Menu Icon

Debt Rattle July 31 2024

Jul 312024
 
 July 31, 2024  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


Gustave Caillebotte Young man by his window 1875

 

• No Primaries, No Alternatives, No Scrutiny: Anti-Democracy Reigns In US (Sp.)
• Trump’s VP Pick Is a Climate Sceptic, and the Knives Are Out (RCE)
• Biden Abandons the Court . . . and His Last Inviolate Principle (Turley)
• Kamala Harris Suddenly Rejects All Of Her Radical Positions (ZH)
• Trump Shooter Was ‘Step Ahead Of Secret Service’ – NYT (RT)
• The Man Who Could Get to the Bottom of the Trump Shooting (Julie Kelly)
• Trump Will Talk To FBI, Debate Harris (Sp.)
• Media Shills Have Received Their New Script: “Conservatives Are Weird” (ZH)
• The Paris Olympics Are The Most French Thing Ever (Marsden)
• Maduro Declares Musk ‘Archenemy’ (RT)
• Hamas Politburo Chief Killed in Tehran (Sp.)
• Haniyeh Murder ‘May Have Been Crossing a Red Line’ – Larry Johnson (Sp.)
• Leaked Emails Reveal ‘Civil War’ At CIA Regime Change Cut-out (RT)

 

 

 

 

Melania

 

 

Wow

 

 

Vote

 

 

Kamala

 

 

Trump ad

 

 

10 million new voters.

 

 

Trump Congress

 

 

My people
https://twitter.com/i/status/1818269133298950253

 

 

 

 

“This is just a very slick PR process that, again, has been engineered by the same elements that got rid of Joe Biden.”

• No Primaries, No Alternatives, No Scrutiny: Anti-Democracy Reigns In US (Sp.)

On July 21, US President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection. The announcement came after Democratic primary voting had completed, leaving Democratic voters with no say in the party’s nominee. Meanwhile, third-party candidates are being stonewalled at every turn and the media pretends this is all normal. The American electoral process has degraded into a shambling shell of its former self, propped up with vapid, slick and committee-tested PR campaigns rather than debate. Over the past week, with the tickets of the two major parties all but finalized, the media can not bring themselves to ask a substantive question of either person likely to sit in the White House in less than six months.

“My question is,” YouTube personality and WWE United States Champion Logan Paul asked former US President and Republican nominee Donald Trump, “for other young people in this country who are looking to get ahead, cause for a lot of them, times are tough right now. What would you say to them, kids who want to pursue their own version of the American dream and try to achieve their wildest dreams?” Trump answered that young people should vote for him. Meanwhile, Harris sat down for a non-televised interview with People, which asked her about her relationship with her husband, how much sleep she gets and her favorite nickname (“Momala” as it turns out) but not any policy positions on the economy, immigration, Ukraine or Gaza. Even Paul and his “Impaulsive” co-host Mike Majlak had the good sense to ask Trump about those topics, even if they didn’t challenge him on them.

This is what passes for scrutiny in American politics. Worse, the incumbent president’s party all but refused to hold a primary. Then Biden suddenly resigned from the campaign after weeks of refusing to and his vice president was anointed the new nominee without receiving a single vote. On Saturday, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama threatened to invoke the 25th amendment and force Biden out of office if he did not drop his reelection campaign. “The lords of capital decided that he had to go and, in fact, they made it quite clear he had to go because they said that not only would they stop contributing to his campaign, but they told the DNC get rid of Joe Biden or don’t expect any financial support for any Democrat candidate down ballot,” argued political activist and the 2016 Green Party Vice Presidential nominee Ajamu Sibeko Baraka on Sputnik’s Political Misfits. “This is clear elite extortion.”

“So, this was, in fact, a coup. A coup by the donors and we need to deal with that in that way because it exposes the true nature of this anti-democratic process we have in this country. So, people [who] are committed to democracy, [who] would like to see something that approximates democracy. You can’t continue to support these two anti-democratic parties. That’s a very important point,” he added. To shore up the perception of support, the Harris campaign hosted a series of Zoom calls, bizarrely segregated by race and gender. Black Men for Harris came first, then Black Women for Harris. Then White Women for Harris and finally, White Dudes for Harris. “It is sort of a silly Zoom call,” said Baraka. “But it does reflect the kind of identity reductionist policies we have in this country.” “I mean, why are people supporting Harris? Based on what? What policies? There’s no serious political conversation taking place. This is just a very slick PR process that, again, has been engineered by the same elements that got rid of Joe Biden.”

Read more …

If you don’t “believe” that fossil fuels will kill us all -tomorrow morning, preferably- then they must get rid of you. For the planet’s sake…

• Trump’s VP Pick Is a Climate Sceptic, and the Knives Are Out (RCE)

Within a day of ex-President Trump’s announcement of “climate denier” Mr. J. D. Vance as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, the climate industrial complex and supportive mainstream media had the knives out. A few headlines of the past 24 hours are an indication. The New York Times: “JD Vance Is an Oil Booster and Doubter of Human-Caused Climate Change”. The Independent: JD Vance: “Climate activists alarmed by Trump’s ‘dangerous’ pick for vice president”. The Guardian: “Climate advocates fear picking JD Vance for VP is ‘a dangerous step backward’”. The umbrage taken by media commentators is familiar. CNBC laments that “the former venture capitalist though is a known critic of climate change and renewable energy [italics added].” UK’s The Independent newspaper reports that “[c]ampaigners are responding with alarm to the selection of climate denier and Ohio senator JD Vance as Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee, with activists warning he represents a “dangerous” voice for the US.”

Mr. Vance’s “eagerness to please Donald Trump” adds to the image of the vice-presidential nominee as an unprincipled politician seeking office. Climate advocacy group Fossil Free Media spokesperson Cassidy DiPaola asserted that “This [VP] choice signals that a potential Trump-Vance administration would likely double down on fossil fuel expansion at a time when we desperately need to transition to clean energy.” Communications director Stevie O’Hanlon of Sunrise Movement, a climate activist organization, said that “Like Donald Trump, JD Vance has proven that he will make it a top priority to roll back climate protections while answering to the demands of oil and gas CEOs.” Does Mr. Vance have a principled stand and is his stance on climate and energy policy worthy of consideration? As the highly polarized debate over climate change over the past few decades has amply demonstrated, the discourse often descends into ad hominem attacks and name calling.

“Climate denier” is a charge that is often used by proponents of climate alarm to shut down critical debate and to deplatform climate sceptics. Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Evergreen Action, said this of Mr. Vance: “Donald Trump has chosen an avowed climate denier as his running mate who has used his time in Congress to vote against the environment and shill for fossil fuel corporations at every opportunity.” The “denier” accusation is among the more pernicious if popular epithets used to denigrate sceptics of the so-called “consensus science.” It invokes a comparison to those who engage in Holocaust denial. To be sure, most observers would consider it ludicrous to suggest that questioning the accuracy and predictive power of scientific models is like questioning the historical fact of the genocide of Jews in Europe.

Putting aside epithets and journalistic hit-pieces, it seems a fair question to ask just what do politicians skeptical of the climate alarmist narrative believe? And what are their policy positions regarding the Paris Agreement’s “net zero by 2050” target. This policy target is an imperative, at least nominally, for most current governments in North America and Western Europe? Mr. Vance – lawyer, businessman, former Marine and writer of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”, arisen from the humblest working class background – places himself firmly in the populist right movement. It now looks very likely that Mr. Trump will be the next US president. The assassination attempt on Saturday, his miraculous split-second turn of the head which saved him and the iconic picture of his raised fist with the US flag in the background seconds after being injured make him almost irresistible. Thus Mr. Vance will likely join the Donald Trump next year as his VP in an administration that will seek to rapidly unwind the myriad policy and regulatory constraints that the Biden administration has imposed to shackle the US oil and gas industry at every turn.

Vance has also criticized the “green energy fantasy” of the Biden administration, pointing out that “solar panels can’t power a modern manufacturing economy” and “that’s why the Chinese are building coal power plants.” He has similarly called out wind power turbines. At the Turning Point Action conference last year, he said “they’re hideously ugly. They kill all the birds. And they’re mostly made in China.” The Biden administration’s all-out support for EVs comes in for the same critique. In a July 2022 radio interview, he said: “The whole EV thing is a scam. If you plug it into your wall, do these people think there are Keebler elves back there making electricity in the wall? It comes, of course, from fossil fuels.”

Read more …

“..That will only increase pressure to convert the Court into an alternative avenue for social and political reform..”

• Biden Abandons the Court . . . and His Last Inviolate Principle (Turley)

President (and Supreme Court Chief Justice) William Howard Taft once said “presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.” But not if Joe Biden has his way. Indeed, both the president and Court as we know it could be gone. In a failed attempt to save his nomination, Biden offered to “reform” the Court by imposing an 18-year term limit that would jettison the three most senior conservative justices. With only six months left in his presidency, Biden’s efforts are likely to fail, but, unfortunately, could set the stage for activists under a Harris Administration in seeking to change the Court forever. For more than 50 years, Biden staunchly refused to play politics with the Supreme Court and support calls for “reforms” from the left of his party. For a politician who has long been criticized for changing positions with the polls on issues from abortion to criminal justice to gun rights, the Court was one of the few areas of true principle for Biden.

Even though he refused to answer questions on packing the Court in the 2020 election, he ultimately rejected the call as president. Yet Biden’s final principle fell this month when facing the premature and involuntary end of his candidacy. Faced with being a one-term president, the Supreme Court would have to be sacrificed. Biden opted for the least of the evils in pushing for term limits rather than court packing. It was the more popular option for Biden to yield on. Voters have always loved term limits. The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found 67% of Americans, including 82% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans, support a proposal to set finite terms for justices. But there were few law professors and even fewer Democratic members clamoring for term limits until conservatives secured a stable majority on the Court. Then, suddenly, the Court had to be “reformed” without delay. It is no accident that the first three justices who would term limited off the Court are conservatives: Clarence Thomas (after 33 years on the Court), Chief Justice John Roberts (after 19 years), and Justice Samuel Alito (after 18 years).

Think, however, about the iconic decisions we would have lost with term limits in place. Liberal Justice Williams Douglas’s 36 years on the Court would have literally been cut in half. He would have been kicked off in 1957. His famous opinions like Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), striking down bans on contraceptives, would not have been written — an ironic result for those seeking limits after the Court’s ruling in Dobbs. Likewise, liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s tenure would have ended in 2011 before she wrote her famous dissent Shelby County v. Holder (2013), defending voting rights. Anthony Kennedy’s term would have ended in 2011 rather than 2018, before he wrote opinions such as United States v. Windsor, striking down the Defense of Marriage Act. Obviously, other justices could have written opinions in these cases, but the point is that many justices wrote their best opinions after 18 years on the Court. Moreover, the Framers clearly wanted these positions as lifetime appointments as an added protection against political pressure or influence.

For more than two centuries, presidents have struggled with the Supreme Court, but none (until now) have attempted to end life tenure on the Court. Presidents have served as the firewall for the anger and radicalism that has periodically engulfed the Court. Now President Biden is leading the mob for changing this institution for the first time since its founding. It is a testament to what I call “an age of rage” in my new book. After years of supporting the Court when it was setting aside conservative precedent, liberals now want the Court changed to dump or dilute the majority. It is unlikely to end there. After sending Thomas, Roberts, and Alito packing, many want to go further and pack the Court itself.

Democratic leaders such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have called for outright court packing — a proposal that Vice President Kamala Harris has suggested that she might support. Where Biden is a political opportunist in belatedly joining this movement, Harris is a true believer from the far left. If she is elected, the Congress is still likely to be closely divided. That will only increase pressure to convert the Court into an alternative avenue for social and political reform.

Read more …

“..when Harris says “I’m open to that conversation,” it means she has no idea what she’s talking about. And she says that a lot.”

• Kamala Harris Suddenly Rejects All Of Her Radical Positions (ZH)

In 2019, Kamala Harris was rated the ‘most liberal’ Senator in a now-scrubbed rating from GovTrack. She’s on record wanting to abolish ICE (which she compared to the KKK), letting criminals like the Boston Marathon bomber and rapists vote, banning fracking and offshore drilling, defunding the police, providing US taxpayer subsidized healthcare to illegals, and banning private health insurance. According to the NY Times, “video clips of her old statements and interviews are being weaponized as Republicans aim to define her as a left-wing radical who is out of step with swing voters.” “The archive is deep,” said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist and ad maker who is working with David McCormick, the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, among other campaigns. “We will run out of time before we run out of video clips of Kamala Harris saying wacky California liberal things. I’m just not sure that the rest of this campaign includes much besides that.” To that end, McCormick’s campaign has produced one of the first TV ads to attack Harris on her longstanding positions.

Yet, according to the Times, nevermind all that- Harris is now a reformed moderate – and has suddenly reversed course on virtually all of her most radical views. On Friday, the Harris campaign announced that she no longer wants to ban fracking – a ‘significant shift’ from where she stood four years ago. She’s also reversed course on funding for border enforcement, no longer supports a single-payer health insurance program, and has walked back liberal fever dreams of a mandatory gun buyback. “She is no longer pushing for a single-payer health care system, and on Friday her campaign said she would maintain Mr. Biden’s pledge not to raise income taxes on people making less than $400,000 per year.” -NYT. Packing the Court? Nah…

“On Monday, as Mr. Biden prepared a speech in Texas calling for term limits and ethics guidelines for Supreme Court justices, the Trump campaign resurfaced statements Ms. Harris made in 2019 saying she was “open to this conversation” about expanding the Supreme Court. Ms. Harris, in a statement released by her campaign, endorsed Mr. Biden’s proposal, which does not call for adding additional justices to the court.” According to Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank, Harris has ‘evolved’ into a Biden style centrist (if centrism is defined as letting 20+ million illegals into the country and cooking Americans with inflation). “There’s a tremendous difference in changing one’s policy ideas and changing one’s principles,” said Bennett. “She has not changed her principles. She still thinks climate change is an existential threat — she just doesn’t think the Green New Deal is the way to address it.” Sure Matt.

