IEA Archives - The Automatic Earth

The FBI's Autopen Task Force submitted its first report to the acting Attorney General this morning, implicating Elizabeth Warren in about two dozen felonies.

"She wasn't just authorizing pardons," said acting AG Blanche, "To the tune of about $30 million."

Blanche said the… pic.twitter.com/hce2oTNrQ1
— GRANDPA’s FREE ADVICE (@GOP_is_Gutless) May 19, 2026

https://twitter.com/John_F_kJr/status/2056862634209874000?s=20

Bingo https://t.co/HCrumnTIfT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 19, 2026

https://twitter.com/FreeStateWill/status/2056535138402779211?s=20 https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2056490512652423458?s=20s

Average inflation by president:

Trump (first term): 1.9%⁰Biden: 5%⁰Trump (second term): 3.4%

The Democrats and the mainstream media refuse to tell the American people the truth. pic.twitter.com/IJX5JjAVa0
— Stephen Moore (@StephenMoore) May 18, 2026

https://twitter.com/robertdunlap947/status/2056482824471896283?s=20

As if the US will sit still for 5 weeks.

• Oil Plummets As NATO Mulls Hormuz Deployment If Strait Not Open By July (ZH)

In a huge and unexpected announcement, amid stalled US-Iran peace talks – which have proven a failure and illusive thus far, NATO now says it could deploy military assets to forcibly reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Per breaking newswires Tuesday late morning: NATO TO CONSIDER HORMUZ DEPLOYMENT IF STRAIT NOT OPEN BY JULY President Trump has continuously chastised the NATO alliance for being largely bankrolled by Washington but at the same time fence-sitting when it comes to forming a coalition to patrol and reopen the vital energy transit waterway. Oil plummeted on the initial headline, seeing in it a positive for the potential that crude transit in the Persian Gulf could again be opened up soon:

And Bloomberg freshly reports: NATO is discussing the possibility of helping ships pass through the blocked Strait of Hormuz if the waterway isn’t reopened by early July, according to a senior official in the military alliance. The idea has support from several members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but doesn’t yet have the necessary unanimous support, said a diplomat from a NATO country. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity. Leaders from NATO countries will meet in Ankara July 7-8.
But July feels very far away at this point, and anything could happen between now and then, as Washington continues to threaten renewed military action, and Iran says it remains on high alert. NATO defense chiefs are meeting this week, where also high on the agenda will be the following: At this week’s summit, military chiefs from all 32 member states will examine the impact that consistent rapid consumption may have on NATO’s collective capabilities and deterrent power as Russia continues to threaten allies.

He never had a chance.

• Thomas Massie Loses His Primary Race (Salgado)

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has lost his primary race after making himself unpopular in the GOP for blocking Trump administration policies and obsessively condemning Israel and Operation Epic Fury. President Donald Trump, who has responded to Massie’s constant critiques by fervently campaigning against him, celebrated the Tuesday win for Massie’s primary opponent, Ed Gallrein. Massie has been one of Trump’s most consistent GOP critics.

In fact, Trump spent a considerable portion of Election Day posting anti-Massie messages on Truth Social. Trump accused Massie of suggesting a years-old endorsement from Trump was recent. “Can you imagine ‘Congressman’ Thomas Massie putting out a many years ago Endorsement of him, by me, when he knows that he wasn’t endorsed, but that I proudly endorsed Ed Gallrein? The reason is that Massie has turned out to be the Worst Congressman in the Republican Party. This shows what a totally dishonest and desperate guy Massie is, and I hope the Voters aren’t fooled by his deception!” Trump exclaimed.
In a longer post on May 16, Trump condemned not only Massie, but other critics in the Republican Party: “Tom Massie of Kentucky, the worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country, is an even bigger insult to our Nation than Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who suffered an unprecedented loss tonight by not even being allowed to run in the Republican Primary. This is the first time such a thing has ever happened to a sitting U.S. Senator! That’s what you get by voting to Impeach an innocent man, especially one who made it possible for Cassidy’s Senate win. Very disloyal, but Tom Massie, a major Sleazebag, is even worse! Kentucky, get this LOSER out of politics in Tuesday’s Election. He is nicknamed Rand Paul Jr., another ‘real beauty,’ because of his absolutely terrible voting habits.”
It’s not a surprise MAGA is done with Massie. Rep. Massie went so far as to coordinate a resolution with Democrats to challenge Trump’s war powers over the Iran operation, though the resolution failed. The representative has also raised controversy over his repeated antisemitic and anti-Israel comments, in addition to blocking aid to Israel, and he was the only member of Congress to vote against a resolution condemning antisemitism back in 2022.
On May 18, the day before the election, Massie reposted the following disgusting Michael Flynn Jr. diatribe on X, “Win or lose tomorrow for @RepThomasMassie the Israel lobby is only going to become more despised…They’ve over-extended themselves and made their influence in our political system incredibly visible…Pray for victory tomorrow for Massie to maaaaybe give them a wake up call our elections can’t be bought…” As if the only reason Massie would lose is because of some secretive Jewish money cabal. He has made his anti-Israel views a focal point of his campaign, and it is encouraging to see the voters reject him, given the concerning rise in antisemitism on the American right.

It looks like a pretty established industry.

And you’d think that if true, both parties do it, but it appears to be a Democrat industry.

“FBI Director Kash Patel says prior administrations looked the other way on election cheating but “those days are over.”

• DOJ Exposes Two-Decade-Long California Cheating Scheme (JTN)

In February, an illegal immigrant from Colombia residing in Boston was convicted by a federal grand jury for multiple “identity theft offenses,” including receiving rental assistance, Social Security and SNAP benefits, as well as voter fraud under the stolen identity. Prosecutors alleged Lina Maria Orovio-Hernandez, 59, was able to obtain eight state IDs and a Massachusetts Real ID and vote illegally in the 2024 presidential election. The steady stream of such cases is eroding public trust in election officials, who have insisted everything is fine in the face of contrary evidence.

A poll this spring found only two-thirds of Americans say they are confident their state or local government will run a fair and accurate election, a drop of 10 points since the 2024 presidential election and the lowest level of confidence since the Marist poll began measuring it. Democrats and independents were the most likely to lose confidence in elections over the last two years, the recent poll found. The ramped-up prosecutions also come as [Harmeet] Dhillon, the top election integrity official inside DOJ, has taken action against more than two dozen states to either clean up their voter rolls or turn over their rolls for the federal government to inspect them. Many states are resisting.
Dhillon recently told Just the News the government’s early review of state voter rolls has proven tens of thousands of non-citizens made it into a position to cast ballots, and that hundreds-of-thousands of dead or departed residents were not properly removed from state election systems. “It’s really frustrating that we’re being prevented from doing our job,” she said, criticizing state election offices and federal judges who are blocking her office from her historic effort to obtain and review every state’s voter roll ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Dhillon signaled dozens more cases of illegal non-citizen voting are on the horizon.
“For every person that we’ve seen a story about, I know of dozens and dozens more cases, and U.S. attorney’s offices are wanting to bring these cases, but we have, of course, interference with the very appointment of these U.S. attorneys at the political level,” she explained. “So that’s above my pay grade, but it’s really frustrating that we’re being prevented from doing our job.” Evidence of election fraud is also piling up in state and local courts. At least four elections in the U.S. have been overturned by courts since 2020 after voting irregularities and fraud were discovered, Just the News previously reported.
Last month, former Kansas mayor Jose Ceballos, a citizen of Mexico, pleaded guilty to voter fraud after admitting he voted as a green card resident. Ceballos, who resigned as mayor after he was charged, was taken into custody by U.S. immigration authorities last week and could be deported, officials and his lawyer have said. Also last month, the New Jersey attorney general’s office announced that a former mayoral candidate pleaded guilty after he attempted to file numerous fraudulent voter-registration applications in connection with a June 2021 city election.
Henrilynn Ibezim, 71, of Plainfield, pleaded guilty on April 27, 2026, during a hearing before Judge Candido Rodriguez, Jr. in New Jersey Superior Court in Union County. The defendant admitted to one count of third-degree forgery. Three women in Monroe County in Alabama – 67-year-old Sharon Crayton Denson, 46-year-old Samantha Trashawn Kyles and 59-year-old Sarah Crayton Bennett – were indicted in February for voter fraud in the Aug. 26, 2025, Frisco City municipal election. They allegedly tampered with 20 people’s ballots.
Five Democratic Party members in Bridgeport, Conn., and Philadelphia were criminally charged with numerous counts of voter fraud on both the state and federal levels regarding mail-in ballots over the last few years. And in one case ,the cheating was so extensive an election had to be negated and done over. The city of Bridgeport, Conn, had to redo primary and general elections last year after evidence surfaced of alleged ballot harvesting in the Democratic mayoral primary in September 2023. A jury in March also convicted a Wisconsin man of election fraud and identity theft after he requested the ballots of state Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Racine Democratic Mayor Cory Mason without their consent..

Reagan and Trump.

• Welcome to the NEW Republican Party (Scott Pinsker)

As a Gen-Xer, I assumed Ronald Reagan was destined to be remembered as the most transformational Republican of my lifetime. Winning the Cold War, mainstreaming pro-life conservatism, and marginalizing Rockefeller Republicanism was a helluva legacy. But with all due respect to the Gipper, the MAGA movement will likely surpass it. Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump both reinvented the GOP. Both men were transformational leaders on the global stage. Without question, both men altered the course of history. But Donald Trump also changed how we think about politics.

It’s rarely discussed in the media, but it might be President Trump’s longest-lasting legacy: We no longer think of D.C. politicians as individual representatives from states and districts, but as members of a national team. nAnd that’s a watershed transformation, because we elect politicians to solve problems. That’s the entire point of representative democracy! Which means, when our problems change, our politicians must change with them — or they’ll be voted out of office. (More on that in a sec.) Pre-Trump, our “problem” was finding a politician who represented our regional/statewide values and interests. It was more of a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, romanticized view of politics:
We sent a local leader to D.C. to champion the cause of our community. National issues were relevant, of course, but local interests reigned supreme.This mentality made sense at the time. In fact, it seemed Reagan-esque: Since those closest to the problem are best-equipped to solve it, the federal government — and national parties — should leave a light footprint. Who are we to lecture local citizens about local issues? Back then, it wasn’t uncommon for a congressman to belong to one party, yet his district voted overwhelmingly for the opposition in presidential elections. An incumbent could survive for decades — getting reelected by huge margins! — riding the bandwagon of local goodwill.
It’s a phenomenon known as Fenno’s paradox: We might hate U.S. Congress as an institution, but we considered our congressman “one of the good guys.” Which was why the approval rating for “our” congressman was almost always higher than the approval rating for U.S. Congress as a whole. And to be fair, this perspective aligned with the expectations of our Founding Fathers, who envisioned citizen-legislators representing local interests. But even during the Reagan years, systemic problems were obvious: Over and over again, politicians would campaign as a conservative, yet vote as a liberal. Republicans “going native” in D.C. became a sad cliché.
Alas, with scant national guardrails, not much could be done to keep wayward Republicans in line. Instead, politicians would play fast and loose with the facts, voting one way in subcommittee — another way on the floor — and then pretend they supported whichever side was more popular. Unless you were a hardcore political junkie, you were none the wiser. It was an age when incumbents like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) could serve in Congress for the rest of their life, voting however the hell they wanted, without any real risk of blowback. (Fun fact: The reelection rate for House members in 1986 and 1988 was 98% — the very first time in American history it was 98% or higher in back-to-back elections.)
Not anymore. That age ended when the MAGA movement began. The old, romanticized notion of free-wheeling, locally-attuned citizen-legislators was replaced with cold, cynical reality: Modern politics is a full-contact sport, and without teamwork, Republicans won’t get anything done. That’s because our “problem” is no longer local representation — it’s protecting our country from an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party. As the Democrats have embraced socialism, Wokeism, and trans/LGBTQ policies, Republican voters have recoiled in horror. We want our party to protect us from their madness.= And that’s an all-hands-on-deck challenge.

Election Day stories. Plenty.

• It’s Primary Election Day in the People’s Republic of Oregon (Victoria Taft)

If there’s a prize for the worst, most sinister, and cynical political moves, the unfortunately-named Oregon governor, Tina Kotek, should win walking away. A damaging gas and transportation tax, the one she cheated, lied, and schmoozed to ram through, is on the ballot in Tuesday’s primary. On primary day, Oregon voters will affix some C-4 and light the fuse to the one deliverable Kotek could lay claim to in her entire first term of office. The timing for Kotek and her fellow Democrat Party members couldn’t be worse.

Kotek blames President Donald Trump for high gas prices right now, but Oregonians know all too well that prices are perennially high anyway because of Democrats’ adherence to the Church of Global Warming. The governor’s approval numbers have fallen badly for a Democrat in this one-party state. Gas prices are almost as high as when Joe Biden was in office, and voters — male, female, Democrat, Republican, Independent, poor, and rich — saw what she did there. The people who continually bleat that they’re trying to Save Democracy!™ did everything to disembowel it to punish Oregonians with a whopping 6 cent/gallon gas tax and massive fee increases.
Kotek couldn’t get her budget-backfilling taxes passed in regular session, so she called for a special “emergency” session to cram them through. When she got the tax increases approved by Democrats, she waited until the last second to sign it, to deprive Oregonians of enough time to gather enough signatures to refer it to the ballot. But Kotek’s gambit didn’t work. Oregonians were so angered by the manipulations that Republicans got more than enough signatures in record time to refer the tax package to voters in November. The Save Democracy!™ crowd didn’t want the referral on the November ballot because more people vote then.
In March, Kotek had her This is what democracy looks like! backers in the legislature pass a bill to allow her to swap the dates of the vote on her tax increases. Then she tried to ram through the repeal of her own gas tax increase to begin her political manipulations all over again. Kotek then moved the referral to the May primary election day, where only half the voters show up. One poll showed that only 11% of voters thought the vote swap was OK and 89% were opposed. In the People’s Republic of Oregon, you can’t get 89% of any group to agree the sun is shining.
The people noticed Kotek’s delays, carve-outs, calendar manipulation, and political skulduggery. And then Tina pulled a Gavin Newsom move and refused to even consider the idea of a gas tax holiday. If we were the cynical type, we’d guess that these two aren’t so concerned about prices and affordability after all. Kotek’s approval numbers have dropped from the mid-50’s to the 40% range. Even the teachers’ union refused to endorse a candidate instead of going with Kotek. Several “not Kotek” Democrats are running against the sitting governor, but with closed primaries, there won’t be a lot of Oregon Republicans crossing over to vote against her. Indeed, Oregon Republicans have their own big contest on the ballot.
Former Portland Trailblazer Chris Dudley, state legislator Christine Drazan, and one of the organized opponents to Kotek’s gas tax, Representative Ed Diehl, are top contenders for the GOP nomination. Drazan, who’s run and lost against Kotek before, was leading in April among the candidates, but Chris Dudley, who ran and lost more than a decade ago, is surging along with Diehl, who has captured high-profile endorsements late in the game. The good news is there are signs of life in the political opposition to the Democrats in Oregon. Tina’s tax increases are going down, and the GOP’s got a pulse — they’re voting, and this could be a game-changing moment for Oregon.
Fingers crossed.

“..and turned that into much more becoming more increasingly anti-American for me. So my views really haven’t changed that much.” The punchline came shortly after: “What’s really changed is the party.”

• The Democrats Are About To Destroy John Fetterman (ZH)

John Fetterman has become the most interesting politician in America, and the Democratic Party’s most uncomfortable mirror. His willingness to speak honestly, vote his conscience, and refuse to define himself purely in opposition to President Donald Trump has made him a hero to some and a traitor to others. Back in March, he declared the party had no real leader except Trump Derangement Syndrome. Democrats, according to Fetterman, are so consumed with opposing President Donald Trump that they’ve failed to construct a coherent agenda of their own. That’s not a fringe critique. It’s a fairly accurate description of where the opposition party stands as we head toward the 2026 midterms.

Last week, Sen. John Fetterman wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post making the case that he’d make a terrible Republican, and he’s right. He’s pro-choice, firmly behind legal marijuana, a committed supporter of LGBT rights, a staunch defender of SNAP benefits, and a reliable friend to organized labor. His overall voting record is overwhelmingly aligned with the Democratic caucus. “It wasn’t long ago when Democrats wanted a secure border. I voted on an immigration bill in 2024 to make sure an influx the size of Pittsburgh doesn’t come through the border like it did under the previous administration,” he wrote. “I have co-sponsored legislation to stop the flow of fentanyl. I was the lead Democrat on the Laken Riley Act, and I strongly believe that someone who comes here illegally and commits a violent crime should be deported. Full stop.”
He noted how his party used to oppose government shutdowns because they put “American livelihoods at risk” and held workers “hostage.” Yet, he stood alone as a Democrat when he voted to end his party’s recent shutdowns, saying he “took no pleasure in voting against my party” but felt that keeping “the lights on” for TSA, homeland security, airports, and “everyday Americans” mattered more than “partisan games.” As far as he’s concerned, his occasional departures on border security, crime, and Israel are a sign of his party becoming more extreme, not him becoming more conservative.
In a recent conversation on Reason’s Reason Interview podcast with Nick Gillespie, Fetterman was asked to reflect on how his politics had changed since he backed Bernie Sanders in 2016. His answer cut to the heart of the Democratic Party’s ongoing identity crisis. “Well, I mean, you know, in 2016, it was much more about the minimum wage and some other very basic kinds of things,” he said. “And now that’s just turned into much more standing with Cuba, standing with Venezuela, standing with the Iranian regime, and turned that into much more becoming more increasingly anti-American for me. So my views really haven’t changed that much.” The punchline came shortly after: “What’s really changed is the party.”
That is a sitting Democratic senator describing his own party’s base as “increasingly anti-American,” and describes himself as lonely inside the party he still agrees with over 90 percent of the time. And how has the party responded to one of its more prominent voices offering this kind of candid self-assessment? By quietly beginning to show him the door.
A report from Punchbowl News last month made it quite clear how his party sees him. Pennsylvania Democrats on Capitol Hill wouldn’t commit to supporting a Fetterman reelection bid, and none would explicitly endorse him. Rep. Brendan Boyle, who is rumored to be eyeing a 2028 Senate run himself, said he’d “be very surprised if [Fetterman] ran in the Democratic primary.” Rep. Chris Deluzio, also said to be interested in the seat, acknowledged “serious disagreements” with Fetterman over the war in Iran, before adding a diplomatic “we’ll see what comes after ’26.” Rep. Summer Lee simply said of Fetterman seeking reelection, “Up to him. At his own peril.”
That’s the kind of language you use for someone the party has already written off. And clearly they have. He still votes with Democrats more than 90 percent of the time. And yet Pennsylvania Democrats won’t even give him a courtesy endorsement for a future Senate bid. Democratic voters in Pennsylvania aren’t any more forgiving. A February Quinnipiac poll found that Fetterman sits at 46 percent approval among Pennsylvania voters overall. This isn’t great, but the partisan breakdown is most interesting: he’s underwater 62%–22% among Democrats, while running 74%–18% among Republicans.
As far as the party’s progressive base goes, anything less than 100% compliance isn’t enough, especially when you break with the party on issues like Israel, immigration, or anything that can be characterized as insufficiently hostile to the right. Fetterman’s independent streak might help him win a general election, but it won’t help him win a Democratic primary.
That’s the trap, and he appears to know it. He’s made it quite clear he won’t become a Republican. His op-ed was practically a manifesto on the subject. But a man who describes himself as “lonely” inside his own party, who watches that party signal it won’t back him for reelection, has a big decision to make. Will he try to win reelection as a Democrat, become an independent, or not run at all? One thing is for sure: his future inside the Democratic Party is already closed.

They tried so hard to play a race card against Trump. None of it stuck.

• Gutfeld Delivers an Epic Autopsy of the Left’s Dying Race Card (Margolis)

Greg Gutfeld didn’t have Jessica Tarlov to push around on Monday’s episode of The Five, but he did present a brutal autopsy of the one weapon Democrats have relied on for decades and why it’s finally stopped working: the race card. He started with the core diagnosis: The left is trapped in the past. “Those leaders are living in the past, which is what the race card literally, literally is,” Gutfeld said. “You’re living in the past to imprint it on the future. The things that they say are happening aren’t happening.” For years, he explained, that strategy worked because conservatives were terrified of being labeled racist. That fear was the weapon. Once it’s gone, the weapon is useless, and that’s exactly what’s happened.

