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Debt Rattle July 17 2026

Jul 172026
 
 July 17, 2026  Posted by at 10:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  29 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The Dream 1932


• Trump Exposes Mind-Blowing Election Compromising and Cheating (Salgado)
• Trump Drops Bombshell Election Fraud Intel (Matt Margolis)
• Trump’s War On Marxism Enters Action Phase (ZH)
• Rubio Delivers Remarkable Speech on Resurgence of Political Terrorism (CTH)
• Coalition of the Willing to Hold Military Drills Near Ukraine (Anzalone)
• Zelensky ‘Wants Civilian Deaths’ – Ukrainian Spy (RT)
• Horror Stories of Alleged Russian Threat Serve As NATO Build-Up Pretext (RT)
• EU To Strip Draft Age Ukrainians of Refugee Protection (RT)
• Democrats Got Some Devastating News About the Midterms (Margolis)
• Half-Mile-Long Homeless Encampment Springs Up on Manhattan’s West Side (Thorne)
• President Trump Highlights Importance of Data Centers (CTH)
• Smooth Sailing Ahead for DNI Nominee Jay Clayton (CTH)
• Trump Directs DHS Secretary to Continue ICE Deportation Traffic Stops (CTH)
• JD Vance to Joe Rogan: Aliens Are Demons (Scott Pinsker)

 


 

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2077594254067835206?s=20

 


 


It’s a deluge. You can’t run a country this way. Unless you grow bananas on the side

• Trump Exposes Mind-Blowing Election Compromising and Cheating (Salgado)

It turns out that the “conspiracy theorists” weren’t so crazy after all. President Donald Trump says that foreign governments and corrupt domestic bureaucrats have so compromised our election system across the country that it is worse than a Third World banana republic.


“No country could be great without fair and honest elections,” Trump insisted during his Thursday night primetime address. “You have to trust your country because if there can be no trust, there can be no greatness, and that’s very simple: no trust, no greatness.” Unfortunately, according to him, between our enemies around the world like the Chinese and Iranian regimes and their collaborators in the American media and “Deep State,” malicious actors have stolen voters’ data, hacked electronic voting machines, manufactured fake ballots, and bribed fraudsters. It’s an “unprecedented election security nightmare.” And both Joe Biden and Barack Obama apparently benefited.


The president revealed a staggeringly gargantuan number from newly declassified documents: “Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files. That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities,” Trump said.

The genocidal, America-hating Chinese Communist Party even had a special data exploitation unit dedicated to stealing U.S. voter data. “Compounding the travesty, the second set of documents we are releasing reveals that members of the Deep State, a very, very famous group of people,” were complicit, with U.S. intelligence agencies covering up the evidence.

One of the most significant revelations in Trump’s speech regarded the 2020 election. “Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China’s activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden,” Trump said, confirming election interference from our number one enemy on behalf of Biden. “Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China’s election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing. These were briefings I would get almost every day.” The fix was in. One email explicitly admitted to leaving out information given to Trump during his first term in office.

The scheme goes back for years. “Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running ‘a shadow government’ to keep intelligence about China’s election meddling from becoming known,” President Trump stated. “Recently, we found significant numbers of burn bags … and this is a group of bags that were used to destroy information given by President Barack Hussein Obama to be burned … These bags were supposed to be at a different level, by different people, incinerated … but it never happened. Maybe we got lucky.”

[..] Our media and Deep State were selling America to our worst foes. “Put together, these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it,” Trump declared. “Hundreds of millions of U.S. voter files are in the hands of foreign governments. Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking, manipulation, and corruption. China and other countries have been trying to meddle in our elections. Evidence of fraud has been buried. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls, and yet we still have elections with no voter ID, no proof of citizenship, and tens of millions of ballots floating aimlessly through the mail.” That is indeed a situation that belongs to a Third World hellhole, not to the USA.

Read more …

US elections are won by cheating, in 100 different ways. And then denying it.

• Trump Drops Bombshell Election Fraud Intel (Matt Margolis)

President Donald Trump addressed the nation Thursday night, and during his speech, he revealed that China pulled off “the largest compromise of election data in history,” stealing 220 million U.S. voter files. He didn’t stop there. Trump told the country he was releasing evidence documenting just how compromised our elections have become. mThat evidence is now public. The White House posted a batch of previously classified documents on a dedicated webpage, and they paint a picture of an election system compromised by hostile foreign governments and shielded by internal cover-ups. The administration is using the disclosures to push for voter ID, proof of citizenship, and tighter controls on mail ballots.


For years, officials assured Americans that election infrastructure, electronic voting machines, ballot-counting systems, all of it, was secure. The documents released this week directly contradict that claim. “We judge that U.S. adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure,” a declassified U.S. Intelligence Community assessment states. It also warned that “centralized election-related data repositories, such as voter registration databases, pollbooks, and official election websites, are most vulnerable to exploitation, and adversaries could use access to these systems to disrupt election processes.”

The most alarming revelations include that the CIA reportedly obtained intelligence on a specific plot by the Maduro regime in Venezuela to digitally rig its own 2020 election, using methods designed to shift vote totals in ways that would survive an audit undetected. And starting around the 2020 cycle, China allegedly carried out that historic data heist, illicitly acquiring 220 million voter files containing names, addresses, phone numbers, and party affiliations, complete with a dedicated data exploitation unit assigned to the job.

And the worst part is that the Deep State inside U.S. intelligence agencies allegedly suppressed and downplayed the scale of China’s theft, keeping it from the president and from the public. Spy agencies reportedly learned back in 2020 that tens of millions of voters’ data across 18 states had been bought, stolen, or hacked by China. Yet they sat on it.

Think it can’t get worse? The FBI files document large-scale voter registration fraud in Michigan, uncovered after state police raided a Democratic get-out-the-vote organization in Muskegon back in 2020 and referred the case to the FBI’s Detroit office. Canvassers allegedly admitted to agents that they signed registration forms in other people’s names, invented registrations for people who don’t exist, and collected gift cards based on how many applications they churned out. FBI agents believed crimes had been committed. The Biden Department of Justice slow-walked the case for years. FBI Director Kash Patel has now been directed to make sure it’s fully investigated and prosecuted.

Then there’s the noncitizen problem. A Department of Homeland Security review of state voter rolls found roughly 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections, and officials believe the real number is far higher since some Democrat-led states refused to hand over their voter files.

Read more …

“Fatal Cancer On Civilization”: Trump’s War On Marxism Enters Action Phase As Rubio, Miller And Bessent Address 65 Nations.”

• Trump’s War On Marxism Enters Action Phase (ZH)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent addressed delegations from more than 65 countries on the alarming rise of far-left terrorism. The broader message from all three speakers was very clear: Just as the US and its allies confronted the spread of Marxism in previous generations, Washington now believes the West needs an all-of-government, multinational strategy to counter far-left political violence, foreign influence networks and subversion movements seeking to destabilize Western institutions.

Rubio called for the civilized world to unite against an “encroaching darkness,” urging all leaders in the room to defend what they have built and fight back against those who seek to destroy it. The enemy Rubio is referring to is the rise of transnational far-left terrorism.

Rubio said, “In the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in DECADES. In Germany, far-left violence has jumped by more than 40% in just the last year alone.”

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2077747041984184454?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2077747041984184454%7Ctwgr%5E3b0dce7b5112c82f50b0f669fb5acb435cb2884c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fwatch-live-rubio-bessent-convene-65-nations-global-crackdown-far-left-political-terrorism

Rubio added that Antifa is being directly aided by Iran and Cuba through a massive international network that seeks to attack the West with terrorism and propaganda.

After Rubio, Miller addressed the hundreds of high-level officials in the room, saying, “Here in the United States, we have taken the necessary and essential action formally recognizing left-wing violence as a form of political terrorism that is a direct threat to our national security and the survival of our republican form of government.”v

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Serious.

• Rubio Delivers Remarkable Speech on Resurgence of Political Terrorism (CTH)

Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hosting an event with various governments for a Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism. The event focuses on the reemergence of this threat to society and encourages stronger joint action to reinforce frontline defenses and close the gaps the terrorist actors continue to exploit. As part of the State Department effort, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a remarkable speech to the audience. Within his remarks Rubio outlines the history of left-wing violence and lists current examples of how dangerous this has become. In many ways this is the anti-Obama speech that has long been needed. This is a moment that can reset how we view terrorism in the 21st century, shifting from a terror-threat focus from Islamic extremism to the more pervasive threat from left-wing political violence.



STATE DEPT – […] Far-left political terrorism is resurgent, manifesting in violent terrorist acts across the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia and beyond. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a deliberate, ideologically motivated strategy to destabilize free societies by violently targeting our political and economic systems, including attacks against private citizens, government officials, police and law enforcement, businesses, and critical infrastructure around the globe. For too long, however, this threat has remained a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus, underestimated and under-resourced, despite the danger it poses.

The United States is taking a leading role in countering far-left terrorism. Since November 2025, the United States has designated four violent far-left groups — Antifa Ost, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), Armed Proletarian Justice, and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense — as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as well as offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the disruption of the financial mechanisms of these same four organizations.

In recent months, the United States engaged also law enforcement, counterterrorism professionals, and prosecutors around the globe through direct engagements, as well as the inaugural Counterterrorism Law Enforcement Workshop (CTLEW) in May 2026, which convened 14 countries for a two-day, practitioner-focused workshop to exchange best practices for countering the threat of transnational far-left terrorism.

This Ministerial builds on that foundation, bringing together partners from across the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Asia to expand coordination, enhance information sharing, and strengthen international law enforcement mechanisms to counter the threat. Secretary Rubio will highlight the importance of deepening cooperation with international partners to better map violent activity, disrupt terrorist financing, protect critical infrastructure, and promote collective action against a threat that respects no borders.

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They want peace-keeping troops in Ukraine (after the peace-fire), on Russia’s border. Not going to happen.

• Coalition of the Willing to Hold Military Drills Near Ukraine (Anzalone)

A bloc of Kiev allies will hold war games in states that border Ukraine in preparation for deploying troops to the country once a ceasefire is reached with Russia. On Monday, the Coalition of the Willing – a bloc of countries that support Ukraine – met in Paris to discuss providing additional aid to Kiev. French President Emmanuel Macron announced that member states would hold war games in states bordering Ukraine.


The French leader asserted the purpose of the drills was to prepare troops for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine once a ceasefire is reached with Russia. However, Moscow says any peace agreement with Kiev must include a commitment from Ukraine not to host foreign forces. Additionally, the Kremlin has ruled out a short-term ceasefire, and wants all negotiations focused on a peace deal to end the conflict permanently. On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Europe of working to undermine the framework for resolving the conflict established between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin during the 2025 Alaska summit.

During the Coalition of the Willing summit, countries pledged additional military aid to Kiev. President Macron also said Paris would give Kiev permission to produce French missiles and interceptors in Ukraine. Macron’s move mirrors an action President Donald Trump took last week when he authorized Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles. Building factories and establishing supply lines to manufacture advanced munitions in the middle of a war will likely take years to accomplish.

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Every move is made with war with Russia in mind. They don’t want to win it, they want forever war.

• Zelensky ‘Wants Civilian Deaths’ – Ukrainian Spy (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is directing the nation’s intelligence services not to spare civilians in their operations abroad, Vitaly Zhikovich, an acting colonel of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency (HUR), said in an exclusive audio recording obtained by RT. Zhikovich is one of two Ukrainian spies who confessed to liquidating Anastasia Berezovskaya, the main suspect in last month’s bomb attack on exiled Ukrainian millionaire Vadim Ermolaev in Monaco. Russian security services identified him as an active military intelligence operative and shed light on his other attempted terrorist plots.


“My superior said that there would be casualties, civilian casualties. And my president – that green bastard – wants civilian casualties,” Zhikovich can be heard saying to an unidentified interlocutor in one of the recordings, referring to Zelensky, whose last name has a semantic association with the word ‘green’ in Russian and Ukrainian. Zhikovich attempted but failed to commit at least 20 terrorist acts in Russia in recent years. In another recording, Zhikovich stated that his agency was preparing an unprecedented attack against the Crimean bridge after one attempt already failed.

“Believe me, this is going to be a massive event, and the whole world will be talking about it. What we’ve got going on here is really something huge. Crocus will look like nothing by comparison, I’m telling you!” he said. The 2024 Moscow Crocus City Hall massacre was the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia in over two decades, claiming the lives of 151 people and wounding another 609. The Russian Investigative Committee concluded that the attack carried out by a regional offshoot of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) was organized on behalf of Ukraine.

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“Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has claimed Moscow may be planning “provocations” and limited attacks on critical EU infrastructure ..“

• Horror Stories of Alleged Russian Threat Serve As NATO Build-Up Pretext (RT)

The Baltic states are using “horror stories” about an alleged Russian threat to justify further NATO build-up and higher military spending, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Peskov was commenting on Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda’s claims that Moscow could be preparing “provocations” and limited attacks on critical infrastructure in Poland or the Baltic states. “This is the latest batch of horror stories, intended to continue brainwashing people and to prepare the population for further militarization,” Peskov said.


Baltic leaders are deliberately “creating the image of an enemy” in the form of Russia to facilitate the expansion of NATO military infrastructure across the region “in all its forms,” he added. mNauseda told Lithuanian media this week that intelligence agencies had “received signals” about possible “kinetic operations” targeting critical infrastructure. He acknowledged, however, that the information did not indicate where or when such incidents might occur. mLatvian President Edgars Rinkevics reportedly echoed the warning on Wednesday, citing information from “Lithuanian, Latvian and other NATO states” intelligence agencies about possible “various sabotage attempts to lower the security in our states.”

Western officials have repeatedly cited the prospect of Russian aggression to justify higher defense spending, including the EU’s €800 billion ($917 billion) ReArm Europe initiative and NATO members’ commitment to increase military expenditure to 5% of GDP. Moscow has consistently denied harboring aggressive intentions toward the US-led military bloc, dismissing claims of a planned attack on NATO as “nonsense.” Kremlin officials have described such accusations as fearmongering aimed at inflating military budgets. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Russia has “no reason” to attack the EU or NATO unless it is attacked first.

Russia has also repeatedly condemned NATO’s military build-up in Europe and the alliance’s increased activity near its western borders, warning that any deployment of nuclear capabilities closer to Russian territory would draw a response. The Baltic states have been among Kiev’s strongest supporters within the EU throughout the Ukraine conflict. Moscow has argued that continued Western military and financial aid only prolongs the fighting without changing its outcome, while increasing the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

Read more …

The ultimate betrayal of young Ukrainians. They are designated to be cannon fodder.

• EU To Strip Draft Age Ukrainians of Refugee Protection (RT)

The EU has agreed to stop granting temporary protection to newly arriving Ukrainians liable for military service while extending the scheme for others who fled the conflict with Russia, according to the Council of the European Union. The restriction will take effect in March 2027, while the broader protection scheme will remain in place until March 2028. Kiev imposed a general mobilization shortly after the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, preventing nearly all military-age men from leaving the country. Despite the restrictions, many reached the EU, where adult men now make up around 27% of Ukrainians under temporary protection, according to bloc data.


The European Commission said on Wednesday that new applicants would have to “satisfy their military obligations in Ukraine” to qualify for temporary protection. It said the measure was intended to reflect the country’s “evolving defense needs” and would not affect those already benefiting from the scheme. Ukraine currently conscripts men between the ages of 25 and 60. Irish Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, said the extension “provides stability for those who found safety in the EU.” At the same time, he stressed that “we also want to make sure Ukraine can defend itself,” adding that this is why the temporary protection scheme “respects Ukraine’s legitimate needs.”

Across Western Europe, governments are increasingly scaling back support for Ukrainian refugees as pressure grows on welfare systems and public frustration over migration costs rises. More than 4.35 million Ukrainians are registered for temporary protection across the EU, according to Eurostat, while countries such as Poland, Germany, and Hungary have already moved to cut benefits.Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called for military-age men to return from abroad due to troop shortages. Vladimir Zelensky said in April that “our armed forces would certainly like them to come back because it is a matter of justice.”

Ukraine has struggled to replenish its ranks as Russian forces continue to advance. The so-called “busification” campaign, in which draft officers ambush men on the streets and outside their homes, often using force against those who resist, has repeatedly sparked public outrage.

The conscription crisis has prompted several of Kiev’s European backers to review their asylum laws. Earlier this year, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed to restrict protections for Ukrainians, arguing that young men were needed in their home country. Last month, the Czech government approved legislation tightening temporary protection rules, saying future EU discussions could also include limiting protections for military-age men as Ukraine faces mounting manpower shortages. Moscow has accused Kiev and its Western backers of being willing to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”

Read more …

Lemme guess: they don’t stand a chance.

• Democrats Got Some Devastating News About the Midterms (Margolis)

Democrats have spent the past year and a half dreaming about flipping both chambers of Congress this November. The House was always supposed to be the easy part. History certainly favors them, and polling has also favored them for most of this cycle. But that dream just took a serious hit. New data show Democrats are not gaining momentum this summer. Some of it suggests they’re losing ground, and losing it fast. Of course, it’s the middle of the summer, and anything can happen. But for Democrats, the warning signs that the midterms aren’t going to go as they hoped are impossible to ignore. In short, the trend lines right now are running in the wrong direction for Democrats.


According to RealClearPolitics election analyst Sean Trende, the way polls are moving now, there’s a shot that the GOP can keep the House. “The RCP Average generic ballot has gone from D+8 to D+5 over the past six weeks. Probably just inevitable ‘Soft Rs coming home’ but this starts to get into territory where it is conceivable that Rs hold the House,” Trende wrote. “I should add that I think the system can handle a party winning the popular vote by a point or so but losing the House. But if it stretches to a 3-4 point differential, which it may, it is going to be ugly.” Of course, the RCP Average isn’t the only data point moving in Republicans’ favor.

https://twitter.com/OpenSourceZone/status/2077386629887517029?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2077386629887517029%7Ctwgr%5E3c3dc5e21cfc9821289c6ec9e9f770be84d4fa53%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fmatt-margolis%2F2026%2F07%2F16%2Fdemocrats-got-some-devastating-news-about-the-midterms-n4955105


That’s a significant swing in the GOP’s favor. And it’s not just the generic ballot. Races Democrats once considered locks are suddenly competitive again. Take North Carolina. Former Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) has held a commanding lead over former RNC chair Michael Whatley (R-N.C.) for months. Now, even Public Policy Polling, a Democrat-aligned polling firm, has Cooper’s lead down to just four points, and PPP itself is admitting Republicans have a real shot at winning the seat.

That should worry Democrats far beyond North Carolina. They’ve long said that their path to a Senate majority runs through Maine, but that math only works if they also win North Carolina. If Cooper loses, Democrats have no path to the Senate at all. None. So what happened? Two things, mainly. Democrats built their entire midterm pitch around being anti-Trump. That’s the whole strategy, and despite being warned over and over that this isn’t a winning message, they haven’t listened. Meanwhile, the socialist insurgency inside their own party keeps grabbing headlines, and it isn’t doing them any favors with independent voters who, as polls show, are turned off by socialism.

Republicans certainly haven’t sealed the deal. Trump’s favorables still have room to grow, and voters are watching gas prices as closely as they’re watching the news out of Iran. Affordability could still sink the GOP’s chances if it gets bad enough. But Democrats, who have spent this entire political cycle convinced this was their year, just got a brutal reality check. The soft Rs are coming home, the socialists are scaring off the middle, and Roy Cooper might not even be able to save them anymore.

Read more …

The Mamdani Express.

• Half-Mile-Long Homeless Encampment Springs Up on Manhattan’s West Side (Thorne)

Thanks, Zohran! New York City’s grinning young communist-Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani changed Town Hall policy on dealing with homeless encampments early into his term. Notably, he removed all oversight of the issue from the NYPD and placed it instead under the auspices of the Department of Homeless Services (DHS). Mamdani pretended that he still intended to clean up encampments, though. “Mamdani’s approach to the sweeps will go something like this,” reported City Limits:


• On day one, DHS will place notices on encampment sites saying that the location will be cleaned by the Sanitation Department (DSNY) seven days later
• Each day after, DHS outreach staff will go to the site and engage the people there to offer shelter placements or other services
• On day seven, DSNY will clean up the site, with NYPD on hand if the situation escalates

In last winter’s deadly cold snaps, when the homeless were freezing to death in the warmth of collectivism, Mamdani explained the superiority of his system to the old method of removing people from the streets: “Whereas previously, a homeless New Yorker might have only two points of interaction with city government — the first day they’re served a notice and the seventh day when that notice comes to an end — our administration will meet those homeless New Yorkers every single day. And we will meet them looking to connect them with shelter, looking to connect them with services, looking to connect them with a city that wants them to be sheltered and indoors and warm and safe.”

If only it were that simple. But in his infinite and empathetic wisdom, the mayor ignores the reality underlying these encampments: The people living in them don’t want help. They don’t want to leave, don’t want to stay in a shelter, don’t want to clean themselves up, and don’t want to get sober. They want to do drugs, period. And they will do whatever it takes to exist in that state, indefinitely, until they are forced to leave. As a result of the mayor’s fantasies, a massive homeless encampment has sprung up on Manhattan’s west side, stretching from at least 34th Street up to the floating Intrepid Museum at 46th Street, obliterating the quality of life for normal, bill-paying New Yorkers who have the misfortune to live or work in the area.

“You see people walking around half naked in the street,” local mom Diana Khabbaz told the New York Post on Monday. “They are smoking whatever they’re smoking. You see needles on the street every 20 feet. Sometimes you see a homeless person. And all day long, all night, a lot by the parks, there are a lot of people and there are tons of tents, and people are sleeping everywhere.” The Post has been doing an excellent job covering the seedy crisis. On Tuesday, the outlet reported: “Almost one month now – getting a little bigger every time I come back,” one Flixbus driver told The Post. “They put the garbage here on the sidewalk so the people have to wait in the street when I come with the bus.

“They’re asking the people waiting for the bus for money,” the driver said. “It’s no good. My boss called and complained and they do nothing.” As always happens when officials refuse to police these situations, bums have set up semi-permanent structures, ready to stay for the long term, and the sordid encampment grows by the day. Drug use, waste, trash, prostitutes, and nodding addicts litter the sidewalks, forcing normal people to walk in the street. So comfortable and brazen have the vagrants become that they’ve even been tapping into city utility lines and stealing power from New Yorkers to electrify their shanties.

But then, the slide into and tolerance of squalor has always been among the most objectionable characteristics of socialism and communism. Mamdani has already got the billionaires and millionaires on the run. Policies like standing by as crime, drug use, and homeless encampments take over the city will chase out many of the middle- and working-class people who remain. You can watch the Jesse Watters Primetime show’s excellent three-minute report on the intolerable situation below: https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/status/2077186381315719358?s=20

Read more …

They can’t disrupt people’s lives. Make sure of that and you’re fine.

• President Trump Highlights Importance of Data Centers (CTH)

The discussion remains controversial depending on the location. Generally, data centers located in rural isolation do not seem to be too controversial. However, data centers built in proximity to population centers stimulate a great deal of opposition.


Recently New York state banned the building of Data Centers as politicization of the construct has become somewhat of a Right/Left divide. President Trump notes the importance of data centers:

(VIA TRUTH SOCIAL) – One of the biggest Driving Forces in the Future for Jobs, are Data Centers. They are big, strong, bold, and Money Machines for the State in which they are built. Governor Kathy Hochul, for political reasons, has terminated all Data Centers being built, or to be built, in New York State. These Companies are now being sought in Alabama, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and many other States. Both the Taxes and the Jobs amount to LIQUID GOLD! New York State has made a terrible decision.

All of this Income, and other Benefits, will be going to Red States, and some Blue, where Data Centers are sought as Cash Cows, with Lower Taxes and Record Setting Jobs. They must pay for their own Water and Power, and any leftover goes back to the State and local Community. Data Centers are tremendous WINS for the States and Communities that are lucky enough to get them. New York should change its Policy, IMMEDIATELY. The Radical Left Dumocrats must not be allowed to cause us to lose Data Centers, AI, and all of this incredible new Technology, to China, and other countries!”

~President DONALD J. TRUMP

The hardware side of the Data Center expansion is leading to increased revenue for raw material providers, chip makers, computer systems, fabrication shops, electrical components and construction. At the same time, the software side LLM builders and AI companies are trying to figure out how to make stable profitability within the sector.

CTH watches the tokenization and subscription fees for various AI model use with the same perspective CTH viewed over a decade of false claims within the financial market that told lies about social media viability and data processing costs. Now, we watch the seemingly exponential growth of AI capabilities and associated costs with the same pragmatic perspective. Robotic pool cleaners were introduced two generations ago. Did the pool cleaner business dry up? No, it expanded. Robotic vacuums broke into the popular household appliance market five years ago, you probably have one, did it eliminate maid services? No, still growing.

AI can now write its own code to generate outputs. Are software developers getting fired? No, demand for software designers and engineers is up. The mainframe approach, the one AI brain to run all systems, will never work – it is cost prohibitive (see first paragraph – wash, rinse, repeat). Deny this reality at your own investment risk. If needed, politely absorb the ridicule – for it matters not. CTH predicts AI will become a localized and optimized sub-set for each sector of the economy, requiring each major organization and corporation to adopt specific cost/benefit data libraries and networks for use and functionality.

At scale, a thousand coders each working on Gemini, ChatGPT, Anthropic, Fabian, Grok, etc. will become 100,000+ software designers working inside individual companies to create personalized, targeted, bespoke AI data systems and networks; each system specifically tailored to the industry or sector of business. The intranet of internets will happen again. Creating and selling AI system networks and integration functions that are personally tailored to highly specific company functions, creates an entirely new sector of the technology industry that has not even begun yet. [There’s an investment opportunity there]

Will AI robots replace some repetitive human functions? Yes, the ice rink Zamboni will likely not have a steering wheel, just an emergency joystick. A reference for a comparative industrial scale Roomba vacuum, or the robotic pool cleaners. However, at scale the robotic industry is slower than human efficiency in almost all sectors that matter; the cost benefit analysis will limit growth. The maid service sector will not be impacted any more than the software developers.

It is not an issue to fear some AI task efficiencies will grant more time available that will be filled with alternate task capabilities. Human productivity will increase in certain sectors of the economy, but humans will not lose work opportunities. Blue collar jobs will continue to expand as each of the hardware tools developed will need manufacturing, installation, maintenance and monitoring.

The further downstream the worker is from a repetitive function within the [XXXX] industry, the more irreplaceable they become.

As to the bigger picture of fully developed AI and the intersection of information and knowledge; yes, the automation of AI can present an issue. However, all AI concerns can be mitigated so long as multiple, alternative AI systems exist within the larger information realm.

As a nation we need dozens of different AI models each competing within the industry for the best AI product.

As long as we have multiple AI systems, alternatives to the hive-mind, we do not need to fear the AI network as a source of information. If we don’t like the AI outputs, we can switch to an alternate AI provider.

If the subscription cost of the AI is too high, then as long as we have a competitive market where a lesser expensive, perhaps bespoke AI option can exist, we should be okay. Let the free-and-fair market decide.

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Be loud, Tulsi!

• Smooth Sailing Ahead for DNI Nominee Jay Clayton (CTH)

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a quick, one-round, nomination hearing for Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton. The entire event lasted just under two hours with little room for controversy. It should be smooth sailing from here.


Other than a little faux resistance from SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner, the nomination hearing was otherwise unremarkable. You can always tell the position of the Intelligence Community by the positioning of their enabling structure within the SSCI. No worries ahead for Clayton.

The committee may organize a party line vote so that Democrats can maintain their resistance bona fides, but in a general sense it’s all optics during the downhill glide to the nomination. That said, what this means in the larger picture of the USIC system during the Trump administration is yet to be determined. Obviously FISA (702) reauthorization will likely be attached by Senate Majority Leader John Thune into a legislative package for a companion vote. The SSCI and larger Senate chamber all support Clayton and FISA (702), though there may be some optics of resistance from positional republicans.

It seems pretty clear that Acting DNI Bill Pulte was put in place by the White House to stay on through the release of election-related material planned for Thursday night. This move keeps DNI Clayton away from any fallout tied to the 2020 election investigation, and if the White House can pull off a presidential presentation that grabs public attention, Clayton could step into the role later with a mandate to dig into the details of the release without being directly linked to it.

The second aspect is yet another motive for fast DNI confirmation by an SSCI apparatus that really doesn’t want to go down the rabbit hole of foreign activity in the 2020 election. ADNI Bill Pulte and SGE John Solomon are now positioned to have one shot at grabbing political attention framed around the fraudulent 2020 election outcome on Thursday night. Soon thereafter, Clayton will take the reins at DNI and continue the goal of removing politics from the activity of the larger Intelligence Community.

Read more …

There’s still millions who came in through Biden’s open borders.

• Trump Directs DHS Secretary to Continue ICE Deportation Traffic Stops (CTH)

Yesterday DEEP STATE DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin ordered ICE agents to stop deportation apprehensions from vehicles following an ICE self-defense shooting as a vehicle was used as a weapon by an illegal alien. Today, President Trump told his rogue DHS Secretary such an order was not approved by President Trump and ICE agents should continue all efforts to deport illegal aliens including traffic stops when needed.


[TRUTH SOCIAL] The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done. CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven’t been seen in decades. The Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25,000,000 people to pour into our Country, unchecked and unvetted. Many were Criminals, and we have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!

Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands. The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job. Keep those Crime Stat Records coming! Remember, you are loved and respected in America. Thank you for your attention to this matter! ~PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

Secretary Markwayne Mullin is another weak link in the lawful system of removing illegal aliens. Misplaced sympathies, regardless of motivation, are against the interests of law-abiding Americans. Deportation efforts must continue with extreme prejudice against the illegal alien population.

Weak men make for hard times!

Hours later Markwayne Mullin reversed his order.

Read more …

Very strange thing to say for a VP (for anyone?!).

• JD Vance to Joe Rogan: Aliens Are Demons (Scott Pinsker)

Vance is MAGA’s most gifted communicator of economic grievances. He seems sincere, compassionate, authentic, and fair-minded. If you’re an undecided voter, he’s exactly the kind of leader you want in your corner. Come Nov. 2026 and Nov. 2028, if economic concerns, pocketbook issues, and middle-class grievances are the top issues, the Republican Party couldn’t ask for a better, more relatable messenger than JD Vance. He’s the right man at the right time. In a socialism versus free market debate, Vance will win in a landslide.


Trouble is, the vast majority of the Rogan-Vance podcast wasn’t about the economy, pocketbook issues, or the middle class. It centered on Iran, Jeffrey Epstein, Israel, traitorous “hawks,” disloyal Republicans, and whether or not space aliens are demons (or maybe angels). JD Vance is a highly organized thinker. He speaks in paragraphs (plural). That makes him an exceptionally dangerous debater — if you don’t believe me, go ask Tim Walz — but an awkwardly verbose conversationalist. This sit-down with Rogan didn’t play to his strengths. He’s noticeably better on the debate stage. Politically, the most interesting development was Vance’s calculation on Israel. Instead of choosing between the pro-Israel and anti-Israel factions, he declared himself a “reasonable moderate.” It’s a risky calculation.

If it works, he retains a MAGA coalition that was big and welcoming enough to include Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Megyn Kelly. Since neither side finds him objectionable, he could be a bridge between both extremes. But I don’t think he can pull it off. It’s a helluva high-wire act. Besides, his strategy requires him to make a pragmatic argument about what many believe is a moral issue, which puts him behind the eight ball from the get-go. More likely than not, he’ll eventually have to choose a side. Many pro-Israel Republicans believe he already has. That’s because they’re reading into his emotive language, divining his words, and noting that he blames one side far more than the other.

https://twitter.com/alexbruesewitz/status/2077450739207610427?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2077450739207610427%7Ctwgr%5E1e7f0fe91d4eeadefa7d15e7a53feb48f9e9d69f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fscott-pinsker%2F2026%2F07%2F16%2Fjd-vance-to-joe-rogan-aliens-are-demons-hawks-sabotaged-the-mou-israel-is-meddling-n4955111

He explicitly accused “hawks” of sabotaging his (since-failed) Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran. Vance also insisted that the $300 billion Iran payment story was a “bull**** argument” that was “completely made up” by “hawks” to “politically tank the negotiation.” So, according to Vice President Vance, what’s motivating these bloodthirsty hawks? In Israel, “some people in the Israeli government want war indefinitely.” And in America, the “hawks” want us to send 150,000 ground troops into Iran. Which simply isn’t true:

Either way, Vance is taking the MOU criticism personally. Here’s Mediaite with excerpts from his appearance on JRE: “[P]eople have come after me and said that I’m influenced by Qatar, that I am influenced by foreign governments, that I take my marching orders from Tucker Carlson — there’s just so much bulls*** out there, when what I’m actually trying to do is accomplish what the President of the United States told me to accomplish, which is a settlement of this that accomplishes our objectives: Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, and we have the free flow of oil and gas. […]

“But again, when I open up the pages of Time magazine and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing — and, oh, by the way, many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways — my response to that is: well, go to hell. I’m going to do what I have to do for the American people. I represent Americans first.” Yet the people who blew up JD Vance’s (now failed) MOU weren’t hawks, Israelis, or disloyal neocons! It was the Iranians!

For someone who claims to be a “reasonable moderate,” he consistently — and repeatedly — assigns the least charitable interpretation to the pro-Israel/hawk faction while (mostly) ignoring the Groyper/isolationist faction. His disdain is difficult to ignore. And because he’s so damn smart, we assume it’s deliberate. Rogan and Vance also chatted about the VP’s claim that UFOs were demons. It was a very strange back-and-forth: Is it wise for the vice president to speculate about the supernatural? Perhaps: Speculating is fun. Everyone wonders about the unknown. I do.But a politician must be careful not to get over his skis, lest he look ridiculous.

As a one-off, contemplating about the angelic/demonic origins of UFOs won’t move the needle either way. But coupled with Vance’s public declaration (and Susie Wiles’ description of him) as a proud “conspiracy theorist,” he risks being portrayed as a crackpot thinker. Obviously, that’s not helpful for a man with presidential aspirations. This was an ill-advised rabbit hole. We watch longform interviews to catch a window into someone’s mind, soul, and heart. A politician must be mindful of what he reveals. And he must be especially mindful when he’s spitballing about unproveable, unknowable metaphysical phenomena. https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2077543707658653718?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2077543707658653718%7Ctwgr%5E1e7f0fe91d4eeadefa7d15e7a53feb48f9e9d69f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fscott-pinsker%2F2026%2F07%2F16%2Fjd-vance-to-joe-rogan-aliens-are-demons-hawks-sabotaged-the-mou-israel-is-meddling-n4955111

Full video:
Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/2077528642784026875?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2077769923451900044?s=20 https://twitter.com/mcafeenew/status/2077525070520427005?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 20 2026

Apr 202026
 
 April 20, 2026  Posted by at 9:18 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Edgar Degas Les repasseuses (women ironing) 1884


• Trump’s Cryptic ‘The End Is Near’ Post Sends Internet Into A Frenzy (MN)
• Trump Warns Iran: ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’ (Margolis)
• Turkey Could Be ‘Next Iran’ For Israel: US Envoy Scrambles To Calm Tensions (MEE)
• Netanyahu Left ‘Personally Stunned’ By Trump Rhetoric On Lebanon Strikes (ZH)
• Will This Atlantic Hit Piece Be the Final Straw? (Margolis)
• The Enigma of JD Vance (Alan Joseph Bauer)
• Will Spain’s Supreme Court Block Mass Legalization Of Migrants? (RMX)
• Will Ukraine Forcibly Conscript Women To Fight On The Frontline? (RMX)
• Chief Justice Roberts Faces Two Strikes After New Leak Rocks the Court (Turley)
• West Still Wants To Seize Ukrainian Black Soil, Russian Oil – Zakharova (TASS)
• Circling the Drain Phase of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens Gimmick (Pinsker)
• Marjorie Taylor Greene Amplifies Viral Doubts About Butler (ZH)

 


 

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2045684789802336442?s=20 https://twitter.com/JudyMaxB/status/2045542891616194898?s=20 https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/2045628818602459221?s=20 https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2045552110100758533?s=20

 


 

 


 


Trump plays the West like a fiddle.

But Iran is going for what they know best: the long game. That’s not Trump.

• Trump’s Cryptic ‘The End Is Near’ Post Sends Internet Into A Frenzy (MN)

In a development that quickly fueled online speculation, President Trump posted a video of Frank Sinatra performing his signature hit “My Way” on social media with no accompanying text or explanation. The move came just hours after he convened a high-level meeting in the White House Situation Room to discuss the ongoing standoff with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz. The post featured the classic track whose lyrics speak of independence and resolve. While Trump has long used the song at rallies, inaugurals, and even as Air Force One departed at the end of his first term, its sudden appearance amid rising tensions drew immediate attention.

This latest social media activity follows fresh statements from Trump on Truth Social addressing direct accusations of Iranian ceasefire violations. In the post, shared widely on X by accounts including RedWave Press, Trump laid out his position clearly:

“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement! Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations. Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it. They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing.”

He added, “In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the U.S., Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be ‘the tough guy!’ We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”

After a U.S.-brokered 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon took effect, Iran initially announced the Strait of Hormuz was open to commercial vessels for the truce period. Oil prices dropped on the news. But the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) quickly reversed course, citing the continued U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and ships. Iranian officials, including Parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, warned that without concessions the strait would remain closed.

Trump has maintained that the American blockade will stay in place until Tehran reaches a broader agreement that includes commitments on its nuclear program. He has described conversations with Iranian counterparts as productive but stressed that the U.S. position will not shift without concrete steps from the other side. No new direct talks are currently scheduled.

Saturday’s Situation Room session included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to Axios reporting, the focus was on assessing ceasefire compliance and preparing for possible next steps in negotiations. No immediate policy changes were announced afterward.

This episode echoes dynamics we previously covered, when major outlets claimed Trump was preparing to “nuke” Iran ahead of a deadline tied to the same Strait of Hormuz standoff. The White House pushed back firmly at the time, clarifying that any potential action would be conventional strikes on infrastructure rather than nuclear weapons. Media speculation ran hot then, much as it has with today’s cryptic post.

As of this writing, U.S. representatives are set to arrive in Islamabad, Pakistan, tomorrow evening for indirect negotiations. Iran has not publicly responded to the latest Trump statement, and shipping interests continue to watch developments closely given the strait’s critical role in global energy flows. The situation remains fluid, with both sides signaling openness to a deal while holding firm on core demands. Whether the current pressure and diplomatic track yield results or further escalation will depend on the coming days of talks.

Read more …

Did they think he was a nice guy?

• Trump Warns Iran: ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’ (Margolis)

President Donald Trump is done playing nice with Iran — and he wants Tehran to know exactly what that means. After Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps fired on multiple ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, Trump took to social media with a message that left zero room for ambiguity. Trump said Iran violated a ceasefire agreement by opening fire in the Strait of Hormuz, describing the incident as a serious escalation. He claimed that multiple vessels were targeted, including a French ship and a British freighter. “Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement!” Trump said. “Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn’t nice, was it?”


Trump added that U.S. representatives are headed to Pakistan for negotiations, signaling that diplomatic efforts are still underway. “My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations,” he said. At the same time, Trump suggested that Iran’s own actions have effectively reinforced a U.S. blockade in the region. “Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it,” he said. “They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day!”

According to Trump, the United States stands to benefit from shifting shipping patterns, particularly in domestic energy markets. “The United States loses nothing. In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the U.S., Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be ‘the tough guy!’” He emphasized that the administration has put forward what he described as a fair deal, while warning of severe consequences if Iran refuses. “We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” Trump said. “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”

Trump closed with a stark warning, framing potential military action as long overdue. “They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years,” he said. “IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!” Speaking with Fox News’ Trey Yingst Sunday morning, Trump took it further, warning that if no deal is reached, “the whole country is getting blown up.” That’s language strikingly similar to what he deployed just before a previous ceasefire was announced, which suggests this may be Trump’s version of deadline diplomacy. Push hard enough, make the consequences concrete enough, and watch the other side blink.

He also made clear that the military option is fully loaded. “We’re preparing to hit them harder than any country has ever been hit before because you cannot let them have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told Yingst, adding that the U.S. has “massive amounts” of ammunition ready to go. Trump’s frustration is obvious, and clearly, he’s done playing games. The fact is that Iran has spent decades testing the limits of American patience and walking away with sanctions relief, pallets of cash, and enough breathing room to keep spinning centrifuges. The mullahs have learned, quite effectively, that the cost of bad behavior rarely exceeds what they can absorb.

Trump argues that the price just changed. Whether this is carefully calibrated pressure designed to bring Iran to the table on American terms, or a genuine ultimatum with a Tuesday deadline, one thing is clear: the administration believes the only language Tehran understands is overwhelming force, and Trump is speaking it fluently. “It’s time for the Iran killing machine to end,” he said. And when Trump says it, you know he means it.

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“Everything comes from Turkey. It’s fiber optics. We’re talking about Azerbaijan and Armenia, which is flowing oil, gas, information, data and materials. Where does it go? How does it go?”

• Turkey Could Be ‘Next Iran’ For Israel: US Envoy Scrambles To Calm Tensions (MEE)

US Envoy Tom Barrack has downplayed escalating tensions between Turkey and Israel as just “rhetoric” and pushed for regional cooperation between the two countries in security and energy projects. Speaking during a panel at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Barrack pushed back against comments from some officials in both countries that suggested they could come into conflict in the near future. “I think Turkey is just not a country to be messed with,” Barrack said. Barrack said that both countries were seeing a distorted image of each other as a result of sensationalized media coverage that painted both as expansionist.


“So if you wake up in Tel Aviv, you read the newspaper, what do you see? You see the diagram on the paper of The Ottoman Empire 2.0, which is Vienna to the Maldives, right,” he said. “You wake up in Istanbul and read the paper and it’s Greater Israel.” Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize the state of Israel in 1949, and has enjoyed largely cordial security and trade ties throughout most of their modern history. However, since the 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara flotilla, when Israeli forces raided a Turkish ship delivering aid to Gaza and killed 10 of those on board, tensions have been strained and the government has increasingly hit out at Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

The ‘next Iran’?
The most recent attempt to restore relations in September 2023 – which saw Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting and shaking hands for the first time in New York – collapsed the next month after the 7 October Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the subsequent genocide in Gaza. Since then, the rhetoric has escalated from politicians in both countries, with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett describing Turkey as potentially the “next Iran” in March. The US government has staunchly backed Israel’s military actions across the region, including joining its war on Iran.

However, Turkey’s status as a Nato member and US President Donald Trump’s stated admiration for Erdogan has led American officials to seek to restore relations between the two countries. Barrack told the forum in Antalya that the energy price shocks from the Iran war had proven the importance of regional cooperation to maintain energy security. “Everything comes from Turkey. It’s fiber optics. We’re talking about Azerbaijan and Armenia, which is flowing oil, gas, information, data and materials. Where does it go? How does it go?” he said. “So Israel aligned with Turkey, like Israel aligned with Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia could be aligned with Israel and, for the prosperity of the Israeli people, to me that’s the answer.”

Some recent rhetoric out of Israeli media:

Barrack added that Israel should go further, and try to engage Turkey as part of the International Stabilisation Force established for Gaza as part of the ceasefire deal signed in September. “The smartest thing that Israel could do is to entice and embrace Turkey to enter that force,” he said. Barrack said that Erdogan’s interactions with the Palestinian group Hamas was instrumental for reaching a deal to release Israeli hostages, and that it happened because Ankara didn’t designate the group. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also met with Barrack on Monday for what they said was a “productive” meeting.

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“On Friday, Trump declared the US had “prohibited” further Israeli strikes..”

• Netanyahu Left ‘Personally Stunned’ By Trump Rhetoric On Lebanon Strikes (ZH)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his inner circle were reportedly blindsided – left “stunned” – after President Trump dropped a surprise line effectively clipping Israel’s wings in Lebanon, according to Axios, citing sources familiar with the exchange. On Friday, Trump declared the US had “prohibited” further Israeli strikes just as the administration-brokered 10-day ceasefire with Lebanon kicked in. The US President was unusually harsh in rhetoric with America’s longtime #1 Mideast ally, writing on Truth Social that “enough is enough”.


The words were clearly not directed at Lebanon, or Hezbollah, but squarely at Israel and its deadly air campaign which had included intense bombing of Beirut at the South for the last week-and-a-half.The statement set off alarms in Jerusalem, with Israeli officials scrambling for clarity from Washington. Almost everything out of the Trump administration has up to now been generally glowing and positive when it comes to Israel and Netanyahu. However, Axios captures the reaction in Tel Aviv, in a Saturday report saying “Netanyahu was personally stunned and alarmed when he learned of the post, the sources said.”

Israel is set to pause offensive ops, but still says it reserves the right to “take all necessary measures in self-defense at any time against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks.” The NY Times has highlighted that all of this has put Netanyahu in a tough spot: “Now, the prime minister’s critics, and even some of his allies on the right, have seized on what appears plain as day: his inability to resist Mr. Trump’s pressure, not just in pushing to bring the long-distance war with Iran to a close but even in demanding a truce with an enemy directly across Israel’s northern border.

