they refer to the religion’s founder Mohammed as the Prophet Mohammed. As if he were an actual prophet, and not a schizophrenic, incestuous warlord. And you’ll notice they never extend this respect to any other religion. They never refer to Moses as the Prophet Moses. They never refer to Jesus as Jesus the Messiah.

But with Islam? They trip over one another rushing to fasten the shackles to their own wrists. So let’s get a few things straight. Without apology, I will continue to pronounce every word I speak, regardless of that word’s origin, with an American accent, just as people of other languages will continue to speak their words using their own accents, without anyone trying to guilt trip them for it. Without apology, I will continue to spell every word I write using phonetic English, just as people of other languages will continue to write their words using their own phonetics without anyone trying to guilt trip them for it.

And without apology, I will never refer to Mohammed as a prophet. Because he wasn’t one. He initiated a death cult which rivals only leftist ideology in the amount of sheer human suffering it inflicts wherever it goes. I’m American, and I speak and write based on the culture in which I was raised. I’m proud of that. And because of my cultural self-confidence, I feel no need to insist that strangers halfway across the globe pronounce and write the word “America” the same exact way I do. And if some dime store Islamic thug like Erdogan thinks he has a say in how I speak my language in my country, I’d like to see him try to enforce it.

Hey Erdogan, you know that city you call Istanbul? The proper pronunciation is actually “Constantinople.” And you want us to spell your country as Türkiye? The proper spelling is actually “Byzantium.” You might not be aware of that now.

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