The Times also hints that Harris is essentially an idiot who didn’t really understand her own positions while running for president in 2020. “…during that race, Ms. Harris also often appeared as if she were not sure what she believed. In a CNN town-hall event the day after what was widely viewed as a successful campaign rollout in Oakland, Calif., she appeared tentative while discussing health care policy, eventually saying she would eliminate private health insurance and institute a single-payer health care program. She would go on to propose an array of policies popular with progressives. She sought to increase pay for public-school teachers by an average of $13,500 through a bump in the estate tax. She also called for an assault weapons ban and said she would sign an executive order mandating background checks for customers of any dealer who sold more than five guns in a year. And she sought to close the gender pay gap by requiring large companies to certify that men and women were paid equally.” As an obvious aside, when Harris says “I’m open to that conversation,” it means she has no idea what she’s talking about. And she says that a lot.

Read more …

Building the narrative…

• Trump Shooter Was ‘Step Ahead Of Secret Service’ – NYT (RT)

The man who tried to assassinate Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally had prepared better than the protection detail and was able to slip through the cracks in security, the New York Times has reported. The shooter opened fire at 6:11pm that Saturday, nicking Trump’s ear as the former US president turned away. He was later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, from a nearby town. Text messages and after-action reports provided to the Times by Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, revealed that local police had noticed Crooks almost more than 90 minutes before he fired, but kept losing sight of him. Crooks had visited the fairgrounds in Butler on July 7. The Secret Service did not show up until a day later, which is when they decided not to include the AGR warehouse complex in the security perimeter, according to the Times.

On July 13, the day of the rally, the Secret Service did not attend the 9am security briefing for local law enforcement. By 10am, Crooks had bought a ladder and driven to the rally site. He stayed around for over an hour, observing the local police. He then drove back to his hometown, bought 50 rounds of ammunition, and drove back, arriving around 3:35pm, “according to geolocation information from one of his cellphones,” the outlet noted. The Secret Service had not bothered to survey the area with drones, but Crooks did. Around 3:50pm that Saturday, he flew a drone over the site for about 11 minutes, before putting it back into his car and returning to the nearby picnic tables. It was at this point that a local counter-sniper first spotted him, as he finished his shift. The officer warned his colleagues at 4:26pm that someone had “snuck in” and “knows you guys are up there.”

Nothing happened until 5:14pm, Crooks was spotted using a range finder. One of the county counter-snipers took a photo of Crooks. It was shared in the group chat of the local police department at 5:38pm, and then relayed to the Secret Service. One of the two remaining counter-snipers ran out of the AGR building to keep an eye on Crooks until backup arrived, according to Butler County district attorney Richard Goldinger. Crooks had already run off, however, and the sniper returned to post. Four Butler Township officers were pulled from directing traffic to help locate him. One officer texted at 6pm, suggesting that Crooks had moved “away from the event.” In reality, the Times noted, he had climbed onto the roof about 120 meters away from the stage. “There is still confusion about which agency was supposed to oversee the roof,” the Times reported. The Secret Service had left it empty. Beaver County “struggled to find enough volunteers to cover the 12-hour shift,” according to text messages.

Trump took the stage at 6:03pm. Six minutes later, the audience at the rally began pointing to someone on the roof of the warehouse. “Either through luck or preparation,” Crooks had found a spot that let him have a clear shot at Trump, but kept him “somewhat hidden” from the Secret Service, according to the Times. At 6:11pm, Crooks fired at Trump. The Secret Service snipers reacted and fatally shot him. At least eight spent cartridges were found next to his lifeless body. Police who eventually showed up on the roof could not figure out how Crooks had got there. Kimberly Cheatle resigned as the Secret Service director ten days later, after insisting she would not. No one at the agency was reprimanded, fired or otherwise held accountable for the near-fatal incident.

Read more …

They’ll silence him.

• The Man Who Could Get to the Bottom of the Trump Shooting (Julie Kelly)

After the evasive House testimony of now-former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and FBI Director Christopher Wray’s shortlived suggestion that Donald Trump may not have been hit by a bullet, one man alone may help allay Republican fears that the Biden administration will not conduct a forthright investigation into the attempted assassination of Trump last month: Joseph Cuffari. The Trump-appointed inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security has already opened two investigations into the U.S. Secret Service, which is under the purview of the DHS, related to the agency’s handling of the July 13 shooting. But some Republicans are concerned because, they say, Cuffari has been stonewalled by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on other internal examinations – including one that might have revealed Secret Service lapses that might have prevented the attempt on Trump’s life.

Specifically, congressional sources tell RCI that Cuffari’s report, “USSS Preparation for and Response to the Events of January 6, 2021,” has been on Mayorkas’ desk since at least April. The report, according to Politico, will “cast light on a series of embarrassing security lapses for the agency.” And given some comparisons between Jan. 6 and July 13, the report might shed light on systemic issues that impacted both events. For example, unanswered questions remain as to why the Secret Service allowed Trump to take the stage at The Ellipse outside the White House around noon on Jan. 6 amid reports of individuals with weapons in the vicinity – a question many Americans have about the July 13 assassination attempt. Law enforcement and spectators noted the presence of a suspicious individual, later identified as the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, at least a half hour before Trump took the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In addition, no one has explained how the Secret Service failed to notice an alleged pipe bomb found outside the Democrat National Committee DC office on Jan. 6 – while then Vice President-elect Harris was inside the building. Previous reporting by RCI shows multiple law enforcement officers, including one with a bomb-sniffing dog, walking past the bench where the device was found. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of a House subcommittee tasked with a separate investigation into Jan. 6 as well as the now-defunct J6 committee, recently accused Mayorkas of intentionally holding the release of the report. The Georgia Republican told Mayorkas in a letter that “the failure to provide an in-depth review of the department’s security planning and operational failures related to January 6 not only raises concerns about the department’s botched planning for former president Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, but it is quite possible that such reports could have prevented the security breakdown that resulted in the near assassination of a former president and presidential candidate.”

Top Democrats have long sought to remove Cuffari – a former investigator for the Air Force and Department of Justice whom Trump appointed in 2019 in 2019 – from office. The coordinated effort began when the IG notified Congress that a trove of Secret Service texts from January 5 and 6, 2021 had been deleted in late January 2021 under the Biden administration. The purge occurred weeks after every federal agency received a directive from Congress to preserve all evidence related to January 6. Cuffari said messages belonging to at least 24 Secret Service officials including then director James Murray and Cheatle, who was an assistant director of the agency on January 6, were gone. So, too, were the texts of then acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli, both Trump appointees. His office subsequently opened a criminal investigation into the matter.

“The USSS erased those text messages after OIG [Office of Inspector General] requested records of electronic communications from the USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6,” the inspector general wrote in a July 2022 letter to chairmen of both the Senate and House Homeland Security committees, including Rep. Bennie Thompson, who also chaired the Jan. 6 committee at the same time. Cuffari further flagged the DHS’s lack of cooperation with his inquiry, something he had already pointed out in an earlier report to the committees. “DHS personnel have repeatedly told OIG inspectors that they were not permitted to provide records directly to OIG and that such records had to first undergo review by DHS attorneys,” Cuffari continued in the letter.

Not true, responded Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. He claimed the texts had been deleted when cell phones were reset to factory settings as part of a device replacement program. “The insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request is false.” (Guglielmi’s truthfulness was brought into question recently when he claimed it was “absolutely false” that the Secret Service rejected the Trump campaign’s multiple requests for additional security prior to the Pennsylvania rally. The Washington Post later confirmed that top Secret Service officials “repeatedly denied” requests for more manpower and equipment to protect the former president at large events.)

Read more …

“The answer is yes. I’ll probably end up debating. The answer is yes, but I can also make a case for not doing it,”

• Trump Will Talk To FBI, Debate Harris (Sp.)

Former US President Donald Trump said in an interview that he would talk to the FBI on Thursday about the attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month. “[The FBI are] coming in on Thursday to see me,” Trump told Fox News on Monday. Trump further said that he believed there should have been security officers on the roof of the building where the gunman had been positioned during the shooting. Moreover, the Republican presidential nominee said that the US Secret Service should have been communicating with the local police, which it wasn’t. On July 13, Trump suffered a gunshot wound to his right ear and was briefly hospitalized following an assassination attempt at his rally in Butler. Thomas Crooks, 20, killed a member of the audience and injured two others in the crowd before the Secret Service neutralized him. The FBI continues to investigate the assassination attempt.

The incident prompted US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign following criticism of the agency for not preventing the assassination attempt. Trump also commented on the possibility of him debating the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Vice President Kamala Harris. “The answer is yes. I’ll probably end up debating. The answer is yes, but I can also make a case for not doing it,” Trump said in the interview. Trump and Harris are currently set to participate in a ABC-hosted debate on September 10. Trump explained that he could decide to cancel a debate because he did not want to reward “fake news,” adding that ABC could end up making tens of millions of dollars off the debate. He also described the ABC network as a “terrible outfit.”

Read more …

It all sounds weird.

• Media Shills Have Received Their New Script: “Conservatives Are Weird” (ZH)

As August approaches and the campaign season enters the final stretch, there have been some not-so-surprising developments in the behavior of Big Tech search engines, social media and the narratives being spread by establishment news organizations. Search terms for Donald Trump have been suspiciously absent on Google. Trump’s speeches are being consistently edited out of context. And, media platforms are blatantly parroting the same scripted talking points in a way that would make Joseph Goebbels blush. As he once stated: “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” This mantra has never been more obvious than it is today. The new narrative that every progressive shill is reciting on nearly every major news platform? Donald Trump and JD Vance are ‘just plain weird’, and conservatives are all weird by extension…

It’s hard to say who this talking point is meant to appeal to, but Democrats are clearly very proud of it. No doubt they paid an obscure think-tank a lot of money to develop it. However, the slogan slinging tactics of the elections of yesteryear are not very impressive to most of the voting public today. In the midst of stagflationary crisis, cultural sabotage, national instability and a Democratic Party seemingly intent on starting WWIII, Americans are not interested in slogans, Americans want solutions. If you repeat a lie loud enough and often enough, it just annoys the public even more. Perhaps the shift of Gen Z men towards more conservatives ideals has got the progressives scrambling to come up with relatable slogans. They are already referring to Kamala Harris as the “Gen Z meme queen.” Of course, as everyone knows, the political left does not know how to meme. It feels like desperation because this is their candidate going into November…

One could guess that labeling conservatives as “weird” is meant to marginalize the undeniable momentum away from woke demagoguery. Notice that Pride Month was barely a blip on the radar in 2024, Biden just got booted from his own campaign, the Trump assassin missed and the Olympics is losing sponsorships after going woke in their opening ceremonies. Leftists are not having a good year. The pedulum is swinging back and they know it. While we wait for Kamala Harris to say or do anything to deserve the avalanche of praise she has been receiving from the media since replacing Biden as the Democratic candidate, the “memes” are certain to flow with each new narrative being more cringe inducing than the last. None of it will be useful in papering over the fact that Kamala Harris is one of the weirdest and most unsettling presidential hopefuls of all time.

Read more …

“If their surveillance-industrial complex pals were going to stuff their pockets under the pretext of Games security, then couldn’t they just spy on us in peace without all the added bureaucratic nonsense?”

• The Paris Olympics Are The Most French Thing Ever (Marsden)

French culture isn’t just about masked balls at Versailles anymore. As the Paris Olympic Games have proven, it’s now also debating whether drag queens’ balls were adequately masked. Looks like Thomas Jolly, the Games’ Opening Ceremony director, is just now coming to the realization that the entire world doesn’t function like Paris Left Bank intellectuals. He bit off more than he could chew by transmitting a French art house vibe to every country around the globe, some of which – from Morocco and Algeria to China and the US – straight up censored parts of the show that perhaps should have come with a disclaimer in the same way that risqué French films do. Because it turns out that kids – and even some adults – weren’t quite ready to witness a giant Smurf rolling around in a fruit bowl in front of a bunch of drag queens re-enacting what appeared to be the Last Supper.

And the fact that French blasphemy laws were abolished two years after the French Revolution, enshrining a right that became a cornerstone of French free speech, didn’t matter to those who felt offended, which included everyone from religious figures to left-wing France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon. France has defended religious satire as free expression, even when cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed led to a terrorist massacre in January 2015 at the Parisian headquarters of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published them. So this is just France being France, which wasn’t very well received, including by some of the most progressive-minded French officials. One US-based advertiser – the wireless company C Spire – has already said it was yanking their Olympic advertising. Guess there’s a dice roll with the risk that your product might end up somewhere in the vicinity if a clip or screencap of a bunch of drag queens, or a saucy Papa Smurf, and that wasn’t quite the vibe that you were going for when you signed up for high-level sports sponsorship.

There was also an onslaught of reports of X (former Twitter) social media users being hit with copyright takedown notices for posting some of the controversial scenes from the opening show for debate and discussion. Not surprising that the International Olympic Committee, guardian of the Olympic brand, might not want the images etched into history of these Games, to be dominated by things like closeups of drag queens’ crotches for the purpose of debating whether the world actually witnessed some fruit tumbling out of a pair of plum smugglers in a wardrobe malfunction – or whether it was just an everyday pantyhose rip. You know, the kind of thing that could happen to any dude in an average day at the office. The Games have really showcased that world-famous French rigor.

[..] The trains stopped running last week around France due to sabotaged lines. Israel has already blamed that on Iran. The average French person’s mind just went straight to everyday, garden variety French incompetence – the kind that would also would explain all the heavy-handed “security theatre” during the Games. The government required everyone to apply online for QR Codes if they wanted to even cross the downtown core, which was turned into a maze of 44,000 barricades days before the opening ceremony. And the excuse had to be a good one – like you lived there or had an appointment. And the Interior Ministry had already used the Games as a pretext for loading up on new high-tech surveillance systems, from surveillance drones and anti-drone systems to crowd scanners coupled with Minority Report style artificial intelligence algorithms. If all of it actually worked, then why give people the run-around? If their surveillance-industrial complex pals were going to stuff their pockets under the pretext of Games security, then couldn’t they just spy on us in peace without all the added bureaucratic nonsense?