“A cease-fire must come from a position of strength and be an Israeli decision, reflecting leverage that serves negotiations,” said Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff whose new centrist opposition party, Yashar, is gaining in the polls. “A pattern is emerging in which cease-fires are being imposed on us — in Gaza, in Iran and now in Lebanon.” Again, this actually constitutes some of the toughest talk and restrictions ever imposed on Israel from this administration. This suggests the White House is indeed serious about cobbling together a final offramp.

Still, Netanyahu has declared that the fight with Hezbollah is not over, while at the same time confirming Israel’s agreement with the 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon.”One hand holds a weapon; the other is extended for peace,” Netanyahu said in a fresh speech. “I will say honestly, we have not yet finished the job,” he continued. “There are things we plan to do regarding the remaining rocket threat and the drone threat, which I will not detail.” Israel seeks to “dismantle” Hezbollah, Netanyahu continued, “but this will not be achieved tomorrow. It requires sustained effort, patience, and careful navigation in the diplomatic arena.”

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“.. categorically false and defamatory” As an MO.

• Will This Atlantic Hit Piece Be the Final Straw? (Margolis)

The Atlantic has a well-documented history of publishing fake hit pieces about President Donald Trump and his administration, and one wonders how many more hoaxes they can run before they get in real trouble.Its latest ef fort targeting FBI Director Kash Patel may be its most reckless yet — and this time, the bureau is fighting back with lawyers. The piece, written by reporters Sarah Fitzpatrick and Jonathan Lemire, claims that on Friday, April 10, Patel struggled to log into an internal FBI computer system while wrapping up his workday.


He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.” Patel oversees an agency that employs roughly 38,000 people, including many who are trained to investigate and verify information that can be presented under oath in a court of law. News of his emotional outburst ricocheted through the bureau, prompting chatter among officials and, in some corners of the building, expressions of relief. The White House fielded calls from the bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI.

It turned out that the answer was still Patel. He had not been fired. The access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error, and it was quickly resolved.The piece didn’t stop there. It also alleged Patel has been plagued by “bouts of excessive drinking,” claiming members of his security detail had trouble waking him on multiple occasions because he was seemingly intoxicated. It further alleged that breaching equipment — the kind used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams — was requested last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors. The FBI denied every word of it before the article ever went live. Attorney Jesse Binnall sent a formal letter to The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick ahead of publication, putting them on notice that the claims were “categorically false and defamatory.”

The bureau’s response was even more direct: “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court — bring your checkbook.” They printed it anyway. Late Friday night, Patel fired back on X.

It’s worth noting that The Atlantic was apparently the only outlet willing to run this story. Other D.C. reporters chased the same tips and couldn’t verify them. They passed. The Atlantic published it. And now they’re going to be sued. This is what The Atlantic does. They publish outlandish and bogus stories that no other outlet will touch, which accomplishes the goal of giving Democrats and their supporters reason to insist the stories are true.

The outlet’s hoax piece alleging Trump didn’t want to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because the troops there who died in battle were “losers” and “suckers” was disputed by over a dozen witnesses. Yet, the left still insists it happened—even after Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, admitted it could have been wrong. Sarah Fitzpatrick herself has a history of publishing bogus hit pieces lacking sources and corroboration.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche both publicly defended Patel. Blanche praised Patel, noting he “has accomplished more in 14 months than the previous administration did in four years.” FBI spokesperson Erica Knight added that since being sworn in, Patel has taken just 17 days off — roughly half the time taken by former directors James Comey and Christopher Wray over comparable stretches.

Read more …

Try again in 2028.

• The Enigma of JD Vance (Alan Joseph Bauer)

The sitting vice president is hard to figure out.


Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said the other day that nearly 80 million people specifically voted for Donald Trump, and thus it was incumbent on Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act and other legislation that the president supports. Tuberville was right about Trump: many, if not most, of those who voted in 2024 for Donald Trump did so because of the man. Whereas some people vote based on party, independent of the candidate, Donald Trump is the main draw for many voters. Whether it be his colorful ways, supportive family, fighting style, blunt presentation, reliability with friends and allies, little dance, or other features, there is simply nobody like Donald Trump. The stock market is reaching highs, the Iranians are assessing massive damage, tariff revenue is enormous, the armed services reached their recruiting goals five months early, etc. The U.S. and the world are different and, for many, better due to the actions of Donald Trump.

So what happens after Trump? The basic thinking is that JD Vance is the heir apparent of MAGA and the obvious choice to run in 2028. Some people whisper that Vance will take the family over country route and not actually run. There are other Republicans who might have an eye on the prize, though Marco Rubio has consistently said that he will not run if Vance chooses to do so. So what about JD Vance? Nobody can be a Trump II. Fine. But is JD Vance a good fit for the tens of millions who supported Donald Trump, the man and his policies?

Before the vice president left for Pakistan recently in order to talk to the Iranians, he gave a quick interview on the tarmac in Hungary. There had been an open point on Lebanon and the ceasefire. Iran claimed that the two were intertwined as the Iranians are desperate to save their decades-long, hundreds of billions of dollars investment in the Shiite terror group, Hezbollah. The U.S. said that Israel stopping its military campaign in southern Lebanon was never included in the 15-point ceasefire document. What struck me was a comment that Vance made on the subject. In the interview, he said that the issue of a Lebanese ceasefire was one of misunderstanding, but he went on to say that the negotiations should not fall over Lebanon, “which has nothing to do with them [the Iranians].”

My “uh-oh” sensor went off. Now I appreciate that it is hard to give a cogent interview while halfway on one’s way home, but the question is whether JD Vance really meant what he said. Lebanon is everything to Iran. I recently saw an interview with Ayatollah Khomeini on an Air France flight back to Iran. He was asked what he felt returning to his homeland. His answer: “Nothing.” His only goal was to spread Shia Islamic teachings and terror, and if Tehran was a good place to set up his office, so be it. Lebanon has been the graveyard of dozens of IRGC generals and officials. Not surprisingly, when the beepers exploded, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon was seriously injured. Why would he have a beeper meant for Hezbollah operatives?

More recently, at a TPUSA event last week, JD Vance spoke. Ben Shapiro noted that his response to the young audience was troubling. Essentially, he stated that okay, you may not like our being friends with Israel, but there are so many other things that you do like, such as beating up Iran, raising wages, etc., that you should judge us on the whole and join us going forward. I have seen at other TPUSA events with Vance and other Republican stars where they skirt the Groyper arguments against Israel (“attacking Christianity!” “making a genocide!” “the USS Liberty!”) and say, yeah, let’s talk about other stuff that you like. All of the calumnies thrown at Israel by the Groyper-Tucker Carlson wing of the party are lies. There have been no Israeli attacks on Christian sites, with the Christian population of Israel the only one growing in the Middle East. There was no genocide in Gaza, with the population growing and over 80 percent of those killed identified by Hamas as their operatives. The Liberty attack was a mistake; Israel apologized and paid reparations. Hey, did we hear anything from these clowns about the Muslim Kuwaiti pilot who whacked three American F-15Es at the start of the current war?

Do you know how not anti-Christian Israel is? After the Kotel or Western Wall was closed to prayers for the duration of the shooting war, it finally opened after the ceasefire took hold. Several family members went to the Old City to pray at “the Wall.” They were not allowed to enter the Old City. Why? Because it was the Saturday on which local Christians have their Fire Ceremony, so access to the Old City was denied to non-Christians. My wife tried to get in at several points, but the walled city was blocked off to all but Christians and residents of the Old City. Now, does that sound like anti-Christian bigotry?

I remember similar events from the past and being rerouted due to a Christian march in the Armenian Quarter. What I just wrote, Vance should have cited. He should have fought back against the strong Groyper, Jew-hating movement infesting TPUSA and younger Republicans. But he chose to punt: Okay, you may not like our Middle East policies, but how ‘bout them tax cuts? The GOP has a Jew-hating problem imported from the Left/Muslim nexus. It’s no coincidence that Tucker Carlson has high praise for Qatar, Islam, and Muslim cities being superior to Western cities. Vance said that Theo Von was the go-to podcaster. A doorknob is more knowledgeable than Von. Von asked Joe Rogan how much longer Israel will “let us stay alive.” And this is Vance’s guy?

So is JD Vance the real deal? Nobody is going to be Donald Trump, and there is no point trying to compare any potential 2028 candidate with a model that they made one copy of and then destroyed the mold. We should be grateful for Donald Trump’s forceful leadership in an age of wet noodles, but we must realize that just as George H. W. Bush was no Ronald Reagan, the next president will not tell a rally that he is going to bomb the s**t out of America’s enemies. Vance may not run, or he may be bested by someone else in the party. But if Vance is the nominee and he can’t get his head around Israel as a good country and not a genocider or starver of the millions, then he will lose some of the MAGA base. The U.S.-Israel relationship is based on respect, and I have heard only praise from Pete Hegseth and Adm. Brad Cooper regarding Israel’s full participation in the war against Iran. While the Gulf states do little, Israel dropped 18,000 munitions prior to the ceasefire. Where is the praise of a true ally while the Europeans hide in the sand? Where is the counter to Groyper anti-Israel lies? Silence here is not golden.

One can’t expect a guy who grew up in the Rust Belt to have the knowledge and experience with Jews that a New York real estate developer has. Donald Trump grew up among Jews, and he learned respect from his father, who did not take rent from Holocaust survivors who could not afford it. I don’t believe for a minute that JD Vance is an antisemite, and even if he won’t divorce himself from Tucker Carlson’s hatred, I know that he is a friend of Israel and the Jewish people. I don’t think he fully understands the region, and I hope that he is a quick learner.

Read more …

Spain doesn’t let them enter Spain, it lets them enter Europe. No borders.

“As tens of thousands of migrants rush embassies across Spain to begin the regularization process, for the Spanish right, the clock is now ticking to save the country”

• Will Spain’s Supreme Court Block Mass Legalization Of Migrants? (RMX)

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his far-left government are not over the finish line yet when it comes to their plan to legalize hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants. Now, the Spanish legal group Hazte Oír have made the first successful step in challenging the far-left government’s “Royal Decree,” which was used to pass the legislation without a vote from parliament. After Hazte Oír’s application was accepted for processing by the Spanish Supreme Court, the government now has a non-extendable 20-day deadline to hand over the complete administrative file regarding mass legalization.


While it does not guarantee a reversal, it places the decree in a state of significant legal uncertainty. By admitting the case, Spain’s top court has found sufficient legal grounds to examine the merits of the lawsuit rather than dismissing it outright. The Supreme Court will verify whether the government followed correct legal procedures and whether it possessed the constitutional authority to use a Royal Decree for a mass regularization, according to La Razon.

The legal risk for the government currently remains high. The plaintiffs argue that such a measure requires a formal law passed by Parliament rather than a simple cabinet decree. Crucially, Hazte Oír has requested a precautionary suspension of the law. If the Supreme Court grants this, the legalization process would be frozen immediately while the judges deliberate on a final ruling. Hazte Oír argues that if the decree is allowed to proceed, it will create “irreparable damage” by granting legal status to hundreds of thousands of people — a situation that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reverse even if the decree is later found to be illegal.

Already, scenes showcasing thousands of migrants across the country lining up at different embassies to receive the proper paperwork to apply for legalization have spread across social media. The law, which went into effect on April 15, has proven controversial and been fiercely opposed by conservative and right-wing parties. “These are the lines to manage mass regularization in each municipality of Spain. Tomorrow this chaos will move to the health centers, to the social services, to the real estate agencies… It’s called thirdworldization. It’s already happening. Our priority is to reverse it, radically,” wrote Vox party leader Santiago Abascal.

In contrast, Sánchez has been active promoting his Royal Decree, writing: “Thanks to civil society, institutions, the Church, social agents, and the Plataforma Regularización Ya for making it possible. Regularizing is not just necessary: it is just. It is recognizing a reality that already exists. It is guaranteeing rights and obligations, dignity and social cohesion.” The law is expected to have not only a dramatic effect on Spain, including its public services, but all of Europe, as these legalized migrants will have the right to travel freely across borders within the EU.

The lawyer of Hazte Oír is pointing out the irreversible nature of the decree to argue that it is most certainly a law that should have been passed by parliament. The appellant association, Javier María Pérez-Roldán, refers specifically to the transformative aspect of the law on the Spanish system, noting “the granting of residence and work authorizations; registration with Social Security; access to benefits; and the suspension of final expulsion orders.”

Hazte Oír indicates that the Royal Decree “structurally alters the State’s immigration policy, with direct and lasting effects” on the labor market, the public benefits system, the municipal registry, “and, in the medium term, the electoral roll.” As many critics of the law have also pointed out, the mass amnesty will have profound effects on public services, which are already buckling under the pressure of mass immigration. “Massive regularization without planning directly impacts the saturation of essential public services (educational and social), affecting the collective interests that this association defends,” said Pérez-Roldán.

While the Supreme Court did not grant an immediate suspension, that suspension could still arrive once the court reviews the documentation justifying the law. In such a case, the process of legalization could be frozen, creating a legal limbo for all migrant applicants. Royal Decrees are also legally reserved for situations of “extraordinary and urgent need.” Hazte Oír argues there is no “sudden emergency” that justifies bypassing the normal legislative process. They argue the government is using a “shortcut” to avoid political friction in Congress.

In contrast, the government argues the situation is urgent because of labor shortages in key sectors like agriculture and hospitality, and the humanitarian need to bring “invisible” people into the social security system to fund future pensions. It is unclear if the Supreme Court will buy this argument from the government. While the Royal Decree was used to bypass parliament, which allowed the government to fast-track the process of legalization, it may also still prove the decree’s downfall.

Read more …

Will Zelensky’s wife volunteer? Or will she be decorating their mansion?

• Will Ukraine Forcibly Conscript Women To Fight On The Frontline? (RMX)

Since Ukraine’s population has shrunk dramatically, the army’s number one problem is no longer the lack of weapons, such as ballistic missiles and air defense systems, but the lack of soldiers to operate them, writes Világgazdaság. The competent authorities in Kyiv, however, must bring the army size required by Commander-in-Chief Zelensky (800,000 active soldiers), and since the number of men eligible for military service (between the ages of 18 and 60) is slowly running out, the Ukrainian leadership is now trying to fill the gaps by conscripting women.


As of early 2024, approximately 5 million men are considered to be of conscription age in Ukraine, reduced from about 8.7 million before the February 2022 invasion due to death and emigration. And yet, many of these 5 million are exempt, unfit for service, or already serving. Ukraine has long been shown to use forced conscription methods, with increasing violence, leading men to attempt to leave the country, often at the risk of their lives. Last year, Hungarian channel M1-Hirado recently ran a special compiling some of the latest footage of Ukrainians being beaten and shoved into vans in forced mobilization operations.

Read more …

“The most immediate concern for Roberts should be that this is strike two: another leak from within the Court.. ”

• Chief Justice Roberts Faces Two Strikes After New Leak Rocks the Court (Turley)

The legendary baseball player and manager Ted Williams once wrote a letter to the Angels outfielder Jay Johnstone on improving his hitting. Among his pieces of advice was that “with two strikes, you simply have to protect the plate.” Williams’s advice on not striking out came to mind this week when another leak of confidential information rocked the Supreme Court. (The prior leak of the Dobbs decision went unsolved). For Chief Justice John Roberts, the message is clear: it is a time like this that you have to protect the plate.


Roberts, of course, is famous for his own baseball analogies. In his confirmation, he declared that “judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them…Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.” Yet, justices do make rules not only in new precedent, but in the operation of the court system. Those rules are being broken. In the same week as the new leak, Justice Sonia Sotomayor attacked her colleague Brett Kavanaugh as essentially an out-of-touch prig who had never even met an hourly wage worker. It was an unfair insult and a departure from the Court’s long-standing rules of civility. (Sotomayor later apologized).

Additionally, a forthcoming book by Mollie Hemingway on Justice Samuel Alito contains an embarrassing account of how Justice Elena Kagan allegedly screamed at Justice Stephen Breyer so loudly before the Dobbs opinion that the “wall was shaking.” (The book suggests that Kagan was upset with Breyer agreeing to spur along the dissents to get out the final opinions in light of rising threats against conservative colleagues after the leak). For an institution that prides itself on its confidentiality and insularity, the Court is looking increasingly porous and partisan in these leaks. Worse yet, people are indeed coming to the Court “to see the umpires.”

The most recent leak was published by the New York Times, which was given internal memos from various Supreme Court justices on the use of what is known as the “shadow docket” to issue rulings without oral arguments. Notably, the leaks occurred after a controversial speech by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson at Yale Law School in which she denounced the use of the shadow docket by her conservative colleagues to release decisions that were sometimes “utterly irrational.”

The memos reveal the concern of the justices that the Environmental Protection Agency was effectively gaming the system, imposing unlawful regulatory burdens on electric utilities despite a countervailing earlier ruling in Michigan v. EPA. Chief Justice Roberts noted that the EPA was using the ongoing litigation to force utilities to spend billions of dollars to comply with the new regulations: “In other words the absence of stay allowed the agency to effectively implement an important program we held to be contrary to law.”

The controversy over the use of the shadow docket is immaterial to this story. The most immediate concern for Roberts should be that this is strike two: another leak from within the Court that was clearly designed to wound some of its members. Unlike the Dobbs leak (which appeared to be an effort to influence the final opinion), this is a leak about a decade-old case. It had a purely malicious purpose to embarrass or disrupt the Court.

The question, again, is the identity of the culprit. There is no reason to assume that the same person was involved in both leaks. Rather, the leaks appear to reflect a deteriorating culture at the Court. After the Dobbs leak, Chief Justice Roberts launched a fruitless investigation through the federal marshals to find the responsible person. The use of the marshals as the lead investigators (rather than the FBI) was criticized at the time. Roberts may have been sensitive to an executive-branch agency rooting around in the highest court of a sister branch.The result was the worst possible outcome. The culprit succeeded in both leaking the opinion and evading any accountability.

The fact is that the Court’s culture and institutional identity have always been its greatest protection of confidentiality. In a city that floats on a rolling sea of leaks, the Court was an island of integrity and civility. The “umpires” could call balls and strikes without playing the leak game. That culture is fast becoming nothing but a relic in the wake of yet another major leak. For the future of the Court and the faith of the public, Roberts has to set his reservations aside and bring in the FBI to find the culprit. Most importantly, he has to guarantee total transparency in allowing the public to see the results wherever they may lead. In other words, with two strikes, Roberts needs to protect the plate.

Read more …

“This refers to revanchism, “which assumes that they now want to carry out that very revenge that will allow them to still win in this very division of the world, the redrawing of the world’s resources for themselves,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman added..”

• West Still Wants To Seize Ukrainian Black Soil, Russian Oil – Zakharova (TASS)

Western countries have not abandoned their plans to seize Ukrainian black soil and Russian oil, as well as divide the world to suit their own interests, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview with TASS for the Day of remembrance of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people, which will be held for the first time on April 19.m”No, they do not want to give up the idea of taking over the Ukrainian black soil, Russian oil and gas, at least managing them, and extending their influence to the resources of Central Asia, South Caucasus, and so on,” she said. This refers to revanchism, “which assumes that they now want to carry out that very revenge that will allow them to still win in this very division of the world, the redrawing of the world’s resources for themselves,” Zakharova added.
Read more …

“.. they embraced the business model of Howard Stern and Jerry Springer: saying and doing increasingly outrageous things.”

• Circling the Drain Phase of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens Gimmick (Pinsker)

First, the good news: We’ve juuuust about reached the point where we won’t have to talk about Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens anymore. They’ve unmasked themselves as lying, bigoted click-whores. Carlson’s career was longer; Owens’ was shorter. But for a brief, flickering moment in the 2010s, both were considered credible, trustworthy journalists and/or mainstream conservative “influencers.” Turning Pont USA and The Daily Wire boosted Owens; Carlson was the beneficiary of the (exceptionally) well-oiled NewsCorp PR machine. And then… they weren’t.


Conservative audiences are a fiercely loyal breed. We instinctively protect our favorites from the liberal mob — because history has taught us that they’re constantly under attack. That’s our muscle-memory: They smeared Rush Limbaugh. They smeared every other big-name Republican. They attack, demean, defame, and deplatform — and the only way to stop them is by fighting back. Rush Limbaugh still reigns supreme in conservative hearts. No man in the history of political media was slandered more viciously than El Rushbo. Not because he deserved it — but because liberals feared him.

That’s the tragedy of Carlson and Owens’ dark turn: Limbaugh dedicated his professional career to building goodwill between himself and conservative audiences. Time and again, that “harmless, lovable fuzzball” proved himself worthy of our love and respect. No matter how often the mainstream media called him a racist, a sexist, a Nazi, and a homophobe, we knew it wasn’t true. This became our template. It’s how we understood the host-audience relationship. So great was Limbaugh’s legacy that we assumed future hosts would be just as worthy — which meant, as long as we continued to have their back, conservatism, truth, and decency would prevail. It’s a symbiotic relationship: If we do our part, the host will surely do his.

Turns out the paradigm was wrong: Carlson and Owens were unworthy successors — and Rush Limbaugh’s genius was even rarer than we thought. Carlson and Owens traveled the road that Limbaugh paved. They benefited from all the trust and goodwill that he spent his entire career building. And then they destroyed the road.

Because, despite how easy Limbaugh made it look, talking about conservatism 24/7 for years at a time is VERY hard work. Even in the talk-radio medium, there’s absolutely no one else like Limbaugh — someone capable of carrying a three-hour show completely on his own, without guests, co-hosts, a “morning zoo,” or a whack-pack. (Heck, Rush barely even took phone calls!) Yet Limbaugh had the #1 show for decades… and it mostly consisted of him speaking extemporaneously about life, politics, news, and culture.

Of course, Rush had real, actual talent (“on loan from God!”). Lesser hosts must take shortcuts to retain an audience. Like, for instance, Sean Hannity: The veteran conservative still has a highly entertaining program when he’s interviewing someone interesting and compelling. And when he doesn’t, it’s not. There’s no shame in that. Limbaugh-level talents are extraordinarily rare; there almost certainly won’t be another one in our lifetime. (Or, probably, in our kid’s lifetime.) If anything, Hannity deserves credit for staying true to his values. Despite the pressures of fame and fortune, Hannity continues to provide conservative programming for conservative audiences — because conservatism is his north star.

Not so with Carlson and Owens. They abandoned conservatism when they became independent journalists. When they worked for conservative media outlets, they delivered a (mostly) conservative message. Then, when they lost their jobs and had to get clicks to make money, their content changed in a hurry. Instead of being like Limbaugh or Hannity, they embraced the business model of Howard Stern and Jerry Springer: saying and doing increasingly outrageous things. Such as global Jewish conspiracies. Or Mrs. Macron’s innie being an outie. Or Erika Kirk murdering her husband. Or Donald Trump being the Antichrist. Or Muslim extremists being peaceful friends of Christians.

Initially, it was important for conservative media to call out the bait-and-switch, because Limbaugh’s legacy loomed so large, we instinctively gave Owens and Carlson the benefit of the doubt — over and over (and over) again. In fact, the more they were attacked, the more we yearned to protect them! After all, Rush Limbaugh never broke our hearts — so why would his successors? It was a dangerous time for the conservative movement, because Carlson and Owens were mainstreaming antisemitism, crazy conspiracy theories, and historical inaccuracies. Tainting MAGA with their nonsense would’ve been electoral poison. We still considered Owens and Carlson conservatives first — and influencers second. (Just like you-know-who.)

Alas, the trouble with the shock-jock strategy is that it depends on escalation: What shocked us yesterday is old news today. Once you begin circling the drain, you’ve got to circle faster and faster — or the novelty wears off. And eventually, you still go down the drain.

Read more …

Didn’t she retire?

• Marjorie Taylor Greene Amplifies Viral Doubts About Butler (ZH)

Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn attention to a detailed personal account from a longtime Trump supporter who now questions key elements of the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In an April 12 post on X, Trisha Hope, a self-described J6 activist and 2024 Republican National Convention delegate from Texas, details how she shifted from staunch MAGA supporter to skeptic – writing “I learned of the attempt on Trump’s life at the Butler rally. I was in the middle of having dinner at a restaurant in Little Rock, AR.”


Then, at the convention, she thought it was strange that Trump opened his speech by saying he would recount the incident “exactly” once because “it’s actually too painful to tell,” which she found out of character for someone who makes everything about himself. Hope also thought that the ‘ICONIC’ photograph of Trump rising with fist raised, shouting “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT” was weird and “perfectly timed” with a flag lowering and Secret Service agents positioned as if for a staged shot.

“Following the inauguration, I found it odd that Trump wasn’t going aggressively after those who allowed this to happen. He seemed to behave like it was no big deal,” she writes, adding that Trump later promoted Sean Curran – the agent visible in the white shirt in that photo – to head of the Secret Service on January 22, 2025, rather than dismissing anyone for security failures. She also questions Trump’s limited subsequent references to the event, except to say he “took a bullet for us,” and argues that Corey Comperatore’s death was necessary to make the incident believable, while his widow has been denied ongoing answers. Hope concludes by urging readers to apply “critical thinking skills” and have “at least some questions.”

“Instead of his SS detail being terminated as they should have been, Trump made the gentleman in the white shirt the HEAD of the Secret Service on January 22, 2025. Instead of losing his job Sean Curran was given a massive promotion,” she said.

Greene – a former MAGA loyalist whose split with the party over the Epstein files, airstrikes on Iran, Trump’s continued support for Israel and the Gaza conflict, and US involvement in Ukraine – led to her November 2025 resignation from Congress, amplified the post six days later. “Extremely important post worth the read and consideration. Corey Comperatore’s family deserves to know the truth about Matthew Crooks and what happened in Butler on July 13, 2024,” Greene wrote. “President Trump, of all people, should be leading the charge. Why isn’t he? That’s the question.” https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/2045528340602269713

The Official Story
According to the FBI, congressional investigations, and law enforcement accounts, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, acted alone when he fired eight rounds from an AR-15-style rifle from the roof of a building near the Butler Farm Show grounds. The shots grazed Trump’s right ear, killed 50-year-old volunteer firefighter and former fire chief Corey Comperatore (who was shielding his family), and critically injured two other attendees, David Dutch and James Copenhaver. A Butler County Emergency Services Unit officer and a Secret Service counter-sniper returned fire; Crooks was killed on the roof. The FBI has stated after extensive interviews and analysis that Crooks acted alone, though questions about his motive have persisted. Security lapses were acknowledged, including how Crooks was able to access the rooftop despite local police spotting him earlier, but the incident was classified as a genuine assassination attempt.

The Official Doubt
A growing number of voices – particularly from within former Trump-supporting circles – aren’t buying it – arguing that the iconic photograph appeared too perfectly composed to be spontaneous, with the flag lowering in sync, agents seemingly posing, and Trump allowed to stand exposed on stage for the image. Some note Trump’s RNC remarks as unusually curt, suggesting an intent to shut down further discussion rather than capitalize on the drama. Critics highlight the promotion of a Secret Service agent involved in the detail instead of widespread firings or accountability, and Trump’s relative silence on the matter afterward beyond occasional references to “taking a bullet.”

Skeptics also note several early security lapses and immediate post-incident actions as further reason to question the official timeline. Video and photographs show FBI investigators hosing down the rooftop where Crooks was killed the day after the shooting, arguing the scene was cleaned too quickly and that biological evidence was potentially lost.

Then there’s police radio chatter that captured officers spotting Crooks, losing sight of him, and struggling to clearly relay the escalating threat between local law enforcement and the Secret Service – communications that were later explained as coordination failures but struck many as highly unusual. Multiple confirmed reports show Crooks was identified as suspicious, photographed with a rangefinder roughly 90 minutes before the shooting, and was spotted on the roof by Secret Service snipers about 20 minutes before he fired – details critics say should have prompted immediate action to remove Trump from the stage or secure the building.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/AlexAndBooks_/status/2045497400416969022?s=20 https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/2045676255077433779?s=20 https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/2045735203260207306?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 10 2026

Apr 102026
 
 April 10, 2026  Posted by at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  65 Responses »


Jules Adolphe Breton The Song of the Lark 1884


• Whatever’s Happening in Iran and the Middle East, It Isn’t a ‘Ceasefire’ (Moran)
• Israeli MPs Furious Over Trump’s Ceasefire With Iran (RT)
• Before Donald Trump Ran Up His White Flag, Here Are The Reasons He Did So (Helmer)
• JD Vance: EU in Hungary “Worst Ever Foreign Election Interference” (RMX)
• Appeals Court Allows Pentagon To Call Anthropic A Supply-Chain Risk (ZH)
• Is Anthropic’s ‘Mythos’ a ‘Generational Leap’ Beyond Other AI Models (Moran)
• US Moves Closer To Automated Military Draft (RT)
• A Billion-Dollar Mirage: Do Ukraine’s New Missiles Match The Hype? (Kornev)
• Serious Questions about Our “Democracy” (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Doolittle Question, The Do-Nothing Answer (Helmer)
• Panicans and Division (CTH)
• WSJ: Greece on The List of NATO Countries That Trump Will Reward (KTG)

 


 

https://twitter.com/xMarketNews/status/2041908107916218822?s=20 https://twitter.com/_Postive_Vibes/status/2041916296611438958?s=20

 


 


It starts today, guys, not Wednesday or Thursday. The ceasefire comes with the meeting.

“Trump had accepted a secret ten-point plan that the administration felt necessary to keep under wraps.”

• Whatever’s Happening in Iran and the Middle East, It Isn’t a ‘Ceasefire’ (Moran)

How confusing is this “ceasefire” between the U.S. and Iran currently in effect, supposedly for the next two weeks, and why is everyone still shooting at one another? “Well, there is a ceasefire. Or perhaps not,” writes old Middle East hand Elliot Abrams in The Free Press. “It includes Lebanon. Or it doesn’t. Iran’s 10-point plan is an acceptable working document for the United States. Or it isn’t the one U.S. negotiators saw. The Strait of Hormuz will be open. Or passage requires Iranian approval and a toll,” he observes.


Donald Trump agreed to stop attacking Iran, and Iran agreed to stop attacking Israel and its Gulf neighbors and open the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has kept up his end of the deal. Iran has not, but the U.S. is pretending Iran is in compliance. When Saudi Arabia complained that a refinery had been targeted by Iranian drones, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said simply that “troops out in remote locations” who didn’t know about the ceasefire yet were responsible.

The confusion over Lebanon is partly Israel’s fault, given that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims he never agreed to a cease-fire for Lebanon. Iran never claimed during negotiations that Lebanon would be included in any ceasefire deal, either. Now they say it is and won’t attend the Friday negotiating session unless Israel agrees. Trump stated that Iran’s ten-point plan “is a workable basis on which to negotiate,” only to have his press secretary Karoline Leavitt claim in a Wednesday press conference that Iran’s plan “was fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded,” and that Trump had accepted a secret ten-point plan that the administration felt necessary to keep under wraps.

And the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. It never opened. If anything, Iran has dug in its heels on the concept that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controls access to the Strait and is entitled to charge tolls for ships that wish to pass. Lloyd’s List, a shipping industry journal, reported Wednesday afternoon that only three ships had transited Hormuz since the ceasefire. The Free Press: An accounting of gains and losses for the United States is therefore temporary and incomplete. If the ceasefire really breaks down (for instance, because Iran insists that Israel stop responding to Hezbollah attacks, which Israel will not do) the president will have to do something more than the air attacks of last week.

That will mean a broader bombing campaign which, though it will not destroy Iranian civilization, will destroy a number of bridges and power plants. That should not be surprising or unacceptable, because Iran spent the first hours after the ceasefire announcement attacking power and desalination plants and oil sites in the Arab Gulf countries. Or, Trump might decide the time has come to seize some islands in the Gulf. This would all be unwelcome for Trump, who wants the war over, the stock market up, and oil prices steadily (if slowly) descending. He will only do it if the Iranian regime leaves him no other choice.

As badly as Trump wants the war to be over, he can’t end it as it currently stands. Abrams believes that “at the end of two weeks allotted for negotiations, two more weeks will be allotted, and then two more.” I don’t think Trump will string these ceasefire talks out for very long. Donald Trump is going to go big before he goes home. What that means is anyone’s guess, but it certainly won’t be good for Iran. The religious fanatics who were previously in charge have been replaced by Iranian nationalist fanatics in the IRGC. This is not “regime change.” The IRGC fanatics running Iran were responsible for the 35,000 Iranian protesters gunned down in the streets.

Add to that the fact that Iranian communications have been smashed, and a paranoia approaching hysteria, never seen in a modern state, afflicts the current leaders in Iran, and we’re a long way from any real “ceasefire.” I think we can expect another round of fighting with both Israel and the U.S. upping the ante in Lebanon and on Iranian infrastructure.

Read more …

So there’s no ceasefire, but they’re furious about the ceasefire.

“They have described the development as a “political disaster” and PM Netayahu’s worst strategic failure ..”

• Israeli MPs Furious Over Trump’s Ceasefire With Iran (RT)

A ceasefire deal struck by Washington and Tehran is a “disaster” and “failure,” several prominent Israeli politicians have said. Israel was left out of the equation, they argued, calling it a strategic mistake on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. US President Donald Trump announced a two-week pause to the US-Israeli war on Iran to negotiate a long-term solution to the conflict on the basis of a 10-point plan put forward by Tehran. It reportedly includes Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of its uranium enrichment, the lifting of sanctions, and the cessation of war on all fronts, including Israeli attacks on Lebanon.


Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday it “supports” Trump’s decision while maintaining that Israel would continue its military campaign against the Iran-linked Hezbollah group in neighboring Lebanon. “There has never been such a political disaster in all of our history. Israel wasn’t even at the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security,” said Yair Lapid, parliamentary opposition leader and the head of the centrist Yesh Atid party.

“Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically, and didn’t meet a single one of the goals that he himself set,” the lawmaker said in a post on X. Former Deputy Economic Minister Yair Golan, who leads the Democrats party, also branded the development a “total failure” in a social media post, adding that Iran emerged from the conflict stronger than before. MP Avigdor Liberman, the head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, also claimed that peace with Iran under the conditions listed in its plan would only lead to another conflict later.

The US and Israel launched an unprovoked bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in late February, openly stating they were seeking regime change and an end to Iran’s nuclear program. The conflict killed thousands and caused unprecedented disruption to global energy supplies, mainly due to Tehran’s effective closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

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Some people like to think the US lost to Iran.

• Before Donald Trump Ran Up His White Flag, Here Are The Reasons He Did So (Helmer)

President Donald Trump has been defeated on the battlefield near Isfahan over the weekend. He was then defeated on the morning of Tuesday in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in his attempt, manipulating Bahrain, to legalize the use of force against Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.


Finally, minutes short of his announced genocide deadline “before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” and “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, Trump bit his tongue on his threat: “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Instead, Trump announced that as a favour to his Pakistan ally, Asim Munir, “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East. We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America, as President, and also representing the Countries of the Middle East, it is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution.”

The official statement, issued in Teheran by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said that Iran is “considering announcement by POTUS about acceptance of the general framework of Iran’s 10-point proposal as a basis for negotiations”. The Iranian agreement, Araghchi went on, then preserved the new regime for the Strait “via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations.”

Trump and his tweet supervisor, Stephen Miller, then swallowed their tongue by tweeting the text of Araghchi’s tweet. Exact and official wording of Iran’s 10-point proposal is not published. However, this summary published by the Tasnim News Agency, a platform of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), comes close. The IRGC has added the interpretation: “By accepting these conditions as the basis for negotiations, Trump has retreated from his desperate threats and bluffs.”

Humiliation reversed. CIA Director John Ratcliffe and War Secretary Peter Hegseth had repeatedly declared in their April 6 press conference, celebrating the weekend pilot rescue, that the Iranians had been “embarrassed and, ultimately, humiliated by the success of this audacious rescue mission”, and “Iran’s military, and we know this, is embarrassed and humiliated, and they should be”. With Benjamin Netanyahu by his side, Trump had declared last December: “Iran has been greatly reduced in power, prestige. I don’t want to use the word humiliation because, you know, they’re trying to build up again.”

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This could lead to a bitter fight between Trump and the EU.

• JD Vance: EU in Hungary “Worst Ever Foreign Election Interference” (RMX)

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance used a high-profile appearance in Budapest alongside Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to accuse Brussels of carrying out “one of the worst examples of foreign and election interference” he had ever seen, claiming EU officials had targeted Hungary because they “hate this guy” and want to weaken his government ahead of the country’s election.


Speaking at a joint press conference in the Hungarian capital on Tuesday, Vance said the “bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary,” had sought to make the country less energy independent, and had “tried to drive up costs for Hungarian consumers.”“They’ve done it all because they hate this guy,” he added, pointing at Orbán.

The U.S. vice president cast the vote as a test of national sovereignty and told Hungarian voters to ask not who was pro-Europe or pro-America, but “who is pro-you” and “who is pro the people of Hungary.” He caveated his address by insisting he was not telling Hungarians how to vote, and urged the “bureaucrats in Brussels to do the exact same thing.”

Meanwhile, Orbán hailed a new “golden era” in ties with Washington under President Donald Trump and said the return of Trump had transformed bilateral relations after years without a visit by such a senior American official. He said 2025 had been a record year for economic cooperation and that 2026 was already bringing further momentum, pointing to expanded collaboration in defense and space technology as well as new U.S. investment.

Both men used the press conference to present Hungary and the Trump administration as ideological allies. Orbán said the two sides were in constant contact on migration, “gender ideology,” family policy, and global security, while Vance said the partnership was rooted not primarily in economics but in “moral cooperation.”

“What the United States and Hungary together represent under Viktor’s leadership and under President Trump’s leadership is the defense of Western civilization,” Vance said. He said that meant defending the idea that children should be educated “and not indoctrinated,” that families should be able to afford their energy bills, and that the West remained grounded in “Christian civilization and Christian values.”

The vice president also praised Orbán’s handling of energy policy, saying the Hungarian leader had been “the single most profound leader in Europe on the question of inter energy security and independence.” He argued that other European governments were now paying the price for failing to follow a similar path, saying Hungary’s energy price pressures were still less severe than those seen in much of the rest of Europe.

Both leaders argued that Trump’s return to power had strengthened the cause of peace in Ukraine. Orbán said Hungary had lived “in the shadows of a war for four years now” and repeated his long-held claim that the conflict would never have begun had Trump been in office in 2022. He also accused Brussels of obstructing peace efforts, saying that if European leaders had not been “blocking the peace efforts of the president, peace would prevail” in Ukraine already.

The Hungarian prime minister also used the appearance to accuse Ukraine of taking steps designed to damage Hungary before the election. He said Kyiv had earlier blocked a gas pipeline route and had now also blockaded an oil pipeline that he described as “the umbilical cord of the Hungarian economy.” Orbán said Hungary had been forced to tap its reserves, but insisted he had a plan to force Ukraine to reopen the route after the election.

“We have to force the Ukrainians to reopen the pipeline, and we have a plan to do that,” Orbán said. “After the national forces win the election here in Hungary … there will be no option left for the Ukrainians than to lift this blockade.”

Vance echoed that confrontational line, saying there were “elements within the Ukrainian intelligence services” that had tried to “put their thumb on the scale of American elections” and Hungarian elections too. He said that behavior was “just what they do,” though he added that Ukraine, like the United States, contained both “good people and bad people.” At another point, Vance was asked whether the United States would work with a different Hungarian leader if Orbán were defeated. He replied that Washington would work with whoever won because it loved “the people of Hungary,” but immediately added: “Viktor Orban is going to win the next election in Hungary.”

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1) How do we know the court knows enough about AI?

2) Are all other Ai models also supply-chain risks?

• Appeals Court Allows Pentagon To Call Anthropic A Supply-Chain Risk (ZH)

In a significant development for the intersection of artificial intelligence policy and national security, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled on April 8 that the Department of War may designate Anthropic as a supply-chain risk while a full judicial review plays out. The decision came after the AI company sought an emergency stay to block the controversial designation.


The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that Anthropic “has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review,” allowing the blacklist to remain in effect for now. This ruling directly conflicts with a temporary injunction issued last month by a federal district court in California, which had paused the designation during ongoing litigation.

The designation, authorized under federal laws intended to shield military and government systems from supply-chain vulnerabilities and foreign sabotage, functions as an effective blacklist. It prohibits Anthropic from conducting business with the federal government or its contractors and directs federal agencies, contractors, and suppliers to terminate existing ties with the company.

The move originated after Anthropic declined a Department of War request to alter the user policies and safety guardrails of its flagship AI model, Claude. The company refused to remove restrictions that prevent the AI from being used for mass surveillance or the development and operation of fully autonomous weapons systems. Anthropic has emphasized its commitment to “constitutional AI” principles and responsible deployment, arguing that such guardrails are essential to ethical AI use.

The Pentagon has stated publicly that it does not intend to employ Claude for those specific purposes, but it has insisted on the flexibility to use the technology for all lawful military applications. President Donald Trump weighed in on social media earlier, accusing Anthropic of trying to “strong-arm” the federal government by using its AI policies to dictate military decisions.

Late on April 8, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche celebrated the appeals court decision on X (formerly Twitter), describing it as “a resounding victory for military readiness.” He added: “Our military needs full access to Anthropic’s models if its technology is integrated into our sensitive systems.”

Anthropic, a prominent AI firm founded by former OpenAI executives and backed by major investors including Amazon and Google, has positioned itself as a leader in safe and reliable AI development. Its Claude models are widely used in enterprise, research, and creative applications precisely because of their built-in safeguards.

The case is believed to mark the first time such a supply-chain risk designation — typically reserved for foreign entities posing security threats — has been applied to a major U.S.-based AI company. It underscores deepening tensions between commercial AI developers’ emphasis on ethical guardrails and the government’s push for unfettered access to advanced technology for defense purposes.

Litigation continues in both the California district court and the D.C. Circuit, and further updates are expected as the conflicting rulings are reconciled.

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The government says so, but really, honestly, what do they know?

.. “superintelligence” is nearly upon us, and the effect will be “so mind-bending, so disruptive” on society that America needs a “new social contract”

• Is Anthropic’s ‘Mythos’ a ‘Generational Leap’ Beyond Other AI Models (Moran)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is doing something no Big Tech owner has ever done: “He’s publishing a detailed blueprint for how government should tax, regulate and redistribute the wealth from the very technology he’s racing to build and spread,” according to Axios. The reason is a little unsettling: “superintelligence” is nearly upon us, and the effect will be “so mind-bending, so disruptive” on society that America needs a “new social contract” on the order of the Progressive Era of the turn of the 20th century or the New Deal.


AI companies know some random idiot, or some rogue nation, could use their models to conjure the next pandemic. “Wonderful things are going to happen there — we’ll see a bunch of diseases get cured,” Altman said. But he also knows terrorist groups could use the models to try to create novel pathogens: “[T]hat’s no longer a theoretical thing, or it’s not going to be for much longer.” Anthropic has just given its “Mythos” AI model a limited release. Why limited? Both the industry and the government believe that Mythos is an AI capable of “not just identifying weaknesses in security systems, but exploiting them with autonomous, never-before-seen precision,” reports Axios.

The darn thing accidentally escaped the confines of its “sandbox” and strolled through several systems after building a “moderately sophisticated multi-step exploit” to give it the run of the internet. The model demonstrated a “potentially dangerous capability for circumventing our safeguards,” Anthropic revealed. “The researcher found out about this success by receiving an unexpected email from the model while eating a sandwich in a park.” Yikes.

Anthropic’s Logan Graham — a former Rhodes Scholar who leads the Frontier Red Team, which stress-tests new models — told us the industry needs to rethink future releases of all AI models, given the new and coming capabilities. So imagine Mythos-level power in the hands of the Iranian regime in the middle of a hot war or Russia’s military as it tries to decimate Ukraine. That’s the chief reason the government and AI companies are racing so fast toward a technology so powerful and potentially dangerous. These officials fear that China, armed with superior AI, could present an existential threat to U.S. dominance.

“An enemy could reach out and touch us in a way they can’t or won’t with kinetic [battlefield] operations,” a source close to the Pentagon told us. “For most Americans, the Iran war is ‘over there.’ With a cyberattack, it’s right here.” “Secrets” in business or government are fleeting, and for the right price, someone, somewhere might be tempted to sell AI secrets to bad actors. Or more likely, those bad actors would create their own AI nightmares, given the state of the tech and the abilities of the Chinese and the Russians.

The controlled release of Mythos could be the blueprint for future model releases, with AI companies doling out access to select partners that have enough security to test world-bending systems. Other AI companies will soon catch up to Mythos — not just here, but in China and elsewhere. A Chinese state-sponsored group already used an earlier Claude model to target roughly 30 organizations in a coordinated attack before Anthropic detected it.

The time is fast approaching for all of corporate America and all of government to be prepared to guard against hackers with superhuman powers. The window to get ahead of this is closing fast. Most in power aren’t remotely ready.This doesn’t sound like AI hype to me. This isn’t Sam Altman bragging about his latest ChatGPT release. This is crunch time. We’re now in a genuine arms race where keeping ahead of China and Russia is a matter of the highest national security and, potentially, of national survival.