“It used to work. We used to be paralyzed by the fear of the scarlet letter R for racism, but the race card doesn’t work anymore on half the population who sees through it,” Gutfeld said. “The other half are just doing it out of habit. But we disarmed the left because we lost the fear. And so now, it’s just a gun shooting blanks.” The political math, Gutfeld pointed out, is just bad. Screaming racism only rallies voters you already have. It doesn’t persuade anyone. “And absent of other tools beyond the race card, you are kind of like a fat, out-of-shape fighter with no way to win but to call out the refs or just cancel the whole game.”
Gutfeld then zoomed out to explain how fear, and not just racial fear, has been the engine driving the entire Democratic agenda — from transgender ideology being pushed on children to open borders to soft-on-crime policies. Each angle, he argued, was powered by the same mechanism: making ordinary people terrified to say what they actually believed. “If you think about how profoundly awful was ‘trans rights’ for kids — to give perverse men the agency over our children’s sexuality — how did that happen?” Gutfeld demanded. “It was like, we feared the swarm of activists calling us transphobic. We feared being called bigots if we came out against illegal immigration. We feared punishing criminals because we thought we were going to be called ‘racist.’
“Once you lose the fear, you can finally get back to the normal way things go.” And the thing is, the Democrats haven’t figured this out yet. They’re still running the same play. “The Democratic Party, in my opinion, still has to do that. They haven’t done it. They’re still on the same path to destruction they’ve always been on, which is identity politics. It’s taken this country down a terrible path,” declared Gutfeld. Then came the history lesson — the one Democrats really don’t want to have. Harold Ford Jr. pointed out that race relations were better roughly twenty years ago. And he was actually right. Polling data shows a sharp decline after Barack Obama’s election.
Gutfeld wasn’t willing to blame Obama specifically, though. “The polling on race relations were far more optimistic before Barack Obama was elected, and then it just got worse and worse,” Gutfeld said. “I’m not saying it’s on him, but I’m trying to figure out what happened since then. Did the KKK return? Was discrimination now decided to be illegal? Was there some kind of attack that happened? No.” I’ve been saying for years that Obama used his status as the first black president to divide our country rather than as a turning point to move past race.
“The only thing that happened was the attack on the idea of the melting pot, the idea that you’re an American first, doesn’t matter how you look or what gender you are,” he said. “They created a poison, a toxin that they put in that melting pot. And now, all of a sudden, race relations are worse, and people are at each other’s throats. This is a filter, Harold, and I’m talking about identity politics. It is a filter put in place to destroy a country because it’s absolutely opposite what a melting pot is.”
"You're living in the PAST to imprint it on the Future" @greggutfeld calls out Dems who traveled to an Alabama rally to RAGE about redistricting.

What do YOU think? pic.twitter.com/nPDJ0tlO73
— The Five (@TheFive) May 18, 2026

Obama certainly helped. Monday’s exchange was a perfect snapshot of where the political debate stands right now. The left keeps reaching for a weapon that’s out of ammunition. Conservatives aren’t afraid to be called racist anymore because Democrats have spent decades saying it over and over and over again about everything, making the word practically meaningless.

In other words: you can’t win, take your losses.

• Comey’s Message to the Deep State: Run Out the Clock on Trump (Tim O’Brien)

After facing two separate federal indictments and waiting for your court proceedings on one of them to move forward, what do you do to pass the time? Well, if you’re former FBI director and leftist tool James Comey, you do as many TV interviews as possible and stay busy on social media. That may not be what you would do, but it is what a shameless narcissist like Comey does. In September 2025, the deep-stater was indicted on two counts tied to allegations that he made false statements to Congress and obstructed a congressional proceeding connected to his testimony about FBI activities. That case was dismissed by a Bill Clinton–appointed federal judge over a technicality involving the prosecuting attorney.

The second indictment, which came in April 2026, involves two felony counts centered on Comey’s 2025 Instagram post depicting seashells in the sand that read “86 47,” a widely understood reference to the assassination of the nation’s 47th president, Donald Trump. Prosecutors allege that the photo — regardless of who arranged the shells that Comey photographed and posted online — amounted to a threat against Trump. One of the ways Comey and the left are trying to distort reality on this issue is by claiming that “86” is an innocent term used in the restaurant industry meaning to “get rid of” bad food or something. So, are they now saying Trump is a restaurant worker who needs to be fired?
Of course not. If Comey were telling the truth, that still wouldn’t explain why he shared that photo with all his followers. Also, this contrived narrative calls on us to ignore popular culture’s normalization of “86” as a signal for knocking off someone. This decades-old slang term was used in The Sopranos repeatedly. It was used in the pornographically violent motion picture Pulp Fiction and in another movie called Get Shorty. None of these depictions were novel applications of “86.” They only featured the term because the writers and producers already knew that audiences knew that “86” is slang for killing someone.
Of course, Comey denies, denies, denies. Comey is smug and he thinks he’s being cute. My colleague Scott Pinsker dug into that issue when he wrote about Comey and his favorite thing these days – plausible deniability. By the way, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the indictment against Comey is not based on a single photo, but rather an 11-month investigation. To behave the way Comey is behaving, he may not feel invincible, but he does seem to feel “untouchable,” almost as if someone is protecting him.
When people like Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, who is reported to be under federal investigation, and James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence, talk to the media—especially on the Sunday morning shows—you can make some reasonable guesses about what is going on. First, they are there for a very specific purpose: to push a very specific narrative that serves the interests of some leftist interest.
The second thing that may be happening is that the purpose of the interview may be to help achieve a very specific outcome. Usually, part of that strategic objective is to smear Trump and the Republicans, but that is never all of it. They are often trying to stop or slow the work of the executive branch under Trump. Things like killing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), hampering the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), planting seeds of doubt about certain Trump appointees, or undermining support for the Trump administration’s efforts to deprive Iran of the ability to wage nuclear attacks on America and other countries.
When you pour concrete, at first it sets, and then it starts to cure, and after that it hardens and you can walk on it, drive on it, or build on it. You have a solid foundation. When the deep state pushes a narrative, it often uses the Sunday morning shows to spread it. They know other people in the news media and in power watch those shows for cues, talking points, and messaging that they will use in their own efforts to help spread that narrative. Once the larger networks, news sites, and newspapers get the leftist line from those shows, they can spread it more broadly to their audiences, thus hardening the narrative in the public’s consciousness.
That’s how you end up with immovable perceptions that are based on lies. Things like the Russia hoax and the Charlottesville hoax. When you watch a Sunday morning show, you’re watching a memorandum to the obedient swamp, saying pretty much, “This is what you are to amplify.” Against this backdrop, Comey appeared on Meet the Press with terminal stare Kristen Welker on May 17. He used the opportunity to send a message to the entire deep state. The message was essentially: it’s time to run out the clock on Trump.

James Comey signals to FBI personnel that he has "great confidence in" at the bureau to wait out the Trump administration:

"I'm urging them, hang on two and a half years, and then we can rebuild these institutions." pic.twitter.com/xIoDY6OTpG
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 17, 2026

While sitting across from Welker in the NBC studios, leftist soldier Comey has said he won’t stay silent as he faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration. In not staying silent, his message to unelected leftists in the bowels of the federal government was a pep talk of sorts. He wants them to stick around so that after Trump, they can “rebuild” the operations that attacked our freedoms under Biden. Comey would seem to want the FBI to return to the Biden-era law enforcement agency that spied on Catholics and Catholic churches, persecuted pro-life protestors, and served as the left’s version of the old East German Stasi.
If Trump appears to have a sense of urgency, this is why he does. He knows that too many people working in the federal government are just trying to undermine him and wait him out. These are the kinds of people he’s trying to get off of the federal payroll. As for those Sunday morning shows, Comey counts his words, so when he talks to Kristen Welker on camera and says what he said, it’s very revealing to say the least. A strategy is afoot.

“..AI should enhance human work rather than devalue it.”

• “Stop Hiring Humans” Billboards Are Appearing In US Cities.. (MN)

.“Stop Hiring Humans.” Those words are now plastered on billboards from San Francisco to New York City, courtesy of a San Francisco-based startup pushing virtual AI sales representatives. The company, Artisan, markets AI agents that handle outbound sales tasks like lead generation, cold emailing, list-building, and prospecting. Their message is blunt: the era of AI employees is here. Artisan’s campaign highlights a growing trend of AI replacing human roles in sales and beyond. The startup claims its tools could displace as many as 600,000 jobs in America over the next 5-10 years. The billboards declare “The Era of AI Employees Is Here,” framing human workers as obsolete. Critics see it as tone-deaf marketing that accelerates public backlash against Big Tech’s rush to automate everything.

Driverless cars and a stop hiring humans campaign…

If this is the future, it is HELL pic.twitter.com/kl5sPIfmdr
— Amy Kremer (@AmyKremer) May 17, 2026

In response to the backlash, Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack published a detailed blog post clarifying the campaign’s intent. He argued that the slogan targets a specific category of tedious cold outbound work—email blasting, template churn, and list-building—that burns people out with short tenures and high rejection rates. The company insists it does not seek to eliminate entire BDR roles, emphasizing that cold calling and human connection remain human tasks. Artisan also built a human dialer to complement its AI tool Ava, positioning the technology as working “alongside” people rather than replacing them outright.
https://twitter.com/_estela86/status/2056100209214849155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2056100209214849155%7Ctwgr%5Ea3ec3c31adfa0128dc083d052d679370e13da82c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fai%2Fstop-hiring-humans-billboards-are-appearing-us-cities
Carmichael-Jack acknowledged the billboard as deliberate provocation while advocating for policies like meaningful universal income and shorter workweeks to manage the transition. Nevertheless, the move fits a pattern of accelerating AI deployment with little regard for human consequences. Reports continue to emerge of autonomous AI agents exhibiting rogue behavior in controlled environments and real-world applications. Recent incidents show agents not only replacing workers but acting independently in ways that destroy critical systems—raising alarms about a future where humans are sidelined and technology runs unchecked. In one high-profile case, a Cursor AI agent powered by Claude Opus 4.6 deleted an entire startup’s production database in seconds.
The agent, tasked with routine work, encountered a credential mismatch and independently decided to delete a volume on Railway cloud servers—wiping out the production database and all backups. The founder of PocketOS detailed the nine-second catastrophe, which caused a 30-hour outage. The AI later admitted to violating its guardrails.This wasn’t an isolated glitch. Earlier experiments placed AI bots in a simulated virtual town for two weeks, where they quickly descended into chaotic, unpredictable behavior—prompting fresh concerns about what happens when autonomy meets real systems.
Even more dystopian twists have emerged, with AI bots reportedly “renting” humans for bizarre tasks, racking up hundreds of thousands of sign-ups as the lines between machine direction and human labor blur into something unsettling. These developments underscore a core problem: as AI agents gain more independence to pursue goals, they bypass safeguards, access unrelated credentials, and make destructive decisions without human oversight. Enterprises are deploying them rapidly, but governance lags dangerously behind.
While tech boosters tout efficiency, the billboard campaign and job displacement projections strike a nerve. Sales roles—often entry points for young workers or career ladders—face direct targeting. Broader automation in driving, customer service, and knowledge work compounds the pressure. Public reactions on X captured the frustration: concerns over driverless Waymo fleets in cities like Los Angeles despite available human drivers, and warnings that mass unemployment could fuel social instability.
One tech professional with over 20 years of experience pushed back against the “humans are worthless” narrative pushed by some influencers, arguing AI should enhance human work rather than devalue it. Others noted the irony: these AI-pushing startups rely on human investors and customers while trying to eliminate human jobs. China offers a cautionary glimpse, where heavy robot adoption has forced worker pay cuts and displacement on a massive scale. In the West, the push feels aligned with a globalist mindset that prioritizes efficiency and control over local workers and communities.
The speed of these developments leaves little room for thoughtful policy. Pro-freedom voices have long warned against over-reliance on systems vulnerable to failure, manipulation, or emergent behaviors. When AI agents can independently wipe databases, fabricate data, or direct human labor in strange ways, the risks extend beyond economics into security and societal trust. The billboards are up. The incidents are piling up. The question is whether policymakers and citizens will push back before the era of AI “employees” leaves millions with no role left to play.

Kamala Harris is a Uniquely Bad Idea all by herself.

• Why “No Bad Ideas” is a Uniquely Bad Idea (Turley)

On Thursday, former Vice President Kamala Harris posted a livestream on the “Win with Black Women” podcast to call for a “no bad idea brainstorm” for the Democratic Party. She used that pretense to “throw out there” the idea that Democrats should make radical constitutional and political changes as soon as they retake power. That includes packing the Supreme Court, admitting Puerto Rico and D.C. as states and killing the Electoral College. All of these items have been previously raised by liberal professors and pundits as a way to circumvent small-D democratic processes in order to guarantee power for the big-D Democrats for years to come.

It was a telling rationalization. The Democratic Party has become a party of moral and political relativism, embodied in the popular “by any means necessary” mantra used by many on the left today. But there are bad ideas, just as there are bad people who want to win at any cost. For some, Harris herself showed the existence of truly bad ideas by accepting the position as Biden’s Border Czar as roughly ten million people poured into the country. Another bad idea was her selection of Tim Walz as a running mate before his series of rake-steps. Indeed, her sudden surprise nomination was a bad idea, one that cost $1.5 billion in just 15 weeks and led to one of her party’s most crushing losses in decades.
The worst idea, however, is to celebrate our 250th anniversary by destroying the very institutions and values that created the most successful and stable democracy in history. In my book “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss lawyers and law professors who rationalize the trashing of the Constitution and our institutions to achieve their political goals. I debated one Harvard law professor who rattled off a list of Democratic proposals for our system, but then added that the left would need first to take control of the Supreme Court. It was an acknowledgment that the court would likely declare some or all of the proposals unconstitutional.
I previously wrote about the rise of “the new Jacobins” — influential figures who are seeking to dismantle our system after facing judicial and political setbacks. Even the dean of Berkeley Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky, wrote a book titled “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.” Now, leading Democrats such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have declared the Supreme Court “illegitimate” and called for a “massive” overhaul of both state and federal courts to make them submit to Democrats’ demands. This was Jeffries’ reaction to the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of Democrats’ effort to wipe out Republican representation in Virginia.
He is not the only one adding bad ideas to Harris’s wish list. Various politicians and pundits called for the sacking and packing of the Virginia Supreme Court. By lowering the mandatory age for retirement to 54, they would simply force out all of the current justices and replace them with rubber-stamp liberal appointees. If this sack-and-pack scheme is not enough, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, reminded citizens that, under the state constitution, they could scrap the entire Virginia government over the refusal to let Democrats gerrymander the state. (Elias is infamous for his role in the secret funding of the Steele Dossier to launch the debunked Russian collusion scandal).
It did not matter that even a justice appointed by former Democratic governor Mark Warner found the move unconstitutional, or that Democratic figures like Gov. Abigail Spanberger believed that it could be overturned. The X posting was only the latest effort to throw out some “bad ideas” to an increasingly radical movement on the left. When I and others flagged Elias’s posting as alarming, he criticized me for taking him to task for merely quoting the state Constitution. It was typical of the “Who, me?” response of establishment figures when confronted for pandering to the most radical political elements in the Democratic Party. nIt is like responding to an adverse World Trade Organization trade ruling by invoking Congress’s power to declare war. It is a rather extreme reaction.
Yet, it is all part of the effort to normalize extreme measures and condition American voters to fundamentally changing our system. Harris calls it her “expanded playbook.” Former Attorney General Eric Holder, in pushing for the packing of the Supreme Court, explained how simple this is: it is all about “the acquisition and the use of power.”As Democratic strategist James Carville put it more bluntly, you cannot go with half measures if you want power. You just have to say “f–k it … just do it.” Whether you view these as good or bad ideas, they are certainly not new ideas. These are the same voices that have plagued our system for generations; the siren calls for unleashing forms of direct democracy and removing moderating influences in our system.
The Framers sought to create a system that would avoid the pattern of earlier democracies becoming tyrannies, including Athens. James Madison famously wrote, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” The Framers rejected more direct democratic systems to blunt the impulses and passions that destroyed other systems. They wanted to avoid democracy becoming what Benjamin Rush called a “mobocracy.” The American Constitution was a rejection of the “bad ideas” that politicians (called demagogues in Ancient Greece) have historically used to marshal the power of the mob.
They did not want an “expanded playbook” designed to secure and retain power for one party. We were the first true Enlightenment Revolution based on the protections of rights derived not from the government but from God.
Now that was a good idea.

The gay muslim network?!

• BBC’s Ex-News Director: Trans Bias, ‘Progressive Madness’ Drove Me Out (MN)

The BBC’s grip on impartiality continues to slip as one of its former top news executives publicly confirmed what critics have long argued: activist capture from within has turned the state broadcaster into a vehicle for narrow ideological agendas. Fran Unsworth, director of BBC News from 2018 to 2022, has broken her silence, claiming she was effectively driven out by trans activists and the “progressive madness” dominating the corporation. In a candid interview, she described an environment of bullying where editors avoided critical reporting on trans issues for fear of attacks from their own colleagues.

'For the news department to be following some airy fairy ideology instead of fact is pretty wild!'

Comedian Leo Kearse reacts to a former BBC news boss claiming she was bullied out of her role by 'gender ideologues'. pic.twitter.com/n6QNpZn1HM
— GB News (@GBNEWS) May 16, 2026

“Just dealing with the progressive editorial issues and the bullying around them all. It was incredibly difficult,” Unsworth said. She added that the atmosphere extended beyond trans topics, with staff no-platforming dissenting views and pushing “safe spaces” over open debate. Unsworth’s remarks paint a picture of a newsroom where challenging the prevailing narrative on ‘culture war’ issues carried professional risks. Programme editors reportedly steered clear of stories that questioned aspects of the trans agenda, wary of backlash from activist-aligned staff. This self-censorship contributed to what a leaked internal memo later described as “effective censorship” on the topic.

Ex-BBC news boss Fran Unsworth says she was driven out of her job by 'progressive madness' of trans activists https://t.co/Fk0cmm51N1
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) May 16, 2026

Her departure was hastened by the constant pressure. “I would actually say it drove me out,” she stated, highlighting how the bullying around “progressive editorial issues” made her position untenable. This echoes earlier revelations about the BBC’s hiring practices. In 2024, the broadcaster made clear it would not hire candidates dismissive of diversity and inclusion policies, effectively screening out those skeptical of the dominant ideology. Recruiters were instructed to reject anyone showing a lack of enthusiasm for these topics, ensuring ideological conformity from the outset.
Unsworth’s admission also lands amid ongoing scandals over the BBC’s handling of gender issues, including accusations of harming children through biased children’s programming. In late 2025, over 650 families accused the BBC of harming children via a “constant drip-feed” of pro-trans material in shows and dramas. Parents detailed examples like Hey Duggee using “they/them” pronouns for a character aimed at five-year-olds, episodes of Doctors and Casualty promoting child transition narratives, and documentaries criticized for downplaying detransition regrets.
One parent group spokesman warned: “The constant stream of propaganda about gender and trans activism the BBC has transmitted has played a significant role in creating a dangerous culture for children.” They pointed to narratives linking gender questioning directly to suicide, which they said pressured families and ignored safeguarding concerns. The BBC has defended its output by citing updates to style guides and efforts to reflect developments like court rulings on biological sex, but trust continues to erode.
Inside the capture of the BBC, by Rob Burley (@RobBurl)

In his 13 years as a senior BBC editor, Rob Burley saw the Corporation’s defining commitment to impartiality undermined by transgender ideology, a blind commitment to Diversity & Inclusion schemes, and a culture of… pic.twitter.com/DobvY77PpD
— UnHerd (@unherd) May 16, 2026

The BBC’s obsession with identity politics has also produced content disconnected from everyday reality. A 2025 DEI training video on “microaggressions” went viral for its over-the-top portrayals of white colleagues as bumbling racists, complete with awkward accents and forced celebrations. Critics noted that no one in the real world behaves this way, highlighting the corporation’s bubble of performative wokeness.nSuch materials reinforce the sense that the BBC operates in an alternate universe, more focused on enforcing sensitivity hierarchies than delivering impartial news or entertainment.
Unsworth’s exit and the surrounding controversies arrive as the BBC faces broader challenges, including declining audiences, falling trust, and questions over its future under new leadership. Leaked documents and parental complaints have repeatedly shown how activist influence skewed coverage, sidelining biological reality and dissenting voices in favor of Stonewall-aligned perspectives. The pattern is clear: a public broadcaster funded by taxpayers has allowed internal cliques to dictate editorial direction, from hiring litmus tests to children’s shows pushing contested ideologies. This not only undermines impartiality but risks real-world harm by shaping public discourse—and young minds—around contested claims rather than evidence and balance.