Speaking of national security, a bunch of hackers leaked the military background of Israeli athletes, a country with mandatory service and currently involved in an active conflict criticized by the UN’s International Court of Justice and accused of apartheid – an offense that the IOC explicitly cites as justification for Games exclusion. Meanwhile Russian athletes who have never even been in the army can’t even compete in their country’s name. So what happens if a Russian wins a gold medal? The IOC created a special flag just for them, which looks like someone’s kid whipped it up in about five minutes on an app. They also made a new anthem with no lyrics for Russian athletes that sounds like the opening soundtrack for a make-believe fantasy movie. Which is really what all this is: one big Hollywood-grade fantasy that one of the top Olympic nations since forever doesn’t even exist now at the Olympics.

Read more …

A conversation neither should be involved in. Remember Juan Guiado and the CIA?

• Maduro Declares Musk ‘Archenemy’ (RT)

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has accused SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk of trying to disrupt peace and stability in the South American country. The National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela on Sunday declared Maduro the winner of the country’s presidential election, announcing that with 80% of ballots counted, he had secured more than 51% of the vote, compared to 44% for his main rival, Edmundo Gonzales. Supporters of Western-backed Gonzalez have taken to the streets following the release of the official results, claiming that the vote was rigged. Musk, who owns social media platform X (formerly Twitter), took to it on Monday to accuse Maduro of “major election fraud.” The Venezuelan president responded to the claims by challenging the billionaire to a fight, during an address he made on national television.

“Social media creates a virtual reality, and who controls the virtual reality? Our new archenemy, the famous Elon Musk,” Maduro stated, pointing to a cellphone. He then accused Musk of seeking to come “with his rockets and an army to invade Venezuela” but did not elaborate on the claim. “At least you showed your face, because we knew that you were behind everything,” Maduro claimed. “With your money, with your satellites. It is the representation of fascist ideology in the world.” The Venezuelan president went on, challenging Musk “Do you want to fight? Let’s do it … I’m ready. I’m not afraid of you, Elon Musk. Let’s fight, wherever you want.”

Musk, in response, shared the video of Maduro’s speech on X, with a caption in Spanish that translates as “The donkey knows more than Maduro.” It’s not the first case of Musk’s confrontation with senior foreign officials. In April, the businessman clashed with a Supreme Court justice in Brazil over free speech, as well as far-right accounts and misinformation on X. Maduro will be serving a third consecutive six-year term, having first taken office in 2013 following the death of President Hugo Chavez. In his victory speech, Maduro mocked the opposition, which, he said, “cries fraud” at every election. The Venezuelan president said his reelection would bring peace and stability.

Sachs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817882193919987855

Read more …

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov: “This is all very wrong. This is an absolutely unacceptable political assassination, and it will lead to further escalation of tensions..”

• Hamas Politburo Chief Killed in Tehran (Sp.)

Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in the Iranian capital of Tehran, the Palestinian militant group said in a statement on Wednesday. The agency said Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were “martyred” after their residence in Tehran was targeted. “With condolences to the heroic nation of Palestine, the Islamic nation, the combatants of the Resistance Front, and the noble nation of Iran. This morning (Wednesday), the residence of Mr. Dr. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political office of the Islamic Resistance of Hamas, was hit in Tehran; and following this incident, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred,” a statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) read. Iran is investigating the causes of the killing of Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, and his bodyguard in Tehran, with the results to be announced soon, the Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday, citing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Palestinian movement, Hamas, said that Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli attack on his residence in Tehran after he took part in the inauguration of Iran’s newly elected president. The Palestinian movement, Hamas, said on Wednesday that the movement’s politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli attack on his residence in the Iranian capital of Tehran. “The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas expresses condolences to the sons of our great Palestinian people … Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement … was killed as a result of a treacherous Zionist attack on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration ceremony of the new president of Iran,” the movement said on Telegram. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was sworn in on Tuesday. Israeli army declines to comment on the situation, saying that they “do not respond to reports in the foreign media”, CNN says.

A representative of the US government has confirmed to the media that Washington is aware of the situation. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas strongly condemned the killing of Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, the WAFA news agency reported on Wednesday. Abbas also called the killing a cowardly act and a dangerous escalation, the report read. At the same time, Abbas called on Palestinians to be united and patient in the face of the Israeli occupation. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the incident will strengthen the ties between Tehran and Palestine. The Turkish Foreign Ministry stressed that Israel is not seeking peace, and should be stopped before conflict escalates. The killing of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh is a cowardly act that will not go unanswered, Hamas political office deputy head Musa Abu Marzouk said on Wednesday.

Moscow considers the death of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh to be an example of absolutely unacceptable political assassination, which threatens further escalation in the region, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told Sputnik on Wednesday. “This is all very wrong. This is an absolutely unacceptable political assassination, and it will lead to further escalation of tensions,” Bogdanov said.

Read more …

“This attack [on Haniyeh] was so blatant that I don’t think there will be any restraint on the part of Iran or Hezbollah..”

• Haniyeh Murder ‘May Have Been Crossing a Red Line’ – Larry Johnson (Sp.)

Hamas has already pledged to take revenge after the Palestinian militant group’s political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran. The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh “clearly had the support and foreknowledge of the United States and the United Kingdom,” retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson insisted in an interview with Sputnik. “I say that because we also have news reports now coming in that the US and UK warships are headed into the Mediterranean. On one of the US ships is probably a Marine Expeditionary Unit,” Johnson said. So the situation “has now escalated tensions in the region beyond what they were, even after the attack on the Iranian consul in April in Beirut,” according to him.

Responding to that attack, Iran “sent a very clear message to Israel that in the future, any further provocations like this would be met with force, and now both Hezbollah and Iran have been incited to respond and Israel is calculating that it can withstand the blows,” the former CIA intelligence officer added. “This is extremely dangerous. […] This attack [on Haniyeh] was so blatant that I don’t think there will be any restraint on the part of Iran or Hezbollah. I think that this may in fact have been crossing a red line. It is extremely worrisome because this has the hallmarks of being able to spin out of control. And it is, we’re now in a situation of wait and see,” Johnson stressed.

Read more …

$200 million a year: “..Bednarz had berated him for not using pronouns on his business cards and email signature..”

• Leaked Emails Reveal ‘Civil War’ At CIA Regime Change Cut-out (RT)

The biggest public relations fiasco in the history of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has resulted in two senior officials ending up fired and a “civil war” of sorts between the old neoconservative cadres and the new “woke” management, according to documents obtained by The Grayzone. The fiasco in question was the phone call between the NED vice-president for communications Leslie Aun and the Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Alex Rubinstein, which the independent outlet published in May 2023. Aun initiated the call to address Rubinstein’s description of the Endowment as a “CIA cutout,” but ended up saying “I don’t know” a lot instead. On Tuesday, the Grayzone published several emails between Michael Allen – who used to be the editor of the NED’s ‘Democracy Digest’ blog – and the Endowment’s founding president Carl Gershman, revealing that the fallout from the call’s publication may have cost Aun and Allen their jobs.

“Amateur hour – hugely embarrassing!” Allen emailed Gershman and NED VP for government relations, David Lowe, a day after the recording was posted on YouTube. “I specifically counseled against her talking to these people.” Lowe described Aun’s performance as “breathtakingly ignorant” and “too painful to listen to.” Both he and Gershman, who retired in 2021, appeared to disparage the new NED president Damon Wilson for hiring her. Gershman described the call as a “disastrous screwup” and described Aun as “obviously clueless,” a “moron,” and a “clueless wonder” whose hiring was an “egregious error” reflecting Wilson’s focus on media and image. In messages to Gershman and Lowe, Allen blamed NED communications director, Christine Bednarz, who reportedly encouraged Aun to talk to the Grayzone. Allen also blamed Bednarz for instituting mandatory “diversity, equity and inclusion” training and berating him about his “white male privilege.”

In one email, Allen complained about the DEI training agenda including “microaggressions” and the “ideological, not historical” 1619 Project, noting that Bednarz had berated him for not using pronouns on his business cards and email signature. In a June 5, 2023 email to Gershman, Allen complained about the communications team focusing on the “more urgent matter of NED’s LGBTQIA+ agenda” rather than the Grayzone fallout. Another point of conflict arose after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, with Allen complaining that several NED staffers “promoted and attended the pro-Palestinian march organized by ANSWER” and that the NED president still backed Black Lives Matter on Facebook even after they “enthusiastically celebrated the Hamas massacres.”At one point, Gershman asked if Bednarz harbored some kind of personal resentment for her Israeli ex-husband, or if she was “just a woke flake,” to which Allen replied: “The latter, combined with a certain megalomania and defensive resentment over the Grayzone fiasco.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Ehrlich

 

 

Dogs&food
https://twitter.com/i/status/1818204396041154600

 

 

Legend

 

 

Anaconda

 

 

Whale shark

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

In Defense Of JD Vance As Trump’s VP

Jul 182024
 
 July 18, 2024  Posted by at 4:55 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


John French Sloan Spring rain 1912

 

It’s been a while since we saw Andrew Korybko here. But there he is.

 

 

Andrew Korybko:

 

In Defense Of JD Vance As Trump’s VP

Addressing The Top-Three Criticisms Head-On

Trump’s decision to pick freshman Ohio Senator JD Vance as his Vice President (VP) has riled some members of the Alt-Media Community (AMC), who claim that it represents a step backwards for the MAGA movement. They point to his history as a US Marine in Iraq, as a venture capitalist after that, and then finally as a former Never Trumper to claim that he’s a neocon, which his hawkish positions on China and Iran confirm in their minds.

The reality though is that Vance isn’t someone whose worldview can easily be pigeonholed. His history as a US Marine in Iraq taught him, in his own words, that “I had been lied to – that the promises of the foreign policy establishment were a complete joke.” As for his time as a venture capitalist, it led to close friendships with leading elites like Peter Thiel, who’ve been instrumental in turning some Silicon Valley power players against the Democrats. This could ultimately prove to be a game-changer in the election.

Likewise, the same can be said about him formerly being a Never Trumper, which can appeal to millions of on-the-fence voters who used to despise Trump until they were “red pilled” like he admits he was and are thus now seriously considering supporting him. He argued that “I said some bad things about Donald Trump 10 years ago. I can make a good case to the American people, people who may have been skeptical of the president back in 2016, who could be skeptical now, that we’ve seen the results.”

Vance’s hawkish positions on China and Iran are to be expected. The first is the US’ systemic rival while the second threatens its regional hegemony. Nevertheless, what he’s said about Russia and Ukraine proves that he’s not an ideologically driven warmonger, which suggests that he’ll pragmatically manage the US’ competition with them. He’s no doubt a hegemonist, but that comes with the territory, and he’ll never forget what he learned about the establishment during his time with the US Marines in Iraq.

Clarifying China & Russia’s Roles In The MAGA Worldview

His worldview is that the US should be selective with its engagements abroad, both militarily and in terms of foreign aid, and he’s a proponent of Trump’s reported plan for NATO. This would see the bloc become “dormant” as its European members are coerced to step up their involvement in containing Russia while the US “Pivots (back) to Asia” to contain China. Members of the AMC claim that this makes him a “sell-out”, but it’s unrealistic to expect a leading member of MAGA to not be hawkish on China.

After all, Trump was extremely tough on the People’s Republic, which he justified on the grounds of rebalancing their astronomical trade deficit that reached several hundred billion dollars a year before his election. His problem though was that he was too influenced by his son-in-law Jared Kushner during his first term and fell under the sway of neocons, but he’s since learned his lesson judging by how he reportedly took his son Don Jr’s, Steven Bannon’s, and Tucker Carlson’s advice to pick Vance as his VP.

Trump and Vance share the vision of redirecting the US’ containment focus away from Russia and towards China, with a view towards preventing the first’s potentially disproportionate dependence on the second that could turbocharge its superpower trajectory and thus seriously challenge the US. The resultant system of Sino-US bi-multipolarity would comparatively favor China since it would amount to them practically being equals on the world stage, hence why those two want to avoid this if possible.

The means to that end is to relieve some pressure upon Russia so that it can rely more on India and other Global South states, particularly those from its “Ummah Pivot”, as export markets for its natural resources instead of being forced by circumstances into funneling most of them towards China’s rise. From Russia’s perspective, any reduction of pressure would be welcome, especially if it results in some of its national security interests in Europe finally being respected through a compromise in Ukraine.

Russia’s Grand Strategic Interests

Preemptively averting potentially disproportionate dependence on China is also important, not for any politically Sinophobic reasons, but for simple pragmatism since no strategically autonomous country like Russia wants to be reliant on a single partner for the bulk of its foreign export earnings. This explains why it’s recently recalibrated its Asian balancing act from its hitherto Sino-centricity through Putin’s trips to North Korea and Vietnam as well as his hosting of Indian Prime Minister Modi.

The preceding five hyperlinked analyses explain this strategy in detail, the gist of which was just reflected in Valdai Club Program Director Timofei Bordachev’s article about how “Russia has redefined its Asia strategy”, which was released after those pieces and then republished by RT on their front page. This insight is relevant with regards to Trump’s decision to pick Vance as his VP since it strongly suggests that Russia would be receptive to those two’s envisaged endgame of swiftly resolving the Ukrainian Conflict.

Alt-Media’s Activist Problem

Despite recognizing how easily that proxy war could spiral out of control into World War III, and thus appreciating the need to bring about a diplomatic end to it as soon as possible exactly as Vance has promised that he’ll seek to do, some in the AMC are still displeased with him. A lot of these disgruntled folks are activists at heart, which makes them ideologues for the causes that they support, which in this case are world peace in general and less US pressure on China and Iran in particular.

They therefore can’t approve of Vance as VP because of his hawkish positions towards those two, hence why they’re now agitating against him by fearmongering that he’ll risk sparking World War III with them instead of with Russia like Biden and his team are dangerously flirting with by miscalculation. They’re entitled to their views, but observers should remember that they’re being shared by ideologues, no matter how well-intentioned they may be.