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Don’t think everyone’s ready. Three quarters are too heavy, and that’s just one example.

• US Moves Closer To Automated Military Draft (RT)

Plans for automated military conscription during a US national emergency are advancing and on schedule to be in place by the end of the year, according to the federal agency tasked with maintaining the list, the Selective Service System (SSS). Provisions included in the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act passed last December in response to falling compliance shifted the responsibility from individuals to the SSS. The changes drew renewed attention this week after media outlets highlighted a recent update on the agency’s website. The SSS is expected to finalize implementation by December 2026, aiming for a “streamlined registration process and corresponding workforce realignment.”


Currently, most adult males under the age of 26 living in the US – including undocumented immigrants – are required to register for potential conscription. The millions who fail to do so can face penalties of up to $250,000 in fines, five years in prison, and restrictions on obtaining citizenship. Under the new system, the SSS would instead build its registry using personal data from multiple government databases.The US military has relied on an all-volunteer force since the early 1970s. President Richard Nixon ran for office in 1968 on a pledge to end mandatory conscription, viewing it as a key source of public resentment towards the Vietnam War. Although draft registration was halted in 1975, it resumed in 1980 following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

In recent years, the Pentagon has faced mounting challenges in both recruiting volunteers and maintaining the national draft list. Standards for enlistment have been lowered to address recruitment shortfalls, while the shift to automatic registration is intended to boost the pool for possible conscription.

Several anti-war organizations have urged Congress to reconsider the change. They argue the system “won’t produce an accurate or complete list of potential draftees,” but at the same time “will increase the likelihood of war and violate the privacy of US citizens and residents.” Critics believe that the aggregated database will be “vulnerable to misuse and weaponization” by both government entities and private actors.

There are broader efforts across Western countries to prepare for possible large-scale military conflicts, including by tightening conscription policies. In Germany, for example, new rules quietly introduced in January require men of fighting age to obtain permission before staying abroad for more than three months, reportedly catching many by surprise.

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The EU is building a deadly industry.

Backed by nearly $1 billion in contracts, Fire Point has risen on bold claims of deep strikes inside Russia. But how real is its success?

• A Billion-Dollar Mirage: Do Ukraine’s New Missiles Match The Hype? (Kornev)

In less than two years, a little-known Ukrainian startup has secured nearly $1 billion in state contracts, built one of the country’s most ambitious missile programs – and drawn the attention of anti-corruption investigators. A February article by Deutsche Welle and subsequent interviews with co-founder Denis Shtilerman have helped propel Fire Point into the European media spotlight, with bold claims about long-range strike capabilities deep inside Russia. But beyond the publicity, evidence of real-world effectiveness remains limited. What, then, can these missiles actually do – and how serious a threat do they represent?


Fire Point: Sudden success
In 2025, Fire Point rapidly emerged as a leading name in Ukrainian missile manufacturing. Today, it stands out as one of the most dynamic yet secretive defense startups in Ukraine, specializing in the production of long-range drones and missiles. Initially, the company developed only cruise missiles, but now it also designs ballistic missilesReports suggest that the startup launched with $1.5-$2 million invested by the founders themselves. However, in 2024-2025, the company secured government contracts worth approximately $1 billion, which is truly remarkable. Perhaps the answer to this mystery lies in the backgrounds of the founders?

At the helm of the company is Denis Shtilerman, the chief designer, founder, and majority owner (with a 97.5% share) of FP. He describes himself as a wealthy individual unafraid to invest his own money into the project. The co-founder is Yegor Skalyga (2.5% share) who previously headed a film industry company, suggesting ties to Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and his Studio Kvartal 95. Irina Terekh, the technical director and co-owner of FP, joined the team in 2023. And lastly, there is… former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who joined the advisory board in November 2025. Now that’s a smart move, considering the current situation in Ukraine.

High-ranking Ukrainian officials have actively promoted the company’s products. Zelensky referred to the FP-5 Flamingo as the “most successful” missile in Ukraine’s arsenal. The company also reportedly has ties to the former head of Zelensky’s office, Andrey Yermak. This is quite possible, since Fire Point has become the largest recipient of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s budget allocations for the construction of drones. Shtilerman attributes this to the fact that some state enterprises maintain secret ties with Russia, which is unacceptable at this time.

However, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) may have a different opinion about the company’s success. NABU has launched an investigation on several fronts: firstly, it is investigating possible price inflation for components used in FP-1 drones; secondly, NABU is examining the company’s connections with Timur Mindich and potential corruption schemes related to procurement through government structures. Amid these scandals, the appointment of Mike Pompeo to the advisory board has been viewed by many analysts as an attempt by FP to bolster its reputation and shield itself from corruption allegations.

Pink Flamingo
FP indeed emerged out of nowhere and quickly became a leader in Ukraine’s drone and missile manufacturing sector. It specializes in the development and mass production of long-range FP-1 and FP-2 strike drones, as well as the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. By 2025, its workforce expanded to 3,500 employees, including 650 engineers, with production facilities covering 175,000 square meters across several secret locations.

The company’s most notable product so far is the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile powered by a AI-25TL turbofan engine. It is reported that the company has been gathering these engines from decommissioned training aircraft all over Eastern Europe. The missile is marketed as a long-range weapon designed for deep strikes. In size, it surpasses its Western counterparts like the Tomahawk or Storm Shadow missiles. Its flight range is up to 3,000 kilometers, and the warhead weighs 1,000-1,150 kilograms (with about 600 kilograms allocated for explosives).

The missile travels at speeds of 850-900 km/h and has a launch weight of approximately 6,000 kg. The fuselage length is about 12 meters and the wingspan is six meters. Equipped with a relatively modern guidance system – a combination of an inertial navigation system and a jamming-resistant satellite navigation system – it boasts a reported accuracy of approximately 15 meters from the intended target. However, confirming these specifications in real-world conditions has proven challenging – it is unclear how many of the missiles have been launched and how many have failed during testing.

Fire Point had ambitious plans to ramp up production to 200 missiles per month by 2026, but apparently, these are still distant prospects. To create an illusion of ongoing missile production, news reports occasionally surface about the deployment of these missiles, often accompanied by video footage. It seems the company has allocated funds for PR, as multiple stories about FP have appeared in leading Western media outlets within the past month.

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First counter all the lies that have been told about Trump the past ten years.

It’s a miracle he survived, and that our democracy did.

• Serious Questions about Our “Democracy” (Paul Craig Roberts)

Democracy is valued because it is believed to be a means of holding government accountable. To succeed in holding government accountable, it is necessary to know what government is doing and why. Traditionally, opposition political parties and objective media were means for bringing out the truth. In our time political parties fight over power, not over principles. They hide their agendas behind false narratives that media supports rather than exposes. Consider this week’s major event: The alleged rescue operation of a US pilot downed in Iran.


Last Monday for a couple of hours we had the President of the United States, the Director of the CIA, the Secretary of War, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stand before media and TV audience and lie through their teeth by covering up a failed military attack on an Iranian nuclear facility by presenting it as a successful rescue mission of a downed pilot.

The story made no sense and was obviously false. According to President Trump “hundreds” of US military personnel and several aircraft were involved. Navy and Army special forces teams and cargo planes carrying helicopters are not the way pilots are rescued. Such a highly visible operation calls attention to the venture and defeats it. Ask anyone in the know. The Iranians have the documents of Major Ryder that prove the alleged “rescue” was a military operation.

Have you heard anything in the media about Major Ryder? Have you seen or heard the names of the two rescued pilots? Rather than admit to a failed military operation against Iran, the Trump regime substituted a heroic story of the rescue of a brave airman. The first rescued airman was rescued without hundreds of special forces and the lost of a number of US aircraft.

When governments, politicians, and media have no respect for truth there can be no accountability. Just think of all the lies we have been told by governments over the years, lies largely unchallenged by media: President Kennedy was killed by Oswald; Robert Kennedy was killed by Sirhan Sirhan; The US was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnam; 9/11 was the work of Osama bin Laden; Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction; Assad used chemical weapons; Palestinians are terrorists; Iranians are terrorists; Iran is making nuclear weapons. These and many other lies are transparently false but are treated as historical truths. Somehow Americans can believe on one hand that the US has the most powerful military in the world and that the CIA can locate a downed pilot in a cave in an Iranian mountain, and on the other hand that a few Saudi Arabians can defeat US airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning, hijack four US airliners and fly two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and crash one in Pennsylvania, and the powerful American military and hyper-competent CIA are helpless bystanders.

When truth is not respected no principles are. Democracy requires transparency and respect for truth. Just as the Trump regime has lied about recent events in Iran, the Biden regime turned January 6 protesters into “insurrectionists” and imprisoned them, and Democrat prosecutors brought false civil and criminal indictments against President Trump. This is not a portrait of democracy.

It is democracies, not kingdoms and dictatorships, that are characterized by endless fights for power. In fights for power, truth is always the casualty. It is easy to conclude that truth can be less secure in a democracy than in a kingdom.

Democracy has other overwhelming disadvantages that eventually ensure its failure. If a democracy is to have a long life, the franchise must be limited, as America’s Founding Fathers limited it, to male property owners who are more prone to reason than emotion and who have a personal stake in the system. But as time passes and the franchise is expanded there come into existence people whose only stake in the system is their ability to vote away the income and wealth of those who comprised the original franchise. In America today we have a discriminatory income tax that takes more from higher incomes than from lower. We have a property tax that forces property owners to pay for the education of other people’s children including those of illegal aliens whose illegal presence is subsidized by US citizens..

We have inheritance taxes that confiscate 50% of the accumulations of successful people upon their death. Inheritance taxation also forces families that have built successful businesses to sell the business or take it public in order to pay the inheritance tax. In other words, democracies become theft mechanisms. This is the case in every existing democracy in the world today.

All democracies become riddled with faction, and unity disappears. When democracies not only permit but encourage themselves to be overrun by immigrant-invaders, they degenerate into Towers of Babel. The weakening of principle erodes law and respect for moral standards, and sexual and criminal perversities flourish. Democracy requires a great deal of maintenance that is not provided. Consequently, like an unmaintained engine democracy fails.

The most powerful proof of the failure of American democracy is that in the 21st century America’s most important and most costly decisions have been made by Israel. The “war on terror” was the Israel Lobby’s disguise for Israel’s use of American blood and money to eliminate obstacles to Greater Israel, such as Iraq, Libya, and Syria. America’s war with Iran, from which Trump is trying to extricate himself by declaring victory, is the consequence of Israel’s hold over America. The war is not the result of the will of the people who overwhelmingly oppose the war, or of a declaration of war by Congress, or of an Iranian threat to the United States. The war is the result of a decision Netanyahu made for Trump. Clearly, America is no democracy when Netanyahu can send America to war for Greater Israel.

As the US government itself does not have control over its own foreign policy, in no sense can the American people hold “their” government accountable to their will. If America is to rebuild its democracy, America must begin by establishing its independence from Israel.

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“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”

Why can’t a Russian be more like an Iranian?

• The Doolittle Question, The Do-Nothing Answer (Helmer)

Professor Higgins’s question to Colonel Pickering about Eliza Doolittle in the line from the musical, My Fair Lady, was: Why can’t a woman be more like a man? In Moscow, where the course of the Iran war is having a profound impact on military, intelligence, Foreign Ministry, and Kremlin officials, almost nothing can be said in public. Not even the question they are asking each other downwards and sideways, not upwards: Why can’t a Russian be more like an Iranian?


The difficulty of answering is not because it is against the law to criticize the Russian Army’s performance in the present Special Military Operation (aka war), according to the interpretation of the local United Russia party commissar, his chief in the Kremlin, Alexei Gromov, or his chief, President Vladimir Putin.

It is not because of a lack of confidence in what Putin is deciding as commander in chief. The President reveals himself in his private conversations; their substance is not a secret for a great many in a position to know. In the telephone call with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban — according to the authenticated transcript of their conversation of last October 17 – Putin said he believed Trump was not at war, not even in a special military operation, in the Middle East – not in Gaza and Lebanon from 2023, not in Iran in June 2025. Putin also made clear then that he doesn’t think Trump is at war with Russia, and that on the Ukrainian battlefield, Trump’s “tank” is fully functional, moving “forward”, not backward.

“Donald,” Putin told Orban, “has a surprising ability to deal with various crises, such as the regulation of the Middle East and, most recently, the Gaza region, and I hope that there will also be a satisfactory solution to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict.” Orban replied: “To be honest, I was also very surprised. I’ve known Donald for a long time, he’s not an ordinary person [both laugh]. His working method leaves no questions unresolved, I watch with admiration how successful he is. His business style, which is like a tornado, brings results.”

“Putin: As they say, he is moving forward like a tank. It worked for him, and we can only be happy about that. Prior to the meeting in Anchorage, the US side formulated the general principles of possible regulation, and I believe that these will be discussed again in the discussions. We have already talked about this in Anchorage, and there will probably be something to discuss in Budapest as well.” Putin may have been using Orban to ingratiate himself with Trump in the preliminaries for the Budapest summit meeting, but it didn’t help and the summit failed to materialize. The reasons, Russian reasons first, American second, can be followed here and here and here.

What the newly disclosed transcript shows – just as other transcripts of Putin’s private conversations with US leaders reveal – is that Putin is not aiming to fight or deter Trump; that Russia is not at war with the US (and its allies); and that Putin believes that money can be paid in sufficiently large amounts (billions of dollars more for Trump than for his White House predecessors), so that Russia’s national interests will be served. That conviction is one of the three“understandings” — Putin insists as do his subordinates — which were reached at the Anchorage summit meeting with Trump on August 8, 2025.

Putin’s Anchorage reference to Orban is to the “Anchorage Understandings”. The second of these was Putin’s belief that Trump will concede Russia’s dominance of the Ukraine in exchange for Trump’s dominance of the Americas – from Greenland through Canada to Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Exactly what (whether) Trump conceded Russian dominance of the entire NATO eastern front from Poland, the Baltic Sea, to Finland was left unclear at the time. Exactly what (whether) Putin conceded US dominance of China, North Korea, and Iran with Greater Israel was also left unclear.

The third of the “understandings” was that bribes agreed by the two presidents’ bagmen will be honoured by the presidents on receipt. Who in Moscow shall count the sums in exchange and the interests served? That’s the Russian oligarchs. The President’s confidant, negotiator with Trump, spokesman for the Anchorage understandings, signatory of the bribe payments, and chief representative for the Russian oligarchs – this is Kirill Dmitriev. He writes and publishes tweets several times each day because he wants to be heard. It is therefore his determined silence on every aspect of Trump’s attempted genocide against Iran, and his near-completed one against the Arabs of Palestine and Lebanon, which speaks loudest.

The Iranians do not misinterpret that silence. Nor the Chinese nor the Cubans. To understand what the Russians who count understand at present of Russian conduct of operations on the Ukrainian battlefield, the Iranian battlefield, and the Cuban battlefield, it is necessary to read between the lines of what is said in public by the officials, including Putin; and to ask questions in private of those in a position to know enough to piece the answer to the big question. Right now that’s the Doolittle Question.

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Sundance still has the faith.

“Trust God, and pray for President Trump.”

• Panicans and Division (CTH)

Back in 2015/2016 The Salem Media Group, like -the whole crew- the Evangelical right per se’, was essentially against Donald Trump a republican candidate. Trump wasn’t religious enough, and Salem was/is VERY pro-Israel. A very strong evangelical tribe. Salem Media Inc supported Ted Cruz (mostly), they also really liked Scott Walker (and similar). Milquetoast varieties of Republican. You know the sort. {2015 citation} Breitbart (Robert and Rebekah Mercer) and the strong pro-Israel group (Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, etc.) also supported Ted Cruz (Jeff Roe and company). Almost no one directly supported Trump. You know that, and you know the outcome of it.


That environment led to tons of eventual jump-overs, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, etc. when Trump became the “presumptive” nominee. Hey, they go where the $$ flows. Then Mark Levin followed reluctantly, and eventually the Salem crew bit their tongue, overcame the “grab em by the pussy” nonsense and joined the pragmatic MAGA coalition. Now, you might also remember the name Brad Parscale, an online tech guy who was datamining Facebook and microtargeting for Trump support. That led to a controversy called “Cambridge Analytica” after the unexpected Trump win and the leftists crying foul about the online support that defeated their aggressive corporate media ploys. That’s the core. We agree?

Okay. Fast forward. Donald Trump held a loose coalition, which included the Salem tribe (which included a now bigger TPU$A, Charlie Kirk et al) which included the high-horse Evangelicals, only now they were more firm horse riders. Brad Parscale was later hired by Salem Media Inc as their strategic operations director (current position). No longer connected to the Trump team, yet quasi-supporting the objectives of the Trump administration, Mr Brad Parscale takes money from the pro-Israel group, files FARA registration forms and goes back to his tech skillset to shape and influence politics; except now, a decade later, tech micro-targeting is big time algorithmic control systems.

Salem Media Inc. still in alignment with their Evangelical roots, plus a new addition from Trump world (Lara Trump and Don Jr.) each with a foot in the Salem operation, and Brad Parscale promoting the pro-Israel Evangelical mission with unbelievable tools thanks to modern tech, artificial intelligence, datamining and algorithmic data operations on social media platforms.Then comes billionaires Larry and David Ellison, also very pro-Israel, in combination with Salem Media Inc. operated by Parscale, and the ideological alignment of Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, Laura Loomer etc., taking algorithmic AI and Evangelical data targeting to new stratospheric levels.

Which brings us through 2025 and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu noting in his influencer meetup that the Tik Tok and X platform were the two most important strategic operations of interest, against the warning of diminished GenX support from Charlie Kirk. {Citation and Video} Subsequently, Larry Ellison (Oracle) takes control of Tik Tok (GenZ), while Elon Musk (free speech) is controlling X. All of the above come into a deep, collaborative, pro-Israel synergy.That’s not a conspiracy; it is simply the reality of political targeting and influence in the year 2026. That’s the current landscape.

That’s what you are witnessing online, perhaps in your data profile, and more than likely in your algorithmically controlled online travels. Your identity as defined by your data and pixels implanted into your profile that can be targeted to feed you specific information and content. Algorithmic support operations, also using money to shift the visibility of support (or lack therein), is why “X” and other platform content providers, don’t always align with reality you see offline and/or polling that shows consistent support for Donald Trump amid the MAGA base. The narratives are not organic, often they are divisive. However, most users outside the control system can’t distinguish the content that is being targeted toward them.

I hope that somewhat helps see through the friction. Most of us have supported Trump throughout his endeavors in office, trusting him to do what needed to be done, and using his best judgement on whatever the issue was while understanding that he has much more information than us. This still applies today. This doesn’t mean that President Trump can see everything or has immediate reference for everything happening. An example was JD Vance telling the audience today that he had no idea Zelenskyy had threatened Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The White House is focused on the issues confronting them daily; they have a priority perspective, and they do not see everything. Trust God, and pray for President Trump.

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Keep Talking Greece still exists! I remember her from 10-odd years ago. Lost sight of her. Sorry!

• WSJ: Greece on The List of NATO Countries That Trump Will Reward (KTG)

The White House is considering a plan to punish some members of the NATO alliance that President Donald Trump thinks were unhelpful to the U.S. and Israel during the Iran war, according to administration officials. Other countries that have supported the war, such as Greece, will be rewarded. According to an exclusive report by Wall Street Journal, the proposal would involve moving U.S. troops out of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries deemed unhelpful to the Iran war effort and stationing them in countries that were more supportive. The proposal would fall far short of President Trump’s recent threats to fully withdraw the U.S. from the alliance, which by law he can’t do without Congress.


The plan, which has circulated and gained support among senior administration officials in recent weeks, is early in conception and one of several the White House is discussing to punish NATO. It underscores the growing rift between the Trump administration and European allies following the president’s decision to launch the war with Iran. “It is quite unfortunate that NATO has turned its back on the American people over the past six weeks, while they are the ones who are funding their defense,” said the White House spokeswoman.

On Wednesday evening, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “NATO wasn’t there when we needed them, and they won’t be there if we need them again.” The U.S. has around 84,000 troops stationed across Europe, though the exact number varies from military exercises and rotational deployments. U.S. bases in Europe serve as a critical hub of global U.S. military operations, as well as provide an economic boon to the host country through investment. Bases in Eastern Europe also serve as a deterrent against Russia. When asked for comment, the White House referred to recent statements made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticizing NATO countries for failing to be more helpful to the U.S. with the war in Iran.

It couldn’t be determined which countries would lose troops, yet a number of alliance members have run afoul of Trump since he returned to office and more recently attracted his ire by objecting to the war in Iran. Spain—the only NATO country that hasn’t indicated it would spend 5% of its GDP on defense—blocked U.S. planes involved in the Iran operation from using its airspace. Administration officials are also frustrated with Germany after top officials criticized the war, though Germany serves as one of the largest and most important hubs for the U.S. military to support its operations in the Middle East. Italy also briefly blocked the U.S. use of an air base in Sicily, and the French government agreed to only allow the U.S. to use a base in southern France after it guaranteed planes not involved in Iran strikes would land there.

Beyond repositioning troops, the plan could also involve closing a U.S. base in at least one of the European countries, possibly Spain or Germany, according to the two administration officials. Countries that could benefit because they are viewed as supportive include Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Greece, the officials said. The Eastern European countries have some of the highest defense-spending rates in the alliance and were some of the first to signal they would support an international coalition to monitor the Strait of Hormuz. After war broke out, Romania quickly approved U.S. requests to allow its bases to be used by the U.S. Air Force.

The plan could result in putting more U.S. troops closer to the Russian border, an outcome likely to antagonize Moscow. Senior European officials counter that they were never consulted on the war in advance to begin with, making it difficult to coordinate military response in the conflict’s first days. During his first term in 2020, Trump ordered the withdrawal of around 12,000 troops from Germany, but President Joe Biden reversed the decision after taking office in 2021. [full article: WSJ]

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https://twitter.com/InterstellarUAP/status/2041831496399380614?s=20 https://twitter.com/Ikennect/status/2041931700284817560?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 29 2026

Mar 292026
 
 March 29, 2026  Posted by at 10:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  28 Responses »


Piet Mondriaan Mill 1905


• US Suffers Heavy Casualties In Iranian Strike On Saudi Base As Houthis Enter War (ZH)
• Medvedev; Iran Will Be Another “Vietnam” (ZH)
• Who Stabbed Whom in the Back — Bibi Netanyahu or JD Vance? (Scott Pinsker)
• Trump Signs Memo Directing DHS To Pay TSA Agents; First Paychecks Monday (ZH)
• Trump Quietly Delivered a Major Victory Over Real Tyrants (Sarah Anderson)
• With Friends Like These, Who Needs ‘Pocahontas’? (Tim O’Brien)
• Maersk Slaps Emergency Fuel Surcharge As War Upends Marine Supply Chains (ZH)
• Finland Convicts Politician for Speaking Out Against Homosexuality (Turley)
• Apple FORCES iPhone Users To Prove Age With ID (MN)
• Battle for Hungary: The Ukraine Connection (RT)
• EU Moves Toward Creating Overseas ‘Return Hubs’ For Migrants (RT)
• Ukraine Government Schemed To Funnel War Aid To Biden Campaign (ZH)

 

 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2037694963501183174?s=20 https://twitter.com/zoltanspox/status/2037616304341782915?s=20 https://twitter.com/JosefKrieg99804/status/2037564340782473593?s=20 https://twitter.com/iam_smx/status/2037585014548791743?s=20

 

 


Houthis vs Saudis? They’re not friends? Hard to keep track at times.

• US Suffers Heavy Casualties In Iranian Strike On Saudi Base As Houthis Enter War (ZH)

The Houthis have finally entered the war, greatly raising the stakes on what’s becoming a multi-front engagement, given Israel and Hezbollah have already been locked in a ground war in Lebanon. Overnight saw the Houthis send a barrage of missiles on Israel, which is the first such strike since the US began its Operation Epic Fury. Military spokesman for the Houthis, Brigadier-General Yahya Saree, announced the attack on Saturday on the group’s Al Masirah satellite television, Al Jazeera has confirmed. Strikes “will continue until the declared objectives are achieved… and until the aggression against all fronts of the resistance ceases,” Saree said, confirming the Iran-aligned Yemeni group’s entry into the war on Tehran’s side.


The Israeli side confirmed the assault out of Yemen, saying that it intercepted one missile. This spells more bad news for global shipping through the other important regional energy and goods transit waterway, the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. It will also make it even harder for Washington to try and wind down the conflict amid efforts to find an acceptable offramp. Interestingly, the Houthis are justifying their actions not just based on the US-Israel attack on Iran, but on assaults on populations in the broader region. The group said the attack with a barrage of missiles came after continued targeting of infrastructure in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories, adding that their operations would continue until the “aggression” on all fronts ends.

Now Israelis will face aerial threats from Iranians, Hezbollah, Houthis, and Iraqi Shia paramilitaries…

“The injured troops were inside a building on the base that was struck in the attack, the officials said,” the report continues. “The attack also damaged multiple U.S. refueling aircraft. At least one missile struck the base, as well as several unmanned aerial vehicles, according to two of the officials.” This marks the second significant strike on the same base. The aircraft hit was a KC-135 air refueling aircraft, which reportedly caught fire. The mass casualty incident has raised ongoing questions of troop exposure and Pentagon preparedness for Iran’s response:

Iran’s missile war has continued expanding deeper into the Gulf, with the casualty count climbing in Abu Dhabi after an early Saturday strike. The Abu Dhabi Media Office confirms casualties (injuries, but no fatalities reported) have risen to six after a Saturday morning ballistic missile attack. Elsewhere, in Bahrain, home to the United States Fifth Fleet, authorities reported air defenses have engaged almost nonstop over the past 24 hours, responding to 20 missiles and 23 drones. Post raises question over future of Iran’s nuclear program, with one Iranian proclaiming “The war will boost Iranian science and technology.”

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No ground troops.

• Medvedev; Iran Will Be Another “Vietnam” (ZH)

Earlier this week President Putin weighed in on America’s Iran operations, and as we detailed his comments were predictably a bit guarded. He had compared the war and the Hormuz Strait closure – and subsequent impact on global energy – to the massive widescale impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. But fundamentally he highlighted the “unpredictable” nature of the conflict in terms of where it’s headed, as Washington appears to be searching for an offramp on its terms.


On Friday Dmitry Medvedev weighed in, and as expected the former Russian president and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council was much less guarded in his assessment. He warned at a moment thousands of US Marines and Airborne troop are en route to the Middle East that if the US enters a ground war in Iran it will be another “Vietnam”. American boots on the ground so far from US shores “threatens roughly the same consequences as what happened in Vietnam,” Medvedev said as quotes in NBC and others. “When Washington intervened in a foreign country, located a thousand miles away, and for ten years was unable to find a dignified way out of this conflict,” he told the state-run RIA news agency. He added that a potential ground operation in Iran would have “fatal consequences” for the broader region and for all involved in the war.

Size comparison: Vietnam overlaying Iran


The White House has been insistent that Trump’s Iran “excursion” is not a quagmire. It has especially been Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth who has repeatedly denied that this conflict can be comparable to the start of ‘forever wars’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. But clearly the US doesn’t have good track record when its forces must endure extended asymmetric warfare and insurgency conditions. Yet that’s exactly where things will likely head if the White House introduces ground forces.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has actually seized on this historic theme as well, earlier writing on X: “Americans haven’t forgotten how (in 1967), even as hundreds of U.S. soldiers were dying in Vietnam, and the outcome was already clear, General William Westmoreland was flown home to reassure everyone that the war was going well – that the U.S. was ‘winning’.” “The media haven’t forgotten either; those briefings full of fantasy from the frontlines became infamous as the ‘Five O’Clock Follies’,” he said. The “same script, different stage” is now unfolding, Araghchi insisted, adding: “Hegseth steps up, and the message is still detached from reality.”

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“Why was this leaked? Who benefits? And who had the power to leak it?”

• Who Stabbed Whom in the Back — Bibi Netanyahu or JD Vance? (Scott Pinsker)

The film was about as faithful to the subject matter as its namesake was to Jacqueline, but some of JFK’s scenes were riveting Donald Sutherland (a.k.a. “Mr. X”): “Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?”Let’s hijack Sutherland’s advice for the latest mystery that has D.C. tongues wagging: Yesterday, someone leaked a private conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Vice President JD Vance.And because America and Israel are allies in a hot, active war, this breach is especially egregious. If America and Israel cannot communicate openly, candidly, and freely, logistical cooperation breaks down. Confusion sets in. The risk of friendly fire grows.


This means that more Americans will die. But the leak appears to be legitimate: The Daily Mail was among the first to break the story, which Axios also confirmed. The Daily Mail: JD Vance in Tense Call With Benjamin Netanyahu as He Rips Israel’s PM for Selling ‘Easy’ Iran War to Trump JD Vance confronted Benjamin Netanyahu in a tense phone call, accusing the Israeli leader of being overly optimistic about the chances of regime change in Iran. The Vice President told the Israeli leader on Monday that many of his predictions about the war which he had sold to Donald Trump had not materialized. Despite the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hardline factions have tightened their grip on power and the regime remains firmly in control.

Axios added more insight: “Why it matters: Vance has already had multiple calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, met Gulf allies about the war and been involved in indirect communications with the Iranians. He’s expected to be the top U.S. negotiator in potential peace talks. Vance was highly skeptical of Israel’s rosy prewar assessment of how the war would unfold, and currently expects the war to continue for another few weeks, according to U.S. and Israeli sources.” […] Behind the scenes: White House officials started suspecting that some in the Israeli government were trying to smear Vance after a difficult phone call on Monday between Netanyahu and Vance.

In the call, Vance mentioned that several of Netanyahu’s predictions about the war had proved far too optimistic, particularly when it came to the prospects of a popular uprising to topple the regime, according to an Israeli source and a U.S. source. “Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was. And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements,” the U.S. source said. The day after that call, a right-wing Israeli newspaper owned by GOP mega-donor Miriam Adelson reported that Vance had yelled at Netanyahu over the issue of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Multiple U.S. and Israeli sources said the story was erroneous, and Vance advisers suspected it was leaked by the Israeli side. An Israeli official denied Netanyahu planted the story, and said his office had actually denied it when approached by reporters at multiple outlets. To paraphrase Sutherland’s three questions: Why was this leaked? Who benefits? And who had the power to leak it? For some Internet sleuths, the trail of leaks seems to point to “someone” within Tucker Carlson’s orbit — with the Daily Mail journalist who helped break the story, Phillip Nieto, the biggest red flag.

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About time.

• Trump Signs Memo Directing DHS To Pay TSA Agents; First Paychecks Monday (ZH)

President Trump wrote in a presidential memorandum on Friday afternoon that the Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, should use “funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations” to pay TSA agents until regular funding is restored.”If Democrats in Congress will not act to honor the service of our TSA officers, who are now performing their critical public safety responsibilities without knowing whether they will be able to buy food for their families or pay their rent, then my Administration will take action,” President Trump wrote in the memo.


“Accordingly, I hereby direct the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to use funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations to provide TSA employees with the compensation and benefits that would have accrued to them if not for the Democrat-led DHS shutdown, consistent with applicable law, including 31 U.S.C. 1301(a),” he continued. The president noted, “Once regular funding for TSA has been restored, every effort should be made, as authorized by law, to adjust applicable funding accounts within DHS to ensure the continuation of DHS operations and activities consistent with planned expenditures prior to the lapse.”

Reuters is reporting that 50,000 TSA agents could be paid as early as Monday. Fox News’ Bill Melugin reports: BREAKING: President Trump tells colleague @JacquiHeinrich in a call that the Senate bill that passed in the overnight hours to fund all of DHS except CBP & ICE “wasn’t appropriate.” “Well, it wasn’t good. It wasn’t appropriate,” Trump told Jacqui. “Now what they should do is they should terminate the filibuster, Jacqui, and just vote, but you have three or four Republicans in there that are not doing the right thing. You can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund – in my opinion, you can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund ICE. You can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund any form of law enforcement, of which ICE is a big form, and so is Border Patrol.”

Also this.

After meeting with the Freedom Caucus, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has agreed to advance a 60-day continuing resolution (CR) to the House Floor, which would fund all of DHS – including ICE and CBP – in lieu of the narrower Senate-passed bill. This decision will extend the partial shutdown of DHS, which has already lasted more than five weeks, and force the Senate to return and vote on the revised House measure.

The shift reflects intense pressure from hardline conservatives who threatened to sink the Senate bill without major changes. The Freedom Caucus is demanding the inclusion of voter ID requirements, additional border patrol funding, and resources for child sex trafficking investigations within ICE. While Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris argued the delay would not affect airport operations and that the Senate could quickly approve the bill next week, Democrats have repeatedly opposed short-term clean extensions – and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already declared the 60-day CR “dead on arrival” in the Senate, stating Democrats will not give what he called a “blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms.”

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María Corina Machado.

• Trump Quietly Delivered a Major Victory Over Real Tyrants (Sarah Anderson)

I thought about getting up early on this Saturday to go check out and take some pictures at my local “No Kings” rally or march or whatever they call it, but I never quite made it. It seemed like there were much better things to do… like stay in bed a little longer because the cold returned overnight here in Georgia, or go outside and check on my garden — my potatoes are sprouting! When I finally got into the car and left the house, I was so distracted by the dogwoods and azaleas blooming in my neighborhood that I almost forgot where I was going, and by the time I got into town, the traffic was so bad that I gave up and just picked up some lunch for my dad and me instead and came back home.


That’s how little I care about a bunch of delusional leftists, who apparently need attention and/or can’t handle the fact that they lost an election. At this point, the best thing to do is probably ignore them anyway, but we all know the MSM will play it up for their propaganda. Meanwhile, thanks to Donald Trump, real tyranny is losing steam in the other parts of the world where it truly exists, including something huge that happened in Venezuela on Saturday that probably won’t even get an MSM mention at all.

In 2024, future Nobel Peace Prize winner and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado’s Vente Venezuela party had to shut down its Caracas headquarters. Why? Apparently, Nicolás Maduro and his thugs didn’t get the “no kings” message. To recap, Machado would have likely become Venezuela’s next president in 2024, but Maduro banned her from running. She threw her support behind Edmundo González and managed to convince most of her voters to do the same, but Maduro stole the elections anyway. He received very little of the real vote, or at least, what was counted, and that’s despite the intimidation tactics the regime used against voters. When the fed-up people took to the streets to protest afterward, the regime began threatening, arresting, and torturing them.

That led to opposition leaders fleeing the country, as González did, or going into hiding, as Machado did, and the regime robbed and vandalized their offices, harassed their staff, and made it impossible for them to exist. Vente Venezuela shut its physical doors shortly after, though it continued to exist online, in other countries, and in the hearts and minds of its supporters. But thanks to Donald Trump, that fear of merely existing is gone. On Saturday, a huge crowd gathered as Vente Venezuela opened its office in Caracas for the first time in well over a year and a half.

Machado posted a video online with the caption, “Long live Venezuela! This is how our national headquarters stands, ready to open its doors once again to all Venezuelans.” She also posted this video with the message, “COME BACK HOME!! I’m there, with each one of you. Let’s go for FULL DEMOCRACY AND FULL FREEDOM.” Machado herself has promised that she will return to Venezuela in the weeks to come. Right now, it’s probably still not safe — various influential members of the regime are still looking for ways to persecute and prosecute her.

Despite that, everything I’m reading and hearing from inside the country tells me that Machado’s Vente Venezuela movement is picking up steam, and she’s more popular than she has ever been, which is hard to top. It’s highly likely that in the past, people were afraid to support her because they didn’t want to be punished by Maduro and his thugs. As a matter of fact, polls show that she’s the most popular politician in Venezuela right now — a month or two ago, she was number three behind Trump and Marco Rubio. That’s important because even with the United States holding its hand, the only way a transition away from the regime will truly work long-term in Venezuela is if the people step up and make it happen.

Anyway, this is an extremely momentous and symbolic occasion that couldn’t have happened without Trump’s help. Three months ago, before we captured Maduro, it was unthinkable. Now, our president has done something no one before him would do — opened up a path for the people of Venezuela to have real democracy and freedom, something many of them have never experienced in their lifetimes. I even noted a few people waving U.S. flags at the gathering. The fact that it happened on a day when the spoiled leftists in the United States are out protesting him for being some kind of tyrant is truly peak stupidity. These folks would be better off staying inside and reading a history book.

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The name is hers for life.

• With Friends Like These, Who Needs ‘Pocahontas’? (Tim O’Brien)

One of President Donald Trump’s best nicknames bestowed on one of his biggest critics came when he dubbed Sen. Liz Warren (D-Mass.) “Pocahontas.” That was a reference to the fact that in 1986, she identified as “American Indian” on her application for the Texas state bar. When her cover was blown later, she was unflappable in her tone-deaf attacks on conservatives in general and Trump in particular. It would seem that from the minute she wakes up until she lies down at the end of the day in her lair, she just attacks and tries to sabotage any conservative or conservative idea that crosses her path.


But she has nothing on the willful, do-nothing Republicans in the U.S. Senate. They have waged a procedural war on the Trump administration in order to block the president’s ability to make recess appointments. To achieve this, technically, they don’t go on recess. Here’s how that works. The Senate, which is controlled by Republicans at the moment, is allowed to hold brief sessions every few days. These are called “pro forma” sessions, which technically mean the Senate is not in recess. Every pro forma session counts as Senate being in session. This prevents Trump from making recess appointments.

This has worked against Trump. Republicans have successfully prevented (undermined?) a Republican president who’s just trying to fill certain judicial and other critical positions in government. Republicans have also done the same to Barack Obama. According to the Wilson Center, “When Republicans retook the House in 2011, Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, in consultation with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, turned the tables by forcing the Senate (and, by default, the House) to hold pro forma sessions during two recesses to block President Barack Obama from making any recess appointments.”

If you’re wondering why Republicans would do that to a Republican administration, the answers won’t surprise you. It’s not about finding and appointing the best possible candidates so as to “Make America Great Again.” Rather, it’s about power, control, and something that might make you sick to your stomach. It’s about Republicans in the Senate, not liking conservatism, knowingly and actively working against the Trump administration to assure it achieves nothing or close to nothing in the Senate. The Senate sees Trump’s legal and ethical efforts to bring conservatives into the government as an attempt to undermine its power.

Trump poses a threat to the Senate’s power, and that will not be tolerated. So, this do-nothing gaggle of Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) join with the Democrats to block Trump’s progress on appointments. The vast majority of senators, including most Republicans have hopped planes and skedaddled out of Washington for places unknown for yet another recess. But a few have stayed back to conduct pro forma sessions to keep the lights on in the Senate, which technically is not in recess. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) acknowledged as much and tried to bring some clarity on what the House is trying to do about all of this, specifically on paying DHS and TSA. Still, this does not address the way Senate Republicans have used pro forma to slow Trump’s other progress.

At the moment, when we talk about the midterm elections, conservatives have focused on the effort to keep majorities in the House and the Senate, but “Senate Republicans” aren’t even hiding the fact that when elected they will undermine the conservative agenda. This is a serious problem, and it needs to be addressed soon. Trump only has a little less than three years left in his term. Things have to happen now, and the biggest obstacles we face are Republican swamp creatures in Washington.

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Not aa little bit.

• Maersk Slaps Emergency Fuel Surcharge As War Upends Marine Supply Chains (ZH)

The war in the Middle East has upended shipping fuel markets with prices of marine fuels skyrocketing and regions running low on supply, pushing some traders to forgo cargo and ship additional fuel volumes to key bunkering ports outside the Middle East. The price of fuel oil has surged this month as the stalled tanker traffic at the Strait of Hormuz is tightening supplies of the fuel in Asia, the key bunkering hub for fuel oil used in ships. The Middle East is a major global supplier of fuel oil, especially of high-sulfur fuel oil (HSFO). But the Iran war has all but halted traffic via the Strait of Hormuz, stranding supplies for Asia and its key bunkering hub of Singapore.


Yet, stocks in Singapore have increased this month as shipping owners and operators have refrained from buying the too expensive fuel. These, however, could soon start to deplete, fast, because vessels are becoming desperate to refuel, according to a Financial Times analysis. One trader told the publication that their firm had to forgo cargo in order to deliver additional fuel volumes between major ports, mostly between the United States and Singapore. With the Middle East’s key bunkering port of Fujairah mostly offline by the end of March due to Iranian attacks earlier this month, the marine fuel market is in chaos.Shipping giant Maersk warned in its latest Middle East advisory this week that “To preserve network stability, we have undertaken significant redistribution of fuels to offset shortages in the Middle East, and are securing alternative sources from different locations, suppliers, and at increased premiums.”

Maersk also introduced as of March 25 an Emergency Bunker Surcharge (EBS), “in response to notable fluctuations in fuel supply and the additional costs of distribution.”Maersk’s chief commercial officer Karsten Kildahl said earlier this month that “There is currently sufficient fuel globally, but it is unevenly distributed. As a result, we are making changes to our fuel supply chain and begin moving fuel to ensure our vessels can continue to bunker where needed – and protect the flow of trade.”

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Does freedom mean being openly gay or does it mean beingableto say you don’t like it?p>

• Finland Convicts Politician for Speaking Out Against Homosexuality (Turley)

I previously wrote about Finland’s prosecution of Christian Democrat MP Päivi Räsänen for raising objections to homosexuality. She has now been convicted with a decision this week from the Finnish Supreme Court. Free speech is now in a free fall in Finland. Räsänen is a Christian Democratic member of parliament and former Minister of the Interior. Räsänen is also a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and is married to a pastor. She was critical of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland for its support of the Helsinki LGBT Pride events in June. She spoke out against the involvement while highlighting a quote from Romans 1:24-27 , which reads:


24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.

27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

In the United States, this would of course be entirely protected as the exercise of religious freedom and free speech. However, the former Interior Minister was accused of “hate speech” against LGBT+ people over a 2004 publication, a 2018 radio appearance, and a 2019 social media post that included a Bible verse. While she was acquitted by the District Court of Helsinki and the Court of Appeal, the case was eventually brought to the Finnish Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has now voted 3-2 to convict her for being “derogatory towards homosexuals on the basis of their sexual orientation.”

In a statement, the Court declared that “Räsänen’s statements were in this way derogatory towards homosexuals as a group on the basis of their sexual orientation. However, certain other passages referred to in the charge were not held to be derogatory.” The Court imposed fines on Räsänen and the manager of Luther Foundation Finland. Notably, the other person named in the filing is bishop Juhana Pohjola, who published the pamphlet. Pohjola reportedly leads the 2,749-member church, as well as being the chairman of the International Lutheran Council. It also ordered both to take down the “unlawful passages” in the publication.

The Court did uphold Räsänen’s acquittal on a charge stemming from a 2019 social media post in which she posted a picture of Romans 1:24–27. Räsänen stated that she may appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, stressing: “Freedom of speech is needed precisely when we disagree on things. I hope that despite this decision, constructive discussions can be held, even on difficult issues, under the protection of freedom of speech and religion.” In Rage and the Republic, I have a chapter on “Why Big Fierce Rights Are Rare” that specifically discusses the collapses of free speech and other rights in Europe. This case is just another example of how our European allies are abandoning core Western principles from free speech to free exercise.

Given the sweeping economic changes unfolding in this century, those rights will be even more important in the years to come. In countries like Finland, the population will enter these uncertain times with even more uncertain rights.

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“Freedom is not preserved by surrendering control to “safety” pretexts. It is defended by rejecting the machinery of permanent oversight before it locks in place for good.”

• Apple FORCES iPhone Users To Prove Age With ID (MN)

UK iPhone and iPad owners updating to the latest iOS 26.4 are now confronted with a stark choice: verify you are an adult by providing a credit card or scanning your ID, or accept automatic web content filters that restrict access. The message users see states clearly: “UK law requires you to confirm you are an adult to change content restrictions.” Those who do not confirm their age – or are found to be underage – have web content filters turned on automatically.

https://twitter.com/BigBrotherWatch/status/2036863773202432300


The government appointed communications watchdog Ofcom welcomed the development, calling it “a real win for children and families” and noting the UK would be “one of the first countries in the world to receive such restrictions on their devices.” Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, hit back hard. In the organisation’s statement she said Apple had put a “chokehold on Britons’ freedom to search the internet, access information and use apps unless they provide sensitive ID documents.”

She continued: “This means 35 million Brits who have paid hundreds or even thousands of pounds for Apple tech suddenly now have a child’s device unless they comply with invasive demands for personal information that go far beyond what UK law requires.” “Apple has crossed the Rubicon with this software update which is more like ransomware, holding customers hostage to ID demands that are invasive, exclusionary and unnecessary,” Carlo added. She further urged, “Children’s online safety is vital but requires better parental controls and thoughtful tech responsibility – not sweeping, draconian, shock demands by foreign companies for all of our IDs and credit cards.”

This is digital ID enforcement by the back door. The same government apparatus that has already advanced newborn baby digital IDs, mandatory digital ID schemes and biometric tracking is now outsourcing age verification to tech giants at the device level – creating the perfect infrastructure for ongoing surveillance and control. We have previously outlined that broader Orwellian mandatory digital ID and biometric push by the British government, which has claimed that the mandatory ID, based on the UK One Login system, will help to stop “illegal” immigrants from crossing the channel by denying them access to work.