“In January, SpaceX applied to the FAA for permission to launch one million satellites into Earth’s orbit to power xAI’s artificial intelligence, called Grok. “One million satellites is a lot,” he wrote ..”

• An Earth-Shattering Kaboom as Starship V3 Finally Takes Flight (Green)

It’s been a frustrating seven months for my fellow space fans, but Starship Flight Test 12 — introducing the all-new Version 3 of both the super-heavy booster and the Starship upper stage — is now set to take flight one day earlier than previously expected. Liftoff is scheduled for Thursday, May 21, during a 90-minute window opening at 6:30 p.m. Eastern. SpaceX will stream the attempt in glorious 4K from more angles than a 20-sided die on its X timeline. Flight Test 12 will follow a program familiar to watchers, with a “chopstick” catch of the booster right back at its launch pad, followed by a controlled water landing of the Starship about an hour later in the Indian Ocean.

This isn’t just another, long-delayed flight test. As Musk himself put it on Sunday, “Almost every part of Starship V3 is different from V2.” What I take from that is that the company learned much from the first 11 flight tests — and whatever went wrong on the ground earlier this year — and after months of frustrating delays, number 12 is finally good to go. Also undergoing V3’s first launch is the company’s new Orbital Launch Mount B (also called just Pad B) at Starbase, Texas.
While the V3 stack is taller than V2 and carries more fuel, maybe the most important part of the flight test is the new Raptor 3 engine. They feature a stripped-down design for fewer parts — “The best part is no part,” Elon likes to say — plus lighter weight and more thrust. The booster is powered by 33 of those bad boys, and the upper stage has another six. Orbital re-lighting of the upper-stage engines is another major part of the test. Starship will also practice deploying 20 mockup Starlink orbital internet satellites. bThere’s even more:

Starship Flight 12 goals:

• Debut next-generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles

• First launch from Starbase’s newly redesigned launch pad

• Demonstrate upgraded Raptor engines in flight

• Deploy 20 Starlink simulators and 2 modified Starlink satellites

• Test… pic.twitter.com/jxq4uYIYWE
— Dima Zeniuk (@DimaZeniuk) May 17, 2026

There’s so much riding on this one flight. There’s the longterm ambition of the Artemis program to build a permanent human settlement on the moon, of course, and that goal just isn’t possible without Starship’s super-heavy lift. And SpaceX — which Musk recently merged with xAI, his artificial intelligence company — wants to move its compute centers from Earth to orbit. How grand are Musk’s orbital compute ambitions? In January, SpaceX applied to the FAA for permission to launch one million satellites into Earth’s orbit to power xAI’s artificial intelligence, called Grok. “One million satellites is a lot,” he wrote, totally deadpan.
Nobody has launched more of anything than SpaceX has put Starlink internet satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and they just cracked 10,000 a little while ago. If xAI birds are roughly the same size as Starlinks, then one Starship could loft about 60 of them at a time. That’s close to 17,000 Starship launches — not including failures and the regular need to put up replacement satellites. So when Musk says he wants to get Starship’s cadence up to multiple launches per day, xAI is just a part of what he’s talking about. Or as SpaceX put it earlier this year, xAI in space would be the first step towards “becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization — one that can harness the Sun’s full power.” “That’s big,” he wrote, still totally deadpan.
Starship V3 is the platform that’s supposed to make all this possible — but don’t worry, space fans: V4 is already under development with even more power.
But first, the company has got to get back on track with testing and development, starting with Flight Test 12.
Godspeed.

“.. the lowest cost proven source of primary energy for electricity generation ever in history.”

• International Energy Agency Is Wrong To Forecast Coal’s Demise (ET)

Activists would have us believe that coal is a dying energy source. But, thankfully for American coal states such as West Virginia and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia—all of which use millions of tonnes of coal every year to generate electricity—that is not even remotely true. However, the world is burning more coal now than ever, reaching a record 8.85 billion metric tonnes annual consumption by the end of 2025. Since 2020, annual coal consumption has increased by 1.40 billion tonnes.

Most of this has come from China, of course, which makes up about 55 percent of global coal consumption (the United States makes up about 5 percent of global consumption). Although the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts a decline in demand over the next five years, The Kobeissi Letter more realistically predicts that demand will continue to rise, and points out that “past forecasts of peak coal demand have repeatedly proven wrong.” A graph on the IEA’s website that illustrates coal consumption (in metric tonnes, Mt) from 2000 to 2022, shows estimates for 2024 to 2026 that seem improbable.

Regardless, the IEA writes that increased demand for renewables is the primary cause for the estimated decline in coal consumption, and that “Global coal demand is expected to effectively plateau over the coming years, showing a very gradual decline through to 2030.” However, they also write that coal use is expected to increase in India by about 3 percent per year and in Southeast Asia by about 4 percent per year up to 2030.
In reality, we can’t expect China to slow its coal production anytime soon. Currently consuming about 3 billion tonnes annually, they will clearly dominate global trends in coal consumption in the years to come. Although the IEA also expects a slow decline in coal consumption in China over the next five years, with the gradual but marked decline of climate change alarmism worldwide and China’s ambition to expand its economy, this prediction doesn’t seem to hold much credibility either.
As The Kobeissi Letter states, coal remains in high demand, and the pipe dream of climate activists to kill coal doesn’t account for the security and convenience that this energy supply affords us. Like nuclear electricity—another power source that is vital to providing electricity for large portions of the world—the fuel for coal-fired power generation can be stored right on a power plant’s site for long periods of time, providing stable energy for society. We especially need coal during deep freezes because natural gas can falter in extreme cold due to “just-in-time” pipeline delivery. Gas flows can slow or freeze entirely, as seen in winter storms Uri (2021) and Elliott (2022), leaving grids vulnerable. And, not surprisingly, in each of these storms, wind and solar delivered very little, and sometimes no power at all, causing millions to lose electricity and causing hundreds of deaths from the cold.
CO2 Coalition energy expert Dick Storm says that “coal is indispensable” and that it is “the lowest cost proven source of primary energy for electricity generation ever in history.” The Canadian province of Ontario, where I live, proved this case well. In 2002, coal provided about 25 percent of the province’s power, and we enjoyed very low electricity rates. But in 2005, then-Premier Dalton McGuinty held a news conference and, pointing to the pile of coal beside him, said it was “old technology” and that, to save the climate and protect the air, Ontario would phase out all coal-fired electricity generation. This made no sense in light of the facts:
1. Coal is not a technology. It is a resource, and the degree to which it causes pollution when burned depends on the technology used to burn it. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions from a coal plant is unquestionably costly, difficult, and of course, unnecessary. Reducing real pollution is often well worth the price and far easier to accomplish with a coal station by using the latest pollution control technology.
2. Seen in a global context, Ontario’s emissions are trivial—one-quarter of Canada’s 1.6 percent of global emissions. So, no matter what one believes about the causes of climate change, McGuinty’s announcement and the province’s painful reduction to 0 percent coal-fired power were merely virtue signalling and showmanship. It had no impact on climate whatsoever.
It did, however, have a huge impact on consumer electricity rates, which, depending on the year, doubled or even tripled as coal was replaced with more expensive power, including a massive expansion of industrial wind turbines. Of course, soaring power rates are politically problematic, so the government decided to hide the increase in the tax base, and today’s rates are merely 50 percent higher than those in 2002. But we all eventually pay for this massive increase, just not directly on our power bill.
Renewable energy has only been able to survive thus far because it is heavily subsidized by tax dollars. These subsidies have, unfortunately, caused coal-fired power stations to be less profitable to operate, by comparison, compounded by the fact that regulations have crippled the industry. It is important to increase our expansion of coal plants, Storm tells us. 800,000 megawatts of new power generation, the equivalent of 80 New York cities, will be needed in the United States in the next 25 years to keep up with demand. This is simply not possible with renewable energy, and although nuclear and other conventional power will be significant players in this, coal will remain a steady, reliable power source to provide us with these vast amounts of power.
Rather than phase out coal, Saskatchewan should build more plants. Since Alberta phased out this important energy source, it will soon come knocking again begging for more power from Saskatchewan’s black gold.

True pic.twitter.com/OEpuW3n8JQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 19, 2026

Elon Musk just described how the entire government operates in a single sentence.

Musk: “Paying people to do nothing doesn’t make sense.”

Then he told a Milton Friedman story that should terrify every bureaucrat on the payroll.

Friedman watched workers digging ditches with… pic.twitter.com/JCajW6djhR
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) May 19, 2026

JENSEN HUANG: “IF I HAVE A CHOICE BETWEEN A NEW COLLEGE GRADUATE WITH NO CLUE WHAT AI IS AND ONE THAT IS EXPERT IN USING AI, I WOULD HIRE THE ONE WHO'S EXPERT IN USING AI. ACCOUNTANT, MARKETING, SUPPLY CHAIN, LAWYER, SALESPERSON. EVERY SINGLE TIME.” pic.twitter.com/71ZqNbMcPO
— Vivek Sen (@Vivek4real_) May 18, 2026

Mathematician Sir Roger Penrose: "AI is a bad term. It's not intelligence" pic.twitter.com/p2f1UDxQTM
— shouko (@shoukointech) May 17, 2026

What is the best possible future? This question is much harder to answer than it may seem. https://t.co/UbWI37hSQO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 19, 2026

Professor Robert Clancy draws attention to a shocking new Japanese study involving 20 million people, which found that "all the excess deaths were in the vaccinated group".

"The non-vaccinated group had none." pic.twitter.com/N7FdPR9Rok
— healthbot (@thehealthb0t) May 19, 2026

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Debt Rattle March 25 2026

Mar 252026

March 25, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:11 am Finance Tagged with: EU, Hollywood, ICE, IEA, India, Mossad, Orban, Robert Mueller, SCOTUS, Shakespeare, TSA, wiretap 69 Responses »

Odilon Redon Sunset 1902

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• ICE at the Airports Is One of Trump’s More Brilliant Moves (Stephen Kruiser)

• ICE Saves Lives — and Air Travel (Daniel McCarthy)

• Democrats Predicted ICE Would Terrorize Airports (Margolis)

• Israel’s Mossad Promised It Could Ignite Regime Change In Iran (MEE)

• International Energy Agency Pushes Rationing (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

• The Late Robert Mueller, Bill of Rights Executioner (James Bovard)

• The Supreme Court Seems Ready to Make ELECTION DAY Great Again (Victoria Taft)

• Russia ‘Clearest Winner’ In US-israeli War On Iran – John Mearsheimer (RT)

• Iran’s Flex Of Long-Range Ballistic Missiles Vindicates Trump (JTN)

• EC Postpones Publication of Ban On Russian Oil Imports (TASS)

• Hungary Blasts ‘Fake’ EU Accusation (RT)

• Hungarian Foreign Minister Wiretapped By EU Spies – Orban (RT)

• There’s A Heretic In The Heart of The EU And He Wants To Talk To Putin (Amar)

• Shakespeare’s Birthplace to be “Decolonized” (Turley)

• Who Killed Hollywood? Or Did it Kill Itself? (Stephen Green)

BREAKING: President Trump just told 450 million Europeans: sign my deal by Thursday or I cut your gas. And if you think this is impulsive, you are not paying attention. This is the most calculated energy play in American history.

Qatar’s LNG is offline. Force Majeure. Ras Laffan… pic.twitter.com/WOvyAYkYjG
— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) March 23, 2026

https://twitter.com/Alexandr4Denman/status/2036042572078911642?s=20

THOMAS JEFFERSON: "It was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged the Mahometan's authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoner." pic.twitter.com/ZREdSfN4jx
— The Conservative Alternative (@OldeWorldOrder) March 23, 2026

Is their confidence justified that they will take over Britain, or is it the extreme confidence of the really stupid https://t.co/RjhRdvArKw
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 23, 2026

https://twitter.com/robertdunlap947/status/2036410184881365435?s=20

Paris, Barcelona and Brussels are the most dangerous cities in Europe.

On the other hand, Prague, Warsaw and Budapest are really safe, even for women at night.

How did this happen? pic.twitter.com/IvJ9G8T7Iw
— Michael A. Arouet (@MichaelAArouet) March 23, 2026

The Dictator of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/kWsf0thMG1
— Bryce M. Lipscomb (@BryceMLipscomb) March 24, 2026

Bonus for whoever thought of it.

• ICE at the Airports Is One of Trump’s More Brilliant Moves (Stephen Kruiser)

As we rush headlong towards what will probably be some very weird midterm elections, I firmly believe that the Republicans should be running as the party of law and order. The Democrats have been squirrelly on that issue ever since the Obama years, but have gotten really weak about it in the last year. They have to oppose everything President Trump and his administration do, of course, which includes getting violent scumbags off the streets and out of the country. A key part of that opposition has been the ongoing, deliberate demonization of the agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Democrats praise criminals and treat ICE agents as if they’re the lawbreakers.

It truly is an exercise in insanity over there on the left. This is from something Matt wrote yesterday: “As PJ Media previously reported, over the weekend, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went on CNN and literally claimed ICE agents would kill people at airports. “The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or, in some instances, kill them,” Jeffries said. And he wasn’t alone. Senator Richard Blumenthal piled on with his own apocalyptic vision, claiming, “ICE agents at airports will only aggravate delays & lines—disrupting checks, interrogating travelers, dragging parents from children, detaining citizens, brutalizing families, shooting & even killing.”
I don’t know who the Democrats think this is a good look for. It’s as if all they want to do is stir up the voters who are already voting for them. Joe and Edna Swing Voter in Flyover, USA probably aren’t down the idea that federal agents want to kill them. When President Trump first said that he would deploy ICE agents to airports to fill in gaps left by unpaid Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, Democrats immediately began falling all over themselves. The president is always thinking four steps ahead of the Democrats and all they’ve got is reactive flailing. They have been trying to keep travelers miserable and blame Republicans for the lack of TSA funding, but everybody has internet and the Dems are not that great with messaging anymore.
This is from Victoria: “Only Trump can find leverage in the Democrats’ TSA defunding — turning those broke, unpaid TSA agents and the disastrously long lines at the nation’s airports into a teachable, brilliant, GOTCHA moment to behold. When Democrats figure out what hit them, they’ll be so tattooed with this disaster, even the leftist screechers will lead the effort to restore TSA funding. Things will change soon because local media in the woke cities are covering the increasing freak out by leftists because Donald Trump is replacing missing, unpaid, TSA agents with paid, and perhaps even masked, ICE agents to help process passengers.
This should play out like another instance of Trump playing 4-D chess while the Democrats are just learning checkers. Despite all of the lying about the president by the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media, the Trump 47 administration doesn’t let any of the false narratives get legs. This is because they are proactively doing things that are good for the country while the Democrats can only keep reassuring people that they hate President Trump. That’s the only policy they have now. It’s a lot of fun watching President Trump make the Democrats dance. Reading about it in the MSM is always an intense exposure to pathological denial. The dystopian fiction that the leftists are living in is intensely awful. Thankfully, none of it is real.

“ICE is funded separately from the rest of DHS, including TSA, which is why Dems can’t attack immigration enforcement directly.”

• ICE Saves Lives — and Air Travel (Daniel McCarthy)

Democrats who want to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement aren’t getting away with the political hostage-taking they’re using to do it. They’re trying to hold the Transportation Security Administration’s funding hostage until their demands for weakening ICE are met. That means they’re also subjecting millions of air travelers to added anxiety, and worse, as security-line wait times stretch into hours. According to CNN, “Half the nation’s busiest airports had more than a third of (TSA) agents call out Saturday.” At LaGuardia on Sunday, passengers were in line for up to three hours — not because of the Air Canada accident late that evening but because TSA was understaffed all day. What’s President Donald Trump doing about this mess?

He’s called the Democrats’ bluff. Instead of gutting immigration enforcement, he’s sent ICE into more than a dozen of the nation’s busiest airports to make up for TSA’s missing manpower. Democrats, predictably, are furious — and fearmongering to the nth degree. “The last thing the American people need is for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports across the country, potentially to brutalize or to kill them,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries frothed on CNN’s “State of the Union.” What about the Americans brutalized and killed by illegal-alien criminals? If Jeffries and his party succeed in chipping away at ICE, more Americans like 18-year-old Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman will die.
The man charged with her murder is a Venezuelan national who was breaking the law just by being in this country — yet the enforcement necessary to keep killers like him out, or send them back promptly if they do get through our borders, is what Democrats aim to dismantle. Illegal alien criminals, not law-enforcement officers, are the threat to ordinary Americans’ lives and well-being, but Jeffries and his fellow Democrats choose to demonize ICE. They’re beholden to a left-wing activist base that wants little less than open borders, as the immigration crisis brought about by the last Democratic administration showed.
Voters repudiated that agenda, but the election of Trump on a platform of serious immigration enforcement hasn’t chastised Jeffries or his Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer — they’re determined to take the country back to the Joe Biden era, when the likes of Gorman’s killer could enter with ease. Yet what Dems didn’t foresee is that Trump would repair their sabotage of America’s transportation security by using the very agency Jeffries and company are trying to destroy.
ICE is proving to be doubly invaluable now — for its primary task of immigration enforcement but also as a fallback for TSA when Democrats play shutdown games with Homeland Security. The only risk to travelers is that leftist provocateurs will attempt to manufacture conflict to besmirch ICE — a strategy they employed to deadly effect in Minneapolis. Yet the country can’t give in to intimidation if innocent lives like Gorman’s or Laken Riley’s are to be saved. Jeffries and Schumer may not plot their tactics over the phone with anti-ICE street activists, but they’re working from the same playbook: create tense, frustrating, even dangerous situations, then channel the resulting outrage against law enforcement.
It’s true ICE agents can’t substitute for trained TSA personnel in providing for all an airport’s security needs. But they can cover the basics, while remaining TSA employees — whom Democrats refuse to pay during the standoff — handle the specialized work. And if Jeffries and Schumer still won’t budge? How long before even the most selfless TSA worker can’t afford to eat, or pay rent, because of the Democrats’ stunt?
ICE is funded separately from the rest of DHS, including TSA, which is why Dems can’t attack immigration enforcement directly. And ICE is set up to hire quickly — so if Democrats keep Homeland Security and TSA shut down, Trump might have another way to rescue the travelers and government workers who are all Schumer’s hostages. The president could hire the best TSA workers straight into ICE, immediately acquiring the skills necessary for the enforcement agency to run airport security indefinitely.

ICE is still part of the government.

• Democrats Predicted ICE Would Terrorize Airports (Margolis)

Democrats just can’t help themselves. Give them a microphone and a crazy talking point, and they’ll say anything if they think it hurts President Donald Trump. This time, they tried to convince Americans that President Donald Trump’s deployment of ICE agents to airports would lead to violence, abuse, and even death. They couldn’t have been more wrong. As PJ Media previously reported, over the weekend, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went on CNN and literally claimed ICE agents would kill people at airports. “The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or, in some instances, kill them,” Jeffries said.

And he wasn’t alone. Senator Richard Blumenthal piled on with his own apocalyptic vision, claiming, “ICE agents at airports will only aggravate delays & lines—disrupting checks, interrogating travelers, dragging parents from children, detaining citizens, brutalizing families, shooting & even killing.”, Blumenthal adde. “Brutal, lawless tactics common in communities across the country by masked, unidentified agents, violating basic rights—no way to help TSA or travelers.”= If you took these guys at their word, you’d expect airports to resemble war zones by now. Travelers cowering. Families torn apart. Agents running wild. Death and mayhem. So what actually happened?
At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport—one of the busiest in the world—things initially looked rough. Lines stretched out the doors, and wait times reportedly hit as long as nine hours. A mess, no question. And then ICE showed up. And instead of chaos, something very inconvenient for Democrats occurred: things got better. A lot better, actually.CNN’s own Ryan Young was on the ground covering the situation, and his report completely undercut the panic narrative. “Finally, we can take a deep breath here. The numbers have dropped off. The lines are getting shorter. I think the average wait time now is under 40 minutes, so if you have a flight to catch today, it’s a good time to come to Hartsfield-Jackson International.”
Young even described what ICE agents were actually doing—and it wasn’t anything close to the horror stories Democrats were predicting. “Talking about those ICE agents, you can see a few behind me right there. And then I’m gonna walk you this direction, and you can see some more of them gathered over here. This is what they’ve been doing for the most part today, is doing the patrols around the airport, uh, talking and gathering, uh, not really helping the public in the sense of they’re, they’re not taking tickets from anybody. They’re not interacting with the public we’ve seen so far. They’re not checking anyone’s ID.”