These people are purposely being hyperbolic for political reasons related to the causes that they passionately support. They’re also naïve if they truly thought that Trump wouldn’t pick someone who shares his worldview, which is pragmatic towards Russia but adversarial towards China and Iran. It’s possible to raise awareness of the risks that a theoretical Vance presidency could bring if something happens to Trump without going overboard by fearmongering about him and discrediting him.  

Exposing The Frauds

Some of these folks aren’t being sincere with their concerns, however, since they have ulterior motives. There are those who have a unique interpretation of what MAGA is, which is at variance with what it objectively is, and are thus very angry that Trump’s pick of Vance as VP shattered their expectations. The resultant cognitive dissonance explains some of their furious posts on social media after having previously supported the movement.

Then there are those who never truly supported MAGA, but sought to establish “alliances of convenience” on certain causes like those related to China and Iran, and are deliberately trying to discredit MAGA as revenge since it’s clear that Trump 2.0’s policies wouldn’t align with their views. This is especially true for hitherto seemingly MAGA-friendly foreigners who are now trying to manipulate voters’ perceptions about emotive issues like the ones that they support after Vance’s pick as VP.

These people can’t vote in US elections, yet they’re exploiting social media to have an outsized role in influencing those who can, with the common narrative being that they imply one way or another that this decision supposedly proves that Trump has betrayed MAGA. The truth though is that Trump is paving the way for a successor who’ll carry on what MAGA has always been about on the foreign policy front, and that’s being tough on the US’ top rivals in order to decelerate its declining unipolar hegemony.

MAGA’s Role In The Global Systemic Transition

To be sure, the way in which Trump and Vance envisage doing this is by first alleviating the risk of World War III with Russia, which is a net positive for peace and would bring humanity back from the brink if it’s successful. The global systemic transition to multipolarity has also unprecedentedly accelerated so much since the start of Russia’s special operation that restoring the 1990s-era unipolar system is now impossible, thus meaning that MAGA’s foreign policy is really about responsibly managing this moment.

The best that the US can now hope to achieve is to preserve its privileged position as long as possible through creative – and ideally peaceful – means. It’ll never enjoy the unparalleled dominance from the post-Old Cold War period, but it also won’t become a so-called “normal country” anytime soon either, let alone collapse in the near future like many in the AMC have predicted. A Trump-Vance presidency would be all about slowing the pace of its decline and regaining some ground wherever possible.  

The difference between them and Biden-Harris is that MAGA wants to improve socio-economic living standards at home while keeping World War III at bay abroad while the Democrats care less about Americans and more about their fellow liberal–globalist elite even at the expense of risking World War III. Few activists will ever be fully pleased with any presidential ticket, but comparatively speaking, the Trump-Vance one is much better for world peace as a whole than the Biden-Harris one.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 17 2024

Jul 172024
 
 July 17, 2024  Posted by at 8:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  81 Responses »


Salvador Dali The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory 1954

 

• This One Thing About Trump Shooting Is Very Suspicious (Pochuev)
• Further Thoughts on the Near Assassination (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Rep. Cory Mills Vows ‘J13 Committee’ To Investigate Trump Shooting (ZH)
• The Surrender (Matt Taibbi)
• RFK Jr. Apologizes For Trump Leak (RT)
• Biden Says No To Extra Debate With Trump (RT)
• Elon Musk Pledges $45 Million Monthly To Pro-Trump Super PAC (ZH)
• Elon Musk Abandons California Over Trans Law (RT)
• Pulte Family Takes “Activist Position” in BuzzFeed, Joins Vivek Ramaswamy (ZH)
• JD Vance Promises ‘Rapid Close’ To Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• ‘Root Causes’ Of Ukraine Conflict Should Be Eliminated – Lavrov (RT)
• ‘No Mercy’ For Ukrainian neo-Nazi POW Murderers – Medvedev (RT)
• MEPs Want Hungary Stripped Of Voting Rights – Politico (RT)
• Orban Asks EU To Talk With Russia – Bild (RT)
• “This is How Republics Collapse” (Turley)

 

 


“It blows my mind how narrowly Trump escaped death. He turned his head 0.3 seconds before impact.”


“It gets even crazier. There was a 7mph crosswind at Trump’s rally – enough to push a 5.56 round two inches to the left of its target, at 150 yards. If there hadn’t been a slight crosswind, that bullet would’ve gone straight through Trump’s skull.”

 

 

Alex jones

 

 

Landslide

 

 

 

 

Alexander Pochuev, Vice President of the Long Range Shooting Federation of Russia.

It’s not just this one thing, though. There’s tons.

• This One Thing About Trump Shooting Is Very Suspicious (Pochuev)

On Saturday, 20-year-old Pennsylvanian Thomas Crooks fired three shots from a rifle and was almost immediately hit by return fire from US Secret Service snipers. The country’s former President Donald Trump suffered a minor wound to his right ear, but literally looked death in the face. Apparently, Trump was saved by turning his head to the right, in the direction of the would-be assassin. He had already made this move when Crooks pulled the trigger and the bullet flew towards him at an initial velocity of more than 1,100 meters per second. According to a ballistic calculator, the bullet took 0.14 of a second to reach Trump’s ear. There was no way the shooter could have calculated the movement of his intended victim. Trump was only millimeters away from being fatally wounded.

Even if he had turned at a slightly different angle and the bullet had travelled 10-20 mm to the right, the former US president would have been seriously wounded and out of the running for power in the US for a long time, if not forever. The next two shots were automatic and missed, indicating poor shooting skills and an inability to control himself under stress. The presidential candidate himself heard the shots half a second later, apparently at the same time as he felt the pain of the wound. The speed of a bullet is three times the speed of sound. By this time, a projectile had already hit the next victim. We can assume that the shooter was able to hit several targets with one shot. But that’s not because of any ability on Crooks’ part, it’s the result of the large crowd at the rally.

What was striking, however, was the lightning response of the secret service snipers. They opened fire with at least two rifles in just over three seconds. This is an excellent result. And it would be even in a shooting competition where the target and distances are known, and the command ‘fire’ is given. So, it’s clear that Special Forces snipers had Crooks in their crosshairs by the time the shots were fired. So why didn’t they open fire sooner? And why did they let the shooter get so close and not respond to eyewitness reports of a strange man with a gun?

Read more …

“It is very unusual that an intended assassin would expect to be able to appear with a rifle in a protected area and not be accosted. In other words, it reeks of the smell of a stand down.”

“Trump has to root out the evil, to extinguish the evil. He has to find and appoint and get confirmed a government that will support him in this battle. Anything less and he is a failure.”

• Further Thoughts on the Near Assassination (Paul Craig Roberts)

“The fact that [the Secret Service] allowed a rifle armed shooter within 150 yds to a preplanned event is either malice or massive incompetence.” — Security expert Erik Prince, Navy Seal and founder of Blackwater. One of the most puzzling aspects of the near assassination of Donald Trump on the Secret Service’s watch is the shooter’s expectation to find the buildings within the protected area unoccupied by Secret Service and no agents guarding the sniper positions on the buildings. It is very unusual that an intended assassin would expect to be able to appear with a rifle in a protected area and not be accosted. In other words, it reeks of the smell of a stand down. Here is the Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti’s comment:

“The assassination attempt on Donald Trump is surprising only because it happened on July 13, and not earlier — a year, three or eight years ago. The upstart, who challenged not only most of the American establishment, but also the ‘Washington swamp’ as such, has risked his head very much all these years… It is clear that now the ‘swamp denizens’ are biting their elbows because they did not think to kill Trump before November 2016: they underestimated the threat, did not believe in the reality of his victory.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the atmosphere of hatred created around Trump by the Biden regime has led to the near assassination of Donald Trump. “After numerous attempts to remove Trump from the political arena with the help of legal tools, courts, the prosecution, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate, it was clear to all outside observers that his life was in danger.”

“We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.” — Donald Trump. Trump understands that the real fight is against the evil that has in its grasp the Democrat Party, the media, the liberal-left intellectuals who control the educational system, and the financial system that enslaves the population to debt service. It is extraordinary that former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama along with Biden and Trump himself have issued statements thanking the Secret Service for their “swift intervention.” Swift intervention? After an assassin in plain view of the Secret Service fires a series of shots that kill one person and dangerously injures two others standing behind Trump and misses killing Trump by a quarter of an inch? Only when the assassin finishes firing does the Secret Service intervene. How does a Secret Service that totally fails in its responsibility to protect a presidential candidate get congratulations for preventing an assassination?

Trump’s assassination failed because Trump turned his head when the assassin shot, thus throwing the bullet off mark. The Secret Service did nothing to prevent Trump’s assassination. Is it the case that once the Secret Service saw Trump was down, Trump was believed to be mortally injured and it was the time to eliminate, like happened to Oswald, the shooter before he could talk? I don’t say this is the case. It is a question that needs investigation. The question of the unsecured buildings from which the intended assassin fired has produced a dispute between the Secret Service and local police. The Secret Service claims the neglected shooting positions were the responsibility of the local police. The local police say they are merely the ordered around adjuncts of the Secret Service, who are in charge. Let’s assume the local police were responsible for the security of the nearby sites. Why did not the Secret Service check if the police performed their alleged duty?

The greatest puzzle is the near assassin’s unencumbered access to perfect spots for a successful assassination. To those few Americans still capable of thought, the outpouring of former presidents clearing the Secret Service with praise of its non-performance suggests it was an establishment attack on Donald Trump’s life. Trump’s response to the attack on his life is not promising. Indeed, he is already moving off-task. He says he is going to reunite the country. This assumes that America has no internal enemies intent on destroying her, her values, and her liberties, and in her place erecting a Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel.

How can Trump reunite a country when the Democrat half is dedicated to the country’s destruction via open borders and the legitimization of all forms of sexual perversion? Is Trump going to compromise with his enemies and give them, in the false name of unity, part of their agenda? What is the point of a raised fist with blood running down your face shouting “fight, fight, fight” if you are going to compromise? Trump has to root out the evil, to extinguish the evil. He has to find and appoint and get confirmed a government that will support him in this battle. Anything less and he is a failure.

Read more …

‘How could this have gone so wrong?’

• Rep. Cory Mills Vows ‘J13 Committee’ To Investigate Trump Shooting (ZH)

Former sniper and defense contractor Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) triggered a CNN host on Tuesday after suggesting that “intentional” failures may have resulted in the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday. “The amount of negligence, the amount of mistakes that was made here, I have a very difficult time not leaning myself towards this was intentional, as opposed to fecklessness,” Mills told anchor Kate Bolduan. “If I have a building 160 yards perfectly adjacent to the stage, that’s an obvious threat,” he continued. “Especially with an elevated position that has overwatch? That’s a sniper’s paradise.” Mills, an Iraq war veteran and former DynCorp security specialist, co-founded private security company Pacem Defense, and says he’s overseen security for thousands of events.

After a stunned Boulduan pressed Mills, he replied: “I sit here and scratch my head. You don’t want to be the conspiracist. That’s the issue. You walk this fine balance, but you look at it and think ‘How could this have gone so wrong?’.” Meanwhile, journalist Laura Loomer spoke with Mills outside the Republican National Convention, where he told her that he plans to create a ‘J13 committee’ that’s ‘bigger than the J6 committee,’ and that he will push to be in charge of it.

Read more …

“.. they quoted a “senior House Democrat” at the bottom, saying, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”

• The Surrender (Matt Taibbi)

The decision was announced at a White House briefing Monday morning. “In light of this weekend’s events, the president has directed me to work with the Secret Service to provide protection to Robert Kennedy Jr.,” was the quote from Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas. It’s difficult to read the line “in light of this weekend’s events” and not see an admission on the part of the White House that Secret Service protection was previously being denied to Kennedy, Jr. for political reasons, or out of spite, if those are even two different things in this era. Whatever the original prerogative was for pushing the envelope with that denial, it seems to have been removed by series of paradigm-shattering news events, leading to a flurry of real and symbolic surrenders.

MSNBC likewise made an extraordinary decision Sunday night to pull Morning Joe, with CNN saying the network wanted to “to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television.” As with the Secret Service decision, MSNBC was making a major admission, essentially telling audiences its lead morning news show is either not really a news show, or that its format only holds up under something less than maximum scrutiny. I can’t recall a similar act of self-sabotage in media. Meanwhile, in a move that went mostly unnoticed, Meta announced Friday that it was lifting restrictions on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, with CNN citing company sources saying this was done “to ensure that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, would have equal standing with Democrat President Joe Biden.”

The next day, after the attempt on Trump’s life that left firefighter Corey Comperatore dead, Axios ran a story about Democratic reaction. Burying the lede, they quoted a “senior House Democrat” at the bottom, saying, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.” There’s a longer story to be written about the sudden collapse of many of the core premises of the last eight years of American politics, in particular the notion that Trump is such a unique “existential” threat that the system would not bear treating him like any other politician. In conjunction with Trump’s documents case collapsing and a list of other retreats on the lawfare/prosecution front, we appear headed for a new world, though what that will look like remains very unclear. The two obvious options are retreat from the “at all costs” mindset and a double-down, the double-down being the pattern in the Trump era. Who knows yet, but it’s remarkable to watch.

Read more …

A president calls you who’s been shot just hours before. And you don’t stop the video that’s running, or find a private place to take the call?

• RFK Jr. Apologizes For Trump Leak (RT)

US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has apologized after his son posted a video recording of a recent phone call with his Republican challenger, Donald Trump. During the call, Trump sought RFK Jr.’s endorsement and said that he shared the independent’s concerns about vaccinating children. An excerpt of the call, which took place on Sunday, was posted to X on Tuesday by Bobby Kennedy III, before it was deleted shortly afterwards. According to screenshots of the post, the younger Kennedy posted the video as he felt “these sorts of conversations should be had in public.” In the video, Trump told the elder Kennedy that “clearly something’s wrong” with the US’ childhood vaccination program.

“I said I want to do small doses,” Trump told Kennedy Jr., who was listening on his phone’s speaker. Trump complained that children are given a “vaccination that’s like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a ten-pound or twenty-pound baby. And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change…and then you hear that doesn’t have an impact.” “You and I talked about that a long time ago,” Trump added.