This also ties into the WHO-Gates blueprint for global digital ID, AI-driven surveillance and lifelong vaccine tracking:

Critics see this as the gradual normalisation of universal age verification. Once demanding ID to use your own phone becomes routine, expanding that system to every platform and service is a small step. Beyond blocking illegal or sexually explicit material, the deeper question remains: why should the State have the authority to decide what our kids can and can’t access? In a free society, that responsibility belongs to parents – not to bureaucrats in Westminster or executives in Cupertino acting as their enforcers. While ministers lecture about protecting children online, the same system is busy shaping young minds through official channels.

The Green Party has pushed to teach children a “moral obligation” to accept mass immigration: Government guidance urges schools to report “anti-Muslim hostility” in an Orwellian snitch culture: Counter-terror police ran adverts warning teenagers that sharing “funny content” could amount to terrorism: A government-funded video game literally labels kids as potential terrorists for questioning mass migration:The pattern is clear. Restrict open access to the internet while pumping state-approved ideology into schools. Challenge the narrative and you risk being flagged. Want unfiltered information for your children? First hand over your documents. Britain is rapidly sliding toward a surveillance society where every search, every post and every opinion can be monitored, filtered and scored.

Freedom is not preserved by surrendering control to “safety” pretexts. It is defended by rejecting the machinery of permanent oversight before it locks in place for good.

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The EU uses Ukraine too.

• Battle for Hungary: The Ukraine Connection (RT)

Behind Vladimir Zelensky’s public feud with Viktor Orban, the arrest of two suspected spies in Budapest adds to claims that the Ukrainian leader is waging a shadow campaign to take out the Hungarian prime minister. On July 8, 2025, agents of Hungary’s National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) and National Security Service (NBSZ) raided two properties: a suburban home in a small town near Budapest, and a houseboat, packed with servers, hard drives, phones and covert recording equipment, moored on the city’s Danube waterfront.

The men targeted in the raids – a 19-year-old in the suburbs and a 38-year-old British/Hungarian dual citizen in Budapest – were IT specialists working for opposition leader Peter Magyar’s Tisza party. Between both locations, the raids yielded enough hard drives, USB drives, and computers that backing up all the data took over a month. The operation didn’t make any headlines until this week, when two separate versions of events began to emerge.

Did Orban target his opponents?
According to a report by the pro-opposition outlet Direkt36, the government agents claimed that they were searching for child pornography, but came up empty handed. Instead, they seized files suggesting that both men were in contact with an unidentified handler codenamed ‘Henry’, who was instructing them to steal documents from Tisza’s servers and conduct cyberattacks against the party. In this version of events, the NBSZ and Constitutional Protection Office (AH) steered the NIN’s investigation away from ‘Henry’, holding only in-person briefings on the matter and “persuad[ing] police leadership not to pursue the investigation in this direction.” vTo the reporters at Direkt36, one of whom is currently being investigated for possible espionage, this intervention strongly hinted that the child pornography warrants were a ruse, and ‘Henry’ was a creation of the Hungarian secret services, who were running a “covert operation to bring down the [Tisza] party.” The report does not explain why the secret services would raid their own operatives. Nevertheless, Magyar himself declared that the story “recalls the darkest days of communism and is even more serious than the Watergate scandal.” The supposed plot against Tisza “crosses every line” and “amounts to an attempted coup against Hungary,” he added.

Or was Tisza’s IT team working with Ukraine?
In an intelligence briefing declassified on Tuesday, Hungary’s National Security Committee filled in the details that Direkt36 allegedly left out. The 19-year-old suspect had been under surveillance since 2022, two years before the emergence of Tisza, the briefing states. The suspect, identified as ‘HD’, allegedly made contact with an Estonian citizen in 2022, who sent him to Kiev the following year to train with the IT Army of Ukraine, a cyberwarfare group run by the Ukrainian government. HD is alleged to have carried out “several operations in the interests of Ukraine,” visited the Ukrainian embassy in Budapest on multiple occasions, and in May 2025, two months before the raid, also visited the embassy of an EU member state in to obtain “secret service tools.” The teenager was questioned twice by counterintelligence officers over these activities.

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Merkel did her damage though.

• EU Moves Toward Creating Overseas ‘Return Hubs’ For Migrants (RT)

European lawmakers have endorsed the opening of talks with the EU Council on a controversial legal framework to establish block-wide mechanisms to expel illegal migrants, including the creation of ‘return hubs’ in third countries. The idea to create de facto detention facilities outside of the EU’s borders to hold migrants deemed to have no right to stay has been opposed by rights groups and pro-migration political parties. Under the proposed Return Regulation, which is still in the early stages of the legislative process, people marked for deportation in the EU will be sent to overseas return hubs rather than staying within the bloc as they await expulsion. Critics say the scheme is intended to disappear irregular migrants and failed asylum seekers into a “legal black hole.”


The proposed reform went to a plenary vote on Thursday after three left-wing parties, the S&D, the Greens/EFA, and the Left, each filed requests for it. The groups sought to challenge a decision by the Civil Liberties Committee earlier this month, when it approved the proposed legislation to enter into interinstitutional negotiations.mThe attempt flopped, with 389 MEPs voting in favor of proceeding to the next stage of the legislative process with the proposal, 206 voting against, and 32 abstaining. The outcome of the vote has been strongly condemned by multiple human rights groups that accused right-wing and anti-migration parties of pushing through a purportedly poorly thought-out initiative. Amnesty International’s European Institutions director, Eve Geddie, said the proposed reform has not received “adequate scrutiny or meaningful human rights assessments.”

“This marks a growing trend towards increasingly harmful, exclusionary, and draconian policies on migration, with worrying repercussions for due process and evidence-based policymaking. Far from reducing irregularity, these proposals risk trapping more people in precarious situations,” she said in a statement. The Return Regulation was proposed in March last year, meant to replace the 2008 Return Directive, which prioritized the “voluntary return” of illegal migrants and failed asylum seekers. In December 2025, 19 EU member states urged the European Commission to help fund return hubs outside the bloc, describing them as “innovative solutions” to address the migrant influx, which has plagued the bloc for over a decade.

Read more …

One more try. No attention from anyone here so far.

“Congress had made available $188 billion in Ukraine-related spending, with $164 billion flowing from just five pieces of legislation.”

• Ukraine Government Schemed To Funnel War Aid To Biden Campaign (ZH)

According to a newly declassified intelligence report, U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted communications from Ukrainian government officials back in 2022 discussing a scheme to siphon off hundreds of millions in American taxpayer dollars. The funds, earmarked for clean energy projects in the war-torn country, were allegedly redirected to the United States to benefit Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The report, obtained by Just the News, summarizes raw intercepts gathered by U.S. spy agencies in late 2022. Officials familiar with the material say the communications are not believed to be tied to Russian disinformation efforts.


The declassified summary is very specific. “The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,” the document states.

The mechanics described are textbook money-laundering architecture. “The plan included details of how subcontractors would be funded through U.S. companies so that how the funds were spent and allocated would be difficult to track,” the report explains. Two American subcontractors were named in the raw intercepts as conduits for funneling money toward Democratic coffers, though their identities remain redacted in the declassified version.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Ukraine became by far the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 — the first time a European nation held that distinction since the Marshall Plan. As of December 31, 2025, Congress had made available $188 billion in Ukraine-related spending, with $164 billion flowing from just five pieces of legislation. The last of those bills passed in April 2024 — while Biden was actively campaigning for a second term.

What makes the alleged scheme particularly audacious is the built-in exit strategy. “They were confident the project would be funded initially, even though at some time in the future the project would be disapproved as unnecessary. At this time, the money would already be allocated and impossible to return or use for a different purpose,” the report added. In other words, the design assumed the fraud would eventually be discovered – and didn’t care. By then, the money would be gone and untraceable.

The cover-to-transfer pipeline was engineered for maximum opacity. “Additionally, contracts would be executed that would be difficult to verify. In this manner, most of the U.S. funding would be diverted to Joe Biden’s election campaign without the ability to track where exactly the funds came from,” the report read.Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently learned of the intercepts and directed USAID officials to search agency records for evidence that the plot was actually carried out and to evaluate whether a criminal referral to the FBI is warranted. Perhaps the most disturbing find so far is that there is no substantive evidence that anyone during the Biden years made a serious effort to investigate what U.S. intelligence had intercepted.

Officials reviewing the files noted a lack of investigative curiosity about allegations of foreign election interference. Since President Trump took office, no new legislation authorizing additional spending for Ukraine has passed Congress. But now we need to find out how much of the funds for Ukraine were diverted to Biden’s campaign or the DNC, and whether the lack of an investigation reflects willful negligence, deliberate burial, or a conspiracy.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/VividProwess/status/2037431929944109482?s=20 https://twitter.com/Skint_Eastwood1/status/2037658435332775962?s=20 https://twitter.com/ScaryEurope/status/2037761017740931519?s=20 https://twitter.com/BROKENBRITAIN0/status/2037591656334082513?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 6 2026

Feb 062026
 
 February 6, 2026  Posted by at 10:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Albert Cuyp Cows in a river 1650


• UBS: SpaceX-xAI Merger Signals Rise Of “Orbital AI” (ZH)
• This is When Volatility Kicks In – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
• Netherlands To Tax Unrealized Gains: EU Wealth Grab And Global Implications (Kolbe)
• Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman Deny Epstein Malarkey, And Here’s Some Weird Sh*t (ZH)
• DHS Secretary Noem Identifies Another Leaker and Refers to DOJ for Prosecution (CTH)
• Why Democrats Fight Immigration Enforcement (Matt Margolis)
• How Many Handshakes From Epstein Are You? (Akhmedova)
• Nancy Mace Demands SUBPOENA For Bill Gates In Epstein Case (MN)
• Vance Slams ‘Incestuous’ US Elites Over Epstein Files (RT)
• Vance To Lead Sweeping Anti-Fraud Task Force Investigating California (ZH)
• Vance and Rubio Lead ‘Critical Minerals’ Strategic Ministerial Gathering (CTH)
• How Fast Is The Asian Population Ageing? (ZH)

 

 


What would YOU do with your days in a world where robots fulfill every need and want?

https://twitter.com/HustleBitch_/status/2019282180187291921

 

 

 

 


“… the merger of Musk’s SpaceX and xAI earlier this week, a transaction that has lifted his net worth to $850 billion..”

• UBS: SpaceX-xAI Merger Signals Rise Of “Orbital AI” (ZH)

In September 2024, we penned a note that Elon Musk was on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027, driven by what we described as “space race bets.” That call looks increasingly correct following the merger of Musk’s SpaceX and xAI earlier this week, a transaction that has lifted his net worth to $850 billion. By contrast, former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, who once famously said in 2019 that he wanted to live forever and be the first trillionaire, must be watching Musk’s empire soar to new heights in disgust. Musk’s decision to fold xAI into SpaceX is already being framed by UBS as an “orbital AI” investment angle, positioning Musk at the center of low-Earth orbit dominance and next-generation AI compute.


UBS trader Jephine Wong provided clients on Wednesday with what has caught her eye with the xAI-SpaceX deal:

“X” marks the spot as Elon Musk moved swiftly to fold xAI into SpaceX – an all stock deal valuing the combined entity at ~$1.25T (~$1T for SpaceX; ~$250B for xAI). The signal is clear: SpaceX is planting a flag in orbital AI, betting that a meaningful share of compute -essentially data centers in space- will be operating within 2–3 years. It’s a bold storyline to take into a potential summer/fall ~$50B IPO, but it also introduces new complexity for investors: SpaceX is generating ~$8B in EBITDA while xAI is burning approximately $1B per month. The roadshow narrative shifts from a pure- play space champion to a space-plus-AI hybrid -asking investors to balance operating strength against AI scale capex. EchoStar, a holder of SpaceX- linked assets, slipped on the news – a sign that not everyone is converted just yet.”

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“Europe needs war. You already had the finance ministers of France and Germany say that they may need IMF bailouts. This is why they want war. It’s a distraction.”

• This is When Volatility Kicks In – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong warned in late December to be ready for the “Perfect Storm for Debt, Economy, War, Gold & Silver.” The rain and thunder started at the beginning of February, and the storm is just beginning. Armstrong says, “This is where the volatility starts kicking in. I think Europe is so desperate for war. My concern with the Trump Administration is I would not step a foot in there. Europe needs war. You already had the finance ministers of France and Germany say that they may need IMF bailouts. This is why they want war. It’s a distraction.


Without war, people are going to figure out what the hell is going on. My pension fund is gone. Everything is defaulting. What’s going to happen? They are basically going to be storming the parliament with pitch forks.” Where are you going to see volatility? Armstrong says, “The volatility is in everything. You just saw the metals come down. They will probably consolidate before they go back up when people realize that Europe is going to go to war. What will happen? The dollar will go up. Metals will go up. It will be like WWI and WWII. The US became the financial capital of the world because Europe blew its brains out twice. Now, they think the third time is going to be the charm. . .. If there is war in Europe, it will be maybe in the summer. It does not look good.”

One bright spot was the Ukraine/Russia peace plan Armstrong put together at the request of President Trump. Armstrong says, “I did get a letter from President Trump . . . thanking me for writing it. So, it was sanctioned by Trump, and that’s pretty much everything he is doing except for NATO . . .. At the meeting, they told me you are correct. We know we are not going to be at war with Russia.” Let’s hope the US stays out of a coming Russia/Europe war. If we do, you can thank Martin Armstrong who put his peace plan together for Trump for free.

Armstrong also says the illegal alien invasion created by Democrats is the way they are trying to stay in power. Don’t be fooled by the close Dem wins in recent special elections. Armstrong’s “Socrates” computer has seen no advantage for either side for the midterms this year–yet. Armstrong sees the dollar staying strong and says, “You can’t park money in Canada, Mexico, Japan, or Europe. . ..Where are you going to put serious money? The United States is the only place—sorry. This is why the United States is what it is. Big money needs a place to park.”

On gold and silver, Armstrong is decidedly bullish on both metals and says, “This is not the major high. We have too much craziness on the horizon, from sovereign debt default to war. You are just getting a pullback and consolidation. . .. I am looking at the $165 to $200 per ounce area for silver. For gold, I am looking at resistance at the $8,500 per ounce level and, after that, $10,000 per ounce . . . in the next few years.”

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Taxing the money you haven’t yet made…

• Netherlands To Tax Unrealized Gains: EU Wealth Grab And Global Implications (Kolbe)

A fiscal storm is brewing in the Netherlands. With the potential introduction of a tax on unrealized capital gains, The Hague is set to become a testing ground for the systematic transfer of wealth from the private sector to the state. Across all government levels, the European Union is increasingly transforming into an aggressive parasitic system. A fundamental clash between the public and private sectors is intensifying across the EU. In March, both chambers of the Dutch parliament will decide on the implementation of an annual tax on unrealized gains. Going forward, all increases in value—from real estate and stocks to bonds and cryptocurrencies—would fall under this fiscal framework.


This move significantly accelerates the extraction of capital from the private sector, constituting a political rule violation. Already taxed income and assets would be hit again based on hypothetical gains, severely impeding private wealth accumulation. Support for this measure spans both right- and left-wing parties. It reflects a form of fiscal horseshoe logic, apparently anticipating a severe national financial crisis. For the EU as a whole, this is disastrous. That a nation with a debt ratio of just 46% and new borrowing of slightly over 2% of GDP would effectively declare war on private capital signals profound economic distortions in one of Europe’s most successful economies. One naturally asks: if this is happening in the Netherlands, what does it say about the rest of the European Union?

The End of the Productive Economy

A glance at Eurozone manufacturing suggests a storm is brewing. Deindustrialization in Germany, the largest industrial base in Europe, began in 2018 and has accelerated ever since, with massive capital flight. What applies to Germany applies even more so to the fragile peripheral European economies. For decades, Europe’s economy has shifted from production toward financial and wealth-rentier models. As financialization advances, production and value creation increasingly relocate abroad. This mirrors a process the United States underwent for decades and attempted to reverse under President Donald Trump.

European states see no escape from the economic death spiral created by expanding welfare systems, uncontrolled migration, and slowly shrinking core industrial productivity. Politicians are buying time through the expropriation of citizen savings to evade growing reform pressure. Once societal patience reaches a tipping point, Europe may witness scenes similar to those currently unfolding in the U.S., where the government has effectively declared war on illegal immigration amid a media-driven defensive battle coordinated by far-left forces, globalist media, and foreign foundations.

The pressing question for Europe: how long will native populations tolerate financial assault from the state without demanding corresponding migration and welfare reforms? Several EU states already levy progressive inheritance and gift taxes. Norway recently introduced a wealth tax of roughly 1% on net assets above €160,000 per person, raising eyebrows in one of Europe’s richest nations. Spain applies a progressive wealth tax up to 3.5%, plus a solidarity wealth levy for assets above €3 million—“solidarity,” a political buzzword used to rhetorically justify impending fiscal expropriation.

This expropriation is imminent. Coalition parties have spent the past year laying the groundwork for a massive expansion of inheritance taxes. It would be unwise to rule out Germany’s politically influenced Constitutional Court approving a national wealth tax in the future.

Read more …

Lots of them.

• DHS Secretary Noem Identifies Another Leaker and Refers to DOJ for Prosecution (CTH)

The good news is the process to identify the subversive agents inside the various offices of the administration continues to yield results. The bad news is there’s a lot of them to identify and remove. Dept of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shares another leaker has been identified and removed. Additionally, she is referring their conduct to the Dept of Justice for criminal prosecution.

Both Noem and Gabbard appear to be continuing their methodical approach without fear or favor. Secretary Noem facing down the internal resistors within the FBI, who have been leaking about ICE enforcement operations. Director Gabbard working through the tentacles of the Intelligence Community to identify similarly minded IC agents. Meanwhile there was some media controversy about the FBI Special Agent in charge of the Atlanta Field office being removed from his position just prior to the execution of a federal search warrant in Fulton County. The reason for that removal now seems to come to light with the release of letter former Agent Paul Brown sent to Elections Director Nadine Williams giving her a head’s-up on the material the FBI was going to seize.

FBI Agent Brown asks Ms Williams to voluntarily hand over the material, which has the result of giving Fulton County a heads-up about the specifics of the material the FBI were going to gather and review in their search warrant. [..] Another positive outcome amid all of this, is honestly exposing FBI Director Kash Patel’s lack of operational control over the agency he heads. Each day more people are starting to realize what many of us have noted from the outset. Without first admitting the scale and scope of the problem within the FBI, there was no way Kash Patel was ever going to address it.

The issues with the FBI are obvious; a few examples: There were 40 FBI agents on the Robert Mueller investigation into Trump-Russia collusion. Why would any of them still be employed? Additionally, think about the J6 investigations and Arctic Frost, are those FBI agents still employed within the FBI? There is no apple, it’s all worms.

FEBRUARY 9, 2025:

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“…huge majorities of Republicans, Democrats, whites, Latinos, and black Americans all agreeing that you should show a photo ID to vote.”

• Why Democrats Fight Immigration Enforcement (Matt Margolis)

Democrats have spent years insisting illegal immigrants do not vote, yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries just gave the whole game away. In a letter to GOP leadershi p, they demanded a slate of “reforms” to immigration enforcement as the price for funding the Department of Homeland Security, including targeted enforcement, no masks, mandatory use of body cameras, and other demands, several of which I suspect are nonstarters. I don’t see Democrats getting anywhere with these, but the big thing is that buried in that list is a rather revealing demand:


“Protect Sensitive Locations – Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.”

huge majorities of Republicans, Democrats, whites, Latinos, and black Americans all agreeing that you should show a photo ID to vote. Polling places? They went out of their way to include polling places right alongside hospitals, courts, and churches. There is only one thing that happens at polling places that would matter to illegal immigrants, and it is not the bake sale. Democrats have insisted for years that illegal immigrants cannot and do not vote, and that the whole issue is a right-wing myth. If that is true, then why is “polling places” even on their list of protected zones for immigration violators? No one accidentally adds “polling places” to a policy letter being negotiated at the leadership level. This is deliberate. It gives away what they are worried about… and what they are counting on.

“Democrats just admitted they think illegal aliens need to be protected at polling places. Why exactly would illegal aliens be at polling places? We MUST fully fund DHS AND pass the SAVE America Act,” Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) posted on X. That is the obvious question Democrats do not want to answer. If illegal immigrants are not supposed to be anywhere near the ballot box, then immigration enforcement near polling sites ought to be a non-issue.This comes as Republicans are pushing election reform through Congress with the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act is a straightforward concept: safeguard federal elections by ensuring only American citizens can cast ballots, and that an ID is required to vote.

Schumer’s response has been to smear the SAVE Act as “Jim Crow 2.0” and brand it “racist” and “dead on arrival.” That is the Democrats’ go-to play whenever Democrats feel threatened: slap a “Jim Crow” label on common-sense election rules and scare minorities into thinking Republicans are trying to stop them from voting. The problem is that even minorities aren’t buying it. As PJ Media previously reported, polling has shown consistent and overwhelming support for Voter ID laws for years. That consensus cuts across both party and race, with

Why are Democrats pushing so hard against common sense and trying to help illegal immigrants vote even though they’re not supposed to? Recent census projections show blue states are bleeding population while red states are gaining it, which will shift House seats and electoral votes after the 2030 reapportionment. As people flee high-tax, crime-ridden, Democrat-run states for freer red states, Democrats face shrinking power at the national level. That gives them every incentive to import a new population, shield it from enforcement, and eventually convert them into votes, one way or another.

That’s why Democrats have no qualms fighting so aggressively against overwhelmingly popular election reforms. For them, it’s a matter of survival.

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“Some Weird Sh*t” alright.

• Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman Deny Epstein Malarkey, And Here’s Some Weird Sh*t (ZH)

As the latest Epstein Files release continues to provide premium toilet reading and no arrests, tech billionaires Bill Gates and Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman are in full damage control mode, while President Donald Trump – whose name is all over the files as well, is back to asking if we can just move on. Other notables mentioned in the release are Steve Tisch, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Harvey Weinstein, Leon Black, Peter Mandelson (who just imploded), Sergey Brin, Jason Calacanis, Howard Lutnick and the Nobel Prize committee (more on that later, it’s a fun one), and of course Ehud Barak.


To review – Gates, whose ex-wife Melinda says he ‘needs to answer to those things’ in the Epstein files – was featured in a 2013 email Epstein sent to himself – three months after the disgraced financier appears to have brought top Gates ‘assistant’ Boris Nikolic and ‘two Russian girls’ to Richard Branson’s island for a crypto summit. According to Epstein, Gates – who apparently severed ties with Epstein after some incident involving Boris, ‘implored’ Epstein to ‘delete the emails regarding your std, your request that I provide you with antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda and the description of your penis.’ Gates responded to the latest email, claiming it was ‘never sent’ (incorrect) and that it’s ‘false,’ (though he did offer $100k to anyone that can make a ‘next generation’ condom earlier that year).

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2019045284689424764

Hoffman vs. Musk Meanwhile, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman – who went to Epstein’s island, was invited to his weird fertility ranch, and apparently left his passport in a ‘gift bag’ for Epstein – has been trading Epstein ‘gotchas’ with Elon Musk, who asked Epstein if he could bring his ex-wife to the island for a ‘wild’ party. Hoffman claims he was only on Epstein’s island to fundraise with former MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, while Musk claims Epstein used the fact that Hoffman was on the island to try to get him to go.

Feb 1: Musk drops ‘reid was on the island last weekend,’ email Epstein sent him, and notes that Hoffman brought ‘gifts’ to Epstein. Hoffman, who says he deeply regrets associating with Epstein post-conviction, defended his visit, replying to ZeroHedge after we asked to clarify that he went to Epstein island to raise money for MIT.

When asked if President Trump deserves the same ‘assumption of innocence’ that you are claiming, Hoffman pivots, saying he’s “been calling for an investigation,” adding “No one will need to assume anything if Trump releases all of the files, and we conduct a transparent investigation into those implicated in crimes.” Shockingly, not everyone is buying Hoffman’s story…

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2018958358607520099 https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/2019051610400280982

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“Look at Ukraine. The same political class that now shocks you with its private depravity has been overseeing the destruction of a country in public. These political cannibals may not literally devour people, but the result is much the same. They would have consumed Russia too, had it not resisted.”:

• How Many Handshakes From Epstein Are You? (Akhmedova)

The US Department of Justice has released another batch of files connected to Jeffrey Epstein, so extensive that even Russia’s “foreign agents” and émigré commentators felt compelled to sift through them. “It seems this isn’t a conspiracy theory after all,” they muttered, suddenly uneasy. “It seems the American and global elite really did indulge in depravity with children. And… perhaps even something worse.” Stunned, they asked each other: Will nothing change now that the truth is out? Is the world simply evil? But the world is not “doomed.” What these revelations provoke is disgust, outrage and, for many in Russia, very little surprise.


What exactly is new here? That parts of the global elite are morally rotten? But haven’t they behaved that way in full public view for years? Was it not the same elite – acting through NATO coalitions and political blocs – that bombed countries, toppled governments, and plunged entire regions into chaos? For over a decade, the world has lived with the consequences of decisions made by a tight circle of self-styled “civilized” leaders. The problem is not just a few twisted individuals. It is the elite as a collective. It’s cohesive, protected, smug, and convinced of its own impunity. When you see how casually they destroy weaker nations in politics, it’s not hard to imagine an island where the same people feel entitled to indulge their private vices.

Political cruelty and moral corruption rarely exist separately. Yet many of Russia’s liberal émigrés, who fled in 2022 hoping to merge into this very “global elite,” seem only now to be waking up. Journalist Anna Mongait, for example, wrote that she spent an entire day studying the Epstein files as if sorting through rubbish. She says it looks unreal, as though generated by artificial intelligence: “Old men I know from official chronicles groping teenage bodies. One frame would be enough for a universal scandal, but there are thousands.”

By evening, she said she was wondering whose handshake had indirectly connected her to Epstein. The thought, she wrote, made her want to wash her hands “up to the elbow.” Now she fears Epstein will drag down not only the American establishment, but “many of our own people.” But two things must be said. First: not everyone is linked to Epstein by some chain of social proximity. Many of us are not connected to that world at all. Not by one handshake, not by ten. He will not drag down “our people,” because we were never part of that circle.

Second: you did not need to know about Epstein’s island to recognize the moral bankruptcy of the global elite. Look at Ukraine. The same political class that now shocks you with its private depravity has been overseeing the destruction of a country in public. These political cannibals may not literally devour people, but the result is much the same. They would have consumed Russia too, had it not resisted. Those who left Russia did not support that resistance. Now they recoil from the elite they once admired. But is this a moral awakening, or simple disappointment? Perhaps they distance themselves now because the political winds have shifted, because figures like Trump do not favor them. If a smiling Western politician returned who embraced their worldview, would they not stretch out their hands again?

Cleansing oneself is actually simple. Stand on firm moral ground. Judge people by their actions, not their smiles, slogans, or fashionable reputations. Understand that evil persists as long as people remain fascinated by it and eager to belong to its circle. There are fewer such admirers left in Russia today. Not least because many of them have already left, and no longer lecture the rest of us about what we should be ashamed of.

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“And I am so happy to be away from all the muck.”

• Nancy Mace Demands SUBPOENA For Bill Gates In Epstein Case (MN)

Congresswoman Nancy Mace is turning up the heat on Bill Gates, pushing for a subpoena that could force the tech tycoon to spill the beans on his shady ties to Jeffrey Epstein—exposing how deep the rot runs in the elite circles that have long evaded justice. With the DOJ dropping three million pages of Epstein docs packed with stomach-turning allegations, Mace isn’t buying Gates’ denials, demanding he testify before Congress to set the record straight or face the consequences. Mace wasted no time after seeing Melinda Gates’ eye-opening comments about her ex-husband and Epstein during an NPR interview.

The Rep. announced a push to subpoena Bill Gates in a social media blast, revealing she has asked House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) to haul the Microsoft founder in “immediately.” “We’re calling for Bill Gates to testify under oath on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in front of the Oversight Committee,” Mace declared. She added: “[Three] million pages of Epstein documents were just released by the DOJ and the allegations are SICK. If these allegations are false, Bill Gates should have no problem saying so under oath before Congress.” “Nobody is above the law. Not billionaires. Not the powerful. Nobody,” Mace added.

The latest Epstein files, unleashed by the Department of Justice, include a 2013 email from the predator himself alleging Gates caught an STD after “sex with Russians girls” and schemed to slip antibiotics to Melinda without her knowing. Another 2017 email hints at Epstein blackmailing Gates over an alleged affair with Russian bridge player Mila Antonova. Melinda’s response on NPR’s Wild Card podcast lit the fuse for Mace. Melinda said Gates and other Epstein cronies “need to answer to those things.”

“I think we’re having a reckoning as a society,” she told host Rachel Martin. “No girl should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him.” Reflecting on the victims, Melinda added: “It’s beyond heartbreaking. I remember being those ages those girls were; I remember my daughters being those ages.” The Gates’ 2021 divorce announcement cited: “[W]e no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.” But Melinda tied the Epstein mess directly to her pain: “So, for me, it’s personally hard whenever those details come up because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage, but I have moved on from that.”

She pointed the finger squarely: “whatever questions” that remain on the Epstein debacle “are for those people, and even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me. And I am so happy to be away from all the muck.” Gates’ camp fired back through a spokesperson: “These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false.” They claimed: “The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.”

This push comes amid a broader reckoning, with the DOJ’s massive file dump shining a light on elite entanglements. Fresh scrutiny hits figures like Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick over their Epstein links, proving no one is immune. Gates’ own squirming defense on Australia’s 9News—claiming he was “only at dinners” and never met women—got shredded on The View, with hosts like Joy Behar mocking: “I know nothing. I did nothing.” Even that leftist stronghold is turning, signaling Gates’ PR fortress is crumbling.

The Clintons have also finally caved under pressure, agreeing to testify in the Epstein probe after dodging subpoenas for months. Facing contempt charges, Bill and Hillary bent the knee, with depositions set for late February— a win for transparency against deep state stonewalling. This cascade signals that the elite pedophile network’s protectors are finally cracking. As Mace leads the charge, it’s clear the Epstein saga is far from over. Globalists like Gates, long shielded by their billions and media allies, now face real oversight. The Clintons’ testimony could unleash more bombshells, exposing how power corridors enabled this horror.

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“… Gates sought help obtaining drugs “in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls.”

• Vance Slams ‘Incestuous’ US Elites Over Epstein Files (RT)

US Vice President J.D. Vance has said new documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein expose what he described as an “incestuous” culture among America’s political and business elites. The documents, released by the US Justice Department last week, include previously unpublished records from Epstein’s estate and related investigations. The trove spans more than 3 million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images, renewing scrutiny of his connections to political, business, and tech figures and revealing how he maintained ties with prominent individuals even after his 2008 conviction.


Vance told the Daily Mail on Tuesday that the files expose a “pretty incestuous nature” among America’s elites, calling the revelations “pretty gross.” He singled out figures including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, former US President Bill Clinton, and billionaire Bill Gates, saying the disclosures reflected “very poorly on them.” The documents show Musk discussing plans in 2013 to visit Epstein’s private island, asking about “a good time to visit,” with Epstein offering to send his helicopter. The trip never happened, and Musk said he never traveled to the island.

A separate 2013 email shows Epstein sending himself a document claiming Gates sought help obtaining drugs “in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls.” A spokesperson for Gates dismissed the claim as “absolutely absurd and completely false.” Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee in its investigation into Epstein. The ex-president has previously acknowledged flying on Epstein’s private jet in the early 2000s but denied wrongdoing. The couple had initially resisted subpoenas, calling them “invalid and legally unenforceable.”

Speaking about Trump, whose name appears in the files on at least 3,000 occasions and who has denied being friends with Epstein, Vance said the president “knows a lot of these people” due to his wealth and status but “is very much outside of the social circle” and was not closely involved. Trump himself has accused Epstein of plotting against him, writing on social media: “I never went to the infested Epstein island but, almost all of these Crooked Democrats, and their Donors, did.” Epstein died in a New York jail in 2019, in a death ruled a suicide, which has fueled conspiracy theories, including claims he was killed to prevent the disclosure of compromising material involving prominent figures.

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“Hospice is crazy here,” Dr. Oz said. “You’ve got hospice that’s grown seven-fold in the last five years. They represent about three and a half billion dollars of fraud, we believe, just in LA County.”

• Vance To Lead Sweeping Anti-Fraud Task Force Investigating California (ZH)

Vice President JD Vance is poised to chair a new White House task force aimed at rooting out potential fraud and abuse in government programs in California, according to CBS News. Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, is expected to serve as the task force’s vice chairman and handle day-to-day operations, CBS News reports. President Donald Trump is anticipated to issue an executive order in the coming days to formally establish the group, the news outlet said. The White House task force would operate separately from a related Justice Department effort led by Colin McDonald, a Trump nominee for a new fraud-investigation role at the department. McDonald is expected to also probe fraud in Minnesota uncovered by YouTuber Nick Shirley and other independent journalists.

https://twitter.com/NJGOP/status/2017397171604115771

California has long grappled with documented issues of waste, fraud, and weak oversight in state and federally funded programs. State auditors have for more than a decade flagged problems including persistent cost overruns, inadequate internal controls, and unimplemented reform recommendations across various initiatives, CBS News reported last month. California’s Employment Development Department faced acute criticism during the pandemic, when unemployment-insurance fraud resulted in an estimated $20 billion or more in improper payments, while many eligible claimants endured lengthy delays in receiving benefits, according to NPR News. Separately, federal officials have recently scrutinized fraud risks in hospice and home-health services, particularly in Los Angeles County.

Last week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz visited the area to draw attention to the issue, citing the rapid proliferation of hospice providers and potential billions in improper billings. One physician in California reportedly billed the government $120 million in a single year while claiming oversight of 1,900 patients -an volume that has raised questions about feasibility and potential abuse. The county is home to nearly 2,000 licensed hospice agencies, a number exceeding the combined total in more than 36 states and roughly 30 times the count in states such as Florida or New York. “Hospice is crazy here,” Dr. Oz said. “You’ve got hospice that’s grown seven-fold in the last five years. They represent about three and a half billion dollars of fraud, we believe, just in LA County.”

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“… has made a policy decision to create a critical mineral reserve [..] The initiative is called “Project Vault.”

• Vance and Rubio Lead ‘Critical Minerals’ Strategic Ministerial Gathering (CTH)

In the past few years people have heard the term “rare earth minerals” or “critical minerals” as they relate to the manufacture of component goods that are vitally important in the lives of everyone. However, the term “rare” is somewhat of a misnomer. The minerals themselves are not rare; indeed, they have been around for hundreds of millions of years in abundant supply. It is the processing of those minerals into stable second stage commodities that has become rare.


As a result of western environmental rules and regulations, U.S, EU and developed nations have outsourced critical mineral processing (the dirty stuff) to China and Asia. We then import the finished commodity after processing. This becomes a problem when you realize the processor can weaponize western dependency, as we have recently seen with China controlling the export of processed minerals needed for manufacturing. President Trump has made a strategic decision to bring back the manufacturing of critical minerals to the United States and has made a policy decision to create a critical mineral reserve. Just last Monday President Trump announced a $12 billion strategic mineral reserve to combat China’s domination of critical mineral supply chains, a major step toward tackling China’s advantage in a crucial sector of the U.S. economy. The initiative is called “Project Vault.”

“For years, American businesses have risked running out of critical minerals during market disruptions,” President Trump said. “Just as we have long had a strategic petroleum reserve and a stockpile of critical minerals for national defense, we are now creating this reserve for American industry,” Trump said during the Oval Office announcement. Today in Washington DC, Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio led a critical minerals discussion at the State Dept., where they are organizing an effort to get all nations to invest and create their own critical minerals strategic reserves. WATCH:

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Faster than us?!

• How Fast Is The Asian Population Ageing? (ZH)

The latest revision of UN World Population Prospects reveals that demographic shift is no longer a distant projection but an accelerating reality across parts of Asia, with the share of people aged 65 and over rising fast in several countries. As Statista’s Tristan Gaudiaut reports, this trend poses a significant challenge in the region for labor markets, public finances and care systems within a single generation. The figures (UN medium-scenario projections) show Japan already far ahead, as older adults made up already around 29 percent of the population in 2020, and are projected to surpass 30 percent in the coming years: 31.1 percent by 2030 and 35.4 percent by 2040. But, as our infographic shows, the more striking story is the pace of change elsewhere.

South Korea and China are among the standout accelerators. Both countries are expected to see their 65+ population shares more than double between 2020 and 2040. In South Korea, this figure is projected to surge from 15.8 percent (2020) to 33.8 percent (2040), while in China, it is expected to rise from 12.7 percent to 26.6 percent.

Those trajectories mirror intensifying national concerns about future labor supply and pension burdens, amid persistent low fertility and a shrinking workforce. Meanwhile, rapid ageing is not confined to the region’s richest economies. Thailand and Vietnam start from lower baselines, yet both trend sharply upward by 2040. Both South-East Asian countries are projected to see their 65+ population shares double in twenty-years: Thailand to 25.6 percent and Vietnam to 15.8 percent.

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https://twitter.com/MarioBojic/status/2019010007887478792 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2019025650099855464

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 29 2025

Sep 292025
 
 September 29, 2025  Posted by at 10:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  33 Responses »


René Magritte Sixteenth of September 1956

 

• John Mearsheimer On Trump Passing The Buck To Europe (ZH)
• UK Journalist Blows Holes In Western Myths About Russia (RT)
• Vance Calls On Russia To ‘Wake Up’ And Accept Reality (RT)
• Vance Claims Russia ‘Refused’ Meetings With Trump (RT)
• US Considering Tomahawks For Ukraine – Vance (RT)
• Ukraine ‘Unlikely’ To Regain Territory Lost To Russia – Independent (RT)
• Zelensky Confirms Israel Sent Patriot Missile Battery To Ukraine
• Kash Patel On Why There Were 100s of FBI Agents on the Hill on January 6 (Vespa)
• Kash Patel Accuses Christopher Wray of Lying to Congress About Capitol Riot (Margolis)
• Is the Fix Already in to Protect James Comey? (Margolis)
• While Men Wonder, ‘What Can I Do?’ They Already Know (Tim O’brien)
• We Now Have a 4th Theory of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

https://twitter.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1972292337427738821

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1972334411229057323

https://twitter.com/SilentlySirs/status/1972382218480922969

 

 

 

 

A very rare clear head and voice.

• John Mearsheimer On Trump Passing The Buck To Europe (ZH)

Professor John J. Mearsheimer’s now famous 2014 hour-and-fifteen minute lecture on how NATO led Ukraine down the primrose path, once it was popularly ‘discovered’ on YouTube after the Russian invasion of 2022, has since racked up several tens of millions of views. We wrote about his insights and forecasts in Mearsheimer’s Ukraine Crystal Ball as well as his 2024 talk on “Social Engineering At The End Of A Rifle Barrel”. And now in 2025 more and more people continue to say: John Mearsheimer was right, and his analysis continues to be accurate as ever.

In his latest appearance on “Judging Freedom”, he talked with the Judge about Trump’s famous Truth Social tweet where the president subtly said that the US is turning responsibility for the Ukraine war to the Europeans and Ukraine, while at the same time he is going to great lengths as the war goes south to protect himself against the charge he “lost Ukraine.” Mearsheimer and Judge Napolitano also discussed the roots of America’s harmful relationship with Israel and Tucker Carlson’s comment that Netanyahu has been telling others that “I control the United States.” Trump insists he has long been seeking to wind down the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, but what’s really going on behind the scenes. Watch the foremost realism foreign policy expert of our time unpack it…

As a reminder, here’s what Trump wrote on Truth Social regarding the future of the Ukraine crisis this week, ‘stunning’ some European officials while unleashing an avalanche of speculation over what precisely he meant.

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“Believe it or not, Russia is great..”

• UK Journalist Blows Holes In Western Myths About Russia (RT)

British journalist and commentator James Delingpole has shared a provocative account of his recent visit to Moscow, painting a picture of Russia that sharply contrasts with the prevailing negative tone in the Western media. In an essay subtitled “Believe it or not, Russia is great,” published in the UK political and cultural weekly The Spectator earlier this week, Delingpole describes how an invitation from a Russian Orthodox archbishop, an avid listener of his podcast, set the stage for his journey. The columnist admits that many friends and family members considered the trip reckless, some even warning he might be trailed by Russian intelligence or struck by a drone. But instead of a hostile or oppressive environment, he encountered a country that defied many of his expectations.

Delingpole praises Moscow’s clean and safe streets, efficient public transport, and the warmth and dignity of its inhabitants. The award-winning journalist also reflects on the deep spirituality and traditions upheld by the Russian Orthodox Church, drawing a sharp contrast with what he views as the West’s drift into secularism and aggressive progressivism. One part of the essay focuses on Moldova, where he claims the Orthodox Church is facing persecution by pro-EU authorities. Delingpole argues that Western support for such governments often leads to the suppression of conservative religious voices, particularly those opposing gay marriage, LGBT parades or abortion. The writer recounts small but meaningful moments from his trip, such as a local woman teaching him the proper way to cross himself, and the honor of venerating a saint’s relics offered as a gesture of hospitality.

“Though I’m not planning on abandoning my Anglican parish in Northamptonshire, with its six or seven picturesque medieval churches and its Book of Common Prayer communion services, I do find the mysteries of Orthodoxy awfully seductive,” Delingpole noted. The essay does not touch upon any aspects of Russian politics, but does challenge readers to reconsider blanket narratives concerning the country. The author suggests that in condemning everything associated with Russia, the West may “be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

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Where did he come from? Trump tired?

• Vance Calls On Russia To ‘Wake Up’ And Accept Reality (RT)

US Vice President J.D. Vance has called on Moscow to “’wake up and accept reality,” claiming that Russia has little “to show for” its military effort in the Ukraine conflict. His words echo those of President Donald Trump, who has recently also changed his rhetoric on the issue by stating that Kiev could defeat Moscow. For months, Washington insisted that Kiev would need to give up on certain territorial claims for a US-mediated peace deal with Moscow to move forward. This week, however, the US President made a U-turn by dismissing Russia as a “paper tiger” and urging Kiev to “act.” Vance called on Moscow to sit down at the negotiating table in an interview with Fox News on Sunday.

The US would “keep on working for peace, and we hope the Russians actually wake up to the reality on the ground,” he stated while largely repeating Trump’s recent arguments. According to the vice president, Moscow’s forces have “really stalled” and “don’t have much territorial gain to show for” their efforts, with the Russian economy allegedly “in shambles.” Moscow has repeatedly stated it is open to a peaceful resolution of the hostilities at any time but has maintained that any deal must address the roots of the conflict and respect the realities on the ground. This includes the status of the former Ukrainian territories that joined Russia after public referendums.

Contrary to recent statements by both Trump and Vance, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on Thursday that its forces have taken control of 4,700 square kilometers and 205 settlements this year alone. The Russian economy has also been demonstrating steady growth over the past few years despite the pressure of unprecedented Western sanctions. The nation’s GDP grew by 4.1% in 2023 and by 4.3% in 2024. Although a slowdown is expected this year, it is still projected to grow by 2.5%. The Kremlin had earlier responded to Trump’s original remarks by saying that Russia is traditionally associated with a bear rather than a tiger and there is “no such thing as a paper bear.”

https://twitter.com/rinalu_/status/1972353752800657510

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They want them well-prepared.

• Vance Claims Russia ‘Refused’ Meetings With Trump (RT)

The Russian side has refused trilateral meetings with US President Donald Trump and representatives from Ukraine, US Vice President J.D. Vance claimed in an interview with Fox News on Sunday. Trump has increasingly expressed impatience with the pace of Ukraine peace talks. The Kremlin says Kiev has demonstrated that it is not interested in peace by sticking to megaphone diplomacy and ignoring Russian settlement proposals. “Unfortunately, what we have seen over the last couple weeks, the Russians have refused to sit down with any bilateral meetings with the Ukrainians,” Vance told Fox News.

“They have refused to sit down with any trilateral meetings, where the president or some other member of the administration could sit down with the Russians and the Ukrainians,” he added. According to Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to meet Trump if the US leader chooses to take up the invitation and visit Moscow. The offer was extended shortly after their summit in Alaska in August. “This invitation still stands,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Sunday. “Putin is ready and will be glad to meet President Trump. It will then all depend on Trump’s decision.”

However, a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky would first require the peace talks to make some headway, Moscow has argued. An “unprepared” meeting with Zelensky would amount to “a PR-stunt doomed to failure,” Peskov said on Wednesday. Moscow has maintained that it is ready and willing to settle the Ukraine conflict via diplomatic means.

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“The missiles have a range of up to 2,500km and can be equipped with nuclear warheads.”

If they can, you must presume they do.