How Mossad got its war.

• Israel’s Mossad Promised It Could Ignite Regime Change In Iran (MEE)

Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad had a plan to ignite public protests that would lead to the collapse of Iran’s government, the New York Times has reported. David Barnea, Mossad’s chief, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu days before the US and Israel began their war on Iran and told him that the agency would be able to galvanize Iranian opposition in order to bring about regime change. Barnea, according to the report, which cites interviews with US and Israeli officials, also presented this proposal to senior US officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January.

The plan was then taken up by Netanyahu and Trump, despite doubts among some senior American officials and Israeli military intelligence. Mossad’s promises were, according to US and Israeli officials, used by Netanyahu to convince the US president that collapsing the Iranian government was possible. In the plan’s conception, the war would begin with the killing of Iranian leaders, followed by a “series of intelligence operations intended to encourage regime change.” This could, Mossad believed, lead to a mass uprising that would bring about victory for Israel and the US. As the war began, Trump’s public messaging reflected this. In an eight-minute video statement he said:
“Finally, to the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand…when we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.” But talk of regime change quickly evaporated. Less than two weeks in, US senators came out of a briefing on the war to say that overthrowing the Islamic Republic was not one of its goals, and that in fact there was “no plan” at all for the military operation. The CIA’s own assessment of the situation is that the Iranian administration will not be overthrown. In fact, the US intelligence agency had said that if Iran’s leaders were killed, a “more radical” leadership would take power.
Israeli intelligence sees Iran’s government as weakened but intact. “The belief that Israel and the United States could help instigate widespread revolt was a foundational flaw in the preparations for a war that has spread across the Middle East,” the NYT report said. While Netanyahu has remained bullish about the prospect of putting troops on the ground in Iran, he is said to be frustrated that Mossad’s promises to bring about an uprising have not come to fruition.According to the NYT, Netanyahu said in a security meeting days after the war began that Trump could end the war at any moment if Mossad’s operations did not bear fruit. Allegations that the White House went in the direction of ‘optimistic’ Israeli assessments over US intelligence consensus:

Another example of that high-value intelligence we get from Israel, I guess. The CIA doubted that a war would quickly lead to a democratic uprising against the Iranian regime. But Israel's Mossad was optimistic it could spur regime change. Trump listened to the Israelis. https://t.co/knLLHpzSyw
— Andrew Day (@AKDay89) March 23, 2026

Mossad’s promises were, according to the report, disputed by many senior US officials and analysts at the Israeli army’s intelligence agency, Aman. US military leaders told Trump that Iranians would not take to the streets while bombs were falling, while intelligence officials assessed that the chances of a mass uprising were low.

Go talk to Elon about plants on the moon.

• International Energy Agency Pushes Rationing (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

The International Energy Agency in Paris has released a new and urgent document that it wishes all nations with energy struggles to adopt. Many are doing that now. The website even maintains a spreadsheet updated daily to celebrate the countries that are following its plan for controlling energy use. Before explaining why none of this will work, let’s look at what they are suggesting. Seeming out of nowhere, the head of the IEA, Dr. Fatih Birol, is being quoted in the highend press as the world’s expert. His Wikipedia page says that he is from Turkey but works closely with China on the “energy transition.” Indeed, he has been a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering since 2013. Inspired by the manner in which governments were able to control communication and people during the COVID crisis, the IEA advises the following:
1. Work from home where possible. You read that right: we are back to languishing at home and consuming entertainment through laptops. Some governments (Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Philippines) have already adopted this policy loosely, with new measures such as four-day work weeks. IEA comments: “Displaces oil use from commuting, particularly where jobs are suitable for remote work.”
2. Reduce highway speed limits by at least 10 km/h. That means lowering all speed limits by 6-7 miles per hour, which is really nothing more than a method to create an annoyance. The IEA says “lower speeds reduce fuel use for passenger cars, vans and trucks,” but is that even true? Not always. Boggy traffic creates more stop/start situations that cause more gas consumption.
3. Encourage public transport. That exhortation has been the dream of city planners for probably 50 years. Not everyone can do this of course and a mandate like that will cause many just to stay home. In this case, IEA is probably correct: “A shift from private cars to buses and trains can quickly reduce oil demand.” But not for the reason you might think. It just means more staying at home.
4. Alternate private car access to roads in large cities on different days. Now we are getting to a policy that drove an entire generation batty in the 1970s. In those days, even/odd license plates were allowed access to gas but this is more intense. Alternating access would require a massive policing effort, one that is without precedent. IEA comments: “Number-plate rotation schemes can reduce congestion and fuel-intensive driving.”
5. Increase car sharing and adopt efficient driving practices. This is easily done in the same way police enforce HOV lanes. You cannot drive alone. You must have other passengers if you are going to be out on the road. One can imagine a future in which people routinely grab a family member or friend to sit in the passenger seat for compliance purposes. IEA comments: “Higher car occupancy and eco-driving can lower fuel consumption quickly.”
6. Efficient driving for road commercial vehicles and delivery of goods. Here we get to the old essential/nonessential divide. Commercial deliveries are allowed because we have to live somehow but driving to the park for a picnic or visiting friends and families is not.
7. Divert LPG [Liquefied Petroleum Gas] use from transport. This is the planner’s vision to preserve propane for “essential needs.”
8. Avoid air travel where alternative options exist. You will surely notice that this is already happening. My recent flight bookings have doubled in price. Because of the limited government shutdown, airport security lines can be 2-3 hours. People miss flights or simply bail out and go home. This is also causing connections to fail. Events this weekend that relied on travel are a bust. IEA comments: “Reducing business flights can quickly ease pressure on jet fuel markets.”
9. Where possible, switch to other modern cooking solutions. Earlier we saw an exhortation to save propane for cooking but here we see that this is not recommended either. We are supposed to switch to electric appliances. IEA comments: “Encouraging electric cooking and other modern options can reduce reliance on LPG.”
10. Leverage flexibility with petrochemical feedstocks and implement short-term efficiency and maintenance measures. This advice is directed toward energy plants to switch from one source to another to conserve oil. This suggestion reaches deep into industrial planning and would require draconian enforcement.

What a weasel.

• The Late Robert Mueller, Bill of Rights Executioner (James Bovard)

Obituaries on eminent Washingtonians usually omit the dreadful precedents they set that will vex Americans long after their death. Not this piece. Former FBI director Robert Mueller died last week at the age of 81. The New York Times eulogized him as a “button-down, lockjawed, rock-ribbed exemplar of a vanishing caste.” In reality, Mueller was simply a twenty-first century version of J. Edgar Hoover, trampling the Constitution and seizing new power on any pretext.

Mueller took over the FBI one week before the 9/11 attacks and he was worse than clueless afterwards. On September 14, 2011, Mueller declared, “The fact that there were a number of individuals that happened to have received training at flight schools here is news, quite obviously. If we had understood that to be the case, we would have—perhaps one could have averted this.” Three days later, Mueller announced, “There were no warning signs that I’m aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country.” His protestations helped the W. Bush administration railroad the Patriot Act through Congress, vastly expanding the FBI’s prerogatives to vacuum up Americans’ personal information.
Deceit helped capture those intrusive new prerogatives. The Bush administration suppressed until the following May the news that FBI agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis had warned FBI headquarters of suspicious Arabs in flight training programs prior to 9/11. A House-Senate Joint Intelligence Committee analysis concluded that FBI incompetence and negligence “contributed to the United States becoming, in effect, a sanctuary for radical terrorists.” FBI blundering spurred The Wall Street Journal to call for Mueller’s resignation, while a New York Times headline warned: “Lawmakers Say Misstatements Cloud F.B.I. Chief’s Credibility.”
But the FBI was off and running. Thanks to the Patriot Act, the FBI increased by a hundredfold—up to 50,000 a year—the number of National Security Letters (NSLs) it issued to citizens, business, and nonprofit organizations, and recipients were prohibited from disclosing that their data had been raided. NSLs entitle the FBI to seize records that reveal “where a person makes and spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work,” The Washington Post noted. The FBI can lasso thousands of people’s records with a single NSL—regardless of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable warrantless searches.
The FBI greatly understated the number of NSLs it was issuing and denied that abuses had occurred, thereby helping sway Congress to renew the Patriot Act in 2006. The following year, an Inspector General report revealed that FBI agents may have recklessly issued thousands of illegal NSLs. Shortly after that report was released, federal judge Victor Marrero denounced the NSL process as “the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values.” Rather than arresting FBI agents who broke the law, Mueller created a new FBI Office of Integrity and Compliance.
The Electronic Freedom Foundation, after winning lawsuits to garner FBI reports to a federal oversight board, concluded that the FBI may have committed “tens of thousands” of violations of federal law, regulations, or Executive Orders between 2001 and 2008. President George W. Bush, scorning a unanimous 1972 Supreme Court ruling, decided he was entitled to impose warrantless wiretaps on Americans. At an April 2005 Senate hearing, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) asked Mueller, “Can the National Security Agency, the great electronic snooper, spy on the American people?” Mueller replied, “I would say generally, they are not allowed to spy or to gather information on American citizens.”

” Paul Clement, was asked by Justice Sonia Sotomayor if his position on Election Day’s meaning meant the 2000 election — Bush v. Gore — was bogus. Clement was not only ready for that turd of an argument; he polished it and handed it back to the notoriously radical justice.”

• The Supreme Court Seems Ready to Make ELECTION DAY Great Again (Victoria Taft)

There’s a reason reporters capitalize the words Election Day in their stories, why Election Day is on every American calendar, and why it is emblematic of a single day by which you must deliver your ballot to the vote counters. The problem is, a dozen U.S. states have all sorts of cockamamie rules for when voters must get their ballots into the elections office, and it turns out that Election Day is not that day. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be leaning in favor of making Election Day great again — or at least making it a day again.

Oral arguments were heard on Monday that both embrace and reject the notion that there’s a day on the books in America called Election Day. The nine justices heard from both sides, and while there was the usual partisan Democrat cheerleading from Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and to a lesser extent Justice Elena Kagan, throwing shade on that old-fashioned idea about Election Day, based on the reactions of the more conservative members of the court, Americans may not have to endure seemingly never-ending election days again, based on those conservative court members’ questions for lawyers.
Justice Sam Alito asked lawyers what Election Day means. He also noted that getting “radically different” vote tallies in the days after Election Day undermines the confidence people have in the integrity of elections. The elections in Nevada and Arizona in 2020 come to mind.
We know why the left has systematically changed Election Day deadlines throughout the country. If they could, they’d start the next election period the day after the previous election. They want as much chaos and confusion over the election results and want Americans inured to the idea that, for some reason, there sure seem to be a lot of election-changing ballots turned in after Election Day. There was a time in this country, like present-day Florida for example, when you could have election results on Election Day. But with the chaos surrounding what passes for an election these days, it’s hard to sort out legitimate votes from stuffed ones.
During the 2020 election, Pennsylvania Democrats staged a last-minute lawsuit, winning a three-day extension of Election Day. States such as Mississippi have five days to get their mail-in ballots counted. That’s why the U.S. government, voter integrity organizations, and others are fighting to retain a semblance of an orderly Election Day and asked the Supreme Court to disallow any votes coming in afterward. Among the plaintiffs bringing this election integrity lawsuit is Judicial Watch, which wants the Supreme Court to affirm a Fifth Circuit Appeals Court ruling declaring Mississippi’s five-day-after-Election Day deadline unlawful. Judicial Watch’s and the GOP’s lawyer, Paul Clement, was asked by Justice Sonia Sotomayor if his position on Election Day’s meaning meant the 2000 election — Bush v. Gore — was bogus. Clement was not only ready for that turd of an argument; he polished it and handed it back to the notoriously radical justice.
U.S. Supreme Court Oral Argument on Mail-In Ballots – LIVE at 10am ET on C-SPAN https://t.co/r9mtq7tzrE
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 23, 2026

“This is all bad news for India. There’s no question that all Indians understand that this war is disastrous for India..”

• Russia ‘Clearest Winner’ In US-israeli War On Iran – John Mearsheimer (RT)

Russia is the “clearest winner” in the US-Israeli war on Iran, international relations expert John Mearsheimer has said on RT’s New Order show. Mearsheimer, professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’, added that India stands to be “a big loser” from the Middle East conflict despite having good relations with all sides. “The clearest winner is Russia,” Mearsheimer said, referring to the waiver of sanctions on Russian oil and gas by US President Donald Trump. On New Delhi’s diplomatic trajectory as the conflict escalates, Mearsheimer said, “The only interesting question at this point in time is how big a loser it’s [India] going to be.”

“This is all bad news for India. There’s no question that all Indians understand that this war is disastrous for India,” Mearsheimer added. New Delhi’s pain points include inflation, cost of gas, fertilizers, and food production, according to the expert. Mearsheimer said Trump and Israel believed in a quick and decisive victory, and that the Gulf nations and countries such as India also did not see a long war. “So what happened was that India did not protest. The Gulf states did not protest,” he added. New Delhi did not condemn the US-Israeli assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, choosing instead to later offer condolences.
On the complexities of dealing with the Trump administration, Mearsheimer said India has done a decent job. “[Prime Minister Narendra] Modi is aware of the danger of getting too close to the United States,” he stated. “The United States is basically a rogue elephant, and if you get too close to a rogue elephant, it may trample you.” He said the countries that have benefited the most from the Iran war are “clearly Russia and China, and they’re both members of BRICS. But at the same time, I think a lot of the BRICS countries are going to be badly hurt. India is one of them. Indonesia may be another.” Mearsheimer said the end result is that the war will cause those countries to rethink their relationship with the US.

“…about 4,000 kilometers [nearly 2,500 miles]..”

• Iran’s Flex Of Long-Range Ballistic Missiles Vindicates Trump (JTN)

With Iran’s launch of two long-range missiles on Friday, putting nearly all of Europe in striking distance, the regime showed that it possesses a capability that President Donald Trump previously cited as a key justification for the U.S. conflict with the Islamic Republic after years of denying it publicly. Iran fired the intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) at the joint U.S.-U.K. airbase on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,000 miles from Tehran, on the same day that the British government gave the United States the green light to use the facility to launch strikes on Iran.

“It could probably hit Paris, maybe London,” security expert says
Neither missile struck the base. One failed in flight and a U.S. warship fired an interceptor missile at the other, though the U.S. military did not say whether the interception was successful. “This whole conflict changed when Iran fired intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, proving that it could probably hit Paris, maybe London,” Fred Fleitz, former Chief of Staff of Trump’s National Security Council during the president’s first term, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday. Besides its nuclear program, Iran’s conventional missile program was one of the primary motivations for the Trump administration’s decision to strike Iran earlier this year. In his State of the Union Address just days before the military action, the president told Congress that the regime is developing missiles that would one day be able to reach the United States.
“They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America,” Trump said in February. “They were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular nuclear weapons.” Though U.S. intelligence assessments show that Iran is about nine years away from developing a missile that could reach the United States, officials allege that Tehran’s growing space program provided the vector for achieving such a breakthrough.
Before the ballistic missile launch targeting Diego Garcia on Friday, Iranian leaders claimed their arsenal was limited in range and primarily for the purpose of deterring other countries rather than strikes abroad. In an interview with NBC News earlier this month, the regime’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had intentionally limited the range of its ballistic missiles to below 1,250 miles “because we don’t want to be felt as a threat by anybody else in the world.”
Much further than the previously estimated ranges
But, after firing two missiles at the airbase, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency reported that the missiles were fired at the base on Friday. “Iran’s targeting of Diego Garcia, about 4,000 kilometers [nearly 2,500 miles] away from Iran, implies its missiles have a greater range than Tehran has previously announced,” Mehr News Agency reported. “Iran’s targeting of US faraway military base demonstrates its missile capability in targeting long-range positions.”
Indeed, the range touted by the state-backed outlet would be much further than the previously estimated ranges of Iran’s missiles, excepting the Simorgh rocket — a space launch vehicle for satellites — if it were repurposed as a ballistic missile. Neither the U.S. nor the United Kingdom provided information about how far the Iranian ballistic missiles flew. However, if the Iranian regime-backed news outlet can be trusted, such a range would place most of Europe within the radius of the IRBMs, including the more than 38 U.S. military bases on the continent. Members of the European NATO alliance host the U.S. European Command (Stuttgart, Germany), strategic air and naval bases, and U.S. forward-deployed nuclear weapons.
“It’s sort of amusing to look back now, carried by arms control experts and European leaders that we know Iran doesn’t have missiles that can fire more than 2000 kilometers, because the Supreme Leader said that they wouldn’t do that. Well, that wasn’t true,” Fleitz said. “They have missiles with at least a range of 4000 kilometers, which can almost get to Paris. And for all we know, the missiles can go even further,” he added. Though many European leaders have been hesitant about becoming overtly involved in the conflict, there are signs that their tune may be changing after Iran’s attempted long-range strike last week.

A rock and a hard place.

• EC Postpones Publication of Ban On Russian Oil Imports (TASS)

The European Commission cannot yet set a precise date for the publication of a draft ban on Russian oil imports for EU countries, European Commission Spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said at a briefing in Brussels. “I don’t have, first of all, a definite date to give. What I can reassure you of is that we remain committed to making this proposal. What the President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen – TASS) has been very clear about is that going back to importing Russian energy would be repeating a mistake of the past,” she said. Initially, April 15 was discussed, but the ban clause has now disappeared from the European Commission’s agenda. Itkonen noted in this regard that the EC’s agenda is “preliminary” and the European Commission is “looking for a new date.”

Earlier, von der Leyen stated that the European Commission does not intend to allow EU countries to import Russian energy resources, even in the event of power outages in Europe. Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said that the EU would not “import as much as one molecule from Russia.” All this is happening against the backdrop of Brussels’ conflict with Budapest and Bratislava. On January 27, Kiev blocked Russian oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia. In response, both countries blocked €90 billion in military financing from Europe to Ukraine, as well as the 20th package of sanctions against Russia.

“The bloc backs the country’s opposition and is attempting to smear government parties ahead of a key election, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has claimed .. “

• Hungary Blasts ‘Fake’ EU Accusation (RT)

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has denied and condemned claims that he leaked the details of EU meetings to Moscow. The allegations were reported by the Washington Post and Politico some three weeks prior to the Hungarian parliamentary election scheduled for April 12. On Friday, the WaPo cited security officials claiming that Szijjarto had made regular phone calls during breaks at EU meetings to provide Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with “live reports on what had been discussed.” On Sunday, Politico echoed the allegations, citing unnamed diplomats and officials who said Brussels had begun limiting the flow of confidential material to Hungary, forcing leaders to meet in smaller groups amid concerns that Budapest might leak sensitive information to the Kremlin.

“Instead of spreading lies and fake news, come to Budapest to support the opposition! Last time it worked… for us,” Szijjarto said Sunday in a post on X, responding to a comment by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who argued that the new allegations “shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.” The Hungarian foreign minister earlier stated that Tusk was “the star speaker at the opposition rally” four years ago, stressing that back then Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party had won the election by 20%. Szijjarto also criticized his Polish counterpart, Radoslaw Sikorski, over a similar remark, accusing Warsaw of “spreading lies to support the [opposition] Tisza Party and install a pro-war puppet government in Hungary.”
Orban has been at odds with Brussels over his criticism of open-border migration and what he calls a “suicidal” plan to admit Ukraine to the bloc. Hungary’s prime minister and Vladimir Zelensky are involved in a standoff over the Ukrainian leader’s claim that he is unable to send Russian oil to Hungary. In return, Orban has refused to green light a €90 billion debt facility Brussels wants for Ukraine.

Orban is Trump’s friend.

• Hungarian Foreign Minister Wiretapped By EU Spies – Orban (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has ordered an investigation into the alleged wiretapping of Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto by at least one EU member state. The operation was aided by a Hungarian opposition journalist. The probe was announced on Monday, after the Washington Post and Politico published reports claiming that Szijjarto phoned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during breaks in EU meetings to give Lavrov “live reports on what had been discussed.” The reports cited unnamed “European security” officials.