Kennedy Jr. has railed against vaccinating children since before the Covid-19 pandemic, and Trump – whose administration funded the development of Covid vaccines – at one point publicly shared his views. “My theory,” he told reporters in 2007, “is the shots” are responsible for causing autism. “We’re giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.” Within hours of the video being posted, Kennedy Jr apologized for the leak. “When President Trump called me I was taping with an in-house videographer,” he explained in a post on X. “I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president.”

Kennedy Jr. did not speak during the section of the call posted online. After laying out his views on vaccines, Trump appeared to ask for the independent candidate’s endorsement, telling him “it would be so good for you.” Trump met with Kennedy Jr. the day after the phone call to discuss his possibly suspending his bid for the White House and joining the Republican’s campaign, Politico reported on Monday. The Kennedy campaign acknowledged that the meeting took place but said that the two discussed “national unity,” and that Kennedy Jr. would remain in the race. Recent polls show Kennedy Jr. winning around 10% of the national vote in a hypothetical race that includes the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the Justice for All Party’s Cornel West. These same polls show Trump leading President Joe Biden by between one and six points.

Read more …

“I have done 22 major events, met thousands of people, overwhelming crowds.”

Let’s see the footage.

• Biden Says No To Extra Debate With Trump (RT)

US President Joe Biden has turned down Donald Trump’s proposal for him to “redeem himself” after his disastrous performance in their first televised debate last month by holding another unscheduled face-off. Biden has faced increasing calls to withdraw from the presidential race after he appeared frail and confused during the June 27 debate against Trump. According to the New York Times, Democratic donors have been withholding some $90 million in donations in order to persuade the party to replace the 81-year-old president on the ticket. Biden, however, has insisted he is staying in the race. Last week, speaking at a rally in Miami, Trump offered Biden a “chance to redeem himself.”

“Let us do another debate this week so that sleepy Joe Biden can prove to everyone all over the world that he has what it takes to be president,” he said, adding that the unscheduled face-off should have no moderators and be “man-to-man.” Asked about the proposal during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Tuesday, Biden said he will debate Trump only at the previously agreed time. “I’m gonna debate him when we agreed to debate. And I agreed to debate him in September,” Biden said. The second face-off between the two is scheduled to take place on September 10, with ABC News hosting. Biden snapped back when Holt suggested a snap debate in the coming weeks would be a chance for him to “get back on the horse.”

“I am on the horse. Where have you been? I have done 22 major events, met thousands of people, overwhelming crowds. A lot has been happening. I am on the horse,” he said, insisting that he does not need notes or a teleprompter. “I can go out and answer any questions at all,” he said. Multiple US news outlets have reported in recent weeks that Democratic donors and officials have been plotting to force Biden out of the race and replace him with another candidate. Axios reported last week that an “anti-Biden network” that includes veterans of the Obama and Clinton administrations are seeking to oust Biden and field a candidate they believe has a better chance of winning the November election. Biden told Holt on Tuesday that he would not repeat his poor performance at the next debate. “I don’t plan on having another performance on that level,” he said.

Read more …

To counter Zuckerberg millions?!

• Elon Musk Pledges $45 Million Monthly To Pro-Trump Super PAC (ZH)

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a source familiar with the situation has revealed Elon Musk’s latest power move: a $45 million a month commitment to a new super political-action committee to support former President Donald Trump. This new super PAC will deploy large sums of money and other resources in critical swing states to counter ‘get out the vote’ campaigns by Democrats. Called ‘America PAC,’ the group is reportedly focused on registering voters and convincing constituents to vote early and request mail-in ballots across swing states, according to the people. The group will counter get out the vote campaigns by Democrats in swing states. Besides Musk, America PAC is supported by Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and former US ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft and her husband, Joe, the chief executive of coal producer Alliance Resource Partners.

According to a Monday filing, America PAC received $8.75 million in contributions for the quarter ending June 30, as reported by the WSJ. Musk is rumored to begin his donations this month. A recent Bloomberg News report indicated Musk had donated to the new super PAC last week, although the donation size was not mentioned. Following the failed assassination attempt on Trump, Musk wrote on X on Saturday evening, “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” adding, “Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt.” X user End Wokenes wrote, “Elon Musk went from being an Obama voter to pledging $180 million to elect DJT. The woke left really f*cked up. Badly.” Musk responded with a “Yeah”…

Perhaps the Democrats miscalculated their assault on Musk. Musk also praised Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential nominee, calling it an “excellent” choice. Vance has ties with Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir Technologies. In recent weeks, David Sacks has backed Trump, even hosting a fundraiser at his San Francisco mansion. Whether it’s Thiel, Sacks, or Musk, they were all once part of a group dubbed the ‘PayPal Mafia.’

Read more …

“Have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building..”

• Elon Musk Abandons California Over Trans Law (RT)

SpaceX CEO and X owner Elon Musk has said that he will relocate the headquarters of both companies from California to Texas in response to a new law forbidding teachers in the Golden State from telling parents if their children identify as transgender. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the SAFETY Act into law on Tuesday. Hailed by activists as a safeguard against the “forced outing” of gay or transgender kids, the law forbids school staff from informing parents if their children identify as gay in the classroom, or use names or pronouns that differ from those on their birth certificates. Critics slammed the bill as an infringement on parental rights. “This is the final straw,” Musk wrote on X. “Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.”

Musk explained that he made it “clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.” In a follow-up post, Musk said that he would relocate X’ HQ from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. “Have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building,” he said, referring to San Francisco’s well-documented homelessness, drug abuse, and street-crime problems. Musk previously described the “once beautiful and thriving” downtown area of San Francisco as “a derelict zombie apocalypse,” blaming the decline on decades of Democrat rule. Last August, the billionaire vowed to go to “war” with a law firm that was suing city authorities for clearing vagrants from the area.

Musk already moved Tesla’s HQ from the tech hub of Palo Alto in California to Austin in 2021, and moved his personal residence from California to Texas in 2020. Aside from distancing himself from coastal liberalism – which he has described as “the woke mind-virus,” the move allowed Musk to avoid tax on his personal income. In 2023, Musk told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he blamed his transgender daughter’s liberal Los Angeles school for encouraging her to become “a full communist” and to sever all ties with her father the year before. “She went beyond socialism to being a full communist and thinking that anyone rich is evil,” Musk said of his now 20-year-old child. “I’ve made many overtures, but she doesn’t want to spend time with me.” Musk has also spoken out repeatedly against child sex changes, stating last year that he “will be actively lobbying to criminalize making severe, irreversible changes to children below the age of consent.”

Read more …

Buzzfeed looks dead to me.

• Pulte Family Takes “Activist Position” in BuzzFeed, Joins Vivek Ramaswamy (ZH)

Shares of Buzzfeed jumped 26% moments ago after the Pulte Family revealed an “activist position” in BuzzFeed, supporting the changes Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, has proposed for the media company. “In our opinion, the Current BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti is driving the company into the ground, and when Vivek Ramaswamy gave him a lifeboat to save his sinking ship, Peretti told him thanks anyway,” William J. Pulte, CEO of Pulte Capital and a former Director of PulteGroup, wrote in a statement released on X. Pulte said, “This is exactly the type of hubris that needs to end in corporate America; at every turn, CEO Peretti has delivered unacceptable financial and operational performance, quarter after quarter. If CEO Peretti isn’t up to modernize BuzzFeed, then he should bring in someone who is or he should buy the company back from its shareholders.”

He added, “We support the changes Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed and that which he thinks are necessary.” Axios reported on June 24 that Ramaswamy and two of his proposed directors spoke with CEO Peretti via conference call to discuss his activist campaign against the media company. In May, Ramaswamy announced his BuzzFeed stake with a letter to the company’s board, saying the media company has “lost its way.” Ramaswamy holds approximately a 7.7% stake in BuzzFeed, while the size of the Pulte Family’s stake has not been disclosed. Pulte concluded, “For the avoidance of doubt, we are not working in concert with and are not working in a group with Mr. Ramaswamy. To that end, we did not inform Mr. Ramaswamy before we purchased shares in BuzzFeed.”

Read more …

“Is there a risk of escalation into a nuclear war? Because there is, when you have a buffoon running foreign policy, and we have got a lot of them right now in Washington, DC..”

• JD Vance Promises ‘Rapid Close’ To Ukraine Conflict (RT)

Donald Trump will bring about a “rapid close” to the Ukraine conflict if reelected as US president in November, the Republican’s newly announced running mate, JD Vance, has said. Vance argued that Washington should shift its focus to China, describing Beijing as the “biggest threat” to the US. Trump announced Vance as his running mate on Monday at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Ohio senator’s candidacy was approved later the same day. If Trump returns as president after the November 5 election, his policy on Ukraine will be “very simple,” Vance told Fox News shortly after being officially nominated. “Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump had been president. Everybody agrees with it. Even a lot of my Democratic colleagues privately agree with that,” he said.

Vance again accused the administration of US President Joe Biden of lacking a coherent policy on the conflict. “We have now spent $200 billion [on aiding Ukraine]. What is the goal? What are we trying to accomplish? Is there a risk of escalation into a nuclear war? Because there is, when you have a buffoon running foreign policy, and we have got a lot of them right now in Washington, DC,” he said. “I think what President Trump has promised to do is go in there, negotiate with the Russians and Ukrainians and bring this thing to a rapid close, so that America could focus on the real issue, which is China. That’s the biggest threat,” Vance stressed. Since the outbreak of the fighting between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the conflict wouldn’t have happened if he had retained the presidency in 2020. He has also vowed to resolve the crisis within 24 hours if he returns to the White House.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that Moscow takes the former US president’s comments “quite seriously.” “I certainly do not know what, exactly, his proposal would be [to end the conflict] and how he plans to achieve that. And that is the key question. But I do not doubt his sincerity and we welcome” the sentiment, Putin stated. In early June, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky demanded that Trump reveal the details of his peace plan. “I would like to know what it would mean to finish a war fast,” Zelensky told Bloomberg. “If Trump knows how to end this war, he should tell us today, because if there are risks to Ukraine’s independence, and there are risks that we will lose our statehood, we want to be prepared for this,” he argued.

Read more …

“Russia and the West need mutual “guarantees and agreements..”

• ‘Root Causes’ Of Ukraine Conflict Should Be Eliminated – Lavrov (RT)

The world should address the “root causes” that led to the “crisis” in Europe and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a ministerial summit at the UN Security Council on Tuesday. Ending the standoff between Moscow and Kiev should be accompanied by the removal of the threat posed by the West to Russia’s security, he said. Conditions for a “sustainable peace” between Russia and Ukraine had already been presented by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the top diplomat noted. In June, Putin outlined Moscow’s terms for initiating a ceasefire. They involved a full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from all Russian territories, including the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, as well as a legal commitment from Kiev never to join NATO. Any final deal should be recognized in Western capitals and pave the way to lift sanctions against Russia, Putin added. Both Kiev and its Western backers dismissed the offer.

Any “political and diplomatic settlement [of the Ukraine conflict] should be accompanied by specific steps aimed at removing the threats to the Russian Federation posed by the [West],” Lavrov told the UNSC as he listed the measures needed to “restore trust and stabilize the situation” on the international arena. “The root causes of the crisis that has broken out in Europe should be dealt with once and for all.” Russia and the West need mutual “guarantees and agreements,” the minister stated, adding that “new geostrategic realities on the Eurasian continent” should be taken into account as well. According to Lavrov, a new “pan continental architecture of truly equal and indivisible security” was being formed on the continent. “The global and regional balance of power should be restored as well, along with repairing injustices in the world economy,” he said. A multipolar world should not have any monopolies in the financial or currency regulation, trade or technologies, he said, calling on the World Trade Organization to be reformed to reflect the “real weight” of non-Western centers of growth and development.

Moscow has long blamed the hegemonic aspirations of Washington and its allies for various crises in recent decades. In June, Putin said the world had missed an opportunity to create a better, more just and secure international order in the 1990s. The US and other Western nations believed they had “won the Cold War and refused to respect the interests of others,” he said at that time. That approach manifested itself in NATO’s policy of resolving conflicts that came down to “accusing the party they dislike of all sins and crushing it,” Putin stated. Such an approach proved to be a disaster, according to the Russian president. He also denied that Russia was the main threat to Europe, arguing that the greatest danger to European nations comes from their massive dependence on the US.

Read more …

Fully ignored in the west.

“Fascists are fascists,” he told reporters. “We must treat them this way and they must be destroyed..”

• ‘No Mercy’ For Ukrainian neo-Nazi POW Murderers – Medvedev (RT)

No mercy must be shown towards Ukrainian neo-Nazis who murdered an unarmed Russian soldier, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said. The only response that should follow is across-the-board executions, he added. Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, was commenting on a video depicting the brutal execution of a Russian serviceman that was published by the Azov Brigade on its Telegram channel on Monday. The helmet-camera video shows an unarmed soldier asking a purported Azov militant not to shoot him, before he gets shot several times in the face at point-blank range. The commander of Russia’s Akhmat Special Forces unit Apty Alaudinov said the incident violated the Geneva Conventions. Under the provisions of the 1949 treaties, “members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, or detention” should be treated humanely.

Medvedev said, however, that reference to the Geneva Conventions is pointless, as there should be “no mercy” to perpetrators of war crimes. The politician quoted the Soviet WWII-era war poet Konstantin Simonov’s verse “Kill him” and called for the expedited execution of those who murdered the captured serviceman. “There is no place for good here. Just kill! Like Simonov, to whom I have referred many times!” he wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. “Only total executions. No choice. There are no words about mercy. No humanity. No pardon. They have no right to life,” Medvedev insisted. Echoing his remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Tuesday that Ukrainian Neo-Nazis should be “destroyed.” “Fascists are fascists,” he told reporters. “We must treat them this way and they must be destroyed,” Peskov added.

Earlier this month, the New York Times revealed, citing a German battlefield medic, multiple atrocities allegedly committed by members of the so-called ‘Chosen Company,’ an international mercenary group fighting on behalf of Ukraine. In one reported incident described by the NYT, members of the Chosen Company murdered a seriously injured Russian serviceman who, it’s claimed, was surrendering and pleading for help. Russia’s Investigative Committee has said it will probe alleged war crimes committed by mercenary units fighting for Ukraine. Moscow will also demand that international organizations verify data on alleged Russian POW executions, which, if confirmed, would qualify “as a violation of key norms and principles of humanitarian law, amounting to war crimes,” according to ambassador-at-large for Ukraine’s crimes, Rodion Miroshnik.