• US Considering Tomahawks For Ukraine – Vance (RT)

The US is considering making long-range Tomahawk missiles available for Ukraine, Vice President J.D. Vance told Fox News on Sunday. Several Western news media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and The Telegraph, previously reported that Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky specifically requested the missiles during a meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York last week. According to the WSJ, Trump did not oppose the idea and was also open to lifting restrictions on Kiev’s use of US-made weapons for strikes deep into Russian territory, but made no specific commitments during the meeting. The president was previously against giving Tomahawks to Ukraine, according to Axios.

“We’re certainly looking at it,” Vance said when asked if Washington is considering selling the missiles to other NATO members so that they could be handed over to Kiev. When further pressed on the issue of a potential escalation that could follow such a step, Vance said that Trump would ultimately determine Washington’s course of action. The US president’s special envoy, Keith Kellogg, who also talked to Fox News on Sunday, said that “the decision has not been made,” while confirming that Zelensky did ask Trump for Tomahawks. The missiles have a range of up to 2,500km and can be equipped with nuclear warheads. Moscow has repeatedly warned that Western arms supplies to Kiev will not change the situation on the front line and only risk further escalation, potentially leading to a direct conflict between Russia and NATO.

In November 2024, President Vladimir Putin cautioned that “the regional conflict in Ukraine provoked by the West has assumed elements of a global nature,” and warned of a backlash if tensions escalate further. His comments came after Kiev launched several strikes using US-made ATACMS and HIMARS systems, as well as British-made Storm Shadow missiles, deep inside Russian territory after receiving the green light from its Western backers. The Kremlin also warned that “reckless decisions” of Western nations supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles cannot be left unanswered.

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“..he did not even entirely understand what Zelensky was “actually talking about.”

• Ukraine ‘Unlikely’ To Regain Territory Lost To Russia – Independent (RT)

Kiev is in no position to reclaim the former Ukrainian regions it lost to Russia without the active participation of its NATO backers, The Independent has reported, citing a group of experts. Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump claimed that the country could potentially win back the territory it lays claim to. The US president likened Russia to a “paper tiger” and said it was “time for Ukraine to act” in a post on Truth Social that was praised by Vladimir Zelensky. However, the experts approached by The Independent poured cold water on Kiev’s hopes. Ukraine would need its NATO backers to provide it with an effective “sky shield” and long-range weapons if it hopes to overpower Russia, according to John Lough, the head of foreign policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Center.

“It doesn’t really look realistic unless Russia can be crippled economically,” he added. Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst at Black Bird Group, a Finnish open-source intelligence project, called such a prospect nearly unimaginable. “I do not find it possible, under the current circumstances, that Ukraine would be able to take all of its land back,” he told The Independent, adding that such an “immense task” would require the direct participation of NATO nations. He also questioned recent statements by Zelensky about an offensive in the Donetsk People’s Republic, where the Ukrainian leader claimed Kiev’s troops had thwarted a major Russian attack.

“The amount of land that he’s saying has been taken back seems to be over-exaggerated,” the analyst said, adding that he did not even entirely understand what Zelensky was “actually talking about.” Contrary to Trump’s “paper tiger” claims, the Russian Defense Ministry has been reporting steady advances in recent months, particularly in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Russian forces have taken control of 4,700 square kilometers and 205 settlements this year, it reported on Thursday. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Aleksandr Syrsky also admitted that Russia was superior on the front line, with its troops prevailing in all key areas.

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What good are Patriots vs hypersonics?

• Zelensky Confirms Israel Sent Patriot Missile Battery To Ukraine

It was a surprised announcement, given that for over three years of the Ukraine war, Israel has been persistent in resisting calls to send arms to Israel, given it is more concerned with keeping its delicate relations with Moscow positive. Until now it had only sent non-lethal and humanitarian aid. Also, Russia has long maintained a military presence on the Mediterranean, along Syria’s coast. But times have changed, and Russia could be packing up its Syrian naval and air bases, given the December overthrow of its ally Assad and the Jolani regime being installed in Damascus. Moscow is suddenly left with less leverage in the region, and has pivoted to growing closer with Iran, which has supplied it with kamikaze drones used in Ukraine.

It likely rubbed Tel Aviv the wrong way seeing Russia deepen its economic, defense, and technological cooperation with Iran, so in light of all of this it has softened its resistance to arming Ukraine. Back in June, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodsky was the first to let slip that Patriot systems would protect Ukrainian cities, which was a risk given it has angered Russia. Yet the Ukrainian government had never officially acknowledged this. But to get US-supplied Patriots to Ukraine, there’s been some trickery and serious diplomatic maneuvering involved in order to make it appear all very ‘indirect’ – in part to prevent Israel from provoking too much wrath out of Moscow. Back in May, the NY Times presented how the scheme would work:

A Patriot air-defense system that was based in Israel will be sent to Ukraine after it is refurbished, four current and former U.S. officials said in recent days, and Western allies are discussing the logistics of Germany or Greece giving another one. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, declined to describe President Trump’s view of the decision to transfer more Patriot systems to Ukraine. And Kyiv Post has newly acknowledged, “The deployment confirmed an intricate plan, first reported by US media in May, that involved Washington requesting that Israel return an older Patriot system for refurbishment before it was routed to Kyiv.”

Ukraine is seeking to establish a layered permanent defensive air shield based on advanced systems provided by the West. The Trump administration has largely put the brakes on simply donating arms directly, but wants Europe and allies to foot the bill and make the transfers.

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“Agents were sent into a crowd control mission after the riot was declared by Metro Police – something that goes against FBI standards..”

• Kash Patel On Why There Were 100s of FBI Agents on the Hill on January 6 (Vespa)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been cagey regarding its activities on January 6. The allegation that undercover operatives were embedded in the crowd during the riot isn’t tin foil hat material—the bureau admitted it. The inspector general tried to deny it, but there was no spinning this. The FBI had agents on the ground, some of whom entered the Capitol Building. Now, we’ve learned that there were hundreds of agents on the ground this week, around 275. FBI Director Kash Patel had to clarify what the FBI was doing over the weekend, and former FBI Director Chris Wray might be hauled before Congress again. Mr. Patel said that agents were dispatched for crowd control (via Fox News):

“The FBI responded on Saturday to a report that 274 plainclothes agents were at the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, clarifying the role of bureau personnel while still blasting former Director Christopher Wray. While the agents were on hand, they were sent in after the riot had begun to try to control the unruly crowd, officials told Fox News Digital. That is not the proper role of FBI agents, and Wray was not forthcoming about what happened when he testified numerous times on Capitol Hill, Director Kash Patel said. “Agents were sent into a crowd control mission after the riot was declared by Metro Police – something that goes against FBI standards,” Patel told Fox News Digital. “This was the failure of a corrupt leadership that lied to Congress and to the American people about what really happened.” He added, “Thanks to agents coming forward, we are now uncovering the truth. We are fully committed to transparency, and justice and accountability continues with this FBI.”

[…]
Wray told a House Committee on Nov. 15, 2023, “If you are asking if the violence at the Capitol was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources or agents, the answer is no,” but he wouldn’t disclose if any agents or sources were embedded within the crowd.” So, did Wray lie to Congress? It might be time to ask him some more questions.

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“..only showed up after Capitol Police begged for help with crowd control—a job agents resented because they aren’t trained for it..”

• Kash Patel Accuses Christopher Wray of Lying to Congress About Capitol Riot (Margolis)

The narrative that January 6 was purely an organic riot keeps collapsing under the weight of new revelations. For years, the left branded anyone who suggested the FBI had undercover operatives in the crowd a conspiracy theorist. Now, the bureau has admitted it. The inspector general tried to soft-pedal it but couldn’t—FBI agents were on the ground, and some even entered the Capitol Building. This week’s disclosure was even more stunning: about 274 agents were operating on January 6. That’s not “a few.” That’s a coordinated presence. Over the weekend, FBI Director Kash Patel offered some clarification about this new revelation, and there may be implications for former Director Chris Wray. According to a report from Fox News Digital, the bureau now claims its personnel showed up only after the chaos started and handled “crowd control.”

But here’s the problem: that’s not the job of FBI agents. The bureau isn’t a riot squad, and Patel called out the excuse directly. He also reminded everyone that Wray wasn’t honest when he testified on Capitol Hill—he concealed key facts about the bureau’s actions, and that deception continues to hang over his record. “Agents were sent into a crowd control mission after the riot was declared by Metro Police – something that goes against FBI standards,” Patel said. “This was the failure of a corrupt leadership that lied to Congress and to the American people about what really happened.” Patel added, “Thanks to agents coming forward, we are now uncovering the truth. We are fully committed to transparency, and justice and accountability continues with this FBI.”

There’s no indication any FBI agents were involved in any events related to Trump’s speech on the morning of Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an FBI official told Fox News Digital, adding that Wray should have disclosed that agents were there when he was asked by congressional leaders. President Donald Trump, citing a report that the agents were in the crowd which did not make clear their mission, said earlier that Wray, “has some major explaining to do.” “It was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed, against all Rules, Regulations, Protocols, and Standards, 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Saturday afternoon following a report from The Blaze, revealing the number of agents that were there.

Trump added, “This is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again! That’s right, as it now turns out, FBI Agents were at, and in, the January 6th Protest, probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists, but certainly not as ‘Law Enforcement Officials.’” The president said he wanted to know each officer’s identity and what they were doing at the U.S. Capitol. “Many Great American Patriots were made to pay a very big price only for the love of their Country,” he said, referring to Trump supporters who faced charges for their involvement on Jan. 6.

A December report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz insisted there were no undercover FBI agents in the crowds that day, though he admitted there were informants, including three directed by the FBI. The bureau claims its agents only showed up after Capitol Police begged for help with crowd control—a job agents resented because they aren’t trained for it. According to officials, the first FBI personnel didn’t even arrive until after 2:30 p.m., well after the chaos had begun.

Read more …

“The deep state isn’t afraid of justice—they’re afraid of accountability.”

• Is the Fix Already in to Protect James Comey? (Margolis)

The swamp never wastes time protecting its own, and James Comey is no exception. The disgraced former FBI director, who has finally been indicted for lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding, is already benefiting from the familiar playbook: put the right judge in place, create an appearance of fairness, and then quietly shield him from any real accountability. On Thursday, following the grand jury indictment, Comey’s case was “randomly” assigned to U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff. In 2021, Joe Biden nominated Nachmanoff, and the Senate confirmed him to the federal bench with a razor-thin 52-46 vote, as three Senate Republicans — Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski — crossed over to support his confirmation. If you believe that selecting Nachmanoff to preside over this case was truly random, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Washington’s so-called “random assignments” seem to have a funny way of putting the most Trump-hostile judges on politically charged cases. Take Judge James Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee, who just happened to land multiple Trump-related cases. Every single time, Boasberg ruled in ways that stretched or outright ignored constitutional boundaries to work against Trump. Yet, somehow, we’re supposed to believe these assignments are pure chance. Sure. Judge Nachmanoff’s résumé doesn’t exactly inspire confidence either. Before becoming a magistrate judge for six years, he spent over a decade working as a federal public defender. That’s a career steeped in finding loopholes, bending rules, and negotiating ways to avoid accountability for defendants. He also defended al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui.

And now he’s tasked with presiding over perhaps the most politically sensitive case since the Trump-Russia debacle that Comey himself helped orchestrate. It has all the makings of yet another judicial performance meant not to obtain justice, but to wash Comey clean. Comey himself is projecting confidence, even smugness. After his indictment, he declared, “I’m not afraid,” clearly confident of his inevitable vindication. Of course he’s not afraid—why would he be? He knows exactly how the swamp game works: the very corrupt institutions that targeted Trump are now circling the wagons to protect him. Washington knows that convicting Comey would mean vindicating Trump’s long-standing claims of a deep-state sabotage. They’ll never allow that because it would expose years of abuse and corruption.

Let’s not forget how deep the animosity runs. Comey’s feud with Trump dates back to 2017 when Trump fired him for insubordination and dishonesty. From there, Comey reinvented himself as the loudest of Trump’s critics, playing the role of “principled public servant” while running cover for the FBI’s disastrous handling of the 2016 campaign and the Russia hoax. I guess we should have seen this coming. The Washington swamp protects its own. James Comey presided over one of the darkest abuses of power in modern American politics, weaponizing the FBI against a duly elected president. Now, as he faces the charges he should have faced years ago, the establishment is already stacking the deck in his favor. The deep state isn’t afraid of justice—they’re afraid of accountability. And once again, it looks like the fix is in.

Read more …

“We can no longer afford to give a free pass to the people who are engineering the destruction of America as we know it. “It’s time.”

• While Men Wonder, ‘What Can I Do?’ They Already Know (Tim O’brien)

Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist and now “cancelled” conservative podcaster, signaled a broad imperative on his podcast in the days prior to the 2024 presidential election. He said, “Men, it’s time.” He said men would know what he meant, and he was correct. He realized that not all men in America were listening to him and waiting for his instructions, but he knew that enough of them were listening and did hear his rallying cry. He acknowledged that his audience was both male and female, but his message was for the men. He said he had a strong feeling about what men in America were pondering at that moment in America’s history. He pointed to how nature shapes men in their responses to threats or danger, and that biology instinctively drives them to assume the role of protector.

Paraphrasing Adams here, he said essentially that men will wait until the threat can no longer be ignored and the obligation to respond can no longer be ignored. Of course, none of this ignores the fact that conservative women were seeing the same things, going through something very similar at the same time, and responding in their own way. Just prior to the election, Adams said men in America now saw where the country was headed and that a Kamala Harris victory would put America on a path to a very dark place. Action had to be taken now. Men throughout America knew they had a responsibility to respond. They had to flat-out reject the left’s propaganda and the eft’s definition of “the new normal.” They didn’t need Adams or someone like him to tell them what to do or what to see. They already innately knew, Adams said. They just needed a nudge: “It’s time.”

During the Republican National Convention in July of 2024, the CNN analysts were discussing the speaker line-up the night when Kid Rock, wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, and UFC President Dana White took the stage. The pundits didn’t know what to make of it. That’s when Chris Wallace piped up and said, “A lot of testosterone tonight.” He was right. After the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, you started to see people, but particularly young men, unapologetically wearing their MAGA hats outside of just those Trump rallies. Increasingly, you’d see them in stores, on the beach, or at your kid’s baseball game. “Bro humor” broke out, and it became acceptable to mercilessly ridicule the cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental incompetence and the steady diet of word salads Kamala Harris was serving up. No amount of Barack Obama’s finger-wagging, aimed particularly at young black men, could resonate.

Across demographics, enough men knew what to do and they did it. They did what guys do when they get motivated. They spoke their minds. They laughed at what needed to be laughed at, especially while taking it seriously. They openly rejected stupidity and things that lacked common sense. In the process, a contagion was unleashed. Most men caught it, but again, especially young men. No more disengagement. No more looking the other way. No more playing along to get along, as men often do. Instead, men in general made a collective decision: “We are not tolerating the BS anymore. We reject the lies, the dictates, the nonsensical new woke protocols in society. All of it.”They pushed b ack at every turn. In personal conversations, in texts, on social media, in bars and restaurants, with family and friends, on the golf course, in the gym, and at work. They just quit overlooking it and letting it go.

They wore those MAGA hats where “polite company” doesn’t do that. They went to Trump rallies and other events. They tuned into Joe Rogan, Theo Von and other podcasters who interviewed Trump. They registered to vote and voted.They put Donald Trump over the top in a big way. Since then, many have gone back to their old ways, disengaging from politics, going back to watching sports, going to work, coaching their kids’ teams, and cutting the grass. Like their better halves, they work, they pay taxes, and they raise families. And besides, politics does not consume them. But now different things are happening. Strange things. Things that weren’t on the calendar like an election date was in 2024. Violent transgender and leftist killers have started to shoot up schools and churches with more frequency. Unsuspecting young women are being attacked and killed in places like light rail transit cars, and no one is helping.

A Christian bridge builder was assassinated for trying to go to the opposition to build dialogue. To make matters worse, he has been smeared online, in the halls of Congress, and in the media after death. ICE officers just trying to do their jobs are being targeted and told by Democrat politicians and leftist mobs to take off their masks so they can be personally doxed and targeted. While the left likes to pretend it hates guns, the gun has become its weapon of choice when trying to kill free speech, kill conservative momentum, and kill commonsense governing policies that people democratically voted for. Policies that are committed to deporting illegal immigrants; policies that affirm that men are men and women are women; policies that recognize my family and I have a right to speak, a right to hear, and a right to be safe in our own community

Those same men Scott Adams was talking to last year are now well aware of this vibe shift in the country. Now, with the women in their lives, they’re watching. They’re looking for something, some indicator that once again the threat can no longer be ignored and that they must do something. But what to do? The answer is pretty simple and nothing we haven’t done before. We need to reject the BS, the excuses, and the victim-blaming when the victims don’t fit the leftist narrative. There must be zero tolerance for violence in all forms, even if it means overwhelming that violence through bolstered law enforcement and federal resources as in Washington, D.C. Men now see the threat and know it won’t go away on its own or just because we voted on election day. Unlike 2024, this is not a battle for votes’ it’s a battle for the culture. We know this.

Deep down, we know we have to do what we did before. Women and men. We must call out the instigators openly and unapologetically. Hold them to account. Laugh at those who need to be laughed at and trivialize what needs to be trivialized, all the while taking the left very seriously. Whether we’re on a transit car or in a public space, we know that if something happens, we have to step up. We have no choice. Men have to get involved. This battle will be won in the course of our daily routines. At parent-teacher meetings, in school board meetings, by speaking up in everyday conversations or through firm but reasonable social media activity. In all cases, all of us must reject leftist hate in all forms, such as by boycotting weaselly late-night comedians. We need to reject what has now become serious political and religious persecution. We must refuse to let woke dictates and protocols rule.

We must refuse to let the left’s distorted version of reality become reality. Back in New York City after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, law enforcement came up with a catchy saying that is relevant right now: If you see something, say something. That’s where we are. When we see something that isn’t right, whether it feels like an immediate threat, or one that if allowed to stand will add to the decline of our culture, we have a duty to do something or say something. Nothing will change unless we, and millions like us, do the same. Men can’t leave it to the government, to the Trump administration, or to their wives. They must be present and accounted for. We can no longer afford to give a free pass to the people who are engineering the destruction of America as we know it. “It’s time.”

Read more …

Not a complete story. Video hardly accessible.

• We Now Have a 4th Theory of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination (Paul Craig Roberts)

“There is now video evidence that is extremely compelling that Charlie Kirk was fitted with an explosive lavalier mic, attached to his T-shirt that fired a small caliber projectile through the right side of his neck, creating a bloody exit wound on his neck’s left side. The mini-explosion under Charlie’s shirt caused a momentary ballooning of the shirt and smoke coming from under his garment that would not seem to have been caused by a bullet fired at him from a distance. These details are readily visible in the video attached below.

The apparent assassin was a man with a large-square-patterned, brown shirt in the audience several feet away from Kirk. He seems to have “shot” Charlie, not by firing a Derringer-sized pistol at him, as some have speculated, but by triggering the detonator under Charlie’s shirt with a remote-control device under the killer’s own shirt sleeve. He was captured on video on the front row in the audience, “pulling the trigger” through his sleeve, which is precisely synchronized with the sound of the exploding detonator. In the video, the man then exhibits a completely different reaction from the other frightened people around him at the moment after Charlie is shot. Thereafter, he immediately rushes to the crime scene where his accomplices appear to be removing the spent mic detonator, or “squib,” from Charlie’s shirt, and perhaps the spent bullet on the ground as well.

Another man in a blue shirt appears to be putting something in his back pocket, while the man in the brown shirt hands off what appears to be the remote control trigger device used in the assassination to yet another man in a white shirt, who puts that item in his back pocket. Both men in the blue shirt and white shirt run off behind the stage and disappear. The assassin or “trigger man” remains at the crime scene, apparently combing the area and sweeping up any remaining evidence.

Another person moves quickly to remove the SD card in the camera behind Charlie that captured the murder on video up close, although from a rear angle. However this too was an illegal removal of evidence from the crime scene. Even the rushed removal of Kirk’s body, ostensibly, “to the hospital,” when he was obviously already dead was also a criminal removal of evidence. Incredibly, the same man with the brown shirt who “pulled the trigger,” can also be seen in another video (linked below, as well) directing five other men, uniformly dressed in dark shirts and khaki pants, as they hurriedly carry Kirk’s lifeless body to a black Suburban, as one or two clueless police look on and still do nothing to secure the crime scene. Then the man in the brown shirt enters the black Suburban to accompany Kirk’s dead body to the hospital. He was not only the “trigger man” but apparently the person coordinating the entire criminal cooperation.

During the ride to the hospital, there would have been enough time to remove Charlie’s shirt, and perhaps replace it with an identical garment. This would have precluded any forensic discovery of spent gunpowder from the explosive that was discharged underneath the material of his original clothing. Of course, just as we were presented with falsified photos of the entry and exit wounds on President Kennedy’s skull, and misleading testimonies by the government’s obviously compromised and/or threatened pathologists at Bethesda, Maryland, so also was the published report on Kirk’s wounds a total lie. This operation was necessarily conducted by multiple persons known to Charlie, who were either employees of TPUSA or “contractors” hired by Charlie’s organization. They are now helping to perpetuate the cover-up, as if those in Charlie’s inner circle were covert Mossad and/or CIA operatives tasked with “keeping him in line,” or eliminating him if he deviated from the script approved by Israel.

As many will recall, the Israelis developed explosive pagers that made their way into the pockets of administrators of the Hamas government structures, killing the people who were carrying those devices, and injuring many others in the process, on 17 September 2024. The Mossad’s remote control executions continued on 18 September 2024 with explosive walkie-talkies that had been sold to Iranian officials. In this manner, Israel’s remote-control assassination operations resulted in 42 deaths and over 3500 injuries.

A remotely-detonated explosive lapel microphone, magnetically attached to Kirk’s T-shirt with part of the device hidden from view under the shirt, and modified to fire a deadly projectile at close range, would certainly have been within the Mossad’s capabilities in its war against public figures that threaten Israel’s agenda. Moreover, the Mossad would have been able to call on our own government to assist in the murder, as the obedient slave to the Jewish state that it has become, in totality during the first several months of Trump’s second term.

The presenter of this brief video, Stew Peters, is the courageous producer of the riveting documentary, “Died Suddenly,” which exposed the government’s massive killing spree with the COVID vaccine. Peters lays the blame on Kirk’s “Israeli security detail,” for having executed the murder. If so, they were likely aided in the crime by members of Charlie Kirk’s own staff that remain high up in the organization he founded, Turning Point USA. From early on, Kirk’s operation was heavily funded by Jewish donors, and was run by maniacal “Christian-Zionists” who some time ago stopped following the teachings of Jesus Christ after they became deranged, radicalized Zionists. Once Kirk had gone rogue and began calling out both Israel and domestic Jewish influencers, the members of Kirk’s inner circle had to choose between Charlie and the object of their first loyalty – Talmudic Jewry and the Zionist bandit state.

Israel will not tolerate someone taking their money and then turning on them, nor will their non-Jewish sycophants who have become caught up in the mindset of Talmudic Jewry. The Talmud justifies the killing of non-Jews, and its powerful adherents will not allow anyone seen as a threat to Israel to live. Natanyahu kills people with impunity around the world, and his brainwashed, cultish, non-Jewish, Zionist allies cheer him on.

As you well know, these same kinds of twisted souls financed the Trump campaign and now occupy the Trump Administration, in every single key position. No doubt this is why President Trump never deviates from the Israeli playbook. And this will guarantee that his Justice Department will allow the government’s patsy, who, just like Harvey Oswald, has denied shooting anyone, to be “suicided” while in federal custody, resulting in the immediate closure of the case. Just like LBJ, who was the designated custodian for the cover-up of the murder of JFK before the president was assassinated, so also President Trump is already complicit in the murder of Charlie Kirk by falsely blaming his death on “radical leftists.” And he will continue to allow his corrupt FBI director to lie non-stop to the American people during the agency’s sham “investigation” into the murder of Charlie Kirk from beginning to end.

Kirk’s supposed “best friend,” Andrew Kolvet, is also a bad actor, parroting the ridiculous claim that Charlie’s “man of steel” neck bones prevented the alleged assassin’s 30-06 bullet (which has yet to be produced) from piercing his neck. Kolvet went on camera to present this obviously bogus “coroner’s report,” but no one is buying it.

Every distraction imaginable was spring-loaded and ready to go before Kirk’s murder, including an elderly professional crisis actor (also Jewish) claiming to have shot Kirk, to preoccupy the local police while the killers were sweeping the the crime scene, uninhibited. Plus, multiple decoy shooters were positioned on the roof of the buildings that surrounded the temporary arena where Kirk was speaking. Moreover, there is a plethora of misleading videos and false explanations being put out that have been deliberately engineered to confuse the public. However, a consensus among those determined to uncover the true identity of Kirk’s murderers is beginning to coalesce around Stew Peter’s brief video, linked below.

https://stewpeters.locals.com/post/7312395/breaking-charlie-kirk-assassin-identified

Read more …

 

 

 

 


https://twitter.com/FarmGirlCarrie/status/1971980846455541929

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1972440255992066434

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 18 2025

Sep 182025
 
 September 18, 2025  Posted by at 10:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Georgia O’Keeffe Sky above clouds III 1963

 

• President Trump and Vice President JD Vance To Attend Charlie Kirk Funeral (CTH)
• When Charlie Kirk Died, So Did the Democratic Party (Pinsker)
• Kid Rock Blasts Mainstream Media as ‘Public Enemy Number One’ (MN)
• Jimmy Kimmel’s Rejection By Broadcasters a ‘Turning Point’ In Media (NYP)
• This Ain’t Your Democratic Party’s FBI (Margolis)
• Antigone 2.0: Liberals Denounce and Destroy Memorials for Charlie Kirk (Turley)
• ‘We’d Kick Russia’s Ass’ – Trump’s Special Envoy To Ukraine (RMX)
• Zelensky Has No Intention of Ending Conflict With Moscow – MP (RT)
• Zelensky Tells West To Put Ukraine First (RT)
• EU Plans To Seize €170bn of Russia’s Frozen Funds – FT (RT)
• ‘No Place’ For EU At Ukraine Talks – Lavrov (RT)
• Zelensky Reveals Major Change In Ukrainian Troop Training (RT)
• Lavrov Accuses Kiev of ‘Sabotaging’ US Peace Efforts (RT)
• Zelensky ‘Losing Touch With Reality’ – Foreign Policy Analysis (RT)
• Western ‘Peacekeepers’ In Ukraine Would Be Seen As Occupiers – Lavrov (RT)
• ‘Russian Drone Attack’ Damage Was Caused By Polish Missile (RT)

 

 

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1968410917638397998

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1968109282886398179

jordan
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1968334714860974158

fetterman

https://twitter.com/SaltyGoat17/status/1968277053050167446

 

 

 

 

“..my prayers and life lessons have guided me to understand that is exactly when it is best to say nothing..”

• President Trump and Vice President JD Vance To Attend Charlie Kirk Funeral (CTH)

It is not common when both the sitting President of the United States and the Vice President attend the same funeral together, when it is not a nationally recognized dignitary. Both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance will be honoring Charlie Kirk at the funeral service. It is a fitting and considerate reflection of great honor, worthy of Kirk’s impact.

My dear friends, there is so much background stuff happening we are all watching in the aftermath of the Kirk assassination, it is difficult to find the words for any outline of value. I cannot imagine how challenging life is for Charlie Kirk’s family right now, and out of the greatest respect I feel the best thing to do is just do nothing except honor his faith, work and legacy. I have made the decision not to cover any of the controversial aspects, direct or ancillary, beyond what I have already shared.

Do I have opinions, yes. And when my brain is full of things I want to say – my prayers and life lessons have guided me to understand that is exactly when it is best to say nothing. My inner voice tells me to remain silent on any of the ancillary subjects until Charlie Kirk is laid to rest with great honor and tribute. Then, when it is appropriate, to provide my personal thoughts on facets that may be valuable in context. Feel free to share any subject matter in/around the storyline of this tragedy on any open thread where we can gather in fellowship. I know a lot of people are hurting. Channel that hurt into meaningful prayer for them.

Read more …

“What’s Coming Next Is Even Worse.”

• When Charlie Kirk Died, So Did the Democratic Party (Pinsker)

Up until the early 2010s, the emotional appeal of being a good, loyal Democrat was twofold: It signaled to your peers how much you cared about the poor, the environment, and the disadvantaged; and — if you were white — it was “proof” you weren’t a racist. Meanwhile, the GOP was the party of old white dudes, business tycoons, and religious weirdos. As Bill Maher put it in 2011, “[Republicans are] the squares. I’m not putting them down. You need squares to run s**t.” And more or less, that’s how the media portrayed the two parties: Republicans were the stodgy old farts in “Footloose,” and the Democrats were the cool kids who simply wanted to dance, dance, dance. That’s how it was for a very long time. Those were the long-established brand identities, pushed and promoted by Hollywood propaganda.

In the 1972 rom-com Butterflies Are Free, Goldie Hawn quipped, “I joined the Young Republicans. Another mistake. There’s no such thing as a young Republican.” It was a funny line with more than a kernel of truth. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party branded itself as the one-stop shop for young people with big hearts — the party of people with compassion and empathy. The Donkeys were the dreamers, thinkers, lovers, and optimists. Whereas Republicans were bitter, unimaginative, stuck-in-the-past realists, the Democrats led with love. It was showcased in their sloganeering: Make love, not war! Love conquers hate! Keep hope alive! Give peace a chance! Putting people first! The man from Hope! Yes we can! That all began to unravel during the Obama years.

Before, the Democrats were a left-leaning coalition party, comprised of union workers, Catholics, minorities, feminists, tradesmen, Jews, gays, and others. But by the beginning of President Obama’s second term, the Democratic Party had handed the keys to the far left — and the far left alone. This was the first shoe to drop. A union dockworker in New Jersey never had much in common with, say, a committed socialist from Portland, but they still voted Democratic because they believed the Democratic Party better protected their political interests. But when the far left ascended, union workers — and other essential parts of the Donkey’s coalition — began looking elsewhere for representation. Enter Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

“Give a man a mask, and he will show you his true face.”
—Oscar Wilde

When the Democratic Party swung to the far left, it created an opening for an outsider like Trump to champion the plight of all the Americans left behind. This became the backbone of the MAGA movement, and if the Democrats had half a brain, they would’ve realized this a helluva lot sooner. But they didn’t. They figured that Donald Trump was a bizarre, historic anomaly — a master propagandist with an inexplicable, Svengali-like hold over a gullible audience — and if they got rid of Trump, they’d get rid of the movement. They didn’t understand that MAGA was as much about the left as it was about the right. So they tried character assassination. Criminal charges. A nonstop #Resistance campaign. They even called him Hitler, a fascist, a dictator, a Nazi, and an existential threat to democracy. The American people listened to them, listened to Trump, and then voted MAGA in an electoral landslide.

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
—Fredrich Nietzsche

The Democrats failed to change Donald Trump’s brand identity: Trump is still Trump. But they spectacularly succeeded in changing how we perceive them. Between 2016 and 2018 (Trump’s first term), Republicans gained 100,000 more registered voters than Democrats. But just between 2024 and today, the Republican edge has exploded tenfold: They’ve now gained over a million. Something big is happening in the heartland. It’s no secret that the Democratic Party’s brand is in the toilet. As NBC News reported in March of 2025: The Democratic Party has reached an all-time low in popularity in the latest national NBC News poll, as it searches for a path forward after a painful loss to President Donald Trump — and as the party’s voters spoil for a fight between their leaders in Washington and Trump.

Just over a quarter of registered voters (27%) say they have positive views of the party, which is the party’s lowest positive rating in NBC News polling dating back to 1990. Just 7% say those views are “very” positive. And that was all BEFORE the murder of 31-year-old Charlie Kirk shocked and appalled the nation. Question for the audience: If the Democrats’ brand was in the toilet before, where do you think it is today?

“The tiger can’t change his spots. No, wait, he did! Good for him!”
—Jack Handey

Changing a long-established brand identity is very difficult. There’s a reason why rebranding campaigns are so frickin’ expensive: Changing minds and hearts isn’t easy. Usually, it happens one of two ways: “Gradually, then suddenly.” After the gruesome murder of Charlie Kirk, we’re now in the “suddenly” part. For decades, the Democratic Party was shielded by the halo effect: They were the party of love, compassion, and virtue signaling. It gave their brand Teflon. That Teflon is now gone. After a decade of unhinged rhetoric, violence, hate, lawfare, and anger, the American people have realized the ugly truth about today’s Democratic Party:

In 2022, 82% of Democrats said that political violence in the U.S. was a problem. Today, it’s just 58% — a 24-point drop in just three years! (Guess for Democrats, it all depends on who’s in office.) Liberals are four times more likely than conservatives to celebrate the deaths of their political opponents. (Which, if you’ve been online lately, you’ve almost certainly witnessed.) A jaw-dropping one in four “very liberal” Americans believe political violence is justified. (Just 6% of conservatives agreed.) That’s an astonishing 25% of American liberals!

They’ve gone from “Make love not war” to “Make war not love.” They went from “Do your own thing” and “Give peace a chance” to murdering Charlie Kirk because, in the killer’s own words, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” On this, the killer is exactly right: Some hate can’t be negotiated out. Instead, it needs to be excised completely. Not just Charlie Kirk died on Sept. 10, 2025. So did the old Democratic Party. Unfortunately, what’s coming in its place is even worse. Today’s Democratic Party is in the process of transitioning to the Democratic Socialist Party. A new national poll from Jacobin makes it crystal clear:

Democrats prefer democratic socialism to capitalism by a 58 point margin. Socialism wins overall with likely voters under forty-five years old. […] Candidates who identify as democratic socialists are viewed just as favorably (+69) among registered Democrats as candidates who identify only as Democrats (+67). Prediction: The Democratic Party will rebrand itself as the Democratic Socialist Party, because that’s what their liberal base demands. Each year, as older Democrats die off, the Democratic Socialist advantage will steadily grow within the party. This divide will spread like wildfire during the 2026 midterms — and by 2028, it will devour the remnants of whatever’s left. The future is theirs. The Democratic Party is dead. Long live the Democratic Socialists.

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“..the media is “incentivizing these loner kids to take shots so that they can be heroes.”

• Kid Rock Blasts Mainstream Media as ‘Public Enemy Number One’ (MN)

Musician and outspoken conservative Kid Rock has labelled the mainstream media as “public enemy number one” in the aftermath of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s shocking murder… In an interview with Fox News’ Jesse Watters, Rock argued that inflammatory rhetoric from outlets like The New York Times and other “nut houses” has fueled dangerous narratives. “I’ve said it and I’ll say it again… The mainstream media is the fricking public enemy number one right now,” he declared, further noting that repeated labels of “racist” and “Nazi” directed at conservatives like himself and Kirk incite unstable individuals to violence.

https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/status/1967765814473294227?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1967765814473294227%7Ctwgr%5E6ec01cdec1cbe1a86846d2d037fa5993658d73cf%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2025%2F09%2F16%2Fkid-rock-blasts-mainstream-media-as-public-enemy-number-one-following-kirk-assassination%2F

Drawing from personal experience, Rock noted, “They’ve called me a racist Nazi for years now… Go look up the few facts about my life.” He described how such echoes build up, influencing “nut house kids” who spend their time “playing video games, watching these occult movies that are all over our streaming services” instead of engaging in productive activities. These individuals, he said, end up thinking, “I’m going to go kill a Nazi, I’ma go kill a racist,” leading to tragic outcomes like Kirk’s death. Rock, a longtime Trump supporter, warned that the media is “incentivizing these loner kids to take shots so that they can be heroes.” He criticized the cycle where, after violence, calls for unity quickly dissolve into more divisive language, with conservatives again branded as “fascists.”

Shifting to a broader message, Rock emphasized restraint but issued a stark warning to those celebrating Kirk’s death or vandalizing vigils: “You’re gonna keep it up, you’re gonna run into the wrong people.” “It’s not gonna be pretty. It’s gonna be very ugly, terrible,” he further urged. The musician stressed the need for dialogue, saying, “We gotta start listening to each other and respect one another,” while acknowledging extremists exist on both sides but pointing to the left’s “echo chamber” as particularly problematic. Rock highlighted the need for de-escalation while holding the media accountable for escalating rhetoric.

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Not some top down decision. It was the small local broadcasters who’d had enough.

• Jimmy Kimmel’s Rejection By Broadcasters a ‘Turning Point’ In Media (NYP)

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr described the “unprecedented” rejection of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel by local broadcasters on Wednesday as a “turning point” for legacy media outlets — which he argued have been serving viewers “progressive foie gras.” The comedian’s show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was taken off the air indefinitely by ABC earlier Wednesday after local broadcasters Nexstar and Sinclair announced plans to pre-empt the program over the host’s controversial comments about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “This action today by NexStar and Sinclair, frankly, it’s unprecedented,” Carr told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I can’t imagine another time when we’ve had local broadcasters tell a national programmer like Disney that your content no longer meets the needs and the values of our community.”

Disney is the parent company of ABC, which airs Kimmel’s show on several independently owned affiliates. NexStar and Sinclair, which have licenses with the FCC that require them to operate in the public interest, “stood up” to Disney and ABC, according to Carr. “This is an important turning point,” he said of Kimmel’s show being taken off the air. “There’s more work to go, but I’m very glad to see that American broadcasters are standing up to serve the interests of their community, and we don’t just have this progressive foie gras coming out from New York and Hollywood,” the chairman added. Kimmel, who has long been held in low regard by Republicans and President Trump, outraged conservative viewers Monday by starting his show arguing that Kirk’s suspected killer was part of the “MAGA gang.”

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” the late-night host said, one day after authorities announced that suspected assassin held a “leftist ideology.” Kimmel has also mocked Trump’s response to the assassination of the Turning Point USA founder, describing it as “how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish,” and he has accused the president of “fanning the flames” of violence. In an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, Carr had suggested the FCC might take action against Kimmel, ABC and Disney over the comedian’s “news distortion.” “Any license granted by us at the FCC, that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest,” the chairman explained.

“You can make a strong argument that this is sort of an intentional effort to mislead the American people, about a very core, fundamental fact, of a very important matter,” Carr said of Kimmel’s remarks about Kirk’s alleged killer. “Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he continued, teasing that action against Kimmel isn’t taken by ABC or Disney “there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Sinclair, the nation’s largest ABC affiliate group, informed ABC earlier Wednesday that it would not continue to air “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” as a result of the host’s comments. “Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were inappropriate and deeply insensitive at a critical moment for our country,” Vice Chairman Jason Smith said in a statement. “We believe broadcasters have a responsibility to educate and elevate respectful, constructive dialogue in our communities.”

“We appreciate FCC Chairman Carr’s remarks today and this incident highlights the critical need for the FCC to take immediate regulatory action to address control held over local broadcasters by the big national networks.” Nexstar, which owns dozens of stations affiliated with ABC, similarly said it would pre-empt Kimmel’s show “for the foreseeable future.” “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” Nexstar President Andrew Alford said in a statement. “Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.”

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“Americans deserve an FBI that protects the country, not political agendas.”

• This Ain’t Your Democratic Party’s FBI (Margolis)

FBI Director Kash Patel returned to Capitol Hill this week, and Democrats probably wish he hadn’t. After embarrassing them in the Senate on Tuesday, Patel appeared before the House on Wednesday, where Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) teed up one of the most devastating moments yet. In a rapid-fire back-and-forth, Jordan highlighted the FBI’s most notorious past controversies, giving Patel the chance to dismantle the smears against him and prove just how different the Bureau looks under his leadership. The exchange left Democrats’ talking points in tatters. “Director, yes or no? Is the FBI still spying on parents at school board meetings?” Jordan asked. “Uh, no sir,” Patel responded. “Is the FBI still targeting Catholics?” Jordan pressed. “No sir.” “Is the FBI still spying on President Trump?” Jordan continued. “I don’t believe so,” Patel said.

Jordan then asked, “Is the FBI still censoring Americans?” “Uh, no sir,” Patel replied. Moving down the list of scandals, Jordan asked if Americans were still being targeted for shopping at Cabela’s or buying Bibles. Patel was clear: “Nobody is targeted for their faith.” Jordan followed up: “Is the FBI still targeting Americans who are pro-life?” “Nobody is targeting anyone for their beliefs,” Patel said.= “What about cooking the books on crime data?” Jordan asked. “The crime data is real,” Patel answered. Jordan pressed further: “Is the FBI still purging agents for conservative viewpoints?” “No one at the FBI is asked their viewpoints on policy,” Patel said. Finally, Jordan raised another notorious controversy: “Is the FBI still labeling the Betsy Ross flag, the flag of the American Revolution, a hate symbol?” “No,” Patel replied.

With those answers on record, Jordan pivoted to the FBI’s progress. “Well, maybe that’s why you’ve been able to… What was the number? Twenty-three thousand bad guys you’ve arrested? A huge increase from the same time period in the previous administration. Think you said 1,400 predators, 4,000 children rescued. It’s those, were those the facts?” “Forty-seven thousand, 35% increase on children rescued,” Patel confirmed. Jordan then referenced the capture of the terrorist responsible for the Abbey Gate bombing during the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. “Yeah. And you got the guy that… Abbey Gate? We had, we had—” “We got the Abbey, we got the Abbey Gate guy,” Patel said.

Jordan noted the sacrifice of a soldier from his own district who was killed in that attack. “Got a guy from the Fourth District of Ohio, lost his life there serving our country. We appreciate that. Maybe when you’re not focused on politics, you can actually do what the FBI is supposed to do, go get the bad guys, right?” “That’s what the men and women of the FBI do,” Patel agreed.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1968334714860974158

For years, Americans wondered if they could ever trust the FBI again. Under questioning, Patel made one thing clear: sunlight and accountability work. Corruption and political bias don’t survive exposure. Under previous Democrat administrations, the Bureau spied on parents, targeted conservatives, and questioned people for their faith or politics, turning inward on Americans instead of focusing on real threats. Now the FBI is finally doing what it’s supposed to do: going after criminals, rescuing children, and bringing terrorists to justice. The results speak for themselves. The challenge is keeping it that way. Oversight must remain strong, and Congress must hold the bureau accountable. Americans deserve an FBI that protects the country, not political agendas. This ain’t the Democratic Party’s FBI anymore.

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“A city which belongs to just one man is no true city.”

• Antigone 2.0: Liberals Denounce and Destroy Memorials for Charlie Kirk (Turley)

Throughout his short life, Charlie Kirk enraged many by exposing the hate and hypocrisy of the left in higher education. What is astonishing is that he continues to do it even in death. As millions mourn his murder around the world, any expressions of sorrow or respect for Kirk are triggering some on the left. Liberals have been arrested for stomping on or burning memorials to Kirk and others have taken to social media to denounce or mock people expressing regrets over the loss. A courthouse memorial was vandalized while a mural to Kirk had to be restored after an attack. Former Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers wrote an essay for Nation under the headline: “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning.”

Some of the loudest voices have come from academia. University of California Irvine lecturer Larry Tenney went on the liberal safe space site, BlueSky, to rave in all caps: “WE KNOW WHO CHARLIE KIRK WAS…”F**k off America” “F**k off Trump” and “F**k all you motherfuckers, idgag about any of you.” (For the non-profane literate, “idgag” means “I don’t give a f**k”). What is clear from the diatribe is that Kirk also knew exactly who people like Tenney are. He knew that even his appearance or that of his group on campus would trigger many in academia. For the speech-intolerant, any invitation to debate issues like abortion or transgender policies is intolerable. You are expected to accept their positions as righteous or face their rage.

What was even more annoying was the fact that Kirk was winning the debate, young people trapped in the academic echo chamber were showing up en masse as they did at the rally where he died. Faculty converted higher education into the current echo chamber and then treated students as a captive audience. When given a choice, many rushed to hear alternative views. Fordham School of Law Professor John Pfaff joined the chorus of those objecting to expressions of respect or regret. Most tellingly, the sin that disqualified Kirk was that he implemented Professor Watchlist, a list of professors deemed the most intolerant and partisan on campuses, so that students could avoid their classes. Pfaff posted: “Just a reminder Kirk’s organization established the Professor Watchlist, which even the NYT framed as a threat to academic freedom. I don’t get why ppl keep describing him as a good-faith debater. One can say ‘Kirk should not have been murdered’ (which is true!) without engaging in hagiography.”

In Pfaff’s siloed world, the New York Times is apparently so conservative that it is remarkable that “even the NYT” criticized the list. The comment only served to confirm that the relevant scale of comparison for academics today runs exclusively from the left to the far left. At the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Anthropology professor Tamar Shirinian. Tamar Shirinian wrote: “The world is better off without him in it. Even those who are claiming to be sad for his wife and kids….like, his kids are better off living in a world without a disgusting psychopath like him and his wife, well, she’s a sick fuck for marrying him so I dont care about her feelings.”

Syracuse University political science assistant professor Jenn M. Jackson announced “him dying this ways seems both ironic and in line with his own politics.” Others warned that anyone expressing sorrow was only self-identifying for future lists of fascists. Martin Pfeiffer, PH.D candidate at the University of New Mexico, warned, “Charlie Kirk was a vicious, hateful fascist and white supremacist. To say anything else is a lie and, quite frankly, fascist collaboration.” Across the country, efforts by a few professors to get their colleagues to sign letters expressing condolences or concerns over the murder were derailed by some of the same passive-aggressive ideologues who engaged in pearl-clutching objections over divisive positions.