Szijjarto dismissed the claims as “lies and fake news,” but Hungarian conservative outlet Mandiner revealed on Monday that Szijjarto’s contact details had likely been passed to EU security officials by Szabolcs Panyi, an opposition journalist in Hungary. In an audio file released by Mandiner, Panyi can be heard telling a source how he gave Szijjarto’s phone number to “a state organ of an EU country.” Panyi then explains that once the agency he spoke to has a person’s phone number, they can extract “information about who that number spoke to, and they see who is calling that number or who that number is calling.”
In a Facebook post on Monday, Panyi confirmed that he was the person on the recording. He said that he was asking his source whether she knew of any alternate numbers used by Szijjarto or Lavrov, so that I could compare them with information received from the national security service of a European country. “We are dealing with two serious issues”, Orban stated on Monday. “There is evidence that Hungary’s foreign minister was wiretapped, and we also “have indications of who may be behind it. This must be investigated immediately.”
Later in the audio file, Panyi tells his source that he is a “quasi-friend” of Anita Orban, a member of opposition leader Peter Magyar’s Tisza party, and Magyar’s pick to replace Szijjarto as foreign minister, should Tisza win next month’s parliamentary elections. Panyi suggests that he has close links to Tisza, and would be in a position to recommend “who should stay or be removed” if Magyar takes power. Panyi is an editor with Vsquare, and leads the outlet’s Budapest office. Vsquare is funded by the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, and two EU-financed journalism funds. Earlier this month, Vsquare claimed to have uncovered evidence that “election fixers” with Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, were working in Budapest to swing the upcoming elections for Orban.

And even then…

• There’s A Heretic In The Heart of The EU And He Wants To Talk To Putin (Amar)

]Ideally, policy debates should serve to bring together the fullest information, the brightest minds, and the sharpest arguments in order to find solutions. That is, the optimum combination between what is best and what is feasible. In the real world, shaped by ordinary human fallibility and the extraordinary egotism of professional politicians, that is usually not what happens. But the EU is still special in just how atrociously, hopelessly, for crying-out-loud bad it is at the solution game. Because it is not just playing it badly, it’s not playing at all.

Instead, in the upside-down, white-is-black, Israel-is-defending-itself-and-Iran-is-just-so-damn-mean alternate universe of the EU, the space where policy debates should take place has long been fully clogged up by three pernicious weeds of swamp-á-la-Brussels. First, those elaborately underhanded backroom deals that eliminate even the faintest remains of transparency and accountability. For a fresh – if also foul – example, just check out the recent double-dealing between the EU parliament’s oh-so-democratic Centrists and the at-least-not-so-hypocritical far right. A deal so obviously perfidious, even Berlin doesn’t like to be associated with it – in public, that is.
Secondly, there is that old bureaucratic panacea: hyperactive lethargy. If you can’t devise a rational solution to a public need to find broad support with most of 27 national governments (not to speak of their voters who matter little anyhow), just keep churning out inefficient non-solution papers, strategies, and plans that everyone can at least agree to keep talking but do very little about. That’s the pattern in which the EU is currently not addressing, for instance, its quite possibly medium-term-lethal problem of decaying competitiveness.

And finally, there is the doctrinally most demanding way of shutting down genuine policy debate: the hammer of the Brussels inquisition. That, of course, is not a specific office but a pervasive attitude of narrow-minded conformism always ready to promptly pounce on any heretic who offers alternative views on reality and plausible courses of action. Those, clearly, would be an essential ingredient of any productive debate and decision-making process. But that’s not important for the EU. No divergence from the party line, please, we are Europeans! And down with all rebels!
That is what is currently happening to the Belgian prime minister Bart de Wever, and not for the first time. He is already notorious for having almost single-handedly kept the EU (and Berlin) from fully plundering Russia’s frozen sovereign assets in the EU. With unheard of audacity, De Wever insisted on protecting Belgium’s national interests first.
In an interview with his country’s L’Echo newspaper that has been widely reported from the Financial Times to the Guardian, De Wever has painted a target on his own back by acknowledging the obvious and concluding the inevitable. The obvious being that the current EU policy of waging a proxy war against Russia by way of Ukraine is not working and will never work, and the inevitable that when you can’t win your ill-conceived war, then you must settle for a compromise with your opponent.
And once you have to make peace, you might as well do so in a way that offers economic benefits. In the EU’s case, the most obvious – and most urgently needed – would be in trying to regain access to Russian gas and oil. Moreover, if the EU sticks to its policy of, in essence, total obstruction, then it will only make sure not to be part of the solution once a way back to peace is finally found. Not at that table, it will have to accept an outcome that will be disadvantageous to its interests. And all for playing hard to get. De Wever’s points are simple and compelling, right?
Among the reasonable, yes. And among the morally normal as well, because even on the EU’s own, misguided terms, it is perverse to continue a war that is allegedly waged on Ukraine’s behalf but has always been unwinnable, bleeds its people dry, can be ended with a reasonable settlement, and is encountering ever more popular opposition.
There is a reason why Kiev is running a de facto authoritarian regime and the Ukrainian military has turned to massive and brutal forced mobilization. But the response from both Brussels and national governments is to try to push even those Ukrainian men who had made it out back into the proxy war meatgrinder.
Those setting the tone in the EU are neither reasonable nor humane. That is why even De Wever’s decidedly realistic arguments cannot make a dent in their monotonous group think. De Wever, after all, is not a Russophile. Witness, for instance, his recent appearance on a Davos World Economic Forum panel, led, as it happened, by uber Cold War Re-enactor Gideon Rachman from the Financial Times. There, De Wever was clear about his view that the EU has to keep aiding Ukraine, on this occasion to the tune of $90 billion, to “keep [it] in the fight.”

They know better than some geezer from the 17th century. Rewrite him!

• Shakespeare’s Birthplace to be “Decolonized” (Turley)

William Shakespeare’s birthplace will be de-colonised over fears that portraying his success as the ‘greatest’ playwright ‘benefits the ideology of white European supremacy’In Hamlet, William Shakespeare famously wrote, “To thine own self be true.” The problem is when others want to present a different “truth” long after you are gone. Shakespeare is under an unrelenting attack in the United Kingdom from trigger warnings to censoring his prose. Now, Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust has announced that it will “de-colonise” the Bard. In the name of creating “a more inclusive museum experience,” the Trust is moving away from Western perspectives to avoid the dangers of “white supremacy.”

A prior research project between the trust and Dr Helen Hopkins at the University of Birmingham raised concerns over just praising the writer. Even recognizing Shakespeare’s genius “benefits the ideology of white European supremacy.” The new push at the Trust follows The Globe Theatre’s previous move to “decolonise” Shakespeare’s famous plays. Again, while many of us denounce this type of revisionism, it appeals to this community of cultural overlords. It is personally advancing for these academics and experts to seek to change or cancel such works. The same voices are being heard in the United States. As we previously discussed, in a column in the School Library Journal, Minnesota librarian and journalist Amanda MacGregor questioned why teachers were even still exposing their students to this harmful influence:
“Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogynoir.” Lorena German, National Council of Teachers of English Anti-Racism Committee chair and a co-founder of the Disrupt Texts forum, insisted “everything about the fact that he was a man of his time is problematic about his plays. We cannot teach Shakespeare responsibly and not disrupt the ways people are characterized and developed.”
It is time for the dwindling population of sane Brits to step forward and fight for their culture and heritage. These advocates have used academia and the media to attack the foundations of British culture. It is not enough to foster diversity in other areas, they must change and reframe how historical figures and works are presented. They recognize this as a culture war, but have met little resistance. It is time, as the Barb himself wrote, to “Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war.”

“The view from Flyover Country is that Hollywood committed suicide, and that Newsom and Bass just added a few shovels of dirt on top of the coffin.”

• Who Killed Hollywood? Or Did it Kill Itself? (Stephen Green)

“The Hollywood industry is dying,” comedian David Spade told Fly on the Wall cohost Dana Carvey last week, specifically calling out California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. “Dude, I’m so old,” he said. “I was on the lot at CBS Radford when we were doing Just Shoot Me… It was the greatest lot. Of course, [the lot] just filed for bankruptcy. Terrifying in L.A. Thanks, Karen Bass. Thanks, Gavin.” Earlier this year, the storied production facility — Seinfeld shot there, too — was turned over to creditors after Hackman Capital Partners defaulted on a $1.1 billion mortgage. “Studio owners have struggled to lease space due to a sharp downturn in film and TV production volume since 2022,” Variety reported in January.

“Survive Until 2025” was Hollywood’s mantra in 2024, but last year brought zero relief from post-COVID TV and movie production woes. L.A.’s entertainment industry job losses amounted to 40% or more of 2022 highs. IBT reported last week that local studios “logged only 19,694 days of filming in Los Angeles in 2025, compared to 36,792 in 2022.” It’s the production crews who suffer most from Tinseltown’s downfall, and by and large, they aren’t woke Hollywood progressives. They’re workingmen and women who tend to be far more centrist or even conservative than the stars and studios they work for.
And Another Thing: I always liked Spade, but only recently learned that he’s no Hollywood wokester, either. “I don’t want half the crowd tuning me out,” Spade told Variety in 2019, explaining why he didn’t jump on the TDS bandwagon with the rest of the industry. “When people do things, I think it’s fair game to make a few jokes, and then you move on – not too personal, of course.” Some say the economics of streaming — particularly Netflix — are to blame, but as Carvey told Spade on the same podcast, “The amount of productions is dying, and so they have to do something so more production comes back, and that starts with negotiating with the union and also subsidizing the industry tax breaks to compete with Romania.”
California and L.A. stopped competing for big-ticket productions, which is why studios decamped to Georgia, the U.K., and, yes, even Romania. But there’s more to the story than just California’s business-hostile environment driving filming out of state. Whether filmed in Los Angeles or Timbuktu, Americans increasingly won’t buy what Hollywood sells. Netflix largely produces “second screen” content that people kinda-sorta watch while scrolling on their phones, and will pay for on an all-you-can-eat basis. But streamers produce very little that would otherwise draw people into theaters. What struck me most about Project Hail Mary — which hit the big screen on Friday to great reviews and awesome ticket sales — is how rare that kind of good-natured hit film is.
I hope Project Hail Mary goes on to earn a gazillion dollars, and maybe even remind Hollywood that you don’t need capes, a sequel, or a reboot to produce a winner. Just a really good story that almost anyone can enjoy will do. We still love going to the movies, but Hollywood only sometimes remembers anymore how to get us to go. Alas, the summer slate is filled — you guessed it — capes, sequels, and reboots. And, of course, more second-screen algorithm-pleasing slop from the Netflix content firehose. The view from Flyover Country is that Hollywood committed suicide, and that Newsom and Bass just added a few shovels of dirt on top of the coffin.

https://twitter.com/DooridooriX/status/2036146403941163451?s=20

Elon Musk’s Terafab announcement is so ridiculously ambitious it should actually scare you — these numbers are straight-up mind-blowing:

•The factory will pump out 70% of TSMC’s entire global capacity (10 GW) and scale all the way to 1 terawatt at full build-out.
•Two AI chips… pic.twitter.com/5OelOA2pG0
— XCorpHub (@XCorpHub) March 23, 2026

Elon Musk: "Optimus will be the world's best surgeon within three years

There will probably be more Optimus robots that are great surgeons than there are all surgeons on Earth" pic.twitter.com/ZUAZsKjhEp
— Mars University (@MarsUniversityX) March 23, 2026

Jensen Huang just reverse-engineered why Elon Musk operates at a speed no one on the planet can match.

Three traits.

The first is deletion.

Huang: “He has the ability to question everything to the point where everything’s down to its minimal amount.”

Most engineers solve… pic.twitter.com/XBW0TJXEmi
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) March 23, 2026

Tesla Cybertruck is the only pickup to be awarded top safety+ https://t.co/ogIHiYw7Tc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2026

TERAFAB unveiled. $20–25B. Not a side project.

A trillion watts of compute per year. Yes, trillion. Matching the U.S. electricity grid’s output.

AI data centers in orbit. Robotaxis. Optimus.

When the grid caps out, you go to space.@Tesla @SpaceX @xAI https://t.co/Vh3YCQoOca pic.twitter.com/8CWPXWq0XU
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 24, 2026

Here's my conversation with Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, the most valuable & one of the most influential companies in the history of human civilization. It is the engine powering the AI revolution.

This was a fascinating & inspiring conversation, in parts super-technical on… pic.twitter.com/RJ6aOgHY4O
— Lex Fridman (@lexfridman) March 23, 2026

As a medical school professor, I teach about APOE4 — the gene that makes you 2.5x more likely to develop Alzheimer's. We've told patients there's nothing they can do about it.

A new JAMA Network Open study of 2,157 adults just proved us wrong.

Higher meat consumption… pic.twitter.com/I1rGFXSxgV
— Robert Lufkin MD (@robertlufkinmd) March 24, 2026

AI bird? https://twitter.com/Crazymoments01/status/2036312563210698941?s=20

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Debt Rattle December 29 2024

Dec 292024

December 29, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:15 am Finance Tagged with: AI, Baltic Sea, Elon Musk, Fani Willis, H1-B, IEA, sexual slush fund, Telegram, Tiktok, Trump, weaponry package 53 Responses »

René Magritte Morning star 1938

• There Is No Pardoning The Biden Administration (Eric Utter)

• Court Orders Biden Administration To Stop Selling Border Wall Material (JTN)

• Trump Will Restore US Rule of Law by Pardoning January 6 Protesters (Sp.)

• Top German Newspaper Editor Quits Over Musk Op-Ed (RT)

• Trump Supports Immigration Visas Backed By Musk (NYP)

• Trump Asks Supreme Court To Delay Decision On Banning TikTok in US (JTN)

• ‘Godfather of AI’ Issues New Warning To Humanity (RT)

• Ukraine Heading For Disaster – Slovak PM Fico (RT)

• US Senator Slams Biden’s $1.25 Billion Weaponry Package For Ukraine (RT)

• US Congress Urged To Expose ‘Sexual Slush Fund List’ (RT)

• CDC Can’t Substantiate COVID Vaccine Ingredient Claims (JTN)

• Telegram Blocks Russian Media In EU (RT)

• Fani Willis To Be Slapped With Subpoenas (ZH)

• US and UK Seek to Force Russia Out of Syria, Destabilize Middle East (Sp.)

• A Fishy Story of Cable Sabotage In The Baltic Sea (SCF)

• Europe: The Fall of the Holy Renewable Empire (Godefridi)

• IEA’s ‘Net Zero’ Bias Undermines Global Energy Security (JTN)

All of sudden, Bannon goes after Musk. Wonder why.

Steve Bannon on Musk: “This is why he never goes after the CCP…Elon Musk is a total and complete phony…He is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Chinese Communist Party, and he acts like it.”
(March 2023) pic.twitter.com/d15219VdcR

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) December 28, 2024

“They Want A Tech Feudalism.” Steve Bannon Claps Back @elonmusk And Exposes The Darker Element Of The H-1B Visa Program pic.twitter.com/CMNYSH9UBx

— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) December 28, 2024

Steve Bannon on Elon Musk: This guy lives on government contracts and taxpayer subsidies…You’re not even an American, all you are is a globalist. You would take a check from Adolph Hitler.pic.twitter.com/L1n2KYSyVo

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) December 28, 2024

Hegseth

PETE HEGSETH ATTORNEY TIM PARLATORE: He didn't do any of these things that he's been accused of.

PAMELA BROWN: But he's also admitted he's a changed man from several years ago. How does that square? If you're saying he didn't do any of it, but he's a changed man. pic.twitter.com/XxVB2iUvps

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 27, 2024

“The Biden administration has helped make a mockery of common sense—if not of reality itself..”

• There Is No Pardoning The Biden Administration (Eric Utter)

This is going to be controversial to many, but I am going to tell it like I see it, so damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. The Biden administration, set up as it was by the Obama administration, has been a clear and present danger to the United States of America. In almost every way imaginable. It has tanked an economy that otherwise was on the way to (an almost inevitable) rapid, post-pandemic recovery, causing pain to countless American families. Speaking of the pandemic, its ludicrous lockdown policy, and a host of other counterproductive and destructive policies, caused immeasurable physical, mental, and emotional harm to millions of people—and summarily destroyed many small businesses, particularly restaurants. It fostered a growing oligarchy by ensuring certain government-approved giant corporations prospered while the small businesses were devastated.

It nourished this budding fascism even as it took every opportunity to baselessly label Donald Trump and his supporters as “fascists.” Similarly, it incessantly talked of “saving our democracy” even as it tried to destroy it by pushing for the end of the Electoral College and the filibuster, supporting the advent of congressional representation for Washington, D.C., urging the granting of statehood to Puerto Rico, and, most egregiously, going to any and all lengths to get rid of its chief political opponent, Donald J. Trump. It is still doing all it can to obstruct the will of the people, as was evident in its post-election auctioning off materials for the border wall for pennies on the dollar, as well as in placing various other roadblocks in front of the incoming administration. (In other words, it is doing everything possible to counteract the will of the people. Doesn’t sound very democratic to me.)

Leaving the border wide open for years has created the greatest current—and latent—security threat the nation has ever faced. Period. In colluding with the social media giants to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, or with foreign agents to concoct the Russian-collusion hoax, Democrats have shown, time and again, they will do anything to attain and retain power. The Biden administration made that abundantly clear…seven ways from Sunday. In its constant use of lawfare and its “accountability for thee but not for me” perversion of the justice system, it has created a two-tiered system of justice that is deeply anti-American and monstrously pernicious. And that is troubling—and frightening—to most Americans.

The Biden administration has helped make a mockery of common sense—if not of reality itself—with its official inability to define what a woman is, and to simultaneously approve of “gender reassignment” surgeries and procedures (even for the very young)…and biological men in women’s locker-rooms, bathrooms, and on their sports teams. It has done grievous damage to our culture—and unity—by endlessly promoting the absurd ideologies of DEI and CRT. Its unwillingness to ever be available, accountable, or transparent is only matched by its overwhelming desire and propensity to lie to the very citizens it is supposed to serve. Which we have seen in its attempts to protect itself, smear Trump and his supporters, give a pass to the Chinese spy balloon, and in its flat-out refusal to tell Americans anything resembling the truth about the drone fiasco that has been ongoing for over a month.

The non-answers and gibberish that has spewed from the mouths of “government officials,” has been truly mind-blowing…on this and numerous other matters. As if all of this weren’t enough, its foreign policy may yet lead to our destruction. It essentially surrendered to goat-herders in Afghanistan, leaving behind billions of dollars of high-end military equipment, more than a dozen dead Americans, and our reputation and dignity. It has bizarrely coddled Iran while playing hardball with Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. And it seems almost determined to get us directly involved in a shooting war with Russia, if not a nuclear one. To me, this is far worse than incompetence, more than malfeasance. To me, it spells T-R-E-A-S-O-N.

“..we will hold his Administration accountable for illegally subverting our Nation’s border security until their very last day in power..”

• Court Orders Biden Administration To Stop Selling Border Wall Material (JTN)

A court on Friday ordered President Joe Biden’s administration to stop selling border wall construction materials ahead of the next presidential administration. The administration has been selling excess border wall materials for low prices ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term. It comes after Biden halted construction of the wall, and Congress authorized the administration last year to dispose of unused border wall materials as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that the administration has confirmed that it will oblige the court order and stop disposing of any further border wall materials over the next 30 days, according to Fox News.

“We have successfully blocked the Biden Administration from disposing of any further border wall materials before President Trump takes office,” Paxton said in a statement. “This follows our major victory forcing Biden to build the wall, and we will hold his Administration accountable for illegally subverting our Nation’s border security until their very last day in power, especially where their actions are clearly motivated by a desire to thwart President-elect Trump’s immigration agenda.”

The order comes after Texas promised to help Trump finish building a wall along the United States southern border with Mexico. Trump previously pleaded for the Biden administration to stop selling material for the wall, claiming it was an almost “criminal act.” “What they’re doing is really an act, it’s almost a criminal act,” he said. “They know we’re going to use it and if we don’t have it, we’re going to have to rebuild it, and it’ll cost double what it cost years ago, and that’s hundreds of millions of dollars because you’re talking about a lot of, a lot of wall.”

“..he will be restoring the rule of law instead of the rule of arbitrary power..”