Read more …

93 MPs who don’t want peace.

• MEPs Want Hungary Stripped Of Voting Rights – Politico (RT)

Scores of European Parliament members have called on Brussels to punish Hungary after its prime minister, Viktor Orban, allegedly abused the bloc’s rotating presidency by launching his Ukraine “peace mission,” Politico reported on Tuesday. The outlet published a letter signed by 93 MEPs and addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, and European Parliament chief Roberta Metsola. The signatories accused Orban of causing “significant damage by exploiting and abusing the role of the [EU] Council Presidency,” which Hungary assumed earlier this month. The focus of their ire was Orban’s “peace mission” which involved recent visits to Ukraine, Russia, China, and the US.

“Orban deliberately left the impression that he was acting on behalf of the entire European Union,” the letter claimed, despite the leader stressing that he was acting in his capacity as head of the Hungarian government before flying to Moscow earlier this month. MEPs said their assertion was “clearly evidenced” by the fact that senior EU officials had stressed that Orban did not represent the bloc “in any form” during his trips. The Hungarian leader “is actively pursuing a policy agenda which is contrary to common EU positions,” and “this cannot be allowed to continue,” the MEPs said. They have urged the EU leadership to launch so-called Article 7 proceedings against Hungary. Widely considered a “nuclear option,” the article allows suspension of voting rights of a member state. The punishment is necessary “since practice has shown that mere verbal condemnations of this situation have no effect,” the letter said.

Hungary has criticized EU policy since hostilities between Ukraine and Russia broke out in February 2022. According to Budapest, Western economic sanctions imposed against Moscow have seriously damaged European economies, while the supply of weapons to Kiev has led to the continuation of hostilities instead of their end. Orban has urged a ceasefire and a negotiated resolution of the crisis, which his critics call a pro-Russian stance. Orban has detailed his vision of resolving the conflict in a letter to Michel, the European Council president, his office confirmed on Monday. His plan reportedly includes making concessions to Russia in terms of NATO’s expansion in Europe, which Moscow has called one of the key triggers of the confrontation.

Read more …

What a crazy idea!

• Orban Asks EU To Talk With Russia – Bild (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has written to Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, urging him to resume dialogue with Russia and involve China in the effort to resolve the Ukraine conflict, Bild reported on Monday. The plea comes after Orban went on a “peace mission” to Ukraine, Russia, China, and the US. According to the letter cited by the German tabloid, Orban provided Michel with a summary of his talks with the Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Turkish leaders, as well as Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. It also reportedly contained “some suggestions for [Michel’s] consideration.” Warning Michel that “the intensity of the military conflict [in Ukraine] will radically intensify in the near future,” Orban urged the EU official to hold talks with China on a ‘peace conference’ as well as reestablish diplomatic relations with Russia, according to the letter.

He further called for a “political offensive” in the Global South, arguing that the region is disillusioned with the EU’s stance on the Ukraine conflict. Orban also reportedly suggested that US President Joe Biden is “not in a position to change the current [US] pro-war policy.” However, he is said to have written that if Trump is reelected, he will “immediately be ready to act as a peace mediator.” Trump also “has detailed and well-founded plans” for ending the conflict, the letter reportedly said. Trump, who survived an assassination attempt at the weekend, has promised to end the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev within 24 hours if elected.

A Politico report earlier this month suggested that the presumptive Republican candidate could strike a deal under which “NATO commits to no further eastward expansion,” specifically into Ukraine and Georgia, while holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin “over how much Ukrainian territory Moscow can keep.” Orban’s recent ‘peace mission’ sparked a fierce backlash in the West. Michel himself declared that the Hungarian leader “has no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU” and stressed that “no discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine.” Orban urged Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire during their meeting, although the latter rejected the proposal, insisting that the Hungarian prime minister lacked the clout to negotiate an end to the conflict.

Read more …

“How do republics collapse? When judges are pressured or removed for ruling against favored parties.”

• “This is How Republics Collapse” (Turley)

“This is how republics collapse.” Those ominous words captured the hand-wringing, hair-pulling reaction to the dismissal of the Florida case against Donald Trump by Judge Aileen Cannon. It was not just that she reached a conclusion long supported by some conservative lawyers and a Supreme Court justice. To rule in favor of Trump in such a dismissal is, once again, the end of Democracy as we know it. The 93-page order methodically goes through the governing cases and statutes for the appointment of prosecutors. There has long been a debate over how an attorney general like Merrick Garland can circumvent the constitutional process for the appointment of a U.S. Attorney and unilaterally elevate a citizen to wield even greater power. With the expiration of the Independent Counsel Act in 1999, attorneys general have long relied upon their inherent authority to appoint “inferior officers” to special counsel investigations.

The issue has never been conclusively ruled upon by the Supreme Court, even though lower courts have rejected this challenge. The Trump ruling is certainly an outlier and the odds favor prosecutor Jack Smith on appeal. Many point to a challenge in 2019 in the D.C. Circuit to the appointment of Robert Mueller. The court found that “binding precedent establishes that Congress has ‘by law’ vested authority in the Attorney General to appoint the Special Counsel as an inferior officer.” That is the view of many lawyers and judges. However, Judge Cannon disagreed and found a lack of clear authority for both the appointment and the appropriations used for Smith. Nevertheless, legal experts were incredulous and irate. Jed Shugerman, a Boston University Law professor, is quoted as expressing shock that Judge Cannon is essentially saying, “I’m not bound by the DC Circuit, and I think they misinterpret this.” He added that it showed an “astonishing level of dismissiveness.”

However, in point of fact, Judge Cannon is not bound by the D.C. Circuit. As a federal judge in Florida, she is bound by the 11th Circuit and, of course, the Supreme Court. She is allowed to reach a different conclusion on a matter of law. Laurence Tribe, a law professor at Harvard University, declared that “Judge Cannon just did the unthinkable,” He added, “This finally gives Jack Smith an opportunity to seek her removal from the case. I think the case for doing so is very strong.” (Tribe previously declared that he was certain “without any doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt” that Trump could be charged with the attempted murder of former Vice President Michael Pence). It does not matter to these critics that other lawyers and judges agree with Judge Cannon.

Justice Clarence Thomas recently expressed the same view in the Trump immunity decision in his concurrence. He did not view this as a settled question and wrote “if this unprecedented prosecution is to proceed, it must be conducted by someone duly authorized to do so by the American people. The lower courts should thus answer these essential questions concerning the special counsel’s appointment before proceeding.” Yet these experts believe that a judge without a direct controlling case on the question should be removed for reaching the same conclusion as a member of the Supreme Court and at least two former U.S. Attorneys General. Of course, these experts would be aghast at any suggestion that D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan should be removed after being reversed by the Supreme Court in the recent immunity opinion. Such experts are not raising questions of bias over Chutkin’s rulings in favor of Smith or the similar pattern of Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan. Yet Cannon is viewed as not simply wrong, but partisan in ruling for Trump. How do republics collapse? When judges are pressured or removed for ruling against favored parties.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Lion
https://twitter.com/i/status/1813042360386781389

 

 

Croc

 

 

Antelope

 

 

Flirting

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 16 2024

Jul 162024
 
 July 16, 2024  Posted by at 9:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  133 Responses »


René Magritte The false mirror 1928

 

• “I’m Supposed To Be Dead” (ZH)
• Trump Makes First Public Appearance Since Assassination Attempt (RT)
• Trump Picks J.D. Vance As Running Mate (ZH)
• Trump’s Would-Be Assassin Did Not Act ‘on His Own’ – Ex-CIA Officer (Sp.)
• I Know A Hero When I See One (David Sacks)
• Shocks to the System (Kunstler)
• Biden Defends His ‘Put Trump In Bullseye’ Remark (RT)
• Biden Orders Security For Kennedy (RT)
• Bobby Kennedy III Slams US Secret Service (RT)
• Russian Reaction To The Trump Assassination Attempt Is Biblical (Helmer)
• Trump Classified Docs Case Dismissed, Jack Smith Unconstitutional (ZH)
• MSNBC Yanks Morning Joe On Fears Of Inappropriate Trump Shooting Comments (ZH)
• There’s Another Culprit In The Trump Murder Attempt (Bridge)
• Orban Delivers Ukraine Peace Proposals To EU (RT)
• Ex-US NATO Ambassador Tells Ukraine To Conscript Teenagers (RT)
• Elon Musk is Right: End the Online Censorship Racket (Turley)

 

 

Fight

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I want to try to unite our country… but I do not know if that is possible. People are very divided.”

• “I’m Supposed To Be Dead” (ZH)

Donald Trump says he’s “supposed to be dead,” and that Saturday’s attempted assassination was a “very surreal experience.” Speaking with the NY Post aboard his private plane en route to Milwaukee for the GOP National Convention, the former president said the doctor called it a ‘miracle.’ “The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle,” said Trump, whose ear was covered by a loose white bandage. His staff insisted on no pictures. “I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” said Trump. “I’m supposed to be dead.” Trump said that had he not turned his head slightly to the right to read a chart on illegal immigration, it would have been a kill shot instead of having a small piece of his ear torn off, spattering blood on his forehead and cheek.


© AP Photo / Gene J. Puskar

Trump said that as Secret Service agents led him off stage, he still wanted to continue speaking to supporters, but the agents told him it wasn’t safe and they had to get him to a hospital. He marveled at how the agents came flying in like “linebackers” as soon as the shooting started, and he unbuttoned his long-sleeve white shirt to show a large bruise on his right forearm. -NY Post Trump explained that “The agents hit me so hard that my shoes fell off, and my shoes are tight.” He then commended the Secret Service for their heroic actions, and praised them for gunning down the shooter – who had fired from around 130 yards away. Trump also reacted to the iconic photo of him raising his fist as agents tried to get him off the stage. “A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen,” he told the Post. “They’re right and I didn’t die. Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture.” “I just wanted to keep speaking, but I just got shot,” he continued.

Read more …

“He stood flanked by his new running mate JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson on the left, and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and journalist Tucker Carlson on the right.”

• Trump Makes First Public Appearance Since Assassination Attempt (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump was greeted with thunderous applause on the opening night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The four-day convention began just two days after a failed assassination attempt against Trump, who was officially nominated on Monday as the party’s presidential nominee for the November election. The crowd cheered wildly when Trump, with a white bandage on his right ear, appeared on the big screen, walking from backstage to the convention floor to a live version of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” After greeting his supporters, who were chanting “USA! USA!” and “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Trump climbed the stairs to the VIP section. He stood flanked by his new running mate JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson on the left, and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and journalist Tucker Carlson on the right.

Trump tapped JD Vance as vice presidential candidate but did not address the convention on Monday. He is expected to deliver a speech, which he revised in the wake of the shooting, on the final day of the gathering on Thursday. A bullet grazed Trump’s right ear when a gunman fired at least five rounds from a semi-automatic rifle in his direction during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. One spectator was killed and two others severely wounded before the shooter was fatally shot by US Secret Service officers. ”I am not supposed to be here; I am supposed to be dead,” Trump said in an interview with the New York Post on Sunday. The former president said he had prepared “an extremely tough speech… all about the corrupt, horrible administration” for the event in Milwaukee, but “threw it away” after the assassination attempt. ”I want to try to unite our country… but I do not know if that is possible. People are very divided,” he added.

Read more …

Tucker likes him a lot.

• Trump Picks J.D. Vance As Running Mate (ZH)

48 hours after being shot through the ear at a campaign event, Donald Trump has announced J.D. Vance as his running mate. “After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump posted on Truth Social. Full statement:

After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio. J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association. J.D.’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country. J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond….

Vance, 39, had emerged as the front-runner earlier in the day after sources said that Marco Rubio and Gov. Doug Burgum had been finalists. Both were told on Monday that they were out of the running.Following Saturday’s attempted assassination Vance jumped into action – suggesting on X that President Biden bore responsibility. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” wrote Vance, who went from harsh Trump critic to ardent supporter. Donald Trump Jr. has repeatedly advocated for Vance – who in 2016 privately texted a former Yale roommate that he feared Trump could be “America’s Hitler.” By 2018, however, Vance had softened his tone – viewing Trump as speaking to the frustrations of the very Americans he had written about in his book. Of note, the Ohio Senator is pro-crypto…

Tucker JD
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812954934909849746

Read more …

“I don’t know what the network is, I don’t know which organizations he is tied to, but he didn’t do this on his own..”

• Trump’s Would-Be Assassin Did Not Act ‘on His Own’ – Ex-CIA Officer (Sp.)

On July 13 Donald Trump narrowly survived an attempt on his life when a gunman opened fire at him during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania. One bystander was killed and two sustained serious injuries while Trump himself was shot in the ear. The recent attempt on Donald Trump’s life has, among other things, effectively “destroyed the ability of the Democrats going forward to demonize Donald Trump,” says retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson. As the US Democrats consistently sought to brand Trump as an “existential threat… their very language encouraged violence, encouraged killing Trump.” “Now they can’t do that without being accused of inciting violence. And, so now they have to argue on just issues. And when they are supposed to argue on issues, that means, they’re going to fail,” Johnson argued.

Currently, Trump’s political opponents can do little to curb the surge of his popularity in the wake of the assassination attempt, in no small part due to the fact that “they can’t argue the issues,” the ex-CIA officer notes. “What are the issues? Illegal immigration? Well, the Democrats have been enabling that. Inflation? Well, the economy is still plagued with inflation, but people are feeling that at the grocery store and at the gas pump,” Johnson elaborates. “So, their efforts to try to shift to issues, it’s going to be difficult for them, because they’ve been so accustomed to describing Trump as, you know, the personification of Satan.” While the FBI has already announced that the man who is suspected of trying to kill Trump, one Thomas Matthew Crooks, was acting alone, Johnson argues that it is “highly likely” that the gunman “had additional support.” “I don’t know what the network is, I don’t know which organizations he is tied to, but he didn’t do this on his own,” Johnson says.