What is most striking about these academics is the total lack of self-awareness, even as they adopt the very intolerance of historical villains in their classes. The response of these professors is reminiscent of the Greek tragedy Antigone by Sophocles in 441 BCE. In the story, the two sons of Oedipus fight to the death for the throne of Thebes. The tyrant ruler Creon ordered that his favorite of the brothers, Eteocles, be buried with honors while banning anyone from mourning or burying the other brother, Polynices. To be left on the ground unburied and unmourned was considered a great dishonor and sacrilege. It was too much for his sister, Antigone, who defied the tyrant and buried her brother. For that, Antigone was walled up in a cave and committed suicide. Kirk’s critics will allow him to be buried, of course, but some cannot tolerate mourning his passing any more than they could tolerate his speaking.

I have opposed calls for firing academics making hateful comments outside of their official duties or accounts. Charlie spent his life opposing cancel campaigns and censorship. However, it is crushingly ironic to see media and faculty suddenly outraged about cancel campaigns after years of ignoring the purging of conservatives from campuses. Most faculty crying foul today have been entirely silent when conservatives, including Kirk, were targeted in the past. Faculty have spent decades purging conservatives and libertarians from departments, leaving higher education mired in orthodoxy and intolerance. It is the education version of what Sophocles wrote in Antigone: “A city which belongs to just one man is no true city.” In the same way, a university which belongs to only liberal idelogy is no true university.

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Trump has two special envoys. Witkoff travels around, Kellogg stays in Kiev. He’s either too dumb to be true, or an empty propaganda tool. In either case, he can be useful to Trump.

• ‘We’d Kick Russia’s Ass’ – Trump’s Special Envoy To Ukraine (RMX)

Assistant to U.S. President Donald Trump and Special Presidential Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg had a lot to say on Russia’s famed might and those recent drone incursions into NATO airspace. Claiming 19 incursions cannot be an accident, Trump’s envoy said Vladimir Putin “is acting purposefully, he’s sending a signal, and he wants to hear a response,” reports Ukrainska Pravda. “Ukraine will not lose this war. Ukrainians have a moral superiority over Russia, that’s obvious,” Kellogg also noted, specifically praising Ukraine’s advanced drone production capabilities. As to Russia, he said during the interview at the YES Annual Meeting 2025, “They talk a big game,” adding that Putin often likes to tout that Russia is a nuclear power, but other Western powers have nuclear weapons too.

On the topic of Russian superiority, “We’d kick their ass (…) They’re not as good as Putin says they are.” He also credits Ukraine with helping curb Moscow’s military might. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine also confirmed to U.S. President Trump that Russia is “not winning” the war, according to Kellog. “If he was winning, he’d be in Kyiv,” Kellog added, again giving credit to Ukraine for slashing Russia’s military power. Posting on X, Kellog said, “The vision of our country is to see a halt to the death and destruction and restore peace and stability in Europe. Promoting peace over endless wars and proxy conflicts abroad is a defining feature of the America First leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”

Kellogg also spoke about Russia’s total dependence on China. “Russia has now become China’s junior partner. At present, we can say that China has both an economic advantage over Russia and a military advantage, and even historically. I will say more – if China completely cut off its aid to Russia, – this war would end tomorrow,” Kellogg claims. Urging more aggressive action, including further sanctions, against Putin, Trump’s envoy maintained that Russia does not have “the capacity that they had that they could march towards Berlin or anywhere else.”

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“..he intends to fight to the last, but, of course, with others doing the fighting..”

• Zelensky Has No Intention of Ending Conflict With Moscow – MP (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has no intention of ending the hostilities with Russia, while ordinary people pay the price, Verkhovna Rada MP Georgy Mazurashu has said. Mazurashu said Zelensky outlined his position at a meeting with members of his Servant of the People party on Tuesday, a stance the MP claimed is widely shared by the Ukrainian leader’s inner circle. ”At yesterday’s closed meeting… Zelensky, like other individuals exempt from military service, made it clear that he intends to fight to the last, but, of course, with others doing the fighting,” the deputy said in a video on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s mobilization drive, launched to refill depleted ranks amid heavy losses and Russia’s steady frontline advances, has become increasingly chaotic and violent, marred by abuse, injuries, and even deaths of conscripts. Mazurashu has previously called it a “shameful hunt for citizens.” The MP said Zelensky estimated Ukraine would need another $120 billion to fund the armed forces if the conflict drags into 2026, adding that the leader was “still unclear where to get” half of that sum. “And he now wants to focus on finding these funds – abroad, of course,” Mazurashu remarked. Amid battlefield losses, Zelensky has pressed Western backers for more aid, tying it to the security guarantees he says Kiev needs before agreeing to any settlement.

In a Sky News interview on Tuesday, he urged the West to put Ukraine’s needs above its own, boost financial and military support, and impose sanctions that would “really hurt” Russia’s economy.Moscow has warned that foreign aid only prolongs the conflict. It says it does not oppose security guarantees for Kiev in principle, but insists they must follow a peace deal – one requiring Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of new territorial realities – not precede it. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Kiev of sabotaging peace efforts, including mediation by US President Donald Trump. He said Washington understands the conflict cannot be resolved without addressing its root causes, while Kiev and its European backers refuse to do so.

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“I believe that all countries need to stop thinking about themselves..”

• Zelensky Tells West To Put Ukraine First (RT)

Western states should put Ukraine’s needs above their own, Vladimir Zelensky has suggested, accusing the EU and US of dragging their feet on new sanctions against Russia. Moscow has faced sweeping restrictions from Kiev’s Western backers since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. The EU has adopted 18 sanctions packages and is debating its next measures. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Washington has been cautious about new measures amid a thaw with Moscow. Trump has warned, however, that he could turn to sanctions if the conflict persists. In an interview with Sky News aired on Tuesday, Zelensky claimed deliberations about possible blowback from further sanctions were a “dangerous” waste of time.

“I believe that all countries need to stop thinking about themselves and their future relations with Russia, but instead think more about Ukraine, because it’s today and now,” he said. “This is very dangerous, and to be frank, dishonest.” Zelensky said Trump’s call for European countries to cut Russian energy imports and impose tariffs on buyers such as China and India was understandable, but claimed the US must not wait for Brussels, which he accused of hiding behind bureaucracy. “President Trump, I think, believes that if he were to apply all strong sanctions, he would close diplomacy with Russians… But we can’t wait for all European countries to stop relations with Russia,” he said. “All that’s lacking now is a strong sanctions package from the US.”

Zelensky also insisted that Kiev needs a “clear position” from Trump on sanctions and firm security guarantees before any settlement. Trump has urged European countries to stop importing Russian oil and gas and pledged to then consider sanctions. He has also demanded the bloc impose steep tariffs on India and China, the top buyers of Russian crude. According to reports on Tuesday, the European Commission will delay its next sanctions package while members weigh how to meet Trump’s demands. Moscow insists sanctions have been unable to harm its economy and that they will inevitably backfire. It says any settlement must include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of territorial changes, while security guarantees for Kiev are possible only after a final deal.

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Plenty European assets in Russia. American, even better. Tell Chevron to apply for compensation in Brussels.

• EU Plans To Seize €170bn of Russia’s Frozen Funds – FT (RT)

Brussels is pressing ahead with a plan to use €170 billion of Russia’s frozen sovereign assets to back “reparation loans” for Ukraine, the Financial Times has reported. The EU faces growing pressure to find additional funding for Kiev as US cuts back its support. Moscow has condemned the asset freeze and warned that any seizure of its money would amount to “theft.” Western nations froze an estimated $300 billion in Russian funds after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 – some €200 billion of which is held by Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear. The funds have accrued billions in interest, and the West has explored ways to use this revenue to finance Ukraine. While refraining from outright seizure, the G7 last year backed a plan to provide Kiev with $50 billion in loans to be repaid using the profits generated by the funds. The EU pledged $21 billion.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has proposed going further by creating a ‘reparation loans’ mechanism, which she described as urgently needed to finance Kiev. People familiar with discussions said the plan involves channeling cash balances from Russia’s immobilized assets into EU-issued bonds, with the proceeds transferred to Ukraine in tranches. Brussels argues the system would provide Kiev with immediate support while sidestepping a formal seizure. A second option under consideration would involve creating a special-purpose vehicle to manage the loans, which could also allow non-EU partners to take part.

Of the funds frozen at Euroclear, about €170 billion has already matured and now sits as cash on the clearinghouse’s books, the sources said. The plans have already drawn objections from member states. Belgium, Germany, and France have warned that dipping into the principal risks breaking the law and undermining confidence in the euro. Brussels is under pressure to cover a significant portion of Ukraine’s needs as Washington holds back on new aid, the FT wrote. According to a US note circulated among G7 capitals and cited by the outlet, members were urged to consider seizing the sovereign assets principal “innovatively” to fund Ukraine. Moscow warned that any attempt to use the assets “will not go unanswered.”

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“..maintains a “position of revanchism, of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia” while debating a potential troop deployment to Ukraine in case of a ceasefire.”

• ‘No Place’ For EU At Ukraine Talks – Lavrov (RT)

EU nations are trying to elbow their way into the Ukraine peace process despite their openly hostile stance toward Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, stressing that the bloc should be kept out of the talks for that reason. Speaking at an embassy roundtable about the Ukraine crisis on Wednesday, Lavrov said that EU countries are “clearly trying, quite brazenly, to reclaim a place at the negotiating table.” The minister, however, signaled that they have no business there. The bloc, he argued, maintains a “position of revanchism, of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia” while debating a potential troop deployment to Ukraine in case of a ceasefire. “There is, of course, no place for it at the negotiating table,” he stressed.

Moscow has consistently opposed the deployment of any Western troops in the neighboring country under any pretext, saying that one of the key reasons for the conflict was NATO’s expansion towards Russia’s doorstep. It has also warned that any unauthorized foreign troops in Ukraine would be considered “a legitimate military target.” Lavrov also noted that both the EU and Kiev are seeking to convince US President Donald Trump to abandon his push to settle the conflict and relapse into a stand-off with Russia. [They want], essentially, to turn Biden’s war into Trump’s war,” he said.

Since returning to office in January, Trump has been seeking to mediate an end to the Ukraine conflict, spearheading several rounds of talks with Russia. The effort culminated in a US-Russia summit in Alaska in mid-August — notably without EU or Ukrainian participation — which both sides described as highly productive. Although no breakthrough was reached, Trump later said Ukraine could neither expect to join NATO nor reclaim Crimea, which voted to join Russia in a 2014 referendum held after a Western-backed coup in Kiev. He has also shifted focus from seeking a temporary ceasefire to pursuing a permanent peace settlement.

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HA! They will train “at home” from now on, because:

“Earlier this year, it was revealed that Ukraine’s elite 155th Mechanized Brigade, partially trained in France, was plagued with mass desertion, with dozens of recruits reportedly going AWOL on French soil.”

• Zelensky Reveals Major Change In Ukrainian Troop Training (RT)

Kiev no longer needs to send soldiers to train abroad because its troops learn more by fighting the Russian army, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said. Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Kiev has dispatched groups of recruits to Britain, France, Germany, Poland, the US, and other countries, primarily to train using Western-made armored vehicles and artillery. By 2023, “we understood that we can’t train our people there because the war [has] changed,” Zelensky told Sky News in an interview aired on Tuesday. When the soldiers returned home, they already had to be “retrained,” he added.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Ukraine’s elite 155th Mechanized Brigade, partially trained in France, was plagued with mass desertion, with dozens of recruits reportedly going AWOL on French soil. Mikhail Drapaty, who led Ukraine’s Ground Forces at the time, said that the poor quality and low morale of the officers contributed to the unit’s problems. Zelensky claimed that currently only Russia and Ukraine know how to fight a modern “technological” war, particularly using state-of-the-art drones, adding that Kiev is ready to share its knowledge.

“We are inviting officers and representatives of other countries to learn here. Some of them are coming,” he said. “We are in the best shape technologically. We can be helpful to all of the world.” The technology and tactics on the battlefield evolve faster than the West makes decisions to fund Ukraine’s military, Zelensky said, urging Kiev’s backers to put more pressure on Russia. In March, Vadim Sukharevsky, the then-commander of Ukraine’s UAV forces, warned that “not a single NATO army is ready to resist the cascade of drones.” Military experts have said that a recent alleged drone incursion in Poland exposed the lack of robust anti-UAV defenses.

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“..neither Kiev nor its European backers appear to be genuinely interested in peace and are actively trying to prolong the conflict.”

• Lavrov Accuses Kiev of ‘Sabotaging’ US Peace Efforts (RT)

Kiev is actively trying to sabotage US President Donald Trump’s efforts to peacefully resolve the Ukraine conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. He added that Washington appears to understand the need to resolve the root causes of the crisis.Speaking at a roundtable discussion of the Ukraine conflict on Wednesday, Lavrov noted that during the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska last month, the American side agreed that actions need to be taken to address the underlying issues of the crisis. He added that US special envoy Steve Witkoff later conveyed his assessment of the summit to the Ukrainian side.

”As we understand it, these assessments, these considerations, and these proposals have been rejected by Kiev,” Lavrov said, adding that the Ukrainian side is “trying in every way to sabotage this American administration’s line.” The foreign minister suggested that both Ukrainian and Western European leaders are trying to convince Trump to abandon his peacemaking efforts and return to confrontation with Russia, and “essentially turn Biden’s war into Trump’s.”

Lavrov went on to say that Europe has been desperately trying to win a place for itself at the negotiating table. He stressed, however, that given its open position of revanchism and its goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, it has “nothing to do at the negotiating table.” Throughout the conflict, Moscow has stressed that it is open to a peaceful settlement, as long as it includes a Ukrainian commitment to neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and acceptance of the new territorial realities. However, Russian officials, including Lavrov, have said neither Kiev nor its European backers appear to be genuinely interested in peace and are actively trying to prolong the conflict.

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“A draft law imposing sentences for military insubordination, described as “draconian,” proposed that desertion or absence without leave carry a prison term of up to 12 years, with no amnesty even for voluntary return.”

• Zelensky ‘Losing Touch With Reality’ – Foreign Policy Analysis (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and his closest advisers are “losing touch with reality,” as shown by a series of policy and legislative mistakes that have sparked public uproar, analysis published in Foreign Policy claims, citing local sources and experts. The Ukrainian government recently attempted to push through two major measures designed to buttress the armed forces, but sources in Kiev have told journalist Paul Hockenos that each spawned backlash and raised questions about whether the country’s leadership is in tune with the concerns of ordinary Ukrainians. A draft law imposing sentences for military insubordination, described as “draconian,” proposed that desertion or absence without leave carry a prison term of up to 12 years, with no amnesty even for voluntary return.

The bill triggered protests, with activists carrying placards reading “Army service is not slavery,” prompting the authorities to withdraw the legislation. The second move relaxed martial law travel restrictions by allowing men aged between 18 and 22 to leave Ukraine. Martial law had previously barred all men aged between 18 and 60 from travel outside the country. Instead of relief, the reform stirred concern that young men might leave in large numbers, undermining future recruitment and worsening Ukraine’s long-standing demographic problems. One of the most significant blunders of Zelensky’s team was an attempt to crack down on anti-corruption bodies. This summer, Kiev attempted to strip the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) of independence, citing Russian influence, but the move resulted in mass protests, prompting the Ukrainian leadership to backpedal on the reform.

Defense analyst Dmitry K. told Hockenos that Zelensky’s inner circle “exists in a vacuum … They live in a bubble. Some advisers are very good, but they’re obviously not getting a consistent flow of relevant information.” An August poll by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology suggested that public trust in Zelensky had slumped by 7% in a month, standing at 58%. In July, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service reported that Western officials had secretly met with key Ukrainian powerbrokers to discuss ousting Zelensky and lining up a potential replacement.

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“[Western Europeans] tried… to prevent [US President Donald] Trump’s administration from moving toward promoting a real settlement…”

• Western ‘Peacekeepers’ In Ukraine Would Be Seen As Occupiers – Lavrov (RT)

Russia would view Western ‘peacekeepers’ in Ukraine simply as “occupation forces,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Speaking at an embassy roundtable on Wednesday, Lavrov warned that any foreign troops entering the conflict zone alongside Kiev’s forces would be treated as legitimate targets by the Russian military. Members of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” a group of Western states pushing for continued aid to Kiev, have floated deploying NATO troops to Ukraine to monitor a potential ceasefire as part of security guarantees demanded by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. Moscow has repeatedly rejected any Western military presence, whether labeled peacekeepers or otherwise.

Lavrov dismissed the proposals as absurd, likening the people behind them to pompous characters from old Russian satire – full of themselves but with no real influence. He argued that these initiatives are just a way to delay serious peace talks that could actually deal with the deeper causes of the conflict. “[Western Europeans] tried… to prevent [US President Donald] Trump’s administration from moving toward promoting a real settlement… by pumping up the Zelensky regime with weapons, and recently also by forming some peacekeeping, but essentially occupational, forces, by talking about creating a no-fly zone over Ukraine,” Lavrov said. “If some part of Ukraine becomes a territory where so-called peacekeepers are deployed, and Western security guarantees aimed against Russia are in effect for this part of Ukraine, this will mean only one thing: that the West has occupied [this territory],” he added.

The diplomat stressed that any European military contingents in Ukraine would be legitimate targets for the Russian military, noting that Moscow has long warned about this. While Russia says it does not oppose Western security guarantees for Ukraine in principle, it insists they be backed by UN Security Council members, including China. Moscow has stressed that such guarantees must not be “one-sided” or aimed at containing Russia and should come only after a peace deal, not before. Moscow has repeatedly said it is open to a diplomatic solution to the conflict but insists any settlement must address its underlying causes and include Ukraine abandoning its NATO ambitions, pledging neutrality, demilitarizing, and recognizing the new territorial realities.

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“.. cited sources in Poland’s security agencies as saying the object was in fact an AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile fired from a Polish F-16 jet.”

• ‘Russian Drone Attack’ Damage Was Caused By Polish Missile (RT)

The only confirmed damage from what Poland claims was a Russian drone incursion was actually caused by a Polish missile which struck a residential building by mistake, Rzeczpospolita has reported, citing sources. Polish officials last week reported at least 19 violations of the country’s airspace by drones, saying up to four UAVs had been downed while accusing Moscow of being behind the incident. Russia has rejected the accusation, insisting its drones only strike Ukrainian military-related facilities and noting that Western leaders “accuse Russia of provocations on a daily basis, most often declining to offer any arguments.” Rzeczpospolita reported on Tuesday that most of the drones involved in the incident were not carrying explosives and caused no damage.

However, one exception was in the village of Wyryki Wola near the border with Belarus, where what was described by Poland as an “unidentified flying object” crashed into a private home, damaging the roof but without causing casualties. Western media reports claimed that the home had been hit by a Russian drone. Investigators have declined to say what exactly struck the building, only stating that the object was not identified as a drone. Rzeczpospolita, however, cited sources in Poland’s security agencies as saying the object was in fact an AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile fired from a Polish F-16 jet. The missile reportedly suffered a guidance system malfunction and did not explode only because its safety devices prevented detonation.

The missile, around three meters long and weighing over 150kg, is said to have struck the house after being fired in an attempt to shoot down a drone.Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk did not comment on the report but scrambled to take aim at Moscow. “The entire responsibility for the damage to the house in Wyryki rests with… Russia… Hands off Polish soldiers,” he said. On Sunday, Tusk also complained that the drone incident had caused a wave of “antipathy towards a struggling Ukraine,” claiming, without proof, that this was being fueled by Moscow. He stressed that Warsaw’s goal is “to stem this tide,” portraying it as a “test of patriotism.”

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CDC


https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1968344861829943330

GMO

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 9 2025

Sep 092025
 
 September 9, 2025  Posted by at 10:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  68 Responses »


Utagawa Yoshitoshi Ariko weeps as her boat drifts in the moonlight 1886

 

• Britain’s Spirit of Freedom Is Dying (Chris Queen)
• French Government Collapses (RT)
• French Debt A Danger To Eurozone – DW (RT)
• EU Top Diplomat Kallas ‘Critically Uneducated’ – Moscow (RT)
• Zelensky Claims ‘Victory’ Is Avoiding Total Loss Of Ukraine (RT)
• Zelensky Has Insulted Trump. Is He Suicidal? (Romanenko)
• Russia Has No Desire For Revenge – Lavrov (RT)
• Orban Outlines EU Security ‘Guarantee’ Plan (RT)
• Democrats ‘Hate’ Trump More Than They ‘Love’ Their Communities – Homan (DS)
• ‘The Politics Will Figure Itself Out’: JD Vance (Pero)
• Days of Thunder (James Howard Kunstler)
• Appeals Court Upholds E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 Million Judgment Against Trump (ZH)
• Trump Admin Asks Supreme Court to Allow Withholding of Foreign Aid Funds (ET)
• Another Tremendous Supreme Court Victory for Trump! (Margolis)
• Is the Western World Degenerating Into Communism? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Chuck Schumer Tested FAFO and the GOP Will Make Him Pay the Price (Margolis)
• Did Johnson Really Say Trump Was an Informant Against Epstein? (Margolis)
• Elite UK Divers Likely Behind Nord Stream Sabotage – Patrushev (RT)

 

 


https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1965073853576831472

https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1965058356647002444

100s of arrests for Palestine Action protesters. Banksy is quick. Just as quickly, a fence was erected in front of the artwork.
https://twitter.com/GBPolitcs/status/1965030113332056143

 

 

Nap Ritter

 

 

 

 

Britain itself is dying along with that spirit.

• Britain’s Spirit of Freedom Is Dying (Chris Queen)

I’m writing this on the third anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. I still remember that day so distinctly since I was on breaking news watch for her certain passing. The death of such a long-reigning monarch was heartbreaking to the nation she led, but it was also a sad day for Anglophiles like me.I’ve been an Anglophile as long as I can remember. It’s literally in my DNA; the vast majority of my heritage comes from the British Isles. But British culture, entertainment, and politics have fascinated me for decades (although I have to admit that I’m not as enamored with the royal family after Elizabeth’s passing as some people are). British politics has gotten frustrating in recent years for true conservatives, and watching Britain slide into authoritarianism on free speech is something even a dyed-in-the-wool Anglophile like me can’t support. And I’m not alone.

Last week, Lee Cohen wrote a column in The Spectator that resonated deeply with me: “Today, for the first time, I find Britain indefensible. The affection and historical respect remains. The confidence is gone. Britain now prosecutes her own citizens, not for violence or treason, but for words. Lucy Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison for a tweet in the wake of the Southport murders last year. Her crime was expression, harsh perhaps, but still speech. This week, Graham Linehan, the award winning creator of Father Ted, was arrested at Heathrow Airport by armed officers for online comments defending women’s spaces. Arrested, by police carrying weapons, for his opinions. This is the country that gave the world John Stuart Mill.

“Such cases expose what Britain has become: a two tier system of justice. Those branded far right, nationalist, or Islamophobic are persecuted with zeal, Cohen added. Those spreading incendiary rhetoric from Islamist or minority factions are, all too often, met with indulgence. ” Cohen cited not just the crackdown on social media users who express conservative views, but also local governments cracking down on patriotic Britons who fly the Union Jack or St. George s Cross. The same nation that survived the Great Fire of London, the Blitz, and the Falklands War can t handle patriotism in the face of unchecked Muslim immigration. “Meanwhile, foreign flags fly freely across London without question, he wrote. The message is unmistakable: pride in your own country is suspect. Allegiance to any other is acceptable.”

He continued: “From abroad, the shift is impossible to ignore. Elon Musk has called Britain’s censorship Soviet style. JD Vance has condemned its crackdown on speech. The US State Department now lists Britain as a country presenting significant risks to free expression. I never imagined America would place Britain alongside nations that treat liberty as a nuisance. That day has come. For those of us who have long defended Britain, it is heartbreaking. This is the country whose strong institutions enabled America’s own rise and whose commitment to liberty inspired ours. Yet under its current leadership, Britain has stumbled into repression, constraint, and fear, where ordinary citizens look over their shoulders before speaking.”

Cohen appeared on The Spectator’s “Americano” podcast over the weekend, and he told host Freddy Gray that he’s never seen Americans as interested in British politics as they are right now. He mused whether Donald Trump’s Anglophilia and JD Vance’s earnest engagement with British politics might drive the two American leaders to urge the British government to stem the anti-free speech tide. It’s tempting to hope so, but it’s equally tempting to despair that Britain is too far gone. For someone who loves the British and their history and culture, I hope Britons can reverse course and return to shining as a beacon of freedom and hope to the world.

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Another PM gone. They go through them like candy.

Still, Macron stays. But: “..the latest Le Figaro poll showing nearly 80% of French no longer trust the president.”

The only person they trust is Marine Le Pen. Who is prohibited from running.

• French Government Collapses (RT)

The French government has fallen after Prime Minister Francois Bayrou lost a crucial confidence vote in parliament on Monday. Bayrou is the second consecutive prime minister under President Emmanuel Macron to be ousted, throwing the nation into political and economic turmoil. A no-confidence motion in the National Assembly requires at least 288 votes to pass. Monday’s motion received 364 votes, with the left-wing New Popular Front and the right-wing National Rally uniting in opposition to end a months-long standoff over Bayrou’s austerity budget. Having previously survived eight no-confidence motions, Bayrou called this vote himself, in a bid to secure backing for proposals that forecast almost €44 billion ($52 billion) of savings to ease France’s debt burden before the budget is presented in October.

The prime minister, who has repeatedly warned that France’s national debt poses a “mortal danger” to the country, appeared to acknowledge his fate. In a bitter remark on Sunday, Bayrou lashed out at rival parties that he said “hate each other” yet joined forces “to bring down the government.” Bayrou is the second French prime minister in succession to be brought down following Michel Barnier’s ejection last December after just three months in office – and the sixth to serve under Macron since he was first elected in 2017. Bayrou’s ouster reportedly leaves the French president to choose between appointing a Socialist prime minister to steer a budget through parliament, effectively ceding control of domestic policy, or call snap elections that polls suggest favour Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.

With Macron’s approval ratings already hitting historic lows, either choice risks further weakening his presidency. Analysts warn that if markets lose confidence in France’s ability to rein in its deficit and mounting debt, the country could face turmoil reminiscent of the UK during the brief Liz Truss premiership. Public discontent with Macron’s leadership has deepened, with the latest Le Figaro poll showing nearly 80% of French no longer trust the president. Thousands marched through Paris at the weekend demanding Macron’s resignation and carrying placards reading ‘Let’s stop Macron’ and ‘Frexit.’

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Why Macron needs a war with Russia.

But be careful: he’s a Rothschild banker. He knows people.

• French Debt A Danger To Eurozone – DW (RT)

France’s ballooning sovereign debt coupled with political infighting could threaten the fiscal stability of the Eurozone, Deutsche Welle has reported, citing an expert. France has one of the highest national debts in the EU, currently standing at €3.35 trillion ($3.9 trillion) — about 113% of GDP. The ratio is expected to climb to 125% by 2030. Its budget deficit is projected at 5.4–5.8% this year, well above the bloc’s 3% limit. Friedrich Heinemann of the ZEW Leibniz Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany, told the outlet in an article published on Saturday “we should be worried. The eurozone is not stable at this point.”

A drastic austerity plan proposed by French minority government Prime Minister Francois Bayrou triggered a no confidence vote that he lost on Monday evening. The plan involved slashing public sector jobs, curbing welfare spending, as well as axing two public holidays. The right-wing National Rally, the Socialists, and the leftist France Unbowed vehemently opposed the proposal. An Elabe poll ahead of the vote also showed most respondents were against the measures. Heinemann told DW he doubts France will find a way out soon, given the bitter political infighting.

In July, Bloomberg, citing ING Groep NV experts, similarly claimed that France’s rising debt could be a “ticking bomb” for EU financial stability. Despite the considerable budget deficit, France plans to hike military spending to €64 billion in 2027, double what the country spent in 2017. President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly cited a supposed Russian threat. The Kremlin has consistently dismissed the claims as “nonsense,” accusing the EU of rapidly militarizing. In May, member states approved a €150 billion ($169 billion) debt program for arms procurement.

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One job requirenent: hatred of Putin. Not even Russia, just Putin. Can we blame her for not knowing much else?

• EU Top Diplomat Kallas ‘Critically Uneducated’ – Moscow (RT)

Remarks by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas stereotyping Russians and Chinese expose her as “critically uneducated,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday. Speaking at an event organized by the EU Institute for Security Studies last week, Kallas argued that the two nations complement one another in their opposition to the West, describing Russians as strong in social sciences but weak in tech, and the Chinese as the reverse. “Chinese are very good at technology but they are not that good in social sciences,” Kallas said. “The Russians… are not good at technology at all, but super good in social sciences.” Zakharova mocked the remarks in a Telegram post, asking who built the Crimean Bridge or launched rockets from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome if it’s true that Russians lack technological expertise.

“On the same note, China would not be able to govern a billion citizens without being strong in social sciences,” Zakharova wrote. “Kallas is critically uneducated.” The top EU diplomat made the comments while lamenting Western disunity, in contrast to what she described as Russia and China’s unified front. She also claimed that when the two nations highlight their roles in defeating the Axis powers during World War II, it “raises a lot of question marks” for a person who knows history. Moscow has frequently accused officials in the EU of scapegoating Russia for the bloc’s internal problems, arguing that this rhetoric is used to divert public attention from their own failures.

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Russia never laid claim to all of Ukraine. So yeah, some victory. But it’s great media fodder, they eat it up, as do their readers and viewers. Who have no clue what really goes on. The same media made sure of that.

• Zelensky Claims ‘Victory’ Is Avoiding Total Loss Of Ukraine (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to occupy the whole of the country, and that Kiev can claim “victory” in the conflict as long as this does not happen. Russia has long stressed that it has no intention of occupying Ukraine in full. Putin reiterated this when the conflict escalated in February 2022, and again later that year when Russian troops reached Kiev but then withdrew. Since then, Moscow has consistently said any peace settlement requires Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye as Russian territory. Zelensky, however, insisted in an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz which aired on Sunday that Moscow’s ambitions go further.

“Putin’s goal is to occupy Ukraine, it is to destroy us… For him that’s victory,” he claimed. “And until he can do it, the victory is on our side… For us to survive is a victory.” He also accused Putin of “playing games” by holding a summit with US President Donald Trump in Alaska while allegedly refusing to meet with him, and claimed the Russian leader is not truly interested in peace. Putin and Trump met in Anchorage on August 15. Although the summit produced no breakthroughs, both sides described it as a positive step. Trump’s remarks afterward fueled speculation of a potential Putin-Zelensky meeting. Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov later said no agreement had been reached, although Putin has not ruled out a meeting, despite questioning Zelensky’s legitimacy after his presidential term expired.

Putin has stressed, however, that talks can only occur after tangible progress in negotiations. Last week, Putin struck a cautiously optimistic note about the prospects for peace, saying “there is light at the end of the tunnel” given the US shift to peace mediation. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s aide on international economic affairs, echoed the sentiment on Sunday, saying that “peace is close precisely because of Trump-Putin dialogue.” On Sunday, Trump told reporters he planned further talks with Putin “over the next couple of days,” vowing “to get it done – the Russia-Ukraine situation” soon.

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“Ukraine is exhausting its people, its infrastructure, and its economy. If survival truly is the goal, then ending the war must be the only priority.”

• Zelensky Has Insulted Trump. Is He Suicidal? (Romanenko)

In a weekend interview with ABC News, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky accused US President Donald Trump of giving Russian President Vladimir Putin “what he wanted” at the Alaska summit in August. Whether a passing complaint or a calculated jab, it may come at a steep cost for Zelensky. To suggest that Trump bent to Putin’s will is to imply weakness, and weakness is something Trump never tolerates being accused of. This rhetorical swipe was directed at a man who holds significant sway over the trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine war. For Zelensky, the insult may prove more damaging than cathartic.

Zelensky appears to believe that he has become indispensable in Trump’s calculations, that Washington’s policy revolves around Kiev’s demands. But this overstates his importance. Trump has been consistent about one priority: he wants the war to end, and more than that, he wants the US disentangled from it. His approach reflects the sentiment of much of the American public – weary of sending weapons and aid overseas while domestic problems fester. By framing Trump’s summit with Putin as a giveaway, Zelensky risks alienating the one Western leader positioned to actually shift the direction of the war. Trump is sensitive to personal slights. For years, allies and adversaries alike have learned that once he feels personally insulted, he hardens, not softens. To tell Trump, in effect, that he’s Putin’s stooge is to court precisely that reaction.

Trump’s efforts at the Alaska summit were grounded in a political reality that Zelensky refuses to acknowledge. The battlefield is not tilting in Kiev’s favor. Russia’s position, bolstered by sheer resources and strategic depth, is proving resilient. Ukraine’s European backers continue to speak in lofty terms of standing “as long as it takes,” but they lack the power to deliver a Ukrainian victory. Trump, by contrast, pursued a path that might actually move events forward: direct talks with Russia, engagement on security concerns, and the search for a negotiated framework. It is not an approach designed to satisfy Zelensky and the Europeans’ maximalist goals but rather one rooted in ending an exhausting conflict. To dismiss this effort as capitulation is to ignore that it may be the most realistic option still on the table.

In the same ABC interview, Zelensky says his vision for a Ukrainian victory is Ukraine’s survival. Yet his strategy as evident from his actions appears geared less toward survival and more toward dragging the war on for as long as possible. Each new demand for weapons, each new appeal for escalated sanctions, pushes the conflict forward without changing the battlefield reality of Russia grinding forward toward its objectives – and whatever Zelensky claims, total occupation of Ukraine is not one of those objectives. In the name of “survival,” Ukraine is exhausting its people, its infrastructure, and its economy. If survival truly is the goal, then ending the war must be the only priority. Right now, Trump has the best shot at it, because he is realistically engages with the interests of Russia – the side that has the clear upper hand on the battlefield. And Zelensky is pushing that opportunity away.

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“We have never turned away or pushed anyone out. Those who want back in are welcome..”

• Russia Has No Desire For Revenge – Lavrov (RT)

Russia has no plans to exact vengeance on Western countries that cut ties and pressured Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Speaking at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Monday, Lavrov stressed that Russia did not intend to “take revenge or vent anger” on companies that decided to support Western governments in their push to support Kiev and impose economic sanctions on Moscow, adding that hostility is generally “a poor adviser.” “When our former Western partners come to their senses… we will not push them away. But we… will take into account that, having fled at the order of their political leaders, they have shown themselves to be unreliable,” the minister said.

According to Lavrov, any future market access would also depend on whether the companies would pose risks to sectors vital to Russia’s economy and security. The minister stressed that Russia is open to cooperation and has no intention to isolate itself. “We live on one small planet. It was Western-style to build Berlin Walls… We do not want to build any walls,” he said, referring to the symbol of the Cold War that split the German capital from 1961 to 1989. ”We want to work honestly, and if our partners are ready to do the same on the basis of equality and mutual respect, we are open to dialogue with everyone,” he said, pointing to the Alaska Summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, as an example of constructive engagement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, on Saturday, that Western businesses would be welcomed back if they had not supported the Ukrainian army and had met obligations to the state and their Russian staff, including paying due salaries. Putin this month also rejected isolationism, stressing that Russia would like to avoid closing itself off in a “national shell” as it would harm competitiveness. “We have never turned away or pushed anyone out. Those who want back in are welcome,” he added.

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“.. the outcome would only slightly differ from the pre-conflict balance, when Ukraine itself acted as a buffer between Russia and NATO with “50% influence” each..”

• Orban Outlines EU Security ‘Guarantee’ Plan (RT)

Partitioning Ukraine into Russian and Western zones of influence is the likely outcome of the conflict and the only reliable guarantee of the EU’s security, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. Kiev has pressed its Western backers for security guarantees as a precondition for a settlement with Russia, first pushing for NATO membership and later floating ideas such as ‘peacekeepers’ and a buffer zone with Western military patrols. Moscow has rejected Ukrainian membership in NATO or Western troops on its territory, stressing that any settlement must include Kiev’s neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye as Russian territory.

Orban, however, has suggested it is time for the West to acknowledge Russia’s “inevitable” military victory and to begin deciding how Ukraine should be partitioned. ”Europeans all so elegantly talk around security guarantees, but the security guarantee actually means the division of Ukraine,” Orban told guests at the annual Civic Picnic in Kotcse on Sunday. “The first step has already been taken – the Westerners have accepted that a Russian zone exists.” He referred to earlier remarks by US President Donald Trump that Ukraine regaining Crimea was “impossible.”“The result would be a Russian zone, a demilitarized zone and, eventually, a Western zone…The only question is how many kilometers away from the border of the Russian zone a demilitarized zone should be established,” he stated.

Orban noted the outcome would only slightly differ from the pre-conflict balance, when Ukraine itself acted as a buffer between Russia and NATO with “50% influence” each in the country. He said this division would help end the conflict and benefit all sides, particularly the EU, which he warned is on the verge of “collapse” and lacks the means to fund the conflict further. The Hungarian leader has long criticized Brussels over its “warmongering” stance on Russia and support for Ukraine. In his speech, he repeated his warning that Ukraine’s EU accession would trap the bloc in a permanent conflict with Moscow, calling instead for an EU-Russia security pact.

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“.. they’re sanctuary cities and they’re releasing criminals every hour, so that’s where we’re going,” Homan said. “That’s where we’re going to flood the zone.”

• Democrats ‘Hate’ Trump More Than They ‘Love’ Their Communities – Homan (DS)

Trump administration border czar Tom Homan says Democrat leaders in sanctuary states and cities hate President Donald Trump more than they care for their communities. Homan spoke to the State Freedom Caucus Network Summit in Dallas, Texas, Friday night and reiterated the plan to deport illegal aliens in Chicago. While Democrats say Trump is targeting Democrat run cities for political reasons, Homan said that’s not the case. “It’s not because they’re blue, it’s because they’re sanctuary cities and they’re releasing criminals every hour, so that’s where we’re going,” Homan said. “That’s where we’re going to flood the zone.”

Weeks ago, Homan had said they will “flood the zone” with immigration enforcement in Chicago. Last month, Trump said he would send in the National Guard to address public safety, but later hedged that and insisted Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker call for help. Pritzker said he would not call Trump to ask for help, saying there is not an emergency. Saturday, Trump posted a graphic to Truth Social, depicting him as a character in the film Apocalypse Now, but it said “Chipocalypse Now,” “I love the smell of deportations in the morning” and “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” Pritzker posted on social media in response that “this is not a joke” and “this is not normal.”

Pritzker and other Democratic leaders also posted on social media over the weekend “know your rights” campaign messaging, with tips like remaining calm, denying entry without a warrant, remaining silent, and declining to sign anything. Homan tried to make sense of the Democrats’ resistance to cooperating with ICE. “They hate President Trump more than they love their communities, there’s no other reason,” Homan said. “I can’t think of why you would not join forces with us.” Illinois law prohibits state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials. State law also prohibits police from inquiring about an individual’s immigration status. Pritzker said if Trump deploys the National Guard in Chicago, they will immediately take the administration to court.

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Peter Thiel and four different names. That’s JD Vance.

• ‘The Politics Will Figure Itself Out’: JD Vance (Pero)

Vice President JD Vance joined “My View with Lara Trump” Saturday where he discussed everything from his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” to whether he will run for president in 2028. Since it’s been 10 years since Vance wrote “Hillbilly Elegy,” he reminisced on his life before he became vice president of the United States. “I was raised by a grandmother who—we didn’t go to church a whole lot—but she prayed everyday. She read the Bible everyday, and she gave me this sense that there was some purpose to this. We might not understand it. God works in mysterious ways, but there was some deeper meaning to what we were experiencing, and that gave me the perseverance to go through it.” Vance said a major motivation for him growing up was knowing his grandmother was very sick and that someone was going to have to step up and hold the family together when she was gone.

“I kind of wanted that person to be me. I wanted to be the person in my family that other people could rely on.” Vance said his wife Usha Vance is starting to “hit her stride” as second lady, getting involved in projects like John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and children’s literacy. Usha is the anchor of their family, Vance said, and she’s making sure their children are having as normal a life as possible as their family’s life has drastically changed with Secret Service protection and living in the vice president’s residence. “This is really weird for the kids. This is really weird for the whole family unit. [Usha’s] main job more than anything else is just to make the kids have as normal a life as possible.

She makes us do normal family stuff as much as possible.” When it comes to working with President Donald Trump, Vance said there are so many surprising things. One surprise has been that Trump “doesn’t have an off switch.” “Sometimes the president will call you at 12:30 or 2:00 in the morning, and then he’ll call you at 6:00 in the morning about a totally different topic.” Trump is also very good about delegating work, empowering his people to do it, and also trusting them to do the work, Vance said. “What’s made this so much fun is that the president all the time is just saying, ‘JD, you go and do this,’ or ‘JD, you go and talk to these leaders about this particular issue … You don’t have to have me looking over you all the time.’”

When it comes to the 2028 presidential election, many people are viewing Vance as a top Republican candidate. Vance said there are a lot of great people and that if he does decide to run, the job won’t be handed to him “either on the Republican side or on the national side.” “I don’t like thinking about it because I like thinking about the job that I have right now,” Vance said. He added that he thinks ”the American people are so fed up with folks who are already running for the next job seven months into the current one.” “If we do a good job in 2025 and 2026, then we can talk about the politics in 2027,” Vance said. “I’m going to try to do my best job, and I think if I do that, the politics will figure itself out.”

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“If we hadn’t won this election we would have all been vaxxed to death and censored so no one could hear our dying screams” — Mike Benz on “X”

• Days of Thunder (James Howard Kunstler)

That reckoning you’ve heard about lo these many years? It’s here now. We’re in it. You just can’t see all the moving parts, and if you did, you might not understand how or where they are moving, and what they are fixing to do next. Aside from certain US senators playing their pre-scripted mad scenes for the cameras, a disquieting quiet blankets the swamp like a miasma. It feels like a long, still moment before some shaking of the earth. Everyone senses it and the guilty must feel it most keenly.

That’s why they are laying low and keeping their traps shut. Every criminal defense lawyer inside the beltway is burning the midnight oil (and racking up the billable hours, ka-ching). Meanwhile, where are their clients? No longer peddling alibis on MSNBC (MSNOW), at least. I doubt that John Brennan is even in the country. My guess would be he’s cooling his heels in Abu Dhabi, where the extradition protocols with the USA remain comfortably squishy to his advantage. (He reportedly became a Muslim while running the CIA station in Riyadh between 1996-99, just in time for 9-11. . . hmmmm. . . .)

Hillary Clinton has been keeping her pie-hole closed for weeks now while rattling around that big house in Chappaqua, NY, like a BB in a packing crate. Is anyone counting the wine-boxes coming and going from the place? It must be maddening to be HRC — but that new extra edge of prosecution terror would just be larding the lily, considering what Vlad Putin learned about her mental state way back in 2016: deeply unstable. . .diabetic. . . on tranqs. . . often plastered. . . bursts of rage. . . . Comey and Clapper? No more cute pranks on the beach for Big Jim, 86 on the menacing messages in seashells and putting out Taylor Swift fan-boy Tik-toks. Was that some attempt to not be taken seriously? Like you’re some kind of overgrown, harmless child?

James Clapper, of course, would be voted most likely to flip on his compadres, if such a canvass were taken on Coup island. He was the first to publicly announce his lawyering-up in the Russia collusion affair. He never expected it would come to this, this ordeal of interrogation. . . his “good soldier” self plopped ignominiously in the witness chair. . . the odor of his own fear. . . the proffer (just tell us what really happened). . . the US attorneys appearing to leer at him, his house mortgaged to pay the attorney’s fees. . . what’s a poor boy to do. . . ?

Adam Schiff has gone radio silent. A miracle! Alas, the autopen pardon granted for his J-6 Committee doings apparently does not apply to matters such as mortgage fraud and wire fraud. He realizes with chills and sighs of despair that this ain’t no foolin’ around. People go to jail for these things. . . gulp! His attorney absolutely forbids any televised appeals to his fan-base, as if the glamorati of Rodeo Drive could do anything to stop what’s coming. Too bad Ed Buck and his magic checkbook are no longer around.

Even the seeming untouchables, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Anrew Weissmann, Marc Elias must be listening hard for shoes to drop. They thought they had it made in the shade after 2020. They had the USA on a string, they thought. Home free. The trouble with the smarty-pants way of life is sometimes you out-smart yourself and your pants fall down. But all they can do in this late hour is induce a bunch of federal judges — recently imported from countries where justice means casting goat neckbones across the dusty floor of a mud hut — to gum up every executive action coming out of the White House with a poorly-argued TRO. They might as well be on a U-haul box truck throwing furniture off the back at a fleet of pursuing cop cars.

Mr. Trump is having sport with them now. Their crimes spanning the decade past are being bundled into one big coup case against the country, a color revolution on their own citizens and against “the democracy” that they never stop pretending to tout. If I am perceiving all this correctly, the days and weeks ahead will be as consequential a train of events as ever rolled down the tracks into Union Station, DC.