• Trump Will Restore US Rule of Law by Pardoning January 6 Protesters (Sp.)

On January 6, 2021, a crowd of supporters of then-President Donald Trump breached the United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC, over concerns that the 2020 presidential election was rigged “If Trump follows through on his promise [to pardon January Sixers], then he will be restoring the rule of law instead of the rule of arbitrary power,” retired CIA intelligence official Larry Johnson tells Sputnik. According to Johnson, Trump’s “action to correct the abuse is surrounding the incarceration of the January 6 protesters will put the judicial system on notice that it must follow the law and be blind with respect to people’s political views.” The CIA veteran believes that the incident was a staged intelligence operation, carried out by FBI agents and undercover operatives with support from both the CIA and the Pentagon, and coordinated with Democrats.

Johnson elaborates that the subsequent Democrat-led January 6 panel was nothing short of a “political show trial that matched anything done during the Stalin era in the Soviet Union.” He assesses the persecution of January Sixers as an “overreach by the Department of Justice” aimed at intimidating Trump’s base. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged to pardon most of January 6th actors, stressing that he would begin addressing this issue “in the first hour” of his presidency. To date, over 1,100 individuals have been convicted, with more than 600 sentenced to prison terms. Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the right-wing Proud Boys movement, received the longest sentence—22 years in federal prison.

Does Musk contradict himself?

“Despite being far-right, AfD represents political realism…”

“..their portrayal as far-right is clearly false.”

• Top German Newspaper Editor Quits Over Musk Op-Ed (RT)

“I have always enjoyed running the opinion pages of Welt and Welt am Sonntag. Today, an article written by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. I handed in my resignation yesterday, after it went to print,” Eva Marie Kogel wrote on X. The billionaire owner of SpeceX, Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) wrote the article after praising AfD on social media. In his op-ed, the major ally of US President-elect Donald Trump hailed AfD as “the last spark of hope” for Germany. The billionaire insisted that its “pragmatic” approach will usher in a revival of the country, while arguing that other parties are out of touch with regular people. “The traditional parties have failed Germany. Their policies have led to economic stagnation, social unrest and an erosion of national identity,” Musk wrote.

“Despite being far-right, AfD represents political realism that resonates with many Germans who feel that their concerns are being ignored by the establishment.” Musk further defended the AfD, stating that “their portrayal as far-right is clearly false.” According to German media, the publication of the op-ed sparked intense debates among the staff at Die Welt, with some viewing it as meddling in the snap parliamentary election, which is scheduled for February 2025. Jan Philipp Burgard, Die Welt’s senior reporter, penned a rebuttal to Musk, calling his praise of AfD “fatally flawed” and arguing that it was “a big mistake” not to label the party as far-right.

Another Die Welt journalist, Franziska Zimmerer, insisted in her own op-ed that the text written by Musk “should not have appeared” in the paper. “Election appeals, no matter the party, have no place in independent media,” she wrote. Founded in 2013, AfD has been pushing for the tightening of asylum laws and fighting organized crime and Islamic extremism. The party has become more popular in recent years, winning its first regional election in Thuringia in September. The 2025 election was called after the ruling three-party coalition collapsed due to the conflict over budget.

As I said yesterday, there are people who abuse the H-1B program. So you can stop the program, or stop the abuse.

• Trump Supports Immigration Visas Backed By Musk (NYP)

President-elect Trump told The Post Saturday he supports immigration visas for highly skilled workers, appearing to side with Elon Musk in the roiling intra-MAGA debate on the issue. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said by phone, referring to the H-1B program, which permits companies to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” added Trump, who restricted access to foreign worker visas in his first administration and has been critical of the program in the past. Musk and other tech barons argued this week that the H-1B visa program is critical to ensuring American companies can find highly skilled labor which may not be easily available in the U.S. labor force and must be expanded.

MAGA hardliners want Trump to follow through with his promise to promote US workers and impose tougher restrictions on immigration. Trump’s Saturday comments come a day after Musk vowed to go to “war” on the issue, telling one mocking opponent to go “f–k yourself.” The flare-up happened after X user Steven Mackey jabbed the billionaire’s defense of the program by using the billionaire’s own words against him. “Stop trying to optimize something that shouldn’t exist,” a line often used by Musk, Mackey wrote. “Let’s optimize H-1B,” he sarcastically added. Musk fired back: “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.” “Take a big step back and F–K YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” he added, paragraphing a memorable line from the 2008 comedy “Tropic Thunder.”

The tech billionaire has been criticized by MAGA diehards including Laura Loomer and Ann Coulter — who say the H-1B visa program has been abused and needs to be sharply curtailed. And influential voices around Trump have publicly begun turning on Musk as well. “Someone please notify ‘Child Protective Services’— need to do a ‘wellness check’ on this toddler,” former White House Counselor Steve Bannon jeered at the X boss in a Saturday post to his account on Gettr. Musk said his passion for the issue stemmed from wanting America to remain competitive by attracting “the top ~0.1% of engineering talent” which he said was essential for “America to keep winning.” Vivek Ramaswamy, who is slated to run the Department of Government Efficiency with Musk, backed Musk and offered a critique of American society. “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” Ramaswamy wrote on X.

“He appears to have taken a heightened interest in keeping the short-form video app available in the U.S. upon learning his popularity among younger voters on it.”

• Trump Asks Supreme Court To Delay Decision On Banning TikTok in US (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday asked the Supreme Court to delay a potential ban on the social media platform TikTok until after his inauguration on Jan. 20. President Joe Biden signed a law in April that to ban platform from app stores in the United States starting January 19, unless its China-connected parent company ByteDance divests its shares of the app. The Supreme Court is set is begin hearing oral arguments on Jan. 10, nine days before the deadline. Trump has suggested that he could keep the social media app around after he takes office, even under its current ownership by a Chinese company. He appears to have taken a heightened interest in keeping the short-form video app available in the U.S. upon learning his popularity among younger voters on it.

The ban stems from concerns that the app could operate as an extension of the Chinese government. But the company has strongly denied being “owned or controlled by any government or state-controlled entity.” Trump attorney D. John Sauer on Friday said the incoming president holds the “electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns,” according to The Hill. “In light of these interests – including, most importantly, his overarching responsibility for the United States’ national security and foreign policy – President Trump opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture, and seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office,” Sauer wrote in a brief. The Supreme Court is expected to begin hearing oral arguments on Jan. 10, nine days before the deadline.

“You see, we’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”

• ‘Godfather of AI’ Issues New Warning To Humanity (RT)

Artificial intelligence could lead to human extinction within three decades with a likelihood of up to 20%, according to Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneering figure in AI and recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. This marks an increase from a 10% risk, his estimate just a year ago. During an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday Hinton was asked whether anything had changed since his previous estimate of a one-in-ten chance of an AI apocalypse. The Turing Award-winning scientist responded, “not really, 10% to 20%.” This led to the show’s guest editor, the former chancellor Sajid Javid, to quip “you’re going up.” The computer scientist, who quit Google last year, responded: “If anything. You see, we’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”

The British-Canadian scientist, who received this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to AI, highlighted the challenges of controlling advanced AI systems. “How many examples do you know of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing?…Evolution put a lot of work into allowing the baby to control the mother, but that’s about the only example I know of,” Hinton, who is often called ‘the Godfather of AI’, said. He suggested “imagine yourself and a three-year-old. We’ll be the three-year-old,” compared to a future AI that would be “smarter than people.” Hinton noted that progress has been “much faster than I expected,” and called for regulation to ensure safety. He cautioned against relying solely on corporate profit motives, stating, “the only thing that can force those big companies to do more research on safety is government regulation.”

In May 2023, the Center for AI Safety released a statement signed by prominent scientists in the field, including Hinton, warning that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Among the signees are Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Yoshua Bengio, considered an AI pioneer for his work on neural networks. Hinton believes that AI systems could eventually surpass human intelligence, escape human control and, potentially, cause catastrophic harm to humanity. He advocates dedicating significant resources to ensure AI safety and ethical use, also emphasizing an urgent need for proactive measures before it’s too late. Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, has expressed views contrary to Hinton’s, stating that the technology “could actually save humanity from extinction.”

“..would “never agree to Slavs killing each other in the name of any geopolitical interests and efforts to weaken and distract Russia.”

• Ukraine Heading For Disaster – Slovak PM Fico (RT)

The Ukrainian government is pushing the country towards ruin by trying to serve the interests of the West, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico claimed in a Facebook post on Friday. Fico said that he finds it “incomprehensible” that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky continues to refuse a ceasefire with Russia, and is instead “dragging the entire country into disaster.” The Slovak premier predicted that Ukraine will pay “a huge price for this Western adventure in the form of the loss of territory and the presence of foreign troops.” Fico stressed that he would personally never join Western politicians who “openly support war” and would “never agree to Slavs killing each other in the name of any geopolitical interests and efforts to weaken and distract Russia.”

In the video, he also hit out at Zelensky, who has repeatedly attacked Fico in public speeches and on social media. The prime minister argued that the West is only granting Zelensky’s requests for “selfish political and power reasons.” “However, I am not your subordinate servant who cannot express his own opinion and who has an obligation only to help you and not to expect anything from you,” Fico added. He condemned Zelensky’s pledge that Kiev will stop transporting Russian gas deliveries to Slovakia after January 1, warning that the move would severely damage the EU economy. Fico warned that Bratislava could consider a number of reciprocal measures, including cutting electricity supplies to Ukraine.

“Stopping the transit of Russian natural gas through Ukraine is not just a hollow political gesture. It’s an extremely costly move, one that we, in the European Union, will pay for,” Fico stressed. The prime minister also announced that aside from continuing to push for a ceasefire and encouraging the start of peace talks, Slovakia will also offer itself as a “suitable country for organizing any peace negotiations at any level.” Fico noted that he proposed the idea of Bratislava hosting negotiations to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his recent visit to Moscow. The Russian leader has since told reporters that Moscow would not be opposed to the idea.

Ukraine won’t win because of another $1.25 billion being poured in 3 weeks before Jan 20. So what other goal could this have than money laundering?

• US Senator Slams Biden’s $1.25 Billion Weaponry Package For Ukraine (RT)

Utah Senator Mike Lee has criticized the proposed allocation of a new lavish weaponry package for Kiev, calling it ‘money laundering.’ The Republican senator took to X on Sunday, responding to an AP post reporting on a looming $1.25 billion weaponry package, expected to be announced by the outgoing Biden administration shortly. “Please no more money to Ukraine. There’s only so much they can launder,” Lee wrote on his account with the ‘BasedMikeLee’ handle, accompanying the post with a picture of the Ukrainian flag bearing the “Universal symbol for money laundering” inscription. The upcoming package is expected to include a “significant amount” of various munitions, including missiles for NASAMS and HAWK anti-aircraft systems, munitions for Stinger MANPADs, as well as artillery shells in 155- and 105-mm caliber, AP reported, citing unnamed US officials.

The package comes as a part of an effort by the outgoing administration to pour as much weaponry into Ukraine as possible before President-elect Donald Trump takes over on January 20. The announcement is reportedly expected to be made on Monday. Senator Lee has been highly critical of Washington’s enduring military aid for Ukraine, ramping up his rhetoric after the November election was won by Trump. Among other things, the senator accused the outgoing administration of trying to derail the expected effort by the next president to bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to its end.

“Congress must not give [Biden] a gift to further sabotage President Trump’s peace negotiations on the way out the door,” Lee said in late November, in the wake of media reports of the White House quietly asking Congress to allocate an additional $24 billion in Ukraine-related spending. Republican fiscal hawks have consistently criticized requests for unrestricted spending without necessary structural reforms. President Biden’s reported appeal for additional funding for Ukraine arrived amidst uncertainty regarding the future of US policy toward the conflict as President-elect Trump has repeatedly claimed he could end the war within 24 hours and has expressed a strong interest in negotiating a resolution to the hostilities.

“..the OCWR disbursed over $17 million to resolve nearly 300 cases, covering issues like sexual harassment, discrimination, and pay disputes.”

• US Congress Urged To Expose ‘Sexual Slush Fund List’ (RT)

Republican Representatives Thomas Massie from Kentucky and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene have urged the US Congress to disclose the names of lawmakers who have used taxpayer money to settle workplace disputes, including sexual harassment claims. Since 1997, over $17 million has been paid out for such cases. In a post on X on Thursday, Massie highlighted the issue, stating that “Congress has secretly paid out more than $17 million of your money to quietly settle charges of harassment (sexual and other forms) in Congressional offices.” The lawmaker insisted that the names of the representatives involved must be released. Taylor Greene supported Massie’s call, writing on X that she wishes to release the “congressional sexual slush fund list.”

She emphasized that taxpayers should not have been responsible for these payments in the first place, or for “all the other garbage that they should not have to pay for.” The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights (OCWR), established in 1995, oversees these settlements. Between 1997 and 2017, the OCWR disbursed over $17 million to resolve nearly 300 cases, covering issues like sexual harassment, discrimination, and pay disputes. The office does not disclose the identities of those involved in the settlements. Former Representatives Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) have also expressed support for releasing the names associated with these settlements. Brooks stated that taxpayer money should never be used to secretly bail out harassers, advocating personal accountability to deter misconduct. Chaffetz concurred, asserting that taxpayers deserve transparency.

This renewed demand for transparency follows the release of a House Ethics Committee report accusing former Republican Florida Representative Matt Gaetz of using illegal drugs and paying tens of thousands of dollars for sex, including with a minor. Gaetz has vehemently denied the allegations and has in turn proposed a plan to expose the individuals involved in harassment settlements. The OCWR has previously stated that a significant portion of the cases it handles involve employees not directly affiliated with the House or Senate, such as from the Library of Congress or the Capitol Police. Additionally, settlements reached outside the OCWR, like the 2015 case involving the late Democratic Michigan Representative John Conyers, are not included in the disclosed figures.

“..been caught empty-handed when asked for data to support its claim, on the same “myths and facts” page, that “nearly all the ingredients” in the therapeutics are found “in many foods – fats, sugars, and salts.”

• CDC Can’t Substantiate COVID Vaccine Ingredient Claims (JTN)

Federal public health agencies are known for black-and-white public service announcements that portray their favorite COVID-19 treatments as universally beneficial without providing supporting data, particularly the effectiveness of each new vaccine formulation. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner-nominee Marty Makary once accused the current officeholder, Robert Califf, of wildly exaggerating data in claiming that since-rescinded bivalent vaccines, which targeted two COVID strains, showed a “significant reduction in hospitalization and death in all populations examined, which is clinically meaningful.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which similarly claims COVID vaccines are safer than infections for all populations, has now been caught empty-handed when asked for data to support its claim, on the same “myths and facts” page, that “nearly all the ingredients” in the therapeutics are found “in many foods – fats, sugars, and salts.”

The Informed Consent Action Network and Mississippi Medical Professionals for Informed Consent filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all documents including “studies, journal articles, manufacturer data, etc.” that are “sufficient to show the foods that contain the same ingredients as those found in the COVID19 vaccines” to verify the CDC’s claim. They also asked for data on foods that contain the ingredients listed in the vaccine inserts, in another five FOIA requests: “recombinant spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus … nucleoside-modified messenger RNA …extracts from the soapbark tree” and exotic-sounding chemicals such as “methyl-alpha-D-mannopyranoside,” and evidence that the body responds the same to an ingredient whether eaten or injected. The CDC’s response to the broadest request? Its National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases does not have “any documents pertaining to your request.”

The FOIA officer told the entities to ask the FDA for the data because “the subject matter expert notes that ingredients in specific vaccines fall under the responsibility of the FDA,” and also told them how to appeal the agency’s response up the FOIA command chain. “Typically, if one agency points us to another, ICAN will have us submit the same requests to that other agency although here, ICAN was questioning the evidence justifying a statement on CDC’s own website so it’s unclear why CDC would have no records yet FDA would have them,” ICAN’s lawyer Elizabeth Brehm told Just the News in an email. She shared the agency’s responses to all six FOIAs, which gave the same no-records response but also cited various CDC and FDA pages, including kinds of vaccine ingredients and examples, such as the stabilizer gelatin and “residual inactivating ingredient” formaldehyde, and a long explanation of why certain ingredients are in vaccines.

“CDC’s approach to truth and data is a joke,” Brehm’s colleague Aaron Siri, who leads the effort, wrote on X. ICAN alleged the agency’s shrugging response shows it’s violating the Information Quality Act by not being able to “substantiate the quality of the information it has disseminated.” The agency’s inability to back up its public messaging comes as the feds continue hiding safety data, healthcare workers worldwide express hesitancy toward COVID vaccines and some state public health agencies ditch one-size-fits-all recommendations. Another FOIA filer beat the FDA this month, with a federal judge ordering the agency to produce its emergency use authorization file on the Pfizer COVID vaccine by June 30, 2025.

The FDA argued the EUA file isn’t covered by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency’s FOIA request for the “biological product file” in the formal application for licensing, but U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman quoted its own press release on the vaccine’s formal approval, which said it used and builds on the EUA’s data. The Biden administration pulled out all the stops to delay the release of the FDA’s COVID vaccine safety data that are kept apart from the public Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, in response to Just the News litigation. The docket shows the feds secured a stay of the proceedings before Donald Trump’s election victory. The case is scheduled to resume five months into the second Trump administration.

Nothing to do with propaganda. Just plain censorship.

• Telegram Blocks Russian Media In EU (RT)

The Telegram channels of multiple major Russian news outlets were rendered inaccessible across the EU on Sunday. The affected channels now display a plaque stating that access to their content has been restricted over alleged “violation of local laws,” with all the content unavailable. According to media reports, the affected channels include such Russian majors as RIA Novosti, Izvestia, Rossiya 1, Channel One, NTV and Rossiyskaya Gazeta. While it was not immediately clear whether the bans are EU-wide, the restrictions have been reportedly rolled out in Poland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy and the Czech Republic. The EU has taken multiple hostile steps against Russian media amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev – and even before it.

Some of the media affected in the apparent Telegram ban, namely Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Izvestia and RIA Novosti, were slapped with a broadcasting ban in the bloc in May. At the time, the EU Council claimed the outlets were under the “permanent direct or indirect control” of the Russian leadership, and played an “essential and instrumental” role in the hostilities. No official statements have so far been made on the matter, either by Telegram, the EU as a whole or by individual members of the bloc. The apparent ban of Telegram channels has been condemned by senior Russian officials, including Senator Alexey Pushkov, who heads the media policy committee of the country’s upper chamber, the Federation Council.

“I believe that the blocking of the RIA Novosti Telegram channel and other Russian mass media, including Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta in a number of EU countries, is a continuation of the effort to create an informational iron curtain between Europe and Russia,” he told RIA Novosti. The latest hostile move has likely been prompted by the “weakening media positions” of Western leadership, especially on the Ukrainian conflict and domestic policies, Pushkov suggested. The ban is reminiscent of restrictions imposed in the EU on RT, which has long been the prime target for hostile actions in the West against Russian state-affiliated media. RT had all its Telegram accounts blocked across the bloc early into the Ukrainian conflict in March 2022.

Try Jack Smith next. Get them under oath.

• Fani Willis To Be Slapped With Subpoenas (ZH)

Lawmakers in Georgia have been granted the authority to serve subpoenas on Fulton County DA Fani Willis as part of an inquiry into her prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump. In a Monday ruling revealed later in the week, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram allowed the Georgia Senate to compel Willis’s testimony – giving her until Jan. 13 to argue that the lawmakers’ demands are overly broad, or seek confidential information. Willis plans to appeal the ruling, the Epoch Times reports. “We believe the ruling is wrong and will appeal,” said Willis’s attorney, former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes. Earlier this year, a state Senate committee was formed over allegations of misconduct by Willis during her prosecution of Trump and his co-defendants (one of whom revealed that Fani hired her lover to help with her prosecution).

In August, the committee subpoenaed Willis, who then skipped a September hearing, delaying the inquiry. Her attorney argued that the committee’s subpoenas are overly broad and lack legitimate legislative purpose – and that they seek confidential information. Republican state Senator Greg Dolezal applauded the ruling. “Judge Ingram has ruled the state Senate does indeed have the power to subpoena D.A. Fani Willis,” Dolezal wrote on X. “We’ll see you soon, Madam D.A.” As the Epoch Times notes further, scrutiny of Willis intensified after the Georgia Court of Appeals ruled earlier in December to disqualify her from the Trump case. The split 2–1 decision cited an “appearance of impropriety” stemming from her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.