Read more …

“There is no way to fake courage like that..”

• I Know A Hero When I See One (David Sacks)

I KNOW A HERO WHEN I SEE ONE. The Washington Post names me, along with as one of several businessmen, who are using their “megaphones” to spread “narratives” about the assassination attempt on President Trump. I’m not sure what “narratives” they’re referring to, but I know what I saw, and I know what the crowd in Butler witnessed live. At it turns out, my father-in-law lives in Pennsylvania and he was at the rally on Saturday. When the shots rang out and Trump went down, he said pandemonium broke out around him. Everyone feared the worst. But then Trump rose. Covered in his own blood, resisting the secret service’s efforts to whisk him away to safety, Trump raised his fist defiantly, and the crowd could see him say: “Fight. Fight. Fight.”

Immediately the fear of the crowd dissipated, the chaotic uncertainty lifted, and it was replaced with steely resolve. The crowd responded back as one: “USA, USA, USA!” This is not a “narrative.” It is the truth. Trump stood defiant in the face of an assassin’s bullet. There is no way to fake courage like that. It was more important for Trump to let the crowd know that he was unbowed and unbroken than to be taken to safety. Donald Trump has already been in the fight of his life for months, as vindictive Democrats seek to imprison him, but on this day he came within inches of losing it. He has risked everything for this country. It is now up to us, the American people, to show him that he does not stand alone. Let us reject the lies, the hoaxes, the hate and the division that the media has spread about this brave man, and support his resounding victory in November.

Sacks

Read more …

“..if you come at the king, you better not miss.”

• Shocks to the System (Kunstler)

[..] following the election of 2016, scores of government officials from Barack Obama and Joe Biden on down set out to wreck Mr. Trump’s turn in office, and ran one hoax after another to disable and dislodge him, and each hoax was a battery of lies begetting more lies. The style of thinking behind all that is called unprincipled. Many of these lies entailed crimes, some of them gigantic frauds perpetrated on the citizenry such as the ballot-stuffing operation that jammed “Joe Biden” into office — and which you were not permitted to speak of on penalty of cancellation and prosecution.

By 2020, “Joe Biden” had racked up enough bribes from foreign lands that he was susceptible to blackmail and thus to manipulation. That his mind was failing through his entire term only made that easier. Both “Joe Biden” and the Neocon gang at State and the CIA were implicated in a web of crimes in Ukraine, and war there was one way to cover all of it up, so they made sure that war happened. The lies and hoaxes continued to multiply, accompanied by huge, destructive pranks — the George Floyd riots, the drag queens in the kiddie classrooms, the wide-open border, the FBI-instigated J-6 riot — and the Democratic Party was embroidered in that whole tapestry of degenerate politics along with the Deep State blob.

In short, the Democratic Party appears to be guilty of programmatic treason against the people of the United States. They know that a reckoning awaits if Mr. Trump manages to return to office. They’ve known it for years. But two recent Supreme Court decisions really amped up their fears: 1) Trump v. the United States establishes presidential immunity from prosecution for acts involving his core constitutional duties; and 2) Loper Bright v. Raimondo establishes that the federal bureaucracy can no longer rule over citizens unchecked by the courts. Both of these would make it much easier for a President Trump to disassemble the Deep State. And of course, that may lead to the investigation and prosecution of Deep State personae who abused their positions — possibly even prison. . . a discomfiting prospect.

The Democratic Party’s cover got blown on June 27th when Joe Biden had to go live in a debate and displayed his mental incompetency for all to see. That shock to the system forced a scramble to replace “JB” pretty late in the election cycle, since now just enough voters may be indisposed to re-electing an obvious human wreck. But the switcheroo effort seems to have lost traction. And the party may have muffed its blackmail leverage over “Joe Biden.” After all, his briberies are all well-cataloged by the House Oversight Committee, including the vast bank records of the many shell companies set up to receive the bribe money.

Is it possible, though, that “Joe Biden” holds blackmail material over his party confederates? After all, he’s still President. He has access to things you’d never dream of and, demented as he is, he has plenty of help close at hand from Hunter, Dr. Jill, and the Lawfare posse for sorting it out. He probably knows a thing or two about his old pard Barack Obama, too, that would make some folks uncomfortable. So, looks like “JB” is fixing to hang in there as his party’s nominee, and whoever doesn’t like it can go suck an egg.

After the stunning events of Saturday evening, it also looks like candidate “Joe Biden” would go down in flames against Donald Trump on November 5, stuffed drop-boxes and all. Not a few Democratic Party bigshots have already made noises about leaving the country if that happens, possibly to nations lacking extradition treaties with the USA. Many others must be gobbling Xanax like Tic Tacs now that Donald Trump has survived the ultimate affront to his existence. You know the old nugget of wisdom: if you come at the king, you better not miss. Ooops.

Read more …

He knows very well what he said. And why.

• Biden Defends His ‘Put Trump In Bullseye’ Remark (RT)

US President Joe Biden has dismissed any notion that his rhetoric might incite violence, claiming that by calling for a “bullseye” on Donald Trump he was merely trying to shift the “focus” from his poor debate performance to his Republican rival’s actions and policies. The incumbent has repeatedly called his rival a threat to democracy and the nation and told donors earlier this month, “We’re done talking about the debate; it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.” Following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, multiple commentators argued that the violence was incited by exactly this kind of reckless remark. In an interview on Monday, Biden insisted it was a “mistake” and merely a figure of speech when NBC News anchor Lester Holt asked him about using the term “bullseye.”

“I didn’t say ‘crosshairs.’ I meant ‘bullseye,’” Biden clarified. “I meant focus on him. Focus on what he’s doing, focus on his policies, focus on the number of lies he told in the debate. Focus on… I mean there is a whole range of things that… Look, I am not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one. I am not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election.” Asked whether the shooting prompted him to do “some soul searching” and reflect on comments “that could incite people who are not balanced,” the incumbent deflected, arguing that it was Trump, not him, who has routinely used incendiary rhetoric for years.

”How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say something because it may incite somebody?” Biden wondered, recalling Trump’s pledge to become a “dictator” for just one day and his warning about a potential “bloodbath” if he loses. “I have not engaged in that rhetoric… My opponent has engaged in that rhetoric.” On Saturday, a gunman later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks fired several shots at Trump while he was giving a speech on an open-air stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. A bullet grazed the former president’s right ear, but he was otherwise unharmed. One spectator was killed, and two more were wounded before the attacker was neutralized by Secret Service agents. Although the attack was widely condemned by both Republicans and Democrats, Trump supporters have argued that the Democrats and the media were guilty of inciting hatred against Trump.

Read more …

Oh puhleeze. 3 years too late?!

• Biden Orders Security For Kennedy (RT)

Independent US presidential candidate Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., whose father was killed on the campaign trail, had long requested Secret Service protection to no avail, despite multiple security incidents. US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced on Monday that “in light of this weekend’s events, the president has directed me to work with the Secret Service to provide protection to Robert Kennedy Jr.” “Thank you, President Biden, for extending me Secret Service protection,” Kennedy said in a statement, also expressing gratitude to the security firm Gavin de Becker & Associates for “keeping me safe for the past 15 months of my presidential campaign.” The announcement comes shortly after Trump demanded that Kennedy receive protection. “In light of what is going on in the world today, I believe it is imperative that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. receive Secret Service protection – immediately,” the former president wrote on Truth Social. “Given the history of the Kennedy family, this is the obvious right thing to do!”

Kennedy met with Trump earlier on Monday to discuss “national unity,” and said he hoped to meet with “Democratic leaders about that as well,” dismissing rumors that he was planning to drop out of the race. Trump survived an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday when a gunman fired at least five rounds from an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in his direction, with one bullet grazing his right ear. A Trump supporter was killed, and two others were severely wounded in the attack. The assailant was shot dead on site by Secret Service officers. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose uncle, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and father, New York senator and presidential candidate, were both assassinated over half a century ago, filed an application for Secret Service protection last year. Despite several follow-ups, his requests were rejected by the White House.

Kennedy, who initially challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination before launching an independent bid last year, suffered multiple security incidents on his campaign trail. Last September, an armed man impersonating a federal officer was detained at his campaign event, while in October, a man was arrested for trespassing at his Los Angeles home.

Read more …

“Take your secret service and shove it up your ass.”

• Bobby Kennedy III Slams US Secret Service (RT)

Bobby Kennedy III, a member of the famous American political dynasty that has experienced the ‘Kennedy curse’ of assassinations, deaths, and accidents, has slammed the US Secret Service’s failure to detect Donald Trump’s attacker before he fired shots at the former president. According to eyewitnesses who spoke to the media, the suspect was seen on the rooftop of a manufacturing plant shortly before he targeted Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. “Unsecured rooftop 150 yards away. Multiple witnesses saying they were screaming at secret service and cops for 3-4 minutes as they watched the guy with the rifle crawl to the spot and line up his shot, Kennedy III wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. “Take your secret service and shove it up your ass.” Kennedy III is the son of current presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – whose uncle, former US President John F. Kennedy, and father, a New York senator and presidential candidate, were both assassinated in the 1960s.

Regarding the attempt on Trump’s life, eyewitnesses and video footage have depicted a chaotic scene as shots rang out at the event. Concerns have mounted about the level of security in the aftermath of the shooting, after multiple witnesses said police did not respond to warnings about the presence of the would-be assassin. The suspect, later identified as 20-year-old local Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed on the spot by Secret Service snipers. One bystander told the BBC that minutes before the attack, he and other people had seen a man crawling up on the roof carrying a rifle, and had tried to alert the police. “He had a rifle, we could clearly see a rifle,” Greg Smith told the broadcaster. “We’re like, ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle’… and the police did not know what was going on.”

In another report, law enforcement officials told the AP that a local policeman had spotted the shooter on the roof moments before he tried to kill Trump. However, the officer reportedly failed to stop the gunman after he pointed his AR-style rifle at him. “The fact that we’re hearing that people knew that there was a man on this roof with a gun, and were trying to get police attention while the president was up at the podium is just incredibly cause for concern and, I think, very frustrating for everyone,” Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN on Sunday. Trump narrowly escaped death after his attacker fired at least five shots. The presidential candidate was grazed by one of the bullets, sustaining a wound to his right ear. At least one rallygoer was killed in the attack by stray bullets, with two others sustaining gunshot wounds.

Read more …

“After numerous attempts to eliminate the Trump candidate from the political arena using first legal tools, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate, it was obvious for his life to be in danger.”

• Russian Reaction To The Trump Assassination Attempt Is Biblical (Helmer)

The Russian reaction to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is a combination – idol, whirlwind, sin, destruction, God, payoff — plus deep suspicion that either President Joseph Biden or Trump’s organization, or both of them, had a hand in fabricating what happened, plus conviction that they are now capitalizing on the outcome for all they are worth. The official line was given by the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman on sowing the whirlwind. The Kremlin spokesman followed with the calf of Samaria. “Yesterday,” wrote Maria Zakharova of the Foreign Ministry on Telegram, “one of the leaders of the Kiev regime, [Kirill] Budanov, openly admitted that Ukrainian intelligence was preparing attempts on the President of Russia. So this attempt was being prepared, again, for American money, without which there would have been no malicious activity of the GUR, the SBU and, in general, Bankova [the presidential office ].

With massive financing and uncontrolled supply of weapons, Washington has created a terrorist structure in Ukraine – the Kiev regime. It is a machine of murders, bombings, exterminations, and terrorist attacks against both political figures and civilians…TheUnited States of America should take stock of its policy of inciting hatred against political opponents, countries and people, and sponsoring terrorism. The bell is already ringing for Washington!” Dmitry Peskov for President Vladimir Putin said there is “no plan” for the latter to telephone Trump. He then implied the Biden plot by making a qualified denial. “We do not think and do not believe that the attempt to eliminate the presidential candidate Trump was organized by the current authorities, but the atmosphere that was created by this administration in the course of the political struggle, the atmosphere around the candidate Trump, it was that which provoked what today faced with America.”

Peskov then tipped the Kremlin in Trump’s direction: “After numerous attempts to eliminate the Trump candidate from the political arena using first legal tools, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate, it was obvious for his life to be in danger.” The state news agency RIA-Novosti tipped even further for Trump. “The assassination attempt on Donald Trump is surprising only because it happened on July 13, and not earlier — a year, three or eight years ago. The upstart, who challenged not only most of the American establishment, but also the ‘Washington swamp’ as such, has risked his head very much all these years… It is clear that now the ‘swamp denizens’ are biting their elbows because they did not think to kill Trump before November 2016: they underestimated the threat, did not believe in the reality of his victory.”

Tsargrad, an internet platform of Russian exceptionalism and Orthodoxy, treats Trump as a Russian ally in the war against Biden. “A bullet in Trump’s head is a blow to Russia: What remains behind the scenes of the assassination attempt on the ex-president of the United States — a real assassination attempt or a staging? The question, in fact, is not idle, especially in relation to Russia. After the appearance of an increasing number of details in the case of the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump, a lot of interesting things come up behind the scenes of the assassination attempt… This is the true face of hegemony and the unipolar world: anyone who is against globalism, who stands in its way, is first subject to demonization (through the tools of the abolition culture), then physical elimination…Globalists don’t care about the United States, just like everyone else. They need planetary power, the absolute power of supernational capital. And all countries, including America and Europe itself, are just tools in creating a World Government. Trump is for America and against the World Government. As Putin is for Russia, Xi Jinping is for China, Modi is for India, and Orban, Fico, Marine Le Pen and AfD are for Europe,”

Read more …

Can he try again? Perhaps not as Special Counsel?

• Trump Classified Docs Case Dismissed, Jack Smith Unconstitutional (ZH)

US District Court Judge Eileen Cannon has dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents case, ruling that the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional. “The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers,” Cannon wrote in her decision. “He can be appointed and confirmed through the default method prescribed in the Appointments Clause, as Congress has directed for United States Attorneys throughout American history.” “Dismissal of this action is the only appropriate solution for the Appointments Clause violation.” The ruling comes after Judge Cannon had indefinitely postponed the trial, and followed a May hearing in which Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta argued that the Justice Department’s Special Counsel’s Office decision to prosecute the valet was “both selective and vindictive.”