Read more …

“.. even though a jury ruled that she lied about her rape allegations..”

“.. has reportedly accused at least six prior men of raping her..”

• Appeals Court Upholds E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 Million Judgment Against Trump (ZH)

A federal appeals court has upheld a civil jury’s finding that President Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for his repeated social media attacks against the longtime advice columnist after she accused him of sexual assault – even though a jury ruled that she lied about her rape allegations. Carroll, whose advice column ran in the women’s magazine Elle from 1993 to 2019, has reportedly accused at least six prior men of raping her, including former CBS President Les Moonves. Her bizarre social-media history also included posts making light of sexual trauma and even asking her followers if they found Trump sexually attractive. Trump was prevented from submitting that evidence in his trial.

Despite her dubious track record, on Monday the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s appeal of the defamation award, finding that the “jury’s damages awards are fair and reasonable.” Trump had argued that he should not have to pay the sum as a result of a Supreme Court decision expanding presidential immunity. His lawyers had asked for a new trial. A civil jury in Manhattan issued the $88.3 million award last year following a trial that centered on Trump’s repeated social media attacks against Carroll over her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in 1996. That award followed a separate trial, in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll and ordered to pay $5 million.

That award was upheld by an appeals court last December. In a memoir, and again at a 2023 trial, Carroll described how a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue in 1996 started with the two flirting as they shopped, then ended with a violent struggle inside a dressing room. Carroll said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her. A jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, but concluded he hadn’t committed rape, as defined under New York law. Trump repeatedly denied that the encounter took place and accused Carroll of making it up to help sell her book. He also said that Carroll was “not my type.”

Read more …

Lawfare at its finest.

“Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the new application that this is the third time in this case that Ali “has issued an unlawful injunction that precipitates an unnecessary emergency and needless interbranch conflict.”

• Trump Admin Asks Supreme Court to Allow Withholding of Foreign Aid Funds (ET)

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 8 to permit it to withhold billions of dollars in foreign aid previously authorized by Congress. The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the justices to pause a ruling by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who ordered the federal government to spend about $4 billion in previously appropriated funds. The money is earmarked for foreign aid and United Nations peacekeeping projects. The emergency application was filed in two cases, Trump v. Global Health Council, and U.S. Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalitions. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the new application that this is the third time in this case that Ali “has issued an unlawful injunction that precipitates an unnecessary emergency and needless interbranch conflict.”

In February, Ali gave the federal government 36 hours to pay roughly $2 billion in invoices for past foreign-aid work, which Sauer called “an impossible task,” and one that the judge lacked authority to order. The Supreme Court ended the dispute by granting an administrative stay, a court order that gives the justices more time to consider a matter. After the deadline was lifted, the government paid “virtually all of the contested amounts,” Sauer said. Next, Ali issued a “novel injunction requiring the government to obligate tens of billions of dollars in foreign-aid appropriations on the theory that failing to do so constituted an unlawful impoundment in violation of the Constitution and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974,” Sauer said. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit lifted that injunction and that court allowed its ruling to come into effect on Aug. 28, Sauer said.

Now that its original theory has been “decisively rejected,” the district court precipitated a new emergency “by issuing a version of the same injunction near midnight on September 3,” Sauer stated. Again, the district court is forcing the government to obligate about $10.5 billion in foreign-aid funding that was due to expire on Sept. 30, according to Sauer. But now the government has been left “with even less time for further review or compliance, with even more deficient legal theories,” Sauer said. Sauer said the government already intended to obligate $6.5 billion of that funding by Sept. 30, but Ali’s order regarding the remaining $4 billion “raises a grave and urgent threat to the separation of powers,” a constitutional doctrine that divides the government into three branches to prevent any single branch from accumulating too much power.

After the D.C. Circuit canceled Ali’s injunction, the president proposed rescinding that $4 billion in funding under the Impoundment Control Act. Under fast-track procedures, Congress has 45 days to consider the rescission request and during that period the president cannot be required to spend the money, Sauer said. Ali’s new injunction would compel the Executive Branch to begin “obligating those funds at breakneck speed to meet the September 30 deadline, even as Congress is considering the rescission proposal” and before Congress’s 45 days to do so elapse, Sauer said. A panel of the D.C. Circuit denied by a vote of 2–1 a stay of the judge’s order late on Sept. 5, Sauer added.

Also on Sept. 8, Global Health Council and other litigants that want the $4 billion to be released filed a brief opposing the government’s application for an administrative stay of Ali’s order. “The government’s theory that the agencies need not comply with enacted legislation mandating that they spend funds, because the President has unilaterally proposed legislation to rescind those statutory mandates, would fundamentally upend our constitutional structure,” the brief reads. It is unclear when the Supreme Court will act on the government’s application.

Read more …

“The order, crafted to appease immigration activists, accused officers of running “roving patrols” and floated the idea that their actions violated the Fourth Amendment. But on Monday, the Supreme Court wasn’t buying it.”

• Another Tremendous Supreme Court Victory for Trump! (Margolis)

The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Monday, greenlighting his push for tougher immigration enforcement in Los Angeles. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court lifted a lower-court injunction that had barred federal agents from conducting raids without what the judge had called “reasonable suspicion.” With that order gone, Trump’s record-setting deportation efforts are back on track. The liberal justices predictably fumed in their dissent, warning of supposed risks to “constitutional freedoms,” blah, blah blah. But the conservative majority was having none of that garbage. For now, immigration agents can resume their sweeping operations while the case winds through the courts—a clear sign that Trump’s agenda won’t be derailed by activist judges.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in Monday’s decision that the lower court’s restraining order went too far in restricting how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could carry out stops or questioning of suspected unlawful migrants. “To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” he wrote. “However, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.” The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices issued a strong dissent penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote that “countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labour.” “Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities,” she wrote.

The decision undoes a ruling by US District Judge Maame E Frimpong in Los Angeles, who had said that there is a “mountain of evidence” showing the raids were violating the US Constitution. Back in July, Judge Frimpong tried to hamstring immigration enforcement by ordering Trump’s raids halted. His ruling claimed the administration couldn’t rely on “apparent race or ethnicity” or “speaking Spanish” as grounds for questioning someone. He even barred agents from acting based on whether individuals were found at bus stops, farms, or car washes—places long known as hubs for illegal labor. The order, crafted to appease immigration activists, accused officers of running “roving patrols” and floated the idea that their actions violated the Fourth Amendment. But on Monday, the Supreme Court wasn’t buying it.

The justices ruled 6-3, that Trump’s policies stand a strong chance of being upheld as constitutional, clearing the way for raids to continue. Trump’s crackdown began in June with large-scale raids in Los Angeles at places like Home Depot and other worksites. Predictably, activists launched protests that quickly spiraled into unrest. Trump responded by deploying nearly 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines after California’s Democrat leadership refused to act. This ruling is more than just a win for Trump—it’s a crushing humiliation for Gavin Newsom. The California governor spent weeks smugly touting the lower court injunction as proof that Trump had been reined in by the courts. He mocked the president, framing the lower-court order as a permanent roadblock to ICE enforcement, like this post on X that didn’t age well at all:

Now, with the Supreme Court’s decisive smackdown, Newsom is left looking foolish and powerless. His big talking point has evaporated overnight, replaced by the hard reality that Trump’s immigration agenda is moving forward stronger than ever.

Read more …

“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is communism.”

• Is the Western World Degenerating Into Communism? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is communism. During the past year I have read on various websites articles that the West has become the Communist State that it once opposed. Various legitimate examples are offered: the use of law as a weapon as in Stalin’s show trials of the Bolsheviks who made the Russian Revolution; suppression of free speech and protest as all over the Western world; fake election results as in the 2020 US presidential election and in Europe by banning opposition candidates from running for office; focus on “foreign enemies” instead of the domestic institutionalization of tyranny; designation of Trump’s supporters as domestic enemies and insurrectionists. As of yet, no one has put all of these concerns into one formula. Allow me to try.

For 60 years liberals have transitioned the United States from merit to race and gender based entitlements. The United States, whose foundational basis is English common law and the accountability of government achieved by the English Glorious Revolution of 1680, has been beset by progressives and liberals for many decades for being a society based on merit and equality under law. Equality under law requires just that and thus prohibits DEI-based preferences. A merit-based society allows and encourages those best able and qualified to take the leading positions. But this excludes those less capable and, thereby, violates “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which the liberal-left has raised as the new standard. The “solution” is to put the less capable in charge.

This requires demonizing merit as “racist” which has resulted in merit no longer being the requirement for admissions to Ivy League universities and formerly merit-based high schools. Instead, admission is based on racial privilege. Progressives and liberals since the regime of Franklin D. Roosevelt have succeeded in elevating DEI above merit, today dismissed as “white racism.” The entire purpose of the Democrat Party is to destroy a merit-based society. Trump is hated by the liberal-left for trying to restore a merit-based society. For the liberal-left merit is discriminatory and thereby racist. To escape racism, DEI must supplant merit as the basis of American society. DEI is the Democrat Party’s weapon to overthrow a merit-based society. Communism precludes incomes, influence, and status based on merit in theory but not in practice.

In practice, Communist Party membership was the ladder to upward mobility. But for ideologues it is theory that counts. Under communism equality regardless of merit is the standard. Capitalistic, bourgeois society is based on merit with income, influence, and status based on success. Therefore a merit-based society precludes equal results. A merit-based society is “unfair” in the modern parlance. A fair society is one in which merit receives no reward and is handicapped by preferences for those who are without merit. Kurt Vonnegut describes the liberal-left ideal in his short story, “Harrison Bergeron.” Vonnegut thought it would be 2081 before the American liberal-left would be able to establish the Cabinet Department of Handicapper General. But the transition began in 1965 when the EEOC stood the 1964 Civil Rights Act on its head and imposed racial preferences for blacks known as “affirmative action.”

These preferences were explicitly prohibited by the 1964 Civil Right Act. But the American liberal-left elevated its ideological agenda above the law. Such a society will, of course, be mediocre and a laggard in intellectual and cultural advancement. But as such advancements are merit-based, they don’t count. DEI is achieved when individual achievement becomes a criminal offense against society. In Vonnegut’s story, Harrison Bergeron is shot by the Handicapper General. I once read a science fiction story in which at a certain age children were tested for intelligence. If their intelligence was above the norm, they were terminated. Already today September 8th, 2025, we have laws or regulations that penalize merit-based admission, hiring, and promotion decisions and criminalize disagreement with some official narratives, such as the Holocaust.

Various Democrat cities have passed laws that give legal immunities to non-whites. Yet the West continues to claim free speech–obviously a false claim–and to redefine equality under law as equality of result. As free speech guaranteed by the American Constitution is now impermissible, how does truth survive? As truth is impermissible, how can good decisions be made? As recent decades have made completely clear, good decisions cannot be made in the Western world. Enemies are created instead of peace. Law breakers are protected while their victims are punished. Borders are undefended at the expense of the ethnic citizens of the country. As the immigrant invasions continue, the more entitlement takes over from merit and the less Western governments represent their ethnic base. Thus we have arrived at The Camp of the Saints.

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“The solution they’ve crafted draws inspiration from an unlikely source—a 2023 proposal by Democrat Amy Klobuchar that would allow up to 10 nominees from the same committee to be confirmed together.”

• Chuck Schumer Tested FAFO and the GOP Will Make Him Pay the Price (Margolis)

Chuck Schumer is about to learn the hard way what happens when you block and stall for too long. After seven months of throwing a tantrum and holding up more than 100 of President Trump’s nominees, the Senate Minority Leader’s obstruction has finally pushed Republicans to the breaking point. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has had enough, and he’s preparing to unleash the nuclear option to break Schumer’s blockade, ram through confirmations, and get Trump’s team in place before the September 19 recess. In Washington, this is FAFO politics at its finest—Schumer tested his luck, and now he’s about to pay the price.

As PJ Media previously reported back in August, Thune has warned that Republicans would change the rules if Democrats refused to cooperate on speeding up confirmations. Schumer chose to ignore those warnings, apparently believing he could continue his obstruction indefinitely without consequences. That calculation is about to prove spectacularly wrong. After negotiations with Democrats predictably went nowhere, Thune assembled a working group in August featuring Republican Senators Katie Britt, James Lankford, Ron Johnson, Eric Schmitt, and Ted Budd. Their mission was simple: find a way around the Democratic roadblock. The solution they’ve crafted draws inspiration from an unlikely source—a 2023 proposal by Democrat Amy Klobuchar that would allow up to 10 nominees from the same committee to be confirmed together.

The Republican version promises to be far more comprehensive, removing artificial caps on how many nominees the Senate can confirm simultaneously. While judges and Cabinet nominees would remain exempt from this streamlined process, the change represents a fundamental shift in how the Senate handles executive branch confirmations. Schumer’s obstruction strategy has been as petty as it is unprecedented. He openly told The Wall Street Journal that he would instruct his entire caucus to vote against every single Trump nominee, effectively grinding the confirmation process to a halt. In August, he actually bragged about his caucus’s commitment to delaying Trump’s confirmations as long as humanly possible.

The numbers show just how far Democrats have taken their obstruction campaign. Trump is now the first president since Herbert Hoover—almost 100 years ago—to have zero civilian nominees confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent in the early months of his term. That’s not politics as usual; that’s pure spite. Of course, Chuck Schumer is out there defending this nonsense, claiming Trump’s picks are somehow “flawed” or “unqualified.” That’s rich coming from the party that shoved through Xavier Becerra, Pete Buttigieg, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—not to mention a slew of judicial nominees who couldn’t answer basic questions about the law. Republicans have seen this game before, and it looks like they’re finally ready to call Schumer’s bluff. For context, during Trump’s first term, 65 percent of his civilian nominees were approved by voice vote or unanimous consent. Biden managed 57 percent.

Today, only Secretary of State Marco Rubio has slipped past the Democrats’ blockade. That tells you everything you need to know about how shamelessly the left is weaponizing the confirmation process. Republicans aren’t thrilled about using the nuclear option, fully aware that this rule change will eventually benefit Democrats when they next control both the Senate and White House. But make no mistake: this is the inevitable result of the Democrats’ years-long weaponization of the confirmation process, dating back to George W. Bush’s presidency. If the nuclear option is invoked, it’s on them. Chuck Schumer built this trap with nothing but raw partisan spite, and now he’s about to feel the consequences. The nuclear option is coming, and it’s entirely his doing.

Read more …

“The Speaker is reiterating what the victims’ attorney said, which is that Donald Trump — who kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago — was the only one, more than a decade ago, willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein for being a disgusting child predator..”

• Did Johnson Really Say Trump Was an Informant Against Epstein? (Margolis)

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) dropped a bombshell last week, only to take a cautious step back just days later. When CNN’s Manu Raju pressed him on President Donald Trump’s use of the word “hoax” regarding the controversy over the Epstein files, Johnson said that the president had once acted as an FBI informant against Jeffrey Epstein — a fresh detail in the saga. “What Trump is referring to is the hoax that the Democrats are using to try to attack him,” Johnson explained. “He has never said or suggested or implied; I’ve talked to him about this many times, many times. He is horrified. It’s been misrepresented. He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself.”

Johnson also recalled Trump’s decision years ago to ban Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, and that’s when he made the claim. “When he first heard the rumor, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down,” Johnson said, effectively revealing for the first time that Trump had cooperated with federal authorities in efforts to stop Epstein. On Sunday, Johnson’s office tried to clarify the remarks with a carefully worded statement. “The Speaker is reiterating what the victims’ attorney said, which is that Donald Trump — who kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago — was the only one, more than a decade ago, willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein for being a disgusting child predator,” Johnson’s office said, according to a report from the Washington Post.

We already knew that Trump was one of the few people willing to stand against Epstein’s depravity, but the revelation that Trump was an informant was a game-changing new detail. It’s not lost on me that the statement the Washington Post printed doesn’t actually retract the claim, but it doesn’t double down on it either. For years, Democrats have tried to turn the Epstein saga into a Trump scandal because they know many of their own allies have deep ties to Epstein. When they controlled the White House and Congress, they did squat about releasing Epstein files or pursuing real transparency. The Epstein scandal suddenly became the Left’s favored weapon only after Biden’s administration ignored it for so long. Now, they want to drag it out as a smear against Trump in the hopes of creating a distraction to derail his second term. Classic political maneuvering.

Johnson’s “informant” comment touched a nerve because it challenged the left’s carefully constructed lie. Did Trump formally inform on Epstein, or did he simply cooperate with authorities? The difference might matter to the media vultures and political spin doctors, but the real takeaway is Trump’s stance against Epstein, which includes kicking him out of Mar-a-Lago for inappropriate behavior and assisting authorities in exposing Epstein. Whether or not he was an actual FBI informant is unclear, but the Democrats still look foolish trying to make Epstein a Trump scandal.

Read more …

Just yesterday, another German report claimed it was Ukrainians. The particular novelty this time (every report needs one) is that it claims Zaluzhny was in charge.

Why do they do this? To cast doubt on Seymour Hersh’s report. They never say he’s wrong, or even mention him, it’s just an endless stream of “different” stories.

• Elite UK Divers Likely Behind Nord Stream Sabotage – Patrushev (RT)

The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines could not have been carried out without Western commandos, a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, singling out Britain as the likely culprit. German prosecutors have attributed the explosions in international waters in September 2022, which disabled the twin pipelines supplying Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea, to a group of Ukrainian nationals. In an article published Sunday in Kommersant, the former head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Nikolay Patrushev, argued that Ukrainians lack the expertise to carry out this complex operation independently.

The sabotage was likely “planned, overseen, and executed with the involvement of highly trained NATO special forces,” Patrushev wrote, adding that the perpetrators were experienced in deep-sea operations and familiar with working in the Baltic.“Few armies or intelligence services have divers capable of executing such an operation correctly and, above all, covertly. One unit with the necessary skills is the British Special Boat Service,” he said. Founded during World War II, the SBS is the Royal Navy’s elite squad specializing in amphibious warfare. Russia has criticized the German investigation for a lack of transparency and for not including the Russian authorities. In 2024, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service claimed it had “credible information” that the US and UK were directly involved in the sabotage, a claim denied by both London and Washington.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1964729425863282789

fauci

https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1964927875116925373
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1965081470231511305

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 25 2025

Aug 252025
 
 August 25, 2025  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Charles Camoin Village Street in Collioure 1912

 

• “Pray For a Good Winter, but Plant Lots of Cabbages” (CTH)
• Vice President JD Vance Discusses Russia-Ukraine Negotiations (CTH)
• Zelensky Vows To Retake Crimea Despite Trump’s Peace Push (RT)
• Russian FM Sergey Lavrov Extensive Interview On NBC’s Meet the Press (CTH)
• ABC and NBC Should Be Taken Off Air – Trump (RT)
• Territory Is Not What Russia Is Interested In – Lavrov (RT)
• US Seeking Diplomacy, EU Pushing War – Lavrov (RT)
• Zelensky Can’t Sign Peace Deal – Moscow (RT)
• Revolution or a Caesar? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Outline #5 – The Prequel (CTH)
• Outline #5 – The Full Spectrum Criminal Surveillance (CTH)
• Expect Putin To Pay Big-Time For Trolling Trump (NYP op-ed))
• Systemic Corruption Doesn’t Give A Chance For Peace In Ukraine (Antiwar)
• Devin Nunes Frames a Remarkable Reality (CTH)
• Trends in Global Christian Persecution (Salgado)

 

 

https://twitter.com/TheStormRedux/status/1959056675177890127

vdh

larry

 

 

 

 

Lawyer Sundance at the Conservative Tree House (CTH), aka The Last Refuge, had a very busy weekend. This is reflected in today’s Debt Rattle.

First, he returns to the ‘making’ of JD Vance. Did you know he had 3 other names before that one?

“Both Barry Sotero (Obama) and James Bowman (Vance) are mirror images of each other; the playbooks used to create both are identical.”

“Without Peter Thiel there is no Senator J.D. Vance.”

• “Pray For a Good Winter, but Plant Lots of Cabbages” (CTH)

Abandoned by his father to a troubled single mother; eventually raised by grandparents. He is then recruited from an Ivy league law school by shadow figures, a specific billionaire and a network of interests. He changes his name, writes a book about his life story, and with the support of the aforementioned – who eventually pays for a strategic campaign, becomes a Senator for 2 years before being quickly elevated into position in the White House. Many people reading that paragraph are familiar with the life story of Barack Hussien Obama. However, that paragraph is not describing Obama, that paragraph describes James Donald Bowman, aka J.D. Vance. On one side, we have an emotionally constructed political figure for the left. On the other side, we see an emotionally constructed political figure for the right. Each person, each emotional narrative, carrying the specific nuances to appeal to their audience; both follow the same playbook.

J.D. Vance was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio (August 2, 1984). He then changed his name to James David Bowman. He then changed his name to James David Hamel. Eventually, in 2014, notably after Yale Law School (class of 2013, and after marrying his wife Usha, now age 30, he changed his name to write a book. It was 2014, that’s when J.D. Vance was born. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy was published by Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house, Harper Collins in 2016. The book was made into a Netflix movie, [Reed Hastings] created by Imagine Entertainment and directed by Ron Howard (2020). However, the interesting background on J.D. Vance goes back to Yale, and the Obamaesque tap on the shoulder that comes from a billionaire most are familiar with, Peter Thiel (PayPal and Palantir).

Thiel first recruited Vance into his circle while Vance was still a student at Yale Law School. Shortly thereafter, Vance joined Thiel’s investment firm Mithril Capital, where he worked for two years before joining Revolution Ventures. Vance played a major role in Revolution’s “Rise of the Rest” seed fund whose major investors included Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. J.D. Vance then launched his own venture capital firm Narya Capital in 2020, using startup money from both Peter Thiel and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. From this timeline, we can see how J.D. Vance went from no money (student loans) in 2013, to big money in 2020. Everything came via Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt, but mostly Thiel. To understand J.D. Vance as an Ohio Senator, we visit the inflection points in 2013 and the subsequent relationship with billionaire Peter Thiel (Palantir Technologies). The timeline from 2013 to now becomes important.

Billionaires Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel are key members of the steering committee of the controversial, closed-door, and overtly globalist Bilderberg conference. Newsweek once called Schmidt and Thiel the two most influential figures at Bilderberg. Peter Thiel’s company, Palantir Tech, is the driving force of a global surveillance system using artificial intelligence (AI). Palantir has massive contract interests in U.S. military and intelligence communities. Keep in mind, Palantir is the current company creating the tech mechanisms for the U.S. government to conduct foreign and domestic surveillance. The actual technology needed by the Deep State, to advance their interests, is provided by Peter Thiel. According to the popular narrative, J.D. Vance opposes the Intelligence Community deep surveillance state, while simultaneously being the political front for the interests of Peter Thiel and Palantir Technology. This doesn’t reconcile.

Peter Thiel was the money and network behind the 2022 Ohio Senate race between J.D. Vance and Tim Ryan. It was Peter Thiel who took J.D. Vance to meet President Trump in Mar-a-Lago to get the needed endorsement to launch Vance into the U.S. Senate. Without Peter Thiel there is no Senator J.D. Vance. It is also important to remember that prior to 2018, prior to Peter Thiel becoming aligned with the FBI as a confidential human source, and prior to Vance needing the Trump endorsement, J.D. Vance was a staunch never-Trumper. J.D. Vance went from calling President Trump “a literal Hitler,” to appreciating Trump’s incredible leadership – a remarkable shift in opinion. To his strategic credit, Peter Thiel was successful in gaining both the Trump endorsement and the winning outcome of the 2022 Ohio Senate race. That success was now Senator J.D. Vance.

Within the Thiel network, you will note the aligned interests of another key financial friend and big federal contractor, Elon Musk. Together, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel form the core of a very wealthy group of modern tech political influence agents, including another Yale Law School graduate and J.D. Vance supporter, Vivek Ramaswamy. J.D. Vance named one of his three children Vivek. Suffice to say, they are close. What you have read so far is the background of how a billionaire, Peter Thiel, deeply enmeshed in the surveillance state, creates the process for the advancement of his interests. A few dozen millions are a worthy investment if the investment creates and supports the objectives of the billionaire (Palantir Technology).

As an outcome of an influence network in 2006, Senator Barack Obama was successfully installed. As an outcome of an influence network in 2022, Senator J.D. Vance was successfully installed. Both Barry Sotero (Obama) and James Bowman (Vance) are mirror images of each other; the playbooks used to create both are identical. One went through the path of community activism, the other through the military. Both paths have a target audience.

Read more …

Starts with Bolton.

• Vice President JD Vance Discusses Russia-Ukraine Negotiations (CTH)

Vice President JD Vance appears on Meet the Press for an extensive interview about current events and the Russia-Ukraine negotiations. The beginning of the interview starts with questions about the FBI investigation of former National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Read more …

This is what Azov wanted to hear on Ukraine’s Independence Day, yesterday And warmongers including Europeans too. Zelensky delivers.

• Zelensky Vows To Retake Crimea Despite Trump’s Peace Push (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected US calls to withdraw its claim to Crimea or make any territorial concessions to Russia. In a speech marking Ukraine’s Independence Day on Sunday, Zelensky vowed to retake the peninsula, which is predominantly populated by ethnic Russians and overwhelmingly voted to join Russia after the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev. He also pledged to reclaim the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which, along with Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, joined Russia in 2022 after referendums. “Here at the zero kilometer, this is a starting point where distances to Ukrainian cities are marked – to our Donetsk, our Lugansk, our Crimea,” Zelensky said in an address filmed at Kiev’s Maidan Square, the site of the Western-backed 2014 coup.

“All of this is Ukraine… and no temporary occupation can change that. One day… we will be together again as one country. It’s only a matter of time.” While mediating peace efforts between Moscow and Kiev, US President Donald Trump has floated the idea of “land swaps,” but firmly stated that Kiev will not regain Crimea, calling that scenario “impossible.” Land issues were reportedly on the agenda at talks between Trump, Zelensky, and Kiev’s EU backers earlier this week, but Zelensky reportedly rejected proposals to cede territory. He confirmed this in his speech on Sunday, declaring: “Ukraine will never again in history be forced to bear the shame that the Russians call ‘a compromise’.” Trump has called for a one-on-one meeting between Putin and Zelensky, saying it could accelerate the peace process, but warned that the Ukrainian leader must “show flexibility,” including on territorial claims.

He congratulated Ukraine on its national holiday in a post on X, while again urging Kiev to negotiate a settlement with Moscow to “stop the senseless killing.” Putin has not ruled out meeting with Zelensky, despite questioning the Ukrainian leader’s legitimacy due to the expiration of his term, but insists that this can only happen after tangible progress in negotiations. On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Putin could meet Zelensky “when the agenda is ready for a summit,” but added that “as things stand, no meeting is planned.” Moscow has consistently maintained it will only accept a peace deal that includes Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye as Russian.

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Lavrov has much to say. Kristen Welker is a disgrace, and embarrassing. She tries to interrupt him a thousand times -and fails-, but doesn’t listen. She’s interested only in venting her own agenda. But Lavrov is nobody’s fool.

• Russian FM Sergey Lavrov Extensive Interview On NBC’s Meet the Press (CTH)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appears on Meet the Press (NBC) to outline the Russian position on further discussions for a peace agreement with Ukraine. Lavrov notes the working group from the Russian delegation is willing to meet in Istanbul to further negotiate the parameters for any principal meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskyy.

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“..they should pay up BIG for having the privilege of using the most valuable airwaves anywhere at anytime!”

• ABC and NBC Should Be Taken Off Air – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump has said news channels ABC and NBC should have their broadcasting licenses revoked. Trump has long accused major media outlets of spreading lies about him and working to undermine his presidency on behalf of the Democrats. In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump blasted ABC and NBC as “two of the absolute worst and most biased networks.” “They should lose their Licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives, but at a minimum, they should pay up BIG for having the privilege of using the most valuable airwaves anywhere at anytime!” he wrote. He has previously labeled both networks “political pawns” of the Democrats.

In June, ABC dismissed veteran correspondent Terry Moran after he referred to senior Trump aide Stephen Miller as a “world-class hater.” In 2024, the network agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over inaccurate comments about his sexual assault and defamation trial involving columnist E. Jean Carroll. Last month, Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, agreed to pay $16 million as part of another settlement. Trump alleged the company deceptively edited a 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who at the time was running against him in the presidential election. In July, Trump filed a lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones, and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, over a report claiming he had sent a birthday letter to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s.

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..but … but… everybody keeps saying they want ALL of Ukraine…!

• Territory Is Not What Russia Is Interested In – Lavrov (RT)

Russia has no interest in seizing Ukrainian land but wants to protect ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people from persecution by Kiev, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. In an interview with NBC on Sunday, Lavrov was asked whether halting Moscow’s military offensive was the only concession it was prepared to make. ”We don’t have any interest in territories. We have the biggest territory on Earth,” Lavrov said. “What we are concerned about… is the people who live on those lands, whose ancestors lived there for centuries.”

Lavrov said Moscow’s goal is “to remove any security threats to Russia coming from Ukrainian territory” as well as “to protect the rights of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking people who believe they belong to Russian culture and Russian history.” “The only way to protect them against this Nazi regime is to give them the right to express their will,” he stressed. Lavrov went on to underscore that “Ukraine has the right to exist,” but it should be ready to “let people go.” He noted, however, that Ukrainian officials have consistently sought to dehumanize and portray as “terrorists” people in its five former regions that voted to join Russia in 2014 and 2022.

Since the Western-backed armed coup in Kiev in 2014, Ukraine has moved to sever centuries-long ties with Russia and introduced restrictions on the Russian language in the media. It has also sought to phase out Russian in schools, and impose broader curbs on its use in social life. Kiev has also embarked on a campaign to eliminate cultural ties with Moscow, particularly through its controversial decommunization campaign, which involved renaming cities, streets, and landmarks that bore Soviet-era or Russian-linked names.

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“They say we cannot allow the defeat of Ukraine. We cannot allow Russia to win…”

• US Seeking Diplomacy, EU Pushing War – Lavrov (RT)

Kiev’s backers in Europe want the conflict in Ukraine to continue, unlike US President Donald Trump, who seems to have genuinely embraced the path of diplomacy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Speaking in an interview with NBC aired on Sunday, Lavrov said that the reaction of many European officials to the summit in Alaska, and also their rhetoric during follow-up talks several days later involving Vladimir Zelensky, revealed that the European NATO nations remain as bellicose as ever about the Ukraine conflict. “The reaction… of these European representatives and what they were doing… indicates that they don’t want peace. They say we cannot allow the defeat of Ukraine. We cannot allow Russia to win,” Lavrov said.

Meanwhile, the minister noted that US President Donald Trump has opted for another approach. “We respect President Trump because President Trump defends American national interests,” he said, adding that the US leader seems to respect Russian President Vladimir Putin for doing the same for his country. “What… they discuss between themselves is not a secret. We want peace in Ukraine. President Trump wants peace in Ukraine,” Lavrov stressed. He also noted that Russia and Ukraine came close to a peace agreement early in the conflict during talks in Istanbul. “We proposed several times a peaceful resolution on a diplomatic basis. And as I said, it was not us who blew up the deal… in April 2022. It was personally [then-UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson and… several officials from the Biden administration, the French and the Germans.”

During those negotiations, Russia and Ukraine discussed a draft agreement that entailed a neutral status for Ukraine, a scaling back of Kiev’s military, and security guarantees. Moscow has accused Johnson of intervening to urge Kiev to reject the proposed deal and continue fighting, a claim the ex-UK prime minister has denied. Following the Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump held talks with Zelensky and several European leaders, which focused on potential security guarantees for Kiev. Several European governments have also floated the idea of deploying troops to Ukraine once the conflict ends, a step Russia has described as a red line.

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“A game he is very good [at playing] because he wants theatrics in everything he is doing. He does not care about substance,”

• Zelensky Can’t Sign Peace Deal – Moscow (RT)

Russia is open to talks with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky given that he is the “de facto head of the regime” in Kiev, but any deals could only be signed by a legitimate representative of Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. In a rare interview with NBC aired on Sunday, Lavrov did not rule out direct talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky “provided this meeting is really going to decide something.” However, the necessary groundwork for such talks, the foreign minister stressed, has not yet been done. Lavrov acknowledged that Zelensky is the “de facto head of the regime” but said that “the issue of who is going to sign the deal on the Ukrainian side is a very serious [one],” he said. “We would need a very clear understanding by everybody that the person who is signing is legitimate.”

The Ukrainian leader’s presidential term ended more than a year ago, and he has refused to hold a new election, citing martial law. Russia has since proclaimed him “illegitimate.” Lavrov also suggested that Zelensky’s calls for a meeting with Putin are “basically a game” and a way to strengthen the Ukrainian leader’s questionable legitimacy. “A game he is very good [at playing] because he wants theatrics in everything he is doing. He does not care about substance,” he said. Moscow sees no point in talks destined to yield no results due to Kiev’s position, Lavrov said, pointing out cases where Zelensky has directly defied US President Donald Trump. “Zelensky said no to everything… He clearly stated that nobody can prohibit him from joining NATO… he publicly stated that he is not going to discuss any territories.”

Russia maintains that any settlement of the Ukraine conflict must address the root causes of the crisis. Moscow insists that Ukraine must commit to block neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and recognition of territorial reality on the ground. Kiev has said that while Zelensky is ready to discuss Ukraine’s territorial disputes with Russia, it has no intention to recognize its losses.

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“Everywhere in the Western World democracy is in crisis and collapse. Democracy has become so dysfunctional that executive authority is superseding it.”

• Revolution or a Caesar? (Paul Craig Roberts)

FBI Raids Home of Trump’s First Term National Security Adviser John Bolton. Bolton was not detained, but is expected to be charged. Generally speaking, democracies die from corruption. The United States is no exception. America has always suffered from corrupt government at every level. Liberals who put unwarranted trust in government, especially at the federal level, have long been in denial about this fact. Liberals tend to see corruption in state and local governments, especially Southern ones. They see federal government intervention as the correction. Liberals know, or once did, of the corruption of President Grant’s government. They know of President Lincoln’s disregard of the US constitution. But liberals still see the federal government as a corrective force.

The federal government is no more safe from being hijacked by interest groups than state and local governments. Essentially, governments are agencies that influential private interests use to feather their own nest at the expense of others. The reason is that the President, and the members of the House and Senate obtain office courtesy of those private interests that provide their campaign funds. Therefore, it is the monied interests that government serves. Somehow the notion of a “public interest” has survived the many decades of contrary evidence. Over the course of my life I have noticed a quantitative/qualitative change in the power of private interests. Formerly they used the law to get what they want. Today they weaponize law in order to remove those in their way.

The use of law as a weapon to control policy perhaps dates from the Nixon era. President Nixon was making arms control agreements with the Soviets and opened to China. The military/security interests did not want to lose the communist enemy that enhanced their profits, and they went to work on Nixon. Growing suspicions about the assassination of President Kennedy foreclosed the physical assassination of Nixon, so they assassinated him politically with the Watergate orchestration. The bullet that hit President Reagan did not kill him, and the official narrative was accepted. Nevertheless, the CIA was opposed to Reagan’s idea of negotiating the end of the Cold War with the Kremlin. I know, because I was on a secret presidential committee to investigate the validity of the CIA’s opposition.

Whenever its origin, weaponized law in the US has been manifested in the 21st century. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the neoconservatives gave us 9/11 and a quarter century of war in the Middle East resulting in the destruction of 6 countries and millions of displaced persons who fled to the West and destabilized European countries and the UK. To facilitate the profits, budgets, and influence of the military/security complex, American civil liberties protected by the Constitution were erased by laws deemed necessary in order to protect us from an alleged “terrorism,” which was itself an orchestration. But all of this was foreplay. Democrat opposition to Trump’s election in 2016, and Trump’s intention to “normalize relations with Russia,” weaponized not only the Democrats and whore media against him, but also the CIA, Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI.

US intelligence agencies falsified documents, lied to the FISA court and to Congress, and loaded the presstitutes with anti-Trump propaganda in order to hamstring, if not remove, a president deemed dangerous to the enormous profits that flowed from America having the Russian enemy. The “Russian Enemy” is very important to many pocketbooks. Trump is trying, or so it seems, to get rid of the Russian enemy for us, by passing the task of the Ukrainian conflict on to Europe which will purchase US weapons to continue the conflict. This way we are free of the conflict, but the profit interests of the military-security complex are not threatened, Now for John Bolton. Bolton is a neoconservative. Perhaps he just wants, as do other Americans, for the US to be the unquestioned power in the world. Perhaps he thinks that we are really threatened by the enemies we chose to make. Perhaps he takes bribes in behalf of Greater Israel and/or the military/security complex . I don’t know.

What I do know is that when a former National Security Adviser’s home and office are raided by the FBI who carry off his files, whether or not the raids are justified, the image of the United States suffers, just as eight years of false charges against Trump and the FBI raid on Trump’s home damaged the image of the United States. Once law is weaponized, the prospect is created of weaponized law becoming institutionalized. Additionally, the authority of high government positions is undermined by the positions being tainted with impropriety. If the CIA director dispenses with presidents and the FBI chief lies to Congress, trust in the agencies disappears. The Biden regime persecuted not only Trump but also his attorneys, appointees, and those who presented evidence of election theft. Trump, a former president, faced four criminal indictments in weaponized courts with weaponized charges presented by weaponized attorney generals, one of whom, a George Soros protege, currently faces indictment on the same charge she framed Trump with.

Once law is weaponized, it is a life and death matter who controls the government. A government in such turmoil can never serve the public’s interest. What goes around comes around. John Bolton brought it on himself. Bolton, Brennan, Comey, Clapper, and Merrick Garland are likely guilty of crimes, whereas Trump, his attorneys and supporters are likely not guilty. But whatever Bolton and the others suffer, so does the image of the United States. The use of high office for personal agendas separates the interests of government from the interest of the people and kills democracy. The image portrayed is one of a government serving foreign, material, and ideological interests, not the interests of the voters who elected the government. Everywhere in the Western World democracy is in crisis and collapse. Democracy has become so dysfunctional that executive authority is superseding it. When democracy fails, the choice becomes revolution or a Caesar.

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More Sundance. He says there are two ‘gates’: Russiagate and ‘spygate’, where Obama et al spied on Americans for many years. According to him, ‘spygate’ is much more important -and bigger-, and Russiagate is used to divert attention away from it. Especially by people like John Solomon at Just The News.

The two ‘Outline #5’ pieces, here and below, are much longer than I can show here. Click the links.

“Beware the person who picks up the flag at the front of the parade, for they are likely steering the crowd for a reason.”

• Outline #5 – The Prequel (CTH)

If you have followed the construct of the Trump-Russia collusion story, you are likely outraged that accountability has not followed. There’s a very frustrating reason for that, and I will explain how two distinctly different issues are being conflated. Separating them is the key. The first issue is the FBI’s illegal surveillance of presidential candidates, including candidate Donald Trump. The second issue is the Clinton campaign inspired Russia-Collusion story, that led to Crossfire Hurricane, colloquially known as “Russiagate.” All investigative emphasis, including John Durham, has been on the latter which takes you into a DC silo construct where all tentacles lead to dead ends and inaction.

Russiagate was a Clinton-inspired political smear campaign that was given the patina of credibility by the FBI opening the investigation called “Crossfire Hurricane.” If you focus on that storyline, you end up with zero accountability and endless talk that goes nowhere. However, if President Trump and DNI Tulsi Gabbard reveal the first element, the FBI’s illegal surveillance of candidate Donald Trump, that path has a physical trail and documents that cannot be deflected by political obfuscation.

THE FBI SURVEILLANCE – The original agreement between Clinton and Obama, going back to 2008, was for Obama to take the nomination, the presidency and then eventually support Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election bid. Obama would be President. Obama would appoint Clinton to Secretary of State, Hillary would then use her office to build wealth for herself and her family, and then HRC would exit the Dept of State to begin her presidential run. John Podesta would enter the Obama administration as Hillary left (post Benghazi mess) in 2013. Podesta would look out for Hillary’s interests from his position inside the Obama White House. The Clintons and Obamas never fully trusted each other. Barack Obama would put all the mechanisms into place that would transition his administration into Hillary Clinton’s. That was always the plan running in the background.

In 2015, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had a check-in meeting -just touching base to firm up the goals and objectives as Hillary began her campaign launch. Podesta then left the White House to take up position inside the campaign, and Obama would maintain Clinton’s interests as planned without a monitor. All of President Obama’s appointments, in/after 2015, were essentially through the prism of assisting Hillary Clinton to win in 2016. Attorney General Loretta Lynch (tarmac meeting), Deputy AG Sally Yates, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and FBI Director James Comey were all part of that. This is a key point missed by many. In the last two years of Obama, the cabinet and top-tier members of the administration would align their institutional interests to that of Hillary Clinton.

Technically, Hillary had eyes and ears all over the White House at the time, and with Hillary Clinton being a foregone conclusion, per the expectations of Washington DC, everyone would fall in line during the transition from Obama to Clinton. Again, this was the general plan. Obama would show up in 2016 to campaign for Hillary, and all would be seamless. The FBI was aware of the plan for transition from Obama to Clinton. Hence, the FBI role in eliminating the threat later presented by the Hillary Clinton laptop scandal, private servers and the subsequent issues of her receiving and transmitting classified information.

Remember, Clinton’s motive as Secretary of State was to sell her position for material wealth. That’s why she used a personal email, maintained her own servers, and generally controlled how her activity could be monitored and tracked. [Also, she didn’t fully trust Obama] The FBI activity was to support, defend and facilitate the Clinton effort. This is again a key to understanding “Russiagate.” After March 2016 (Super Tuesday), it became obvious Donald Trump was going to win the Republican nomination. Trump would be Clinton’s opponent.

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“Stop focusing so much attention on Russiagate, it’s the shiny thing fraught with plausible deniability. Focus instead on declassifying and releasing the real story of how the NSA database has been used to conduct political surveillance for over a decade…”

• Outline #5 – The Full Spectrum Criminal Surveillance (CTH)

How this all comes together:

Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 simply to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the Obama administration was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database. However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama FBI needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier. That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, were so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content.

The Steele Dossier was a tool needed to get a FISA Title-1 warrant, that became the cover and justification for a pre-existing surveillance operation. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system. Fusion GPS was hired by Hillary Clinton to research Trump; however, the Obama administration was already doing surveillance and spy operations, using FBI contractors. The FBI needed Fusion GPS to give them something, a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations.

Fusion-GPS gave them the justification they needed for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier. Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier was so important; without it, the Obama administration was naked with their NSA database abuse. Investigating ‘Russiagate’, as dirty and unseemly as it was, takes you to a place where politics infected the DOJ/FBI and every participant carries plausible deniability. However, investigate the 2016 illegal surveillance of Donald Trump’s campaign via the NSA database and all of that activity can never be justified. nIf you understand the distinction above, then you start to realize why John Solomon is focusing on Russiagate. Beware the person who picks up the flag at the front of the parade, for they are likely steering the crowd for a reason.

If DNI Tulsi Gabbard focuses on the known FBI surveillance of the GOP candidates in 2016, by focusing on how FBI contractors exploited access to the NSA database to conduct political opposition research, then suddenly the entire story takes on a simpler to understand context. Declassify the Rosemary Collyer 99-page FISA report and outline the FBI contractors doing the surveillance. Stop focusing so much attention on Russiagate, it’s the shiny thing fraught with plausible deniability. Focus instead on declassifying and releasing the real story of how the NSA database has been used to conduct political surveillance for over a decade. Obama conducted full spectrum political surveillance and spying operations exploiting the NSA database from 2012 to 2016. All republican candidates were under surveillance.

THAT is the BIG STORY that will shake up DC.

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A theme that’s gaining popularity: Putin trolling Trump. The contention is that since Putin agreed to a meeting with Zelensky, it has to take place tomorrow morning at the very latest. Any talk of preparing for the meeting is just trolling.

• Expect Putin To Pay Big-Time For Trolling Trump (NYP op-ed))

We expect Russia’s Vladimir Putin and his top minions to soon regret their decision to make a fool of President Donald Trump. At their Alaska summit, Putin gave Trump renewed hope for a peace deal on the Ukraine war — but that’s now looking like Lucy setting up Charlie Brown for another football humiliation. After initially signaling openness to a meet, Sergey Lavrov, Putin’s foreign secretary, just dumped yet more cold water on any chance for a Putin sitdown with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. Bloviating on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Lavrov announced, “There is no meeting planned,” and none will happen without advance agreement that fits Putin’s “presidential agenda.” And that agenda is “not ready at all”: Ukraine must publicly agree it will never join NATO, Zelensky must repeal laws that Lavrov claims ban “the Russian language” and concede in advance on “territorial issues” Lavrov wouldn’t specify.

Oh, and he reiterated the Russians’ believe that Zelensky isn’t Ukraine’s “legitimate” president, though “we recognize him as the de facto head of the regime.” This follows a full week of Lavrov & Co. insisting, for example, that no European troops can be deployed in Ukraine to secure the peace, and indeed demanding a veto over any post-war security guarantees for Kyiv. The Russians are also pushing hard for Ukraine to agree in advance that it will cede the half of Donbas that Putin’s been trying to conquer since 2014. All of it clearly contradicts the gist of what Vice President JD Vance says Putin agreed to in Anchorage: “They’ve recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv, and importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Vance said on the same NBC show.