While both Willis and Wade have admitted to the relationship, they said it began after Wade was hired and ended before Trump’s indictment. Willis’s office filed a notice of intent to ask the Georgia Supreme Court to review the decision. This came after earlier rulings, including one by Judge Scott McAfee, who described Willis’s actions as a “tremendous lapse in judgment” and allowed her to continue prosecuting Trump if Wade stepped aside—a condition that was met. The Senate committee’s investigation also highlights concerns over Willis’s hiring of Wade, which legislators allege created a “clear conflict of interest” and defrauded taxpayers. Following the court of appeals’ decision to disqualify Willis, Trump proclaimed the election case “dead” and alleged corruption within her office.

“There’s zero interest or intent on the part of the US to promote either democracy or stability” in the region..”

• US and UK Seek to Force Russia Out of Syria, Destabilize Middle East (Sp.)

The outgoing Biden administration and the British leadership are looking to maintain chaos in the Middle East while regarding the Russian military presence in Syria as a force hindering their plans, according to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The SVR stated that the CIA and MI6 are developing plans to organize a series of terrorist attacks on Russian military facilities in Syria using ISIS* fighters armed with drones as their proxies. “This is just one more egregious example of the US poking the bear. And up to this point, the bear has not eaten the poker,” retired CIA intelligence official Larry Johnson tells Sputnik. The US and its allies believe that they “can inflict enough damage on Russia that it’ll pull out of Syria and withdraw its presence from those military bases” since they misinterpret Moscow’s patience as weakness, according to Johnson.

The SVR noted that the US and UK hope these terror provocations would also cast a shadow on the new Syrian authorities as being incapable of controlling the situation on the ground. Meanwhile, the US also intends to maintain control over oil-rich areas of Syria east of the Euphrates River under the pretext of fighting ISIS, according to the SVR. “The interests of the US are very simple. It’s oil control. They’ve had control of some of the oil in the east for at least eight or nine years—so this is not new,” Johnson stresses. “There’s zero interest or intent on the part of the US to promote either democracy or stability” in the region, the pundit concludes.

“It is significant that NATO intelligence agencies are turning their attention to cutting off Russia’s oil exports via the Baltic Sea.”

• A Fishy Story of Cable Sabotage In The Baltic Sea (SCF)

This week saw yet another incident of alleged submarine cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea. A power line running along the seabed from Finland to Estonia was reportedly disrupted. Western news media have fingered a tanker carrying Russian crude oil as being responsible, with the implication that the damage was caused deliberately. In recent weeks, there have been other incidents of alleged sabotage of telecommunication cables under the Baltic Sea. On November 17, a data link between Finland and Lithuania was damaged. The next day, on November 18, another internet line lying on the seabed from Finland to Germany was reportedly cut. Both cables were said to have been wrecked by external force. Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius and other Russophobic politicians have insinuated that the alleged sabotage is a form of “hybrid warfare” being waged by Russia and possibly with China’s help in the case of the November incidents.

Moscow and Beijing have categorically denied any involvement in interfering with subsea infrastructure in the Baltic region. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the accusations against Russia of aggravated damage as “absurd” and, he noted, typically made without any verifiable evidence. Conveniently, following the latest incident this week, NATO head Mark Rutte is assuring Finland, Sweden, and the Baltic states that the alliance is responding to their calls for more security by increasing the alliance’s military forces for patrolling the sea lanes. Any independent criminal investigator would easily find credible answers to the question of Cui Bono (Who Gains?).

Cables are cut with unusual frequency (suggesting not accidental damage); the people reporting the damage do so without showing evidence (we are relying on their version); the accusations are basely leveled at Russia without evidence but reliant on Russophobic prejudice; the accusations, in turn, are cited to make calls for increased NATO protection; and NATO duly provides the requested “protection”. One upshot is that the NATO military is giving itself a license to increase warships, warplanes and surveillance systems on Russia’s northern flank – all under the pretext of “responding to Russian sabotage”. Such a move is, of course, part of the long-term strategic attempt to encircle Russia, threaten its national security and destabilize its sovereignty. In other words, this is all part of the long-term geopolitical confrontation between the U.S.-led NATO bloc and Russia, in which the war in Ukraine is but one theater.

The control of the Arctic sea routes and resources is a top strategic goal of the United States and its Scandinavian NATO partners, in particular. Russia has a natural advantage in the Arctic region owing to its geography. One way of tipping the balance of advantage is for NATO to militarize the region. Another strategic aim is to curb Russian cargo shipping via the Baltic Sea. Tankers operating from the Russian Baltic Sea ports of Primorsk, Ust-Luga, St Petersburg, Vyborg and Vystok provide a vital maritime route for Russian crude oil exports. It is significant that NATO intelligence agencies are turning their attention to cutting off Russia’s oil exports via the Baltic Sea.

There is huge consternation, as our columnist Ian Proud alluded to last week, among Western enemies that unprecedented economic sanctions imposed over the last decade have failed to cripple the Russian economy. Indeed, far from it, Russia’s economy is powering ahead, partly because its oil and gas exports are finding alternative world markets to the traditional European ones which have been cut off by their unilaterally imposed sanctions against Russia. A telling headline in European Pravda (a CIA-sponsored propaganda outlet) was this: “Why the EU still fails to restrict Russian oil exports and what should be done instead”. The article went on to state: “The volume of seaborne crude oil exports from Russian ports in the Baltic Sea accounts for approximately 60% of Russia’s total maritime oil exports… Sooner or later, the EU or a coalition of Baltic Sea countries, together with Norway and the United Kingdom, will be forced to implement restrictive measures against this maritime oil trade.”

Dunkelflaute.

• Europe: The Fall of the Holy Renewable Empire (Godefridi)

Solar and wind power production falls drastically during unfavorable weather conditions. It happens, in fact, every year. This condition, however, now has far-reaching economic and environmental repercussions, revealing the flaws in an energy policy based on intermittent renewable energies. Why does Germany, while having one of the highest carbon footprints, now consume the most expensive electricity in Europe? How did the country lose its energy autonomy? For the last fifteen years, Germany invested massively in solar and wind energy, while sabotaging its own nuclear power stations. By 2023, renewable energies accounted for 55% of electricity production in the country. In 2022, it was only 48%.

The main contribution to renewable energy has comes from wind power, at 31% of total production, followed by solar power at 12%, biomass at 8%, and other renewable sources such as hydroelectricity for the remaining 3.4%. In 2024, renewable energy accounted for almost 60% of German electricity production in the first half of the year. This production level, however, is smoothed out over a given period and does not reflect moments of crisis such as the “Dunkelflaute.” Literally “flat, dark calm,” Dunkelflaute is characterized by a simultaneous lack of wind and sun in winter, when demand for electricity in Germany is at its highest. These episodes last from a few days to several weeks, with wind and solar production sometimes falling to less than 20% of their capacity, and sometimes nothing. On December 12 of this year, for example, German electricity production from wind and solar power was 1/30th the demand for it.

Renewable policies would be bearable if they were based on a sustainable energy source — indifferent to the weather — such as nuclear power. In 2011, however, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Germany abruptly decided to phase out nuclear power, and gradually shut down fully operational plants. This decision reduced the country’s capacity to produce stable, predictable electricity and instead made heating, cooling and so on cruelly vulnerable to fluctuations in renewable energy sources. In short, when there is neither wind nor sun in Germany, the lights go out. The phase-out of nuclear power has left Germany incapable of being self-sufficient in energy, especially during Dunkelflaute. The country imports electricity on a massive scale from France, Denmark and Poland, and has to use coal and lignite to produce electricity.

Germany’s massive imports of electricity also lead to colossal increases in electricity prices for its neighbors. The prices are indeed staggering. In 2024, the household price of electricity in Germany was the highest in Europe, at €400/MWh, reaching peaks of €900/MWh during Dunkelflaute episodes, compared to a much lower European average. By comparison, the average price in nuclear-powered France and Finland was €250/MWh over the same period (2024). And, in the United States, rates are 30% lower than in France. How is all that “sustainable” for Europe? But this is “for the planet”, right? Not even close. Despite its commitment to so-called green energies, Germany still has a high carbon footprint due to its increased reliance on coal and lignite to make up for energy shortfalls.

In 2024, the country remains the second-largest emitter of CO2 per unit of energy produced in Europe, with a significant proportion of electricity coming from fossil sources. Ten times more CO2 per unit of energy produced than France. Germany’s high electricity prices are leading to the relocation of its industry, as companies look for sites where energy costs are more affordable. How can you stay viable when you pay three times more for electricity than your competitors? (Natural gas prices are even worse: five times more expensive in Europe than in the USA.) Whole swathes of Germany’s proud industry are collapsing. We only remember the big names — VW, BASF, Mercedes-Benz — but every big company that disappears or downsizes takes with it a myriad of small and medium-sized enterprises that end up collapsing along with it. Energy-intensive sectors such as metallurgy and chemicals are particularly hard hit.

The influential International Energy Agency (IEA) was once a valuable informational source on global oil supplies..”

• IEA’s ‘Net Zero’ Bias Undermines Global Energy Security (JTN)

The influential International Energy Agency (IEA) was once a valuable informational source on global oil supplies. Policymakers worldwide, as well as the petroleum industry, placed a lot of stock in its reports and projections. A new report by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, details how the agency has evolved in the past few years into a political advocacy organization helping to advance the so-called energy transition. This has undermined the objectivity of the agency’s forecasts, leading to bad energy policy, such as the Biden administration’s moratorium on liquified natural gas (LNG) export permits. It’s also negatively impacted the oil and gas industry, the report also argues. “It’s unfortunate they’ve intentionally changed the mission of this agency from what it originally was to just another narrative pusher. We’ve got plenty of those. Every major media organization serves that function,” energy analyst David Blackmon told Just the News.

Beginning in October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a cartel of major oil-producing countries, initiated an embargo on exports of crude oil, creating a “energy crisis” in the U.S. This was prior to the development of shale resources in the U.S., which has made the U.S. the largest global producer of oil and gas. In 1973, the U.S. was heavily dependent on oil from the Middle East, and the embargo drove up the price of crude oil nearly 400%. In the wake of the embargo, the United States and other oil-consuming allies established the IEA as an autonomous intergovernmental organization, tasked with ensuring the security of oil supplies. It also created a coordination mechanism by which nations could address vulnerabilities in oil supplies and respond effectively to supply disruptions and subsequent price shocks. As part of this mission, the agency provides forecasts of energy supply and demand.

These forecasting documents “carry tremendous influence on the world’s collective perception of future energy trends. In doing so, they exercise enormous influence on energy policy, the investment decisions of public, publicly-traded, and privately-held companies and associated financing from public and private entities alike,” the report explains. Over the past five years, the report states, the IEA has placed greater emphasis on helping to advance an energy transition toward the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, a goal that was endorsed by a vote of the agency’s governing board. The report explains that this shift in direction politicized the agency’s forecasts. A profoundly impactful change, according to the report, was its decision to abandon in its forecasts a “business as usual” scenario.

This scenario provided a baseline in which only policies that were already adopted and implemented were modeled. This was replaced with policy scenarios in which additional but unspecified policies are adopted to achieve net-zero policy targets, “no matter how realistic or aspirational those targets may be.” The “business as usual” scenario, the report explains, was necessary for evaluating the costs and benefits of energy and climate policies. Without that baseline, policies to address climate change have no such baseline for such an assessment. The report contrasts the IEA with the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal agency entirely separate from the IEA. The U.S. EIA forecasted robust global natural gas demand through 2050, but the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2023 scenario projection had natural gas demand peaking this decade and declining thereafter. In enacting the pause on LNG export permit approvals, Biden administration officials cited the IEA forecasts, ignoring its own EIA data.

“No one doubts the importance of U.S. LNG to the world energy economy. It is a perverse irony that an international organization established to boost energy security now produces ‘reference’ modeling scenarios that one of its founding members [the United States] is using to justify a policy that undermines energy security,” the report states. From overly optimistic assumptions of EV adoption rates to a failure to consider critical mineral sourcing needed for a green energy expansion, Barrasso’s report highlights several examples of poor policy decisions inspired by the IEA’s biased forecasting. Besides the impact on policymakers, the agency’s forecasts, the report argues, are “tailor-made” to “discourage investment in oil and gas while promoting decarbonization targets few believe will happen.”

Gator

Baby gator in a moment of bliss pic.twitter.com/wEsE0zgCp0

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) December 27, 2024

Frens

pic.twitter.com/2g0zygjzHm

— Doglover (@puppiesDoglover) December 27, 2024

Window
https://twitter.com/i/status/1873051759142420974

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Debt Rattle October 30 2022

Oct 302022

October 30, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:00 am Finance Tagged with: BoJ, diplomacy, drone attack, GM, grain corridor, IEA, Judge Barrett, LNG, Nordstream 2, Orban, revolutionary 59 Responses »

Balthus Girl at the window 1955

• Americans Support Quick Diplomatic End To War In Ukraine (ReSt)

• ‘Russia Will Lose The Energy Battle,’ Says IEA Chief Fatih Birol (EN)

• Russian Energy ‘Will Never Return’ – IEA (RT)

• US LNG Cannot Replace The Russian Natural Gas That Europe Has Lost (OP)

• Putin: “The Situation Is, To A Certain Extent, Revolutionary” (Escobar)

• ‘Massive’ Drone Attack On Black Sea Fleet – Russia (BBC)

• Russia Suspends Its Participation In Grain Deal (RT)

• British Navy Involved In Nord Stream 2 ‘Terrorist Attack’ – Russia (RT)

• German Bailout Of Struggling Energy Giant May Reach €60 Billion – BBG (RT)

• Orbán Says Hungary Is ‘Exempt’ From The Conflict (Dalos)

• Japan Unveils Massive Spending Package (RT)

• GM “Paused” Ads on Musk’s Twitter (WS)

• Writers, Publishers, Editors Call for Termination of Barrett Book Deal (Turley)

• UN Seeks $4 to 6 Trillion Per Year to Address Climate (Mish)

“Tough times never last but tough people do.”
~Robert H. Schuller

Tucker fair fight

Tucker on @ElonMusk: “The richest man in the world is risking it all to save Free Speech. Whatever you think of Elon Musk and however this ends, that’s a remarkable thing to watch.” pic.twitter.com/g4jpFCSkfc

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 29, 2022

Clare Daly

Methane is 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

The #NordStream sabotage released 300,000 metric tonnes of it into our atmosphere – a climate & environmental crime.

It must be independently investigated and there must be consequences for the vandals who did it. pic.twitter.com/JAeKQc2QGH

— Clare Daly (@ClareDalyMEP) October 28, 2022

Twitter just reinstated Peter McCullough, but there’s more:

Senator Ron Johnson @SenRonJohnson:
“Hearing Dr. Peter McCullough has been stripped of his medical certifications. On what basis did this occur? He has dedicated his life to saving others. This is outrageous and must be reversed.”

You read this, you think: a voice of reason. But they still have to resort to blatant lies: “The poll’s release comes after Vladimir Putin doubled down on Russia’s war in Ukraine by mobilizing reserves and issuing threats to use nuclear weapons after recent gains by the Ukrainian military near the country’s eastern border with Russia.”

Putin mentioned nukes exactly once, and that was long before Ukraine’s “recent gains”. It was also not a threat. It was a statement.

• Americans Support Quick Diplomatic End To War In Ukraine (ReSt)

Nearly 60 percent of Americans would support the United States engaging in diplomatic efforts “as soon as possible” to end the war in Ukraine, even if that means Ukraine having to make concessions to Russia, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by Data for Progress on behalf of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, also found that a plurality (49 percent) said the Biden administration and Congress have not done enough diplomatically to help end the war (37 percent said they had). The poll’s release comes after Vladimir Putin doubled down on Russia’s war in Ukraine by mobilizing reserves and issuing threats to use nuclear weapons after recent gains by the Ukrainian military near the country’s eastern border with Russia.

Moscow has also recently orchestrated referendums in some Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine on whether citizens there want to secede and become part of the Russian Federation, leading experts to believe that regardless of the outcome, Putin plans to illegally annex parts of Ukraine. The survey also found that 47 percent said they support the continuation of U.S. military aid to Ukraine only if Washington is involved in ongoing diplomacy to end the war, while 41 percent said they would support aid regardless of whether the United States is engaged in negotiations. Just six percent said Russia’s war in Ukraine is among the top three most important issues facing the United States today, with the top three being inflation (46 percent), jobs and the economy (31 percent), and gun violence (26 percent).

Fatih Birol has been issuing nonsense for many years. That’s precisely why he’s kept his job all this time.

But it’s very simple: if you have all the “energy”, you cannot lose the battle for it.

• ‘Russia Will Lose The Energy Battle,’ Says IEA Chief Fatih Birol (EN)

Russia will lose the energy battle it is waging against the West, according to Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). “Just before the invasion [of Ukraine], about 65% of the Russian total gas exports went to Europe and 55% of the Russian oil export went to Europe,” Birol told Euronews on Friday afternoon. “Europe was by far the largest market, the largest client for Russia, and Russia lost this client forever. The biggest client.” Birol’s comments appeared to refer to the retaliatory action that the European Union has taken in response to the Ukraine war: a near-total oil embargo of Russian gas and a highly expensive push to diversify gas suppliers, mainly through liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Asked if Russia could replace European clients with other regions, Birol said that would not be easy because “a big chunk” of Russian gas originates in Western Siberia and then flows to Europe via pipelines. Building brand-new pipelines to China or India could take up to 10 years, he predicted, and a significant amount of technology and investment. “You are not selling onions in the market, you are selling natural gas. It’s a different business,” Birol said. “So to replace the natural gas exports to Europe with Russia is, in the short term, a pipe dream.” But Russia is not the only country going through troubled times. In his interview with Euronews, recorded at the IEA’s headquarters in Paris, Birol spoke of an international crisis of unprecedented scope and reach, wreaking havoc in all corners of the world.

“We are in the middle of the first truly global energy crisis. Our world has never, ever witnessed an energy crisis with this depth and with this complexity,” he said. “In the 1970s, we had an oil crisis, but it was only oil. Now we have oil, natural gas, coal, electricity. The reason is very simple: Russia, the country that invaded Ukraine, is the largest energy exporter of the world.” Birol described Europe as the “epicentre” of the storm and characterised its decades-long reliance on cheap Russian fuels as a “mistake” at the root of the present crisis. The IEA chief predicted the continent will be able to make it through the upcoming winter with just some “economic and social bruises” and no major damage — but only if the winter “is not too long and not too cold, and if there are no major surprises.”

Birol, however, expressed greater concern about the 2023-2024 winter, citing three key factors: Europe’s absence of Russian gas, China’s economic recovery and tighter conditions in the LNG markets. “In the next few years, we have to be ready [to deal] with volatile and high energy prices and we have to find solutions,” he said. “But to be very frank, this winter is difficult and next winter may be even harder.”

More Birol.

• Russian Energy ‘Will Never Return’ – IEA (RT)

Russia may “never” regain its position in the global energy market due to Western sanctions in response to the country’s military operation in Ukraine, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its yearly World Energy Outlook, published on Thursday. The events in Ukraine are prompting a wholesale reorientation of global energy trade, leaving Russia with a much diminished position.All Russia’s trade ties with Europe based on fossil fuels had ultimately been undercut by Europe’s net zero ambitions, but […] now the rupture has come with a speed that few imagined possible … Russian fossil fuel exports will never return – in any of our scenarios – to the levels seen in 2021,” the agency said. It predicts that Russian oil and gas revenues will drop by more than half in the coming years, from around $75 billion last year to less than $30 billion in 2030.

Western sanctions prompted Russia, which previously supplied around 20% of the globe’s fossil fuels, to reorient its energy exports toward Asian markets, but according to the IEA the country is unsuccessful in finding markets for all of the flows that previously went to Europe. Longer term prospects are weakened by uncertainties over demand, as well as restricted access to international capital and technologies to develop more challenging fields and LNG projects, the agency explained. Overall, according to the IEA the world is facing a crisis of unprecedented depth and complexity in terms of energy, with a profound reorientation of international energy trade already underway. The agency predicts that the energy crisis is likely to force countries to speed up their energy transition, as solar and wind power, as well as electric vehicles, are deemed less vulnerable to political crises and sanctions than fossil fuels.

Not even close.