The ruling marks another blockbuster legal victory for Trump, following the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling that the former president has immunity from prosecution for many of his actions in office. According to Reuters, prosecutors are likely to appeal the ruling, as courts in other cases have repeatedly upheld the ability of the DOJ to appoint special counsels for politically sensitive investigations. But Cannon’s ruling throws the future of the case, which once posed serious legal peril for Trump, into doubt. Smith is also prosecuting Trump in federal court in Washington over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, but his lawyers have not made a similar challenge to the special counsel in that case.

In the documents case, Trump was indicted on charges that he willfully retained sensitive national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club after leaving office and obstructed government efforts to retrieve the material. Trump’s attorneys challenged the legal authority of Biden AG Merrick Garland’s 2022 decision to appoint Smith – arguing that the appointment violated the Constitution because his office was not created by Congress, nor was Smith confirmed by the Senate.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also boosted Trump’s challenge – directly questioning the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment. Thomas used similar arguments to those made by Trump’s legal team.

Read more …

Ha! They pull their no. 1 show just “to provide coverage via a single news feed..”

• MSNBC Yanks Morning Joe On Fears Of Inappropriate Trump Shooting Comments (ZH)

MSNBC has taken its celebrated “Morning Joe” off-air on Monday reportedly on fears that their well-known leftist hosts could say the wrong thing or something deeply insensitive about the Saturday Trump assassination attempt which could leave the network in a bind. The show is missing in action on this crucial day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “The progressive news network confirmed the decision to preempt its influential and top-rated morning show after a CNN inquiry Sunday evening,” CNN confirms. “The network said the show will resume airing Tuesday.” As speculation abounds, and as some try to dubiously claim that it’s ‘normal’ for Morning Joe to not air during a major political news event, NBC issued the following statement: “Given the gravity and complexity of this unfolding story, NBC News, NBC News NOW and MSNBC have remained in rolling breaking news coverage since Saturday evening,” a spokesperson said.

The press release followed with: “As we continue to cover this story into the week, the networks will continue to cross simulcast, alternating between NBC News, NBC News NOW and ‘MSNBC Reports,’ so there is one news feed covering this developing situation.” CNN then admitted the following based on one of its sources: “A person familiar with the matter told CNN that the decision was made to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole.” Indeed there is a long history of show hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski making astounding and highly incendiary claims which leave network executives facing scrutiny and having to field difficult questions. At the very least, the decision to pull the program on Monday displays lack of trust in the long-running program and hosts by top network leadership.

Conservative pundit Laura Loomer sounded off in wake of the decision, pointing out the following: “MSNBC has pulled Morning Joe off air this week because they don’t think their leftist hosts can control themselves from celebrating the attempted assassination of President Trump. Let’s be honest. The rhetoric from MSDNC, CNN, WAPO, NY TIMES and Joe Biden is a contributing factor to why Donald Trump almost had a bullet in his skull this week. They have been inciting violence against Trump for years, calling him Hitler, saying he’s a dictator and a “threat to democracy”. The shooter was probably even a Morning Joe viewer. I’d be willing to take that bet.”

Ironically some on the Left are miffed at the display of obvious lack of trust, with Liberal journalist Jeff Jarvis questioning on X, “What the f—, MSNBC? You preempted your excellent weekend programming… and now you’ve silenced [Morning Joe] in favor of your anodyne streaming news cos-play called Now?” “This is when we need the analysis and conversation these shows bring us (yes, with controversy; that is how public discourse works through it: with discussion),” he continued. “It is shocking that NBC/Comcast do not understand their own company’s programs and raison d’etre.” But again, MSNBC has not alluded to any deeper reasons behind temporarily pulling the program other than to say it wishes to provide coverage via a single news feed.

Read more …

Media.

• There’s Another Culprit In The Trump Murder Attempt (Bridge)

Americans from across the political spectrum were treated to yet more evidence that Donald Trump is an invincible force that cannot be easily reckoned with. But this perception will do little to mitigate the media hostility that poisons the US political scene. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time. Trump, who was addressing a crowd of supporters in Butler, Pennsylvania, was grazed by an assassin’s bullet during a campaign speech (how the would-be killer managed to get so close to the Republican frontrunner amid an army of Secret Service agents is a question for another day). What must concern Americans now is what exactly triggered this latest display of political violence. Several commentators pointed to reckless remarks Joe Biden made on a call with donors earlier this month, when the incumbent leader reportedly said: “I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump… So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

JD Vance, the senator from Ohio and a top contender to be Trump’s running mate, said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter): “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” While that is true, it is the media that happily promulgates such dangerous messages and which must be held at least partially responsible for the atmosphere of hate that now permeates the US political scene. While we constantly hear reports about unhinged individuals being ‘politically motivated,’ how about we give more attention to those who have been ‘media motivated’?

For starters, consider last month’s issue of the New Republic, a left-leaning political journal that featured on its cover a portrait of Trump made to resemble Adolf Hitler along with the inscription, “American fascism, what it would look like.” One month later and on the day of the shooting, the journal was whistling a different tune. “As I write these words, we don’t know what motivated 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to try to assassinate Trump,” wrote the TNR columnist Michael Tomasky, feigning ignorance and disbelief. “But whatever his motivation turns out to be, his act not isolated (sic)… I’d write that we’re about to enter a very dark period, but in fact we entered it long ago, and there’s no end in sight.”

You don’t say, Michael? As to be expected, there was no sign of Trump sporting the Hitler moustache to accompany the article. After reading literally hundreds of such hypocritical pieces that totally lack self-awareness, it becomes more obvious that the entire political field is rigged in favor of one team, namely the Democrats, over those of the Republicans. While the two factions enjoy roughly 50% support of the electorate, it’s no secret (although a great mystery) that the liberal left enjoys far greater public reach due to its overwhelming control of the national media. Thus, Democrats have much greater trust in the media since it generally reflects their own values.

Read more …

“..based on a realistic assessment of the situation” and on setting “realistic goals..”

• Orban Delivers Ukraine Peace Proposals To EU (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has sent proposals to EU leaders on ways to resolve the Ukrainian conflict, newspaper Magyar Nemzet reported on Monday, citing the PM’s political adviser Balazs Orban. The proposals are said to be based on the results of the premier’s controversial peace mission earlier this month, during which he visited Ukraine, Russia, and China. Orban provided EU leaders with a detailed account of his visits, and delivered Budapest’s action plan to their desks, Balazs Orban (no relation) told the newspaper. The adviser described Budapest’s proposals as being “based on a realistic assessment of the situation” and on setting “realistic goals,” without elaborating further. Balazs Orban claimed that there are “pro-war” political forces in the EU, and that the bloc is following the lead of the current US administration, which, he said, wants the conflict to continue.

”If Europe wants peace and wants to have a decisive say in the settlement of the war [in Ukraine] and the end of the bloodshed, then the change of course must be worked out and implemented now,” the adviser said. Hungary is one of the few member states to criticize the bloc’s stance on the conflict. Budapest has refused to go along with Brussels and send weapons to Kiev. It has also stalled financial aid to Ukraine. Viktor Orban’s recent visit to Moscow was condemned by senior EU figures, with Brussels seeking to distance itself from Orban’s efforts. According to the prime minister’s adviser, external mediators, such as China and Türkiye, could be vital to helping negotiate peace.

Hungary plans to use the six months of its rotating presidency of the, which began in July, to create conditions for peace talks. “If the union does not act now, it may not be able to act later,” Balazs Orban warned. During his visit to Kiev, the Hungarian leader called on Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire with Russia, a proposal the latter rejected. President Putin has repeatedly insisted that the hostilities can only end if Ukraine fulfills several of Russia’s demands – including legally binding guarantees that Kiev will not seek NATO membership, and the withdrawal of troops from the whole of Donbass, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. Kiev, along with its Western backers, have rejected the proposal, calling it an unacceptable ultimatum.

Read more …

They want NO FUTURE. None.

• Ex-US NATO Ambassador Tells Ukraine To Conscript Teenagers (RT)

Kiev should send 18-year-olds to fight Russia to increase the likelihood of victory, former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder has argued. Earlier this year, Ukraine lowered the draft threshold from 27 to 25 years as part of a major overhaul of the military service system, aimed at boosting mobilization rates. “This is a war being fought by 40-year-olds,” Daalder told Euronews on the sidelines of last week’s NATO summit in the US. “No other war in history has been fought by 40-year-olds.” “You need to get 18-year-olds, and you need to get 20-year-olds, and you need to get 21-year-olds, which is what every army in the rest of the world relies on,” he added. Both Russia and Ukraine have a system of mandatory conscription of young adult males, but 18-years-olds are not deployed to the frontline by either country.

Moscow has said it fully relies on contracted volunteers rather than mobilized reservists in the conflict with its NATO-backed neighbor, with roughly 1,000 people recruited per day, according to senior Russian officials. Daalder served as the US ambassador under President Barack Obama. He currently heads the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, a prominent corporate-funded think tank known for a hawkish foreign policy. Kiev has reformed its military since suffering significant casualties during last year’s failed attempt to push back Russian forces using Western-donated weapons. Draft avoidance emerged as a major problem, with many Ukrainian men risking their lives trying to cross the western border illegally. Weeks before Vladimir Zelensky signed into law the lowering of the draft age, US Senator Lindsey Graham urged him to do so during a trip to Kiev.

He said: “I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27. You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving – not at 25 or 27.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Ukrainian citizens to embrace the new rules, after they took effect in May. “Your recent mobilization was a difficult decision, but a necessary one,” he said in a speech at a prestigious Ukrainian university. Joining the military will “allow you to harden your defenses, to build more units, to take the fight to Russian aggressors.” Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Lozinsky said last month that a further reduction of the draft age was possible “if we are still fighting for our existence.” His political party Golos is widely considered to be aligned with US interests in the country.

Read more …

“The Global Alliance for Responsible Media is too sophisticated to simply bullhorn groups into silence. Instead, it strangles them financially.”

• Elon Musk is Right: End the Online Censorship Racket (Turley)

Few Americans have ever heard of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, let alone understand how it shapes what they read and hear in news and commentary. That may soon change. An alarming new report of the House Judiciary Committee details this organization’s work to censor conservative and opposing viewpoints in the media by targeting figures such as Joe Rogan and entire social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter). It is part of a massive censorship system that a federal court recently described as “Orwellian.” The sophistication of this system makes authoritarian regimes like China’s and Iran’s look like mere amateurs in censorship and blacklisting. In my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in the Age of Rage,” I discuss our history of speech crackdowns and how this is arguably the most dangerous anti-free speech period that we have faced as a nation. The reason is an unprecedented alliance of government, corporate, academic and media institutions supporting censorship and the targeting of largely conservative viewpoints.

As discussed in the book, there is a crushing irony to the current anti-free speech movement. During the Red Scare and the McCarthy period, it was the left that was targeted with blacklisting, censorship and arrests. It is now the left that has constructed a global censorship system that exceeds anything that Joe McCarthy even dreamt of in the control of news and commentary. Through the years, I have testified repeatedly in Congress on this system supported enthusiastically by President Biden and his administration. It has proven to be a frustrating game of whack-a-mole for civil libertarians. The Democrats in Congress have uniformly opposed any investigation or action on censorship while denying for years that there was a coordinated effort between government and corporations. When we were successful in uncovering components of this system, they were often quickly shut down as the work shifted to other components and assets.

One of the most insidious efforts has been to strangle the financial life out of conservative or libertarian sites by targeting their donors and advertisers. This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns. Years ago, I wrote about the Biden administration supporting efforts like the Global Disinformation Index to discourage advertisers from supporting certain sites. All of the 10 riskiest sites targeted by the index were popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. That included Reason.org and a group of libertarian and conservative law professors who simply write about cases and legal controversies. The Global Disinformation Index warned advertisers against “financially supporting disinformation online.” At the same time, HuffPost, a far-left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.

Once that index’s work and bias was disclosed, government officials quickly disavowed the funding. It was a familiar pattern. Within a few years, we found that the work had been shifted instead to groups like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which is the same thing on steroids. It is the creation of a powerful and largely unknown group called the World Federation of Advertisers, which has huge sway over the advertising industry and was quickly used by liberal activists to silence opposing views and sites by cutting off their revenue streams. These censorship groups typically proclaim that they are merely trying to promote “brand safety” when they target for suppression the same sites that challenge the political and media establishment. The group states that it “unites marketers, media agencies, media platforms, industry associations, and advertising technology solutions providers to safeguard the potential of digital media by reducing the availability and monetization of harmful content online.”

That “harmful content” seems to be the very same sites long targeted by the Biden administration and its allies in business, the media and academia. The internal communications of these censorship groups demonstrate their contributors’ underlying agenda. In one conversation between Global Alliance for Responsible Media co-founder Rob Rakowitz and individuals with an associated “GroupM,” two executives explained to Rakowitz how they identified sites that they did not like and simply monitored them until they could find something that crossed the line. An example is the Daily Wire, a site hated by liberals for its conservative viewpoints and critiques of mainstream media.

In describing how they work to bag such sites, John Montgomery, executive vice president of Global Brand Safety, explained: “There is an interesting parallel here with Breitbart. Before Breitbart crossed the line and started spouting blatant misinformation, we had long discussions about whether we should include them on our exclusion lists. As much as we hated their ideology and bulls–t, we couldn’t really justify blocking them for misguided opinion. We watched them very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line.” In other words, they preselected the sites and then followed their every move like a patrol unit following a car to wait for them to go one mile per hour over the limit. This is called “deplatforming,” a favorite term from higher education, whereby liberal groups organize to shout down and block speakers with opposing views. The Global Alliance for Responsible Media is too sophisticated to simply bullhorn groups into silence. Instead, it strangles them financially.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Pepsi

 

 

Meonk


https://twitter.com/i/status/1812845098469908600

 

 

Pigeon cat

 

 

Elephant
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812727308475683222

 

 

Orca

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

 Newer Entries