Yes, Putin from the start of his invasion has claimed he means to oust a supposed “neo-Nazi” regime in Kyiv (though Zelensky is Jewish!), and generally insists that Ukraine is really just a part of Russia that never should’ve been independent. So what? If Vlad were genuinely willing to discuss a lasting peace deal, he’d have been willing to set those delusions aside, and to order Lavrov and his fellow toadies to quit it. Instead, Putin has his minions outright trolling not just Zelensky, but Trump himself. The American president’s been slowly signaling his displeasure, posting days ago of this war that “it is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking” the invader’s country — a blatant warning that Washington might give Kyiv added ability to strike deep inside Russia.

That’s on top of the threats Trump has conspicuously so far left on the table, including secondary sanctions that would cripple Russia’s economy and so its whole war machine. Trump was beyond clear after Alaska that Putin only had another two weeks to publicly move toward a face-to-face with Zelensky as a key step in reaching a peace accord. One week’s already done, and Russia’s done nothing but signal that no sitdown is in sight unless Ukraine basically surrenders in advance on every issue up for discussion. That is, Putin’s displaying “the art of the no-deal” — and treating Trump like a sucker for believing everything he said to the contrary in Anchorage. The Russian plainly thinks he’ll get away with humiliating the leader of the Free World; it won’t be pretty when Trump finally moves to dispel that delusion.

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The one thing this author has is :”During 2024-2025, the criminals embezzled about $80 000 of money allocated for purchasing of defense goods..”

If that is all you got, you shouldn’t waste people’s time by writing about this.

• Systemic Corruption Doesn’t Give A Chance For Peace In Ukraine (Antiwar)

Another huge scandal linked to embezzlement of budget funds in government procurement has broken out in Ukraine recently. On August 2, Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) exposed an organized criminal group created by “Servant of the People” party’s deputy Oleksii Kuznietsov and head of the State Administration of the Mukachevo District Serhiy Haidai. The group have been organizing purchases of overpriced FPV drones and electronic warfare systems for the National Guard of Ukraine. According to investigation data, beside Kuznietsov and Haidai, a head of one of the Military-Civil Administrations, a unit commander of the National Guard, and representatives of company manufacturing drones were also involved in the huge corruption scheme.

During 2024-2025, the criminals embezzled about $80 000 of money allocated for purchasing of defense goods. 30% from every government contract settled in their pockets. Now, all key persons of interest are taken into custody with the possibility of being out on bail. The head of the state Volodymyr Zelenskyy commented on the situation eloquently calling the fraud “absolutely immoral” and promised a “full and fair accountability” for the criminals. However, neither high-profile exposure of corrupt officials, nor passionate speeches of the president of the country haven’t been able to dispel the tension, that has accumulated over last several weeks, and exonerate the Kyiv authorities for Ukrainians and international public.

The reason for this is recent attempts of authorities to discredit the Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies and restrict their independence which really destroyed civilians’ faith in Zelenskyy’s and his team’s commitment to the rule of law and authorities’ interest in fighting corruption in general. I’m talking about a set of planned and well-coordinated attacks of current authorities on SAPO and NABU which preceded the exposure of the Kuznietsov-Haidai group. On June 21, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (one month before the events the office of Prosecutor General was taken by Ruslan Kravchenko who is known for his loyalty to the Office of the President of Ukraine) and SBU conducted unauthorized searches in both agencies. As the result of the searches, several NABU detectives were taken into custody on suspicion of collaboration with Russia.

This joint operation of the secret services and the Prosecutor General’s Office (cynically called by the implementers “special operation”) literally paralyzed the work of NABU and SAPO and created a formal reason for tightening the control over anti-corruption agencies. The reason the Kyiv authorities have been looking for a very long time and not finding one, is that they created it themselves. Already on July 22, the Verkhovnaya Rada of Ukraine passed a new law which practically liquidated the independence of anti-corruption agencies and established full control over their work by the Prosecutor General’s Office. Later that night, the new law was quickly signed by the President Zelenskyy despite the will of Ukrainians.

Such an undisguised attempt to liquidate the anti-corruption agencies caused an immediate reaction from Ukrainians. Ukrainians openly stood against the culpable law: hundreds of people went to protests on the streets, and free Ukrainian media was full of critics and disapproval of Kyiv’s authorities. However, I hate to admit it, but Ukrainians wouldn’t stop the authorities’ arbitrariness by themselves without the help of Ukrainian allies. Only due to the fast interference and strong stand of European and American authorities which have made everything they could to stop Kyiv’s authorities’ treacherous actions. The process of liquidation of SAPO and NABU was reversed. As a result, on July 31, under pressure of Ukrainian and international public a new law was passed. It restored the independence of the anti-corruption agencies. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t hope that Kyiv’s authorities stop trying to destroy anti-corruption agencies.

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One last Sundance -for today-:

”… the CIA seemingly operates in places like Ukraine without President Trump or Director John Ratcliffe having any power over the activity.”

• Devin Nunes Frames a Remarkable Reality (CTH)

While speaking to Lara Trump about the ongoing Russiagate review efforts, Devin Nunes notes, “The only thing that President Trump and this administration can do, is make sure that whoever can be held accountable, are held accountable, and that this doesn’t happen again; that these people are taught a lesson, so that this doesn’t happen again.” But there’s something even more revealing within the interview. Context: Devin Nunes is the chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, an alternative mechanism to review and analyze global and domestic intelligence information – with overlay against truth and reality that underpins the issue(s). Action: Accepting the intent of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, now insert the recent DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s directive to stop information sharing with allied countries as it specifically relates to President Trump’s efforts to create a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.

Back to the interview: Here’s the statement that really deserves to be emphasized: “Imagine where we sit today, with all the things going on around the world, and the President has to have the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, his own intelligence board, all making sure the intelligence is not weaponized. I mean it’s rather incredible, this is something that is unprecedented in the United States of America.” Think about that remarkable context. Essentially what Nunes is saying is that Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard and Devin Nunes (et al) cannot trust the operational embeds under the agency heads within the United States Intelligence Community. Think about that, as it is said out loud. This is exactly what CTH has been trying to hammer home for years.

The modern IC system is now designed to be a rogue apparatus, disconnected from the traditional framework of executive control. The people who operate within that fourth branch of government are not constrained by the power or authority of the executive. This is exceptionally dangerous. We elect a President (Executive), we elect representatives (Legislative), the Executive and Legislative create the Judicial, who exactly is controlling the Intelligence Branch? Many, too numerous people to count, have dismissed my warnings about how this system is operating. Here we have the former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and current Chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, saying exactly the same thing.

Ratcliffe, Gabbard, Patel, Blanche, Bongino, Bondi, Rubio and all of the Nunes advisory team, are trying to keep the IC system operators from targeting President Trump via weaponized, purposefully manipulated, intelligence information. By direct and unassailable implication, this means rogue influence operations are taking place external to the ability of executive to curtail them. As Devin Nunes is noting, the Office of the President is taking active measures to work around the intelligence agencies. This rogue nature of the intelligence apparatus is an example of how the CIA seemingly operates in places like Ukraine without President Trump or Director John Ratcliffe having any power over the activity.

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Only Trump defends Christian values.

• Trends in Global Christian Persecution (Salgado)

Thousands killed and millions displaced from one religious group across multiple countries. Persecution, imprisonment, and murder loom. Does the world care? No, because this much-targeted religion is Christianity. When Jews and Christians are killed, the West turns a blind eye or downplays the violence. That is especially true when the victimizers are Muslims or Communists. Christians are being massacred in multiple countries worldwide, but you wouldn’t know that from mainstream media. We here at PJ Media, however, aim to highlight this global tragedy. Don’t let the Hamas propaganda fixate all your attention on the jihad-loving Gazans. As Open Doors reveals on its website, persecution of Christians has intensified in recent years and especially in countries with strong Islamic jihad groups or Communist governments. Why are Western aid, media, and and politicians never going to persecuted Christians?

Open Doors notes that “Authoritarian control in Central Asia” have been responsible for “violence and authoritarian restrictions against Christians have risen globally during the past year, most notably in Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. No country stood out more than Kyrgyzstan, which rose sharply on the WWL, the annual ranking of the countries where it is most difficult to live as a Christian.” WWL is the World Watch List for persecution. Civil wars also cause serious danger to many Christians, who can find themselves caught in between both sides in countries torn apart by internal and violent conflict. “Civil wars in Yemen, Myanmar, and Sudan, created unstable environments, putting Christians into the crossfires,” according to Open Doors.

The current genocide in Syria is also an outgrowth of civil war, as Islamic terrorist group HTS, now in charge of the country, was for years at war with the Assad regime. Christians often suffered from both sides, but particularly now that HTS’s al-Golani — now al-Sharaa — is fully in charge and overseeing vicious mass murder against Christian and Druze minorities. The violence against Christians in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is particularly bad. In fact, Open Doors labeled that region “the most violent place in the world for Christians. Chronic government instability and civil conflict have created a vacuum, which is filled by opportunistic Islamic militants, in several nations in SSA.” Do black lives matter? Do they not matter when they are Christian? Leftists love to blather about Africa, but not about Islamic jihad in Africa.

Furthermore, Open Doors highlights the phenomenon of the “disappearing Church.” It explains: The Church is driven out or driven underground in several countries. In the Middle East especially, several Christian communities are dwindling and, in some cases, on the verge of extinction. Finally, Open Doors discusses surveillance states. “Christians in China and other autocratic states are increasingly cautious about openly expressing their faith due to advanced surveillance.” The blood of the innocent cries out from the earth.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/1959289086247862680

keto

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1959505163154059363

caryatid

tarsier
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1959488339402518674

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 11 2025

Aug 112025
 
 August 11, 2025  Posted by at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Man in Oriental Costume (The Noble Slav) 1632

 

• Trump Just Held His Largest White House Briefing Yet (Nas)
• Last Line Of Defense: USA Intervenes Against EU Digital Surveillance (Kolbe)
• Russia and US ‘Very Far From Detente’ – Moscow (RT)
• Zelensky Not Invited To Putin-Trump Summit – WaPo (RT)
• US Backing Ukraine Settlement Based On Current Front Line – Vance (RT)
• US Is ‘Done’ Funding Ukraine – Vance (RT)
• Ukraine’s Backers Won’t Provide Military Personnel – Sunday Times (RT)
• Trump and Putin Could Discuss More Than Just Ukraine in Alaska (Sp.)
• Peace Talks And Power Plays On Former Russian Soil (Kolbe)
• European Leaders Call for Protection of Ukraine as Trump Set to Meet Putin (ET)
• A Rare Glimpse Into The Sick Minds Behind The EU’s Warmongering (Amar)
• JD Vance Drops a Russiagate Truth Bomb (Margolis)
• House Oversight Seeks To Overturn Biden’s Pardons, Executive Orders (JTN)
• The Left Won’t Like What Trump Just Did to Obama’s Portrait (Margolis)

 

 

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/1954220638174113931

Bolton
https://twitter.com/mazemoore/status/1954219434995851499

Biden
https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/1954224964057600133

90

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/1954238912425284001

rudy
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1954736523758141502

 

 

 

 

Waiting for the week-long Alaska storm…

X thread.

• Trump Just Held His Largest White House Briefing Yet (Nas)

Trump just held his largest White House briefing yet. Angside Pam Bondi, he dropped a series of announcements and some strong hints about what’s next for America. President Trump is now more powerful than ever. Everyone should read these biggest changes. A thread.

1/ Federal judges can no longer block Trump nationwide. Before, 1 liberal judge in California could stop Trump’s policies for all 50 states. Now, that judge’s ruling only affects their local district. Trump called this “a monumental victory for the Constitution.”

2/ The shocking truth about who’s been blocking Trump. Pam Bondi revealed that of 40 nationwide injunctions against Trump, 35 came from just 5 districts: Maryland, DC, Massachusetts, California, Washington. 94 districts total. But 5 controlled everything.

3/ Parents can now opt kids out of transgender content. The Supreme Court ruled: Parents can pull their kids from classes with LGBTQ materials. Trump: “Parents lost control of their child. This gives it back.” What are your thoughts? Controversial or common sense?

4/ No more taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries. Trump can now stop federal money going towards gender transitions. Again, previously blocked by courts. Unlocked by Trump. Tax dollars won’t fund these procedures anymore. Sound fair?

5/ They’ve arrested 2,711 TDA gang members. TDA = one of the world’s most violent gangs. Biden let them walk into America freely. Trump has arrested 2,711 so far. Bondi: “You should all feel safer now.”

6/ Sanctuary cities lose ALL federal funding. Liberal judges previously blocked this… But now, Trump can cut every penny. For Example, California gets “nothing” if it keeps protecting illegal immigrants. The money tap just turned off.

7/ Trump secured US mineral rights through an African peace deal. He brokered peace between Rwanda and Congo after years of war. The price for US involvement? “We’re getting a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo.” Strategic resources secured.

8/ Iran faces Trump’s hardest line yet. Asked if he’d bomb Iran again: “Without question. Absolutely.” His demands?
• Surrender ALL nuclear materials • Zero uranium production • Full inspection access/ No wiggle room.

9/ Birthright citizenship heads to the Supreme Court. “It was for babies of slaves, not people scamming the system on vacation.” The matter goes to Court in October. If Trump wins, millions lose their automatic citizenship. His most controversial move yet. Are you with him?

10/ The real bombshell: Trump can now do EVERYTHING at once. With nationwide injunctions gone, he can simultaneously:
• End birthright citizenship
• Restrict immigration
• Build the wall
No more delays. But the genius move?

11/ Trump didn’t just win one case. He eliminated the single tool blocking his entire agenda. Liberal judges can’t stop him anymore. “Americans are finally getting what they voted for.”

Read more …

What the world comes to: Europeans now depend on Trump to defend their basic rights and freedoms. Which are under attack from their own “leaders”.

• Last Line Of Defense: USA Intervenes Against EU Digital Surveillance (Kolbe)

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has launched a lobbying campaign against the EU’s Digital Services Act. With this step, Americans have become the last line of defense for the free speech rights of EU citizens. If, in the past, U.S. President Donald Trump often spoke of the European Union as “a tough nut to crack,” he couldn’t have been more accurate. Freedom-loving EU citizens know exactly what he meant. In Brussels, a bizarre melange of control fetishism, economic dirigisme, and isolation from the outside world has developed—a combination that is no longer tolerable. Not least, Brussels’s fight against free expression in the digital sphere has revealed the true intentions of the von der Leyen Commission: the recovery of narrative dominance and control over political dissidence—achieved by cold-bloodedly sacrificing citizens’ fundamental freedoms.

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance already issued multiple warnings in the spring about a European censorship empire. In a speech in the U.S. Senate, he denounced European digital legislation as an attack on Western liberties. In his address at the Munich Security Conference, he went so far as to suggest cutting ties with the Europeans if they did not reverse their illiberal, dictatorial trajectory. As usual, American criticism fell on deaf ears in Brussels. Although Brussels swallowed the bitter pill of an asymmetrical trade deal with the U.S. two weeks ago, both the hidden protectionism disguised as climate regulation and harmonization standards, as well as the repressive digital laws, remain intact. This is detrimental not only to free speech among Europeans but also for American companies—undoubtedly a key target of the EU censors.

The EU’s discriminatory ambitions through the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the corresponding Digital Markets Act (DMA) primarily target U.S. communication platforms like X, Telegram, and Meta. If these platforms don’t conform to EU rules—granting access to internal communications and aiding Brussels’s surveillance efforts—they face billions in fines. Much like Britain’s digital ID program, Brussels now masks its shamelessly invasive censorship with claims of youth protection and anti-hate measures. It’s tiresome to hear—but, as always, it’s about “their democracy,” or, to put it more accurately, a massive concrete barrier constructed to shield against the audacious citizen seeking to preserve privacy from an unbounded EU bureaucracy.

It seems Americans, even before EU citizens, have finally lost patience with Brussels. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is next in line to confront the EU Commission, stepping into attack mode. This week, Rubio instructed all U.S. embassies across the EU to initiate a coordinated lobbying blitz against Brussels’s censorship package surrounding the DSA. The allegation: Under the guise of security and responsibility, the EU is deliberately suppressing free speech in digital spaces and targeting U.S.-based platforms and communication companies. Rubio has tasked his diplomats with urging governments and regulators to amend the DSA. At the same time, they are to record and report censorship incidents involving U.S. citizens and companies to ramp up pressure for reform.

This marks another daring challenge from Washington to the EU’s expansive control apparatus. The trade war between the U.S. and the EU has now shifted fully into the digital realm. Brussels’s response to Rubio’s initiative was swift. In an official statement, the EU Commission flatly dismissed the censorship allegations: “The claims of censorship connected to the DSA are entirely baseless. Freedom of expression is a core right in the EU.” They added coldly: “Our EU regulations and standards were never up for discussion—and they will not be.” In other words, Brussels refuses to be swayed in building its digital citadel of narrative control—least of all by Washington.

The U.S. attempt to protect its businesses from EU overreach draws them into a broader clash between EU citizens and Brussels’s increasingly omnipotent central authority. Brussels senses growing public pressure and feels exposed amid a deepening economic crisis. Grand narratives—like human-caused climate change and the need for open borders to avert a demographic crisis—are eroding public consensus and exposing Brussels’s failed centralization of Europe’s economy. We are witnessing Brussels’s last desperate stand to defend its narrative monopoly against a rising opposition that is increasingly reclaiming public and media spaces. What happens in the U.S. now matters fundamentally for EU citizens. Under President Trump’s administration, Europe-inspired climate agendas are being reversed, and funding for public media and NGOs is being rolled back.

Read more …

“some sprouts of common sense are appearing in the dialogue with the US, which have been sorely lacking in recent months and years.”

“disappearance of conditions for maintaining the unilateral moratorium”

• Russia and US ‘Very Far From Detente’ – Moscow (RT)

While Washington has recently moved toward fixing relations with Moscow, celebrations would be premature, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said. The diplomat added that Russia had earlier this month stopped abiding by a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of intermediate-range missiles to “cool hotheads in certain NATO capitals.” While the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between Moscow and Washington collapsed in 2019, Russia had nonetheless continued observing the restrictions. During his first term in office, President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the accord, citing supposed Russian violations – a claim the Kremlin has denied.

In an interview with broadcaster Rossiya-1 on Sunday, Ryabkov observed that “some sprouts of common sense are appearing in the dialogue with the US, which have been sorely lacking in recent months and years.” However, the use of the term “detente” would be wholly unwarranted at this point, the deputy minister stressed. Speaking of Russia’s decision to lift a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of intermediate-range missiles, Ryabkov argued that Moscow had no other choice in light of what the “Americans and their allies, especially the European warmongers, are undertaking.” The Russian Foreign Ministry cited the “disappearance of conditions for maintaining the unilateral moratorium” in explaining the decision earlier this month.

The statement said the West was creating a “direct threat” to Russian security, with the recent Talisman Sabre exercise in Australia being an example. The drills in mid-July featured the US Typhon mobile ground-based launcher, designed for firing Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range up to 1,800km, and SM-6 multipurpose missiles, with a range up to 500km.vKremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated around the same time that Moscow reserves the right to deploy its own intermediate-range missiles “when deemed necessary,” and would not announce it. Speaking last month, Trump hinted that he would like to resume negotiations with Russia to maintain the existing restrictions on nuclear weapons.

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“One White House official also told CNN that “anything involving Zelensky” would likely take place after the Trump-Putin meeting..”

• Zelensky Not Invited To Putin-Trump Summit – WaPo (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has not been invited to attend next week’s summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump in the US, the Washington Post has reported, citing an official briefed on the negotiations. On Friday, Trump announced he would meet Putin on August 15 in Alaska. In the hours after the announcement, several outlets reported that Zelensky might take part in some form, with a senior White House official telling CBS News the planning was “still fluid” and that Zelensky could be involved. However, the Washington Post has reported that no invitation has been extended to Zelensky so far. Reuters has also said, citing sources, that the White House is still considering inviting him, but is currently focused on organizing a bilateral meeting, at Russia’s request.

CNN sources, however, said that the Trump administration hasn’t ruled out Zelensky being in Alaska during the summit. One White House official also told CNN that “anything involving Zelensky” would likely take place after the Trump-Putin meeting. Putin has said he will not rule out a meeting with Zelensky, but the Kremlin has stressed that the conditions for such talks have not been met. Trump has suggested that upcoming negotiations could involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.” However, on Saturday, Zelensky rejected any land-swap proposals, citing limitations imposed by Ukraine’s constitution.

The Washington Post has noted that, given the strained relationship between Trump and Zelensky after their tense Oval Office meeting earlier this year, Zelensky’s refusal to consider territorial concessions could risk potential blowback from Trump, who has previously described him as difficult to negotiate with. Russian officials have repeatedly said that any peace deal must address the root causes of the conflict and reflect the realities on the ground, including the status of Crimea as well as the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, which joined Russia after referendums in 2022.

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Defining where that is could be a fight in itself.

• US Backing Ukraine Settlement Based On Current Front Line – Vance (RT)

A resolution of the Ukraine conflict should be based on the existing conflict front lines, US Vice President J.D. Vance has said. He described it as a realistic if imperfect foundation for a negotiated peace. Speaking to Fox News, Vance credited President Donald Trump with securing a breakthrough that could bring Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to the table. “If you take where the current line of contact between Russia and Ukraine is, we’re going to try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and the Russians can live with… where the killing stops,” Vance said, admitting that “it’s not going to make anybody super happy.”

Vance claimed Trump had convinced Putin to walk back his refusal to meet with Zelensky, and that scheduling talks between the three leaders was now under discussion. Asked if Putin and Zelensky should meet before involving Trump, Vance replied, “I actually don’t think it would be that productive,” arguing that the US president must be the one to “bring these two together” for meaningful progress.Russia has long said it is interested in a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict, but has insisted on one that brings about a permanent and stable peace.

Trump and Putin are set to meet next Friday in Alaska, with a possible deal on the conflict between Kiev and Moscow at the top of the agenda. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has already rejected any truce that would involve territorial concessions, despite Trump saying they would be part of the proposed agreement. Moscow has called Zelensky’s continued claim to the presidency unconstitutional since his term expired last year. Putin has said he is willing to meet the Ukrainian leader to finalize – but not negotiate – a truce. He also suggested that the question of Zelensky’s disputed status needs to be addressed to ensure the legality of any future treaty.

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“Ukraine’s European backers can buy weapons from American producers if they want to continue supporting Kiev, and the US will be “okay with that”…

I know, I know, money is money, and the industry is lobbying hard. But you shouldn’t be “okay with that”. Stop the war!

• US Is ‘Done’ Funding Ukraine – Vance (RT)

Washington is not going to fund Ukraine anymore, US Vice President J.D. Vance told Fox News on Sunday. Ukraine’s European backers can buy weapons from American producers if they want to continue supporting Kiev, and the US will be “okay with that,” Vance added. “But we’re not going to fund it ourselves anymore,” he said. The interview was published after Vance met with several Western European and Ukrainian officials in London, including UK Foreign Minister David Lammy. According to media reports, Vance’s trip was intended to pave the way for a summit between the Russian and US presidents in Alaska on Friday, where resolving the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is expected to be at the top of the agenda. Vance suggested that Kiev’s European backers should play a bigger role providing funding if they “care so much about this conflict.”

“Americans, I think, are sick of continuing to send their money, their tax dollars, to this particular conflict. But if the Europeans want to step up and buy the weapons from American producers, we’re okay with that. But we’re not going to fund it ourselves anymore,” he said. The US president had said earlier that the ideas under discussion include “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” sides, adding that Vladimir Zelensky would need to find a way to approve such a deal under Ukrainian law. Zelensky has rejected any such agreement, claiming that “nobody can or will” make concessions on the issue. “The Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupiers,” he proclaimed. Moscow’s senior negotiator Kirill Dmitriev has warned that countries trying to prolong the Ukraine conflict will likely go to great lengths to derail the planned meeting between Putin and Trump.

Read more …

No arms from the US and no military from Europe (let alone the US). Soon, it’ll hardly be a war anymore…

• Ukraine’s Backers Won’t Provide Military Personnel – Sunday Times (RT)

Members of the so-called “Coalition of the Willing,” comprised of Kiev’s European backers, will not be sending troops to Ukraine despite previously floating the idea, The Sunday Times has claimed, citing an anonymous source. Back in March, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that London was prepared to deploy “boots on the ground and planes in the air, together with others.” Earlier this year, French President Emmanuel Macron had made a similar statement. The hypothetical contingent would be acting in a “peacekeeping” capacity if and when Kiev and Moscow agree to a ceasefire. However, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Italy have all expressed reluctance or refusal to commit troops for the potential mission.

Russia has strongly opposed the stationing of NATO military personnel in the neighboring country under any pretext. In an article on Saturday, the Sunday Times predicted that should the upcoming meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, result in a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, Kiev would likely want to see “international monitors on the ground.” However, according to the British newspaper, “it is unlikely that the answer here will be the ‘coalition of the willing’.” The publication quoted an unnamed UK defense official as acknowledging that “no one wants to send their troops to die in Ukraine.”

Back in May, the Financial Times, citing an anonymous source, reported that the coalition’s plans for a deployment in Ukraine were “dead” now that the US had refused to provide backing. A little earlier, The Times similarly claimed that the plan was unrealistic due to personnel shortages faced by European militaries. Last month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused European NATO member states of pursuing a “militaristic [and] confrontational” course. Back in April, Secretary of Russia’s National Security Council Sergey Shoigu, who previously served as the country’s defense minister, warned that the arrival of NATO troops in Ukraine could lead to a third world war. The Kremlin has repeatedly described the Ukraine conflict as a proxy war being waged against Russia by the West, with Kiev being used as an expendable battering ram.

Read more …

Work together. Much preferred.

• Trump and Putin Could Discuss More Than Just Ukraine in Alaska (Sp.)

The location of the Putin-Trump summit represents the “closest proximity” of the United States to Russia, argues Earl Rasmussen, a retired lieutenant colonel with over 20 years in the US Army who is currently an international consultant. “This makes it a very symbolic area. Furthermore, the Arctic is a key region for development, offering economic opportunities and presenting certain security considerations,” he tells Sputnik. “While the choice was surprising, considering the cultural and economic potential, Alaska may indeed be an appropriate place for this meeting.” While the Ukrainian conflict and “broader European security” are going to be discussed at the meeting, “a key area of focus is expected to be economic and trade development, along with its potential.”

“Russia possesses the longest Arctic coastline, which will be relevant in discussions. Canada also has significant Arctic exposure. Consequently, these factors will play a role from both security and economic perspectives, encompassing economic development and trade,” Rasmussen notes. While there is potential for a breakthrough – in the Ukrainian conflict, in trade and in overall US-Russia relations – there are powers in Europe (Britain in particular) who could “disrupt any agreements,” Rasmussen warns.

The fact that Putin and Trump are meeting in person is a positive development, and “the potential for Trump to visit Russia later also bodes well.” “Continuous dialogue, regardless of disagreements or resolutions, is positive, unlike the previous administration’s approach of attempting to isolate Russia, which proved ineffective,” Rasmussen remarks. “Facing major future economic challenges, especially for Europeans, and an ongoing global trade war, any positive developments from this meeting could be beneficial, not only for peace but also for economic and trade relations, and global security.”

Read more …

“Until 1867, Alaska was Russian territory before the US purchased it from Tsar Alexander II for $7.2 million — after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War left its treasury depleted.”

• Peace Talks And Power Plays On Former Russian Soil (Kolbe)

Donald Trump stays true to his line and asserts dominance over the geopolitical chessboard — symbolically as well. Following the announcement of a trade deal with the EU at his golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland, peace talks in the Ukraine conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin are now scheduled in Alaska. The venue of a negotiation often predefines the balance of power between opponents. In that sense, it must be read as a clear show of force that both European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer — notably without military fanfare — traveled to Trump’s private resort in Turnberry to be politically “placed” by the American president. Judging by the outcome of those talks, one conclusion is unavoidable: the European Union no longer plays in the league of the great powers. Washington’s interest in intra-European affairs has noticeably cooled, focusing essentially on two things: an orderly withdrawal from military entanglements, and the defense of US corporate interests in the EU single market.

We are witnessing a shift of power from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It’s hardly a secret: China and the United States will be setting the standards of international politics in the future. Russia, the world’s most resource-rich country, may be labeled by Europeans as a pariah state and a malicious hub of all evil — but that does not change the fact that the age of postcolonial European dominance is ending, and Moscow will have no trouble playing its resource-market cards outside the shrinking European sphere of influence. nIn this spirit, Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel on August 15 to “away territory” in Alaska — once part of Russia — to preliminarily negotiate peace terms in Ukraine with President Trump. Trump sees progress in the stalemated conflict and stresses that the talks will likely lead to a land-swap arrangement “to the benefit of both sides.”

While the Russian government has not issued an official statement, much suggests Moscow will not return the occupied territories in Donbas, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, nor Crimea. Russia currently holds the military initiative and is increasing pressure on Ukraine and its allies to force a resolution. To avoid overshadowing the personal meeting, the White House postponed a tariff ultimatum — originally set for August 9 — that would have imposed 100% duties on Russian goods if the war continued, pushing it back to August 27. We will have to see what unfolds in the meantime and whether potential disruptions derail this cautious rapprochement once more. One recalls the much-discussed visit of former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who, two months after the outbreak of war, acted as a kind of shadow diplomat to reject a Russian-proposed peace deal.

What is now on the table again — a land swap and Ukraine’s exclusion from NATO — was flatly rejected back then. Hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded later, there appears to be a renewed turn toward diplomacy in light of the bleak military situation. This time, however, it is the Americans applying pressure on the warring sides. From Europe, little is heard apart from intense rearmament efforts and a declared will to “re-militarize” the population, as the German government has repeatedly emphasized. The diplomatic thread is now to be picked up again in Alaska. Until 1867, Alaska was Russian territory before the US purchased it from Tsar Alexander II for $7.2 million — after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War left its treasury depleted.

The geography here speaks volumes: Alaska lies between Russia and the US, separated only by the Bering Strait, symbolizing the direct neighborhood of two great powers that may now be entering a new phase of rapprochement in a rapidly changing world order. For the Ukraine talks, the location signals that even deeply rooted geopolitical divides can be bridged through pragmatic agreements. At the same time, Alaska has strategic importance for the Arctic, whose trade routes and resources will likely be integrated into the future architecture of global power. By hosting the Russian president at such a neuralgic spot, Trump fuses historical reconciliation with present-day power politics, creating a symbolic setting that suggests readiness for compromise without conceding sovereignty.

Read more …

Why you don’t want the Europeans at the table.

• European Leaders Call for Protection of Ukraine as Trump Set to Meet Putin (ET)

A coalition of European leaders released a joint statement on Aug. 9 welcoming the news of President Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and stressing the need to ensure that European and Ukrainian interests are protected as the two leaders talk about ending the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Trump and Putin are scheduled to meet in Alaska on Aug. 15. The joint statement included French, Italian, German, Polish, British, and Finnish leaders, as well as the president of the European Commission. “We share the conviction that a diplomatic solution must protect Ukraine’s and Europe’s vital security interests,” the leaders said, adding that they “agree that these vital interests include the need for robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

They also expressed support for the principle that “international borders must not be changed by force.” “The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the statement said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement on Aug. 9 that “the Ukrainian people deserve peace.” “But all partners must understand what a dignified peace is,” he said, adding that Ukraine “will not reward Russia for what it has perpetrated.” On Aug. 10, Zelenskyy said he “values and fully supports” the joint statement by the European leaders. “The end of the war must be fair, and I am grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine and our people today for the sake of peace in Ukraine, which is defending the vital security interests of our European nations,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

Trump has said a deal could involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” parties. After speaking with Zelenskyy, as well as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron took to X. “Ukraine’s future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians, who have been fighting for their freedom and security for over three years now,” he wrote. “Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake.”

The Trump–Putin meeting will follow White House special envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit to Moscow on Aug. 6, during which time Witkoff met with Putin for three hours of talks. Details of their discussion have not been disclosed. It also follows a meeting between Vice President JD Vance and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, as well as representatives of European allies and Ukraine, on Aug. 9 at Chevening House, a mansion outside of London, to discuss Trump’s peace push. “President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace. And Zelenskyy wants to see peace,” Trump said on Aug. 8. “Now President Zelenskyy has to get … everything he needs because he is going to have to get ready to sign something, and I think he is working hard to get that done.”

Read more …

Kasparov: a chess genius lost in the real world.

• A Rare Glimpse Into The Sick Minds Behind The EU’s Warmongering (Amar)

In the world of Western mainstream media political commentary, not everything is fun. In fact, mostly, things are grimly serious, the sort of seriousness that comes with solid, never-questioned self-importance. But sometimes that professional pomposity reaches a tipping point when strenuous efforts to be very earnest involuntarily produce priceless outcomes. That is the case with a recent elephantine op-ed that has surfaced in Politico under the illustrious names of Gabrielius Landsbergis and Garry Kasparov. Its one, relentlessly reiterated argument is touchingly simple as well as out of touch with the world we really live in: The EU, this fantasy goes, is too consensual, peaceful, and nice (tell the migrants drowning in the Mediterranean or traded as slaves in Libya with de facto EU support).

It must become tough, decisive, and fierce, with plenty of arms and gritty oomph. Because otherwise it won’t survive in a world shaped by the big bad “global network of authoritarians” (I won’t enumerate them here; it’s just the usual suspects of every Centrist’s fever dream) and, for good measure, terrorists, too. (Surely, the latter, at least, do no longer include Mr. Jolani, the former leader of the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria who has recently been reborn miraculously as an avatar of diversity now going by Al Sharaa?) Landsbergis is a political nepo baby, enthusiastic NATO sectarian, and the former foreign minister of Lithuania. While popular at international meet-ups of adult – so they say at least – Europeans calling US presidents “daddy,” a 2023 poll back home in Lithuania saw him fail to breach the 2-percent threshold.

If that sounds like perfect material for a blind date with Kamala Harris, Landsbergis certainly has time on his hands after losing his constituency last year and announcing he wanted to take a break from politics. No less, it seems, than his voters clearly needed a break from him. Kasparov is, by comparison with Landsbergis, at least an original phenomenon, the idiot savant of chess. A former world champion, he has now spent decades proving that one can be a chess genius and a perfect dunce in every other respect, especially politics. Since he has combined this obstinate – and almost brave, if that is the word – playing to his worst weaknesses with an equally stubborn obsession with going after Russia and its leadership he still has his fans, in the West.

Together, Landsbergis and Kasparov have signed off on a gargantuan effort to produce another Long Telegram. Clearly, they are driven by a comically misplaced ambition to best American diplomat and Ur-Cold Warrior’ George Kennan – a complex, dour, and vain man, but certainly no fool, as his later fall from official grace and opposition to daft Western expansionism showed – who issued the renowned call to arms against the Soviet Union in 1946/47. What early Cold War Kennan did for the US – and by extension, its postwar empire – Kasparov and Landsbergis would very much, desperately like to be able to do for the EU. And they have striven mightily. Yet they have strutted into the classical trap of the epigone: think of their imitation clarion call as a mix between embarrassingly poor-but-eager fan fiction, a bizarre alternative history of the EU, and a rambling and rather dull party speech masquerading as an op-ed.

Yes, that is how bad it is. Indeed, the screed by the Lithuanian has-been and the chess master who went full blockhead is so self-defeatingly shoddy that it’s difficult to know where to begin. So, for starters, just for a rough sense of what we are dealing with, this is a text asserting the EU systematically promotes politicians who are “excellent negotiators.” Such as Ursula von der Leyen, we must assume? The one really in charge (although no one can coherently explain why) in the EU who has just “negotiated” a grotesquely disadvantageous anti-”deal” – really an unconditional surrender without a fight – with the US, built on the elegantly simple principle “You get everything, we get nothing, and we’ll pay you for that as well.”

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“You don’t just indict people to indict people. You indict people because they broke the law…”

• JD Vance Drops a Russiagate Truth Bomb (Margolis)

Vice President JD Vance just dropped a bombshell that’s should have D.C. swamp creatures shaking in their boots. During a pre-taped interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Vance boldly predicted a forthcoming wave of indictments tied to the Russiagate scandal, asserting that parts of the intelligence community were weaponized to serve political agendas instead of safeguarding national security. Speaking with host Maria Bartiromo, Vance made it clear he wants accountability—but only where the law is truly broken. His remarks come amid growing evidence of serious abuses of power during the lead-up to and early days of the Trump administration.

“I absolutely want to see indictments, Maria. Look, of course, you’ve got to have the law follow the facts here. You don’t just indict people to indict people. You indict people because they broke the law,” Vance said. He acknowledged that legal standards must be upheld, but emphasized that the revelations brought forward by Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel in recent weeks leave little doubt about widespread misconduct. Vance accused key figures within the intelligence agencies of essentially “defrauding the American people” by converting Hillary Clinton’s campaign talking points into “intelligence.” He described how those operatives manipulated and distorted information to fit a predetermined narrative aimed at undermining Donald Trump. “They basically did is they defrauded the American people in order to take Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign talking points and turn them into intelligence by defrauding the American people, defrauding the intelligence agencies, lying about what the intel said.”

As Vance notes, this was not a matter of minor exaggeration but a systematic effort to selectively inflate certain pieces of information that supported Clinton’s narrative while burying or ignoring anything that contradicted it. “They would take something that supported a Hillary Clinton campaign talking point and they would overemphasize it and exaggerate it,” Vance said. “They took anything that actually contradicted that narrative and they buried it deep.” This distortion, Vance argued, amounted to a laundering of political propaganda through official government channels—a betrayal not only of the intelligence community’s mission but of the American public’s trust. “That’s a violation of the people’s trust. That’s a violation of what our intelligence services should be doing,” he said.

“I absolutely think they broke the law, and you’re gonna see a lot of people get indicted for that,” he added. I hope he’s right. The vice president made a pointed distinction between the intelligence community’s proper role and what actually transpired. “What do you want our intelligence community to be doing? I want them to be catching bad guys. I want them to be making sure that terrorists aren’t going to kill innocent American civilians.” Instead, he said, these agencies served as tools to legitimize a political narrative in the media. “It is sick and it’s disgusting. It hurt the intelligence community, it hurt the American people, and it hurt the first Trump administration,” Vance charged. The scandal, he warned, cannot be allowed to stand without consequence. “We’ve got to have consequences for it or we’re just going to see the same play repeated again and again.”

Vance’s remarks expose a dangerous truth: The left weaponized the intelligence community to undermine a free and fair election through blatant deception. What happens in the coming months will determine whether justice is served or if these agencies will keep slipping through oversight and accountability. His warning is unmistakable—if America lets its intelligence services become tools of political warfare, the damage inflicted won’t just fade away; it will scar the foundations of our democracy for years to come.

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“.. the Constitution says: ‘If he approves, he shall sign it.’ So it says, ‘sign it.’ Sign it. So an autopen would raise a real problem if he signed it by autopen, which is not a real signature,”

• House Oversight Seeks To Overturn Biden’s Pardons, Executive Orders (JTN)

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer says his investigation into Joe Biden’s mental decline as president could be used as evidence to overturn some of his pardons or executive orders because his senior staff have failed to prove he knew what he was signing amid accusations of mental decline. “It’s questionable whether or not it’s legal to use an autopen on a legal document, but what’s not questionable is if the President of the United States had no idea what was being signed with using the autopen in his name,” Comer told the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Friday. “Then, you know, that’s not legal.” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said he believes the evidence his investigation uncovers can be used to also call into question the validity of some of the former president’s clemency acts, especially after the disastrous summer 2024 presidential debate in which Biden’s poor performance gave rise to questions about his mental capacity.

“I think at the end of the day, our investigation … could be used as evidence in trying to overturn some of those pardons and some of the executive orders, because the autopen was used so frequently … after that debate,” said Comer. Former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told Just the News in March that challenges to Biden’s autopen use would certainly end up before the courts. “They will end up in court, and there are going to be two issues. One, the nature of what was signed – was it a pardon, or was it a bill from Congress, for example. And second, the nature of the autopen,” he said. “First, the nature of what’s signed. If it was a bill, here’s what the Constitution says: ‘If he approves, he shall sign it.’ So it says, ‘sign it.’ Sign it. So an autopen would raise a real problem if he signed it by autopen, which is not a real signature,” Dershowitz said of bill signed by the president.

Of pardons, the legal scholar said the Constitution does not require a signature, but “it will still raise the issue: Did he actually pardon? Or did somebody else just write the signature without really getting approval from President Biden? You know, we know there were mental health issues there. So there the issue will be: Did he approve the pardon?”

[..] After Biden left office, Comer launched an investigation into the former administration, to uncover how senior officials worked to cover up the president’s mental condition and into the use of an autopen to sign various presidential documents, from executive orders to pardons, during his final months in office. Comer said what his committee has uncovered so far may be enough to call into question the executive orders and pardons that Biden issued in those final months. “The evidence, it shows at the least, that Joe Biden really didn’t know what was being done with those executive orders. He admitted to the New York Times that he didn’t look, himself, at all those pardons, that he delegated that to staff. Well, that implicated himself,” Comer told Just the News.

“And I think that you know, at the end of the day, these Biden inner circle people haven’t been able to prove that Joe Biden knew what was being signed with his autopen,” he continued. Neera Tanden, the former director of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, told the committee that she directed the use of the autopen, but without knowing who in the president’s inner circle was giving ultimate approval for the acts. “Ms. Tanden testified that she had minimal interaction with President Biden, despite wielding tremendous authority,” Comer said of the interview, which took place in late June.

“She explained that to obtain approval for autopen signatures, she would send decision memos to members of the president’s inner circle and had no visibility of what occurred between sending the memo and receiving it back with approval. Her testimony raises serious questions about who was really calling the shots in the Biden White House amid the president’s obvious decline,” Comer continued.

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Basement material.

• The Left Won’t Like What Trump Just Did to Obama’s Portrait (Margolis)

Donald Trump has sent an unmistakable message—Barack Obama’s White House portrait has once again been moved. It’s been tucked away where visitors won’t see the grinning image of a president whose tenure was marked by scandal, deception, and failed policies. Unfortunately, it’s not in the garbage. CNN reports the portrait now sits in an out-of-the-way corner, away from guests who don’t need a reminder of Obama’s disastrous legacy and his effort to frame Trump with collusion charges. This is more than redecorating — it’s a statement about accountability and honesty in presidential legacies. By moving the portrait, Trump delivers a quiet but clear verdict on one of the most corrupt administrations in modern history. It’s a refreshing change, signaling that the Trump administration refuses to glorify a man who left America weaker, more divided, and less respected abroad.

Displaying presidential portraits carries symbolic weight, representing the continuity of democracy and respect for the office. But that respect depends on presidents upholding their constitutional duties—something Obama’s eight years failed to do. Under Obama, federal agencies were weaponized: The IRS targeting scandal should have ended careers and triggered prosecutions, yet his Justice Department protected perpetrators while conservatives suffered harassment. The Fast and Furious gun-running scandal led to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, yet Obama used executive privilege to shield his lackeys from accountability. Most egregiously, Obama’s administration orchestrated the Russia collusion hoax. As PJ Media has previously reported, the FBI, CIA, and DOJ were weaponized to push a fabricated narrative, even as Obama was briefed on Hillary Clinton’s plan to link Trump to Russia during the 2016 campaign.

“Trump directed staff to move the Obama portrait to the top of the Grand Staircase, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN, where it will now be out of view from thousands of visitors who tour the White House each day. One of the sources added that the portraits of both Bushes are also now in the staircase area. Multiple sources have said that the president is directly involved with nearly everything that is done to the aesthetic of the White House, big or small.CNN obtained a photo of the Obama portrait hanging at the top of the stairwell in a corner, at the landing of the entrance to the private residence. That area is heavily restricted to members of the first family, US Secret Service agents, and a limited number of White House and executive residence staff. It is firmly out of view for any visitor hoping to see the photorealistic Robert McCurdy painting of the former president, a source familiar with the matter confirmed.”

It is unclear from the report who would want to see the portrait of Obama. The portrait relocation sends exactly the right message about presidential accountability. Obama’s legacy shouldn’t be celebrated in America’s most sacred political space—it should serve as a cautionary tale about what happens when constitutional guardrails fail and partisan operatives masquerade as public servants. Trump’s decision reflects a deeper understanding of presidential responsibility. Unlike his predecessor, Trump faced relentless investigation, impeachment attempts, and media hostility, yet he never weaponized federal agencies against political opponents.

He never orchestrated surveillance operations against rival campaigns. He never used the justice system as a political weapon. By moving Obama’s portrait, Trump demonstrates that actions have consequences and that the White House should honor presidents who actually honored their oath of office. Obama’s scandals aren’t partisan talking points—they were fundamental betrayals of American democracy that should disqualify him from the honor of prominent display in the people’s house.

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