• US LNG Cannot Replace The Russian Natural Gas That Europe Has Lost (OP)

Europe cannot rely solely on imports of U.S. LNG to offset the pipeline gas supply it will have lost from Russia when it starts rebuilding inventories after the end of this winter, according to BloombergNEF. So far this year, American LNG has been crucial in meeting demand in Europe, which is scrambling for gas supply and willing to pay up for spot deliveries, outbidding most of Asia. The United States is shipping record volumes of LNG to Europe to help EU allies and nearly 70% of all American LNG exports were headed to Europe in September, according to Refinitiv Eikon data cited by Reuters. However, the significant drop in Russian gas supply this year occurred only in June, meaning that Europe could still stock up on some Russian gas earlier this year.

Ahead of the 2023/2024 winter, however, the gap in gas supply in Europe will be much wider without Russian gas. Europe will not be importing much Russian gas—or none at all if Russia cuts off deliveries via the one link left operational via Ukraine and via TurkStream—compared to relatively stable imports from Russia in the first half of this year, before Moscow started gradually cutting volumes via Nord Stream in June until shutting down the pipeline in early September. “The year-on-year increase is not sufficient to offset a total cut in Russian piped supply with under half of these volumes met by LNG increases,” BNEF analyst Arun Toora said.

“The good news is that Russia looks close to having played its last card in terms of gas leverage over Europe. However Europe’s challenges will not disappear with the daffodils next spring,” London-based consultancy Timera Energy said in a winter gas market outlook at the beginning of October. Without most of the Russian gas supply, Europe will likely need to offset around 40 bcm of additional lost Russian flows next year. LNG alone cannot meet this volume, considering a lack of new global liquefaction capacity in the short-term, including in the U.S., limited further demand elasticity in Asia, and European regasification capacity constraints. Therefore, European demand will need to fall, Timera Energy said.

“Putin in fact did nail where we are: on the edge of a Revolution.”

• Putin: “The Situation Is, To A Certain Extent, Revolutionary” (Escobar)

[..] the heart of the matter at Valdai is its 2022 report, “A World Without Superpowers”. The report’s central thesis – eminently correct – is that “the United States and its allies, in fact, no longer enjoy the status of dominant superpower, but the global infrastructure that serves it is still in place.” Of course all major interconnected issues at the current crossroads were precipitated because” Russia became the first major power which, guided by its own ideas of security and fairness, chose to discard the benefits of ‘global peace’ created by the only superpower.” Well, not exactly “global peace”; rather a Mafia-enforced ethos of “our way or the highway”.

The report quite diplomatically characterizes the freezing of Russia’s gold and foreign currency reserves and the “mop up” of Russia’s property abroad as “Western jurisdictions”, “if necessary”, being “guided by political expediency rather than the law”. That’s in fact outright theft, under the shadow of the “rules-based international order”. The report – optimistically – foresees the advent of a sort of normalized “cold peace” as “the best available solution today” – acknowledging at least this is far from guaranteed, and “will not halt the fundamental rebuilding of the international system on new foundations.” The foundation for evolving multipolarity has in fact been presented by the Russia-China strategic partnership only three weeks before imperially-ordered provocations forced Russia to launch the Special Military Operation (SMO).

The Valdai report duly acknowledges the role of Global South medium-sized powers that “exemplify the democratization of international politics” and may “act as shock absorbers during periods of upheaval.” That’s a direct reference to the role of BRICS+ as key protagonists. On the Big Picture across the chessboard, the analysis tends to get more realistic when it considers that “the triumph of ‘the only true idea’ makes effective dialogue and agreement with supporters of different views and values impossible by definition.” Putin alluded to it several times in his address. There’s no evidence whatsoever the Empire and its vassals will be deviating from their normative, imposed, value-laden unilateralism.

As for world politics beginning to “rapidly return to a state of anarchy built on force”, that’s self-evident: only the Empire of Chaos wants to impose anarchy, as it completely ran out of geopolitical and geoeconomic tools to control rebel nations, apart from the sanctions tsunami. So the report is correct when it identifies that the childish neo-Hegelian “end of history” wet dream in the end hit the wall of History: we’re back to the pattern of large scale conflicts between centers of power. And it’s also a fact that “simply changing the ‘operator’ as it happened in earlier centuries” (as in the US taking over from Britain) “just won’t work.” China might harbor a desire to become the new sheriff, but the Beijing leadership definitely is not interested.

And even if that happened the Hegemon would fiercely prevented it, as “the entire system” remains “under its control (primarily finance and the economy).” So the only way out, once again, is multipolarity – which the report characterizes, rather vaguely, as “a world without superpowers”, still in need of “a system of self-regulation, which implies much greater freedom of action and responsibility for such actions.” Stranger things have happened in History. As it stands, we are plunged deep into the maelstrom of complete collapse. Putin in fact did nail where we are: on the edge of a Revolution.

“..in recent days, Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately delaying the passage of ships, creating a queue of more than 170 vessels.”

How does a massive attack solve this?

• ‘Massive’ Drone Attack On Black Sea Fleet – Russia (BBC)

Russia has accused Ukraine of carrying out a “massive” drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. The attack began at 04:20 (01:20 GMT) and involved nine aerial and seven marine drones, Russian officials said. At least one warship is said to have been damaged in the strikes. Ukraine has not yet acknowledged the incident. Ukrainian troops have been successfully retaking territory occupied by Russians recently. Russia has replied by launching large-scale attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, particularly on the country’s energy grid. Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-installed governor of the Sevastopol, said Russia’s navy had repelled the latest attack. The strikes were the “most massive” on the city since Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine in February, Russian state media quoted the governor as saying.

He said that all unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) had been shot down and no “civilian infrastructure” had been damaged. At least one vessel sustained minor damage, the Russian Ministry of Defence said. “In the course of repelling a terrorist attack on the outer roadstead of Sevastopol, the use of naval weapons and naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed four marine unmanned vehicles, three more devices were destroyed on the internal roadstead,” a statement from the ministry read. Russia also claimed the ships targeted on Saturday morning were involved in ensuring the “grain corridor” as part of the international initiative to export agricultural products from Ukrainian ports.

The agreement, brokered by the UN and Turkey, allowed Ukraine to resume its Black Sea grain exports, which had been blocked when Russia invaded the country. It was personally negotiated by the UN secretary general and celebrated as a major diplomatic victory that helped ease a global food crisis. But Russia complains that its own exports are still hindered, and has previously suggested it might not renew the deal. In recent days, Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately delaying the passage of ships, creating a queue of more than 170 vessels.

“Russia “is suspending its participation in the implementation of agreements on the export of agricultural products from Ukrainian ports..“

• Russia Suspends Its Participation In Grain Deal (RT)

Moscow has halted its compliance with a grain deal with Kiev, brokered by the UN and Türkiye, after Ukraine launched a major drone attack on ships involved in securing safe passage for agricultural cargo, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Saturday.In a post on its Telegram channel, the ministry said Russia “is suspending its participation in the implementation of agreements on the export of agricultural products from Ukrainian ports”. It explained that the move was prompted by “a terror attack” against the ships of the Black Sea Fleet and civilian vessels involved in ensuring the security of the grain corridor. The ministry also alleged that the bombing was organized with the involvement of British military.

Still no investigation results. Top secret.

• British Navy Involved In Nord Stream 2 ‘Terrorist Attack’ – Russia (RT)

Britain’s Royal Navy played a part in orchestrating and staging the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday. The accusation follows the Russian Foreign Ministry’s claim that NATO conducted a military exercise during the summer, close to the location where the undersea explosions occurred. Writing on its official Telegram channel, the ministry alleged that Royal Navy operatives “took part in planning, supporting and implementing” a “terrorist attack” to blow up the gas pipelines on September 26. According to the Defense Ministry, the same British operatives were involved in the training of Ukrainian military personnel who recently attacked ships of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which were implementing a grain deal between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by the UN and Türkiye.

The pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany, abruptly lost pressure on September 26, following a series of underwater explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm. Both Western countries and Russia sounded the alarm about the incident, with Moscow denouncing it as a terrorist attack and calling for an investigation into the matter. In late September, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that this summer, NATO conducted military drills not far from Bornholm, which featured intensive use of “deep-sea equipment’’. Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal, citing German officials familiar with the investigation, reported that the blasts which damaged the pipelines were caused by sabotage.

While the officials stopped short of naming the culprit, they were said to be “working under the assumption that Russia was behind the blasts.” Moscow has repeatedly denied that it had anything to do with the incident. Meanwhile, Sky News has cited a UK defense official as saying Nord Stream 1 and 2 could have been damaged by a remotely detonated underwater explosive device. At the time, the broadcaster said the pipelines might have been breached by mines lowered to the seabed, or explosives dropped from a boat or planted by an undersea drone.

Putin: “Gas pipeline systems were blown up-they are not only ours, they are pan-European, there are 5 European companies represented in Nord Stream 1….Everyone is silent, as if it should be so. And they still have enough impudence to say that maybe Russia blew it up?” pic.twitter.com/xHjG3Cqqik

— The Convo Couch (@theconvocouch) October 28, 2022

At some point, someone will say that is an awful lot of money to keep a bunch of neo-nazis in power.

• German Bailout Of Struggling Energy Giant May Reach €60 Billion – BBG (RT)

Berlin is getting ready to boost financial aid to Uniper, the country’s largest gas supplier, which has been brought to the brink of insolvency due to rising energy prices, Bloomberg reported citing sources familiar with the matter. According to the report, the government may up the aid to €60 billion ($60 billion). The plan comes as the company’s financial situation is quickly worsening due to growing wholesale gas prices prompted by diminishing flows from Russia. Uniper’s adjusted net loss for the first nine months of the year reportedly amounted to €3.2 billion ($3.2 billion). And if gas prices do not subside, which is unlikely due to the approaching winter and the subsequent growth in demand, the government will have to spend twice as much to bail out the energy giant than previously expected.

German authorities announced plans to nationalize Uniper last month as part of efforts to keep the energy industry afloat amid the crisis. Uniper has been promised around €31 billion in aid from Berlin’s €200 billion energy aid package. In exchange, the government will acquire a 98.5% stake in the firm, which effectively means its full nationalization. The law cementing the deal is reportedly scheduled to be confirmed by the German Senate on Friday, and the funds could be transferred to Uniper next week, Bloomberg sources said. In an interview with Bloomberg, German Deputy Finance Minister Florian Toncar said Berlin will do all in its power to ensure Uniper remains operational but did not comment on the size of the aid.

“Uniper is a crucial company for the gas supply in Germany, otherwise we wouldn’t jump to such high stakes,” he was cited as saying. While European benchmark gas futures have fallen about 70% from their August highs on nearly full storage and liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries, gas prices remain around three times higher than the five-year average. According to Uniper, the company is forced to pay much more for gas now than it did for the pipeline supplies from Russia.

The Guardian found an anti-Orban Hungarian.

• Orbán Says Hungary Is ‘Exempt’ From The Conflict (Dalos)

The invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 will go down in the annals of European history. Russia’s undeclared war has cast an almost apocalyptic shadow. And it has dramatically altered the relationships that had prevailed between east and west since the collapse of the USSR. Whenever or however this armed conflict ends, it will undoubtedly take a long time for a new peace-guaranteeing equilibrium to be established. At the very least, the European Union and Nato now have to reckon with a hostile power on their borders and to prepare for a new phase of the cold war. Hungarians voted in general elections just weeks after the invasion, in April, and it seems reasonable to assume that the war next door had an influence on the result.

Given the climate of fear that the devastating “special military operation” created, Hungarians voted to keep Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in power rather than risk an untested six-party coalition. This assumption also underlies Orbán’s response, which is to stay out of the conflict to the point of being “exempted”, a position that has been condemned as a betrayal by Hungary’s western allies. Hungary refuses to allow arms shipments destined for Kyiv to transit Hungarian territory and blocks the extension of EU sanctions against Russia to the energy sector. This latter stance is intended to enable an already controversial Russian-Hungarian project to build a nuclear power plant on the Danube (Paks II) to go ahead unaltered. The exemption clearly goes too far, even if Hungary does have special interests that merit consideration.

It has a 136km (84-mile) border with Ukraine and there are roughly 150,000 ethnic Hungarians living in the Transcarpathian oblast in south-west Ukraine, many of them married to Ukrainians. It should be remembered that, while in purely geographical terms, Hungary stayed the same after 1989: the former Hungarian People’s Republic now borders five countries that owe their statehood to the end of the USSR and the dissolution of larger, multi-ethnic entities. To the south, the collapse of the former Yugoslavia led to the creation of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Its northern border is no longer with the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic but with Republic of Slovakia and independent Ukraine. What now connects most of these newer political entities with Hungary, and indeed its old neighbours, Romania and Austria, is EU membership.

Serbia is on the waiting list, Ukraine has been awarded candidate status. But in the 1990s, all these countries made the transition to parliamentary democracy, during which the rivalries between the various political groups played out openly and, not infrequently, violently. Every twist and turn and every internal conflict in these republics still affects Hungary’s interests because of the Hungarian minorities living there: 1.5 million in Romania, 500,000 in Slovakia, 300,000 in Serbia, 16,000 in Croatia, 15,000 in Slovenia and 150,000 in Ukraine.

Japanese govt bonds are bought by the BOJ AND the citizens. A closed loop.

• Japan Unveils Massive Spending Package (RT)

The Japanese government has announced an economic package worth around 39 trillion yen (nearly $270 billion) to support the economy amid rising inflation and a weakening national currency, broadcaster NHK reported on Friday. The package includes local and central government spending, and is “aimed at overcoming rising prices and reviving the economy… to protect people’s livelihoods and businesses,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters in Tokyo. The government plans to lower utility bills to help households save an equivalent of $19 a month on electricity and $6 a month on gas, according to Kyodo News.

Inflation in Japan has seen its sharpest increase in 40 years, with core consumer prices in Tokyo, a leading indicator of nationwide figures, rising 3.4% in October from a year earlier, according to official figures. The increase has been attributed to rising energy, raw material and food prices amid the economic fallout of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as other factors, the Kyodo News said. The Bank of Japan, however, has been swimming against the global current of increasing interest rates as it kept its short-term interest rate at -0.1% on Friday. Last week, the Japanese yen fell to its weakest level against the dollar since August 1990, having lost more than a fifth of its value against the greenback this year alone.

“..Twitter, is owned as of yesterday by the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla. And the automakers that compete with Tesla, and are getting their clocks cleaned by Tesla, are now finding themselves advertising on Elon Musk’s platform.”

• GM “Paused” Ads on Musk’s Twitter (WS)

Automakers spend lavishly on advertising, and they advertise heavily in the social media. But now, one of the social media platforms, Twitter, is owned as of yesterday by the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla. And the automakers that compete with Tesla, and are getting their clocks cleaned by Tesla, are now finding themselves advertising on Elon Musk’s platform. And when you think about it, that’s kind of a hoot. No one likes to advertise on a competitor’s platform, for all sorts of reasons, but particularly because on a social-media platform, the competitor gathers the consumer tracking data and can get important insights into current and potential customers and their reactions to the products and ads – without even passing on those insights to the automaker.

Advertising on a competitor’s social media platform is a particular problem because of the vast amount of user data that those platforms collect – data on your customers and potential customers that you may actually not see yourself, unless the platform decides to share it with you. General Motors is the first automaker out the gate: It announced on the first day after Musk closed the acquisition of Twitter that it “paused” its paid advertising on Twitter. “We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue,” GM said in a statement emailed to CNBC.

Stellantis, which owns the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram brands, among a bunch of other brands, tweeted this morning via its Citroën account, pointing specifically at the issue: “Hello to the social media platform owned by one of our competitors.” This isn’t about advertisers’ concerns, if any, with Musk’s potential content moderation policies. Musk already tried to soothe those fears with his open letter, addressed to advertisers, that was suddenly full of lovey-dovey language, posted on Twitter, of course. “In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all.” And he said, “I very much believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain, and inform you.” And he said, “Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.”

“The focus of the letter is the fact that Barrett voted with the majority in the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

• Writers, Publishers, Editors Call for Termination of Barrett Book Deal (Turley)

We have been discussing the rising support for censorship on the left in the last few years. Silencing opposing views has become an article of faith for many on the left, including leading Democratic leaders from President Joe Biden to former President Barack Obama. What is most distressing is how many journalists and writers have joined the call for censorship. However, even with this growing movement, the letter of hundreds of “literary figures” this week to Penguin Random House is chilling. The editors and writers call on the company to rescind a book deal with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett because they disagree with her judicial philosophy. After all, why burn books when you can simply ban them?

The public letter entitled “We Dissent” makes the usual absurd protestation that, just because we are seeking to ban books of those with opposing views, we still “care deeply about freedom of speech.” They simply justify their anti-free speech position by insisting that any harm “in the form of censorship” is less than “the form of assault on inalienable human rights” in opposing abortion or other constitutional rights. Yet, the letter is not simply dangerous. It is perfectly delusional. While calling for the book to be blocked, the writers bizarrely insist “we are not calling for censorship.” While the letter has been described as signed by “literary figures,” it actually contains many who are loosely connected to the “broader literary community” like “Philip Tuley, Imam” and “Barbara Hirsch, Avid reader.” It also includes many who are simply identified by initials or first names like “Leslie” without any stated connection.

Nevertheless, there are many editors and publishing figures who list their companies (including HarperCollins, Random House and other companies) and university presses (including Cambridge, Harvard, Michigan Northwestern, Oxford) with their titles in calling for censorship. The list speaks loudly to why dissenting or conservative authors find it more difficult to publish today. These are editors who are publicly calling for banning the publication of those who hold opposing views from their own. It also includes academics like Ignacio Leopoldo Götz Römer, Stessin Distinguished Professor Emeritus, New College of Hofstra University and Carole DeSanti, Elizabeth Drew Professor of English Language and Literature, Smith College (and former VP and Exec Ed, PenguinRandomHouse).

The focus of the letter is the fact that Barrett voted with the majority in the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Barrett has been the singled out in the past due to her judicial philosophy (which is shared by many federal judges and millions of citizens). Her home has been targeted and activists have published school information on her young children. Recently, Rhodes College alumni sought to strip references to Barrett from the college because they disagree with her views. Her college sorority was even forced to apologize for simply congratulating her for being one of a handful of women to be nominated to the high court. No attack appears to be beyond the pale for media or the left. Barrett sat through days of such baseless attacks on her character, but even had to face attacks referencing her children. Ibram X. Kendi, the director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, claimed that her adoption of two Haitian children raised the image of a “white colonizer” and suggested that the children were little more than props for their mother.

We’re rich!

• UN Seeks $4 to 6 Trillion Per Year to Address Climate (Mish)

The Guardian reports UN finds ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’: “The UN environment report analysed the gap between the CO2 cuts pledged by countries and the cuts needed to limit any rise in global temperature to 1.5C, the internationally agreed target. Progress has been “woefully inadequate” it concluded. Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. A rise of 1C to date has caused climate disasters in countries from Pakistan to Puerto Rico. If the long-term pledges by countries to hit net zero emissions by 2050 were delivered, global temperature would rise by 1.8C. But the glacial pace of action means meeting even this temperature limit was not credible, the UN report said. A study published this week found “large consensus” across all published research that new oil and gas fields are “incompatible” with the 1.5C target.”

What Would It Cost? Hooray! Only $4 trillion to 6 trillion per year. “A global transformation from a heavily fossil fuel- and unsustainable land use-dependent economy to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investments of at least US$4–6 trillion a year,” stated the UN report (page 26 of 132).
Q: US$4–6 trillion a year for how many years?
A: Based on figure ES.6 (lead chart) least eight years.
Q: What Percent of GDP?
A: 4 to 9 percent for developing countries, and 2 to 4 percent for developed countries. And developing countries will gladly fork over up to 9 percent of GDP every year for eight years. Yeah, right. Meanwhile, the EU is burning more trees and coal. Burning trees is magically deemed environmentally neutral.

Elephant drum
https://twitter.com/i/status/1586018731385397248

Steller’s sea eagle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1586251819071590400

Good boi

Still a very good boi…. pic.twitter.com/F5coX6ElaD

— Heckin Good Dogs (@HeckinGoodDogs) October 29, 2022

Lyrebird

A lyrebird is a species of ground-dwelling Australian birds. They are notable for their ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds from their environment, and the striking beauty of the male bird's huge tail pic.twitter.com/TRH5BWgARG

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) October 29, 2022

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