Pablo Picasso Etude Pour Mercure 1924
🚨 ELON MUSK ON WHO SHOULD CONTROL HIS COMPANIES:
— As Found (@AsFoundX) September 2, 2026
“Succession is one of the toughest age-old problems. It’s plagued countries, kings, prime ministers and presidents, and CEOs, since the dawn of history. There is no obvious solution.
There are particular individuals I’ve…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 3, 2026
They are Americans who want America to lose. Because Trump.
• Trump Rages Against ‘Treasonous Scum’ In Media For Iran War Coverage (ZH)
President Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday to rage against US media coverage of the Iran war (not for the first time), following Treasury Scott Bessent giving similar scathing remarks earlier this week. Trump particularly singled out recent and ongoing reports of US missile and interceptor shortages, which he has slammed as false. He called out the “treasonous SCUM” in the media for issuing supposedly inaccurate reports on “our Military Operation in Iran” – claiming that the US has “virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition”.Read more …
But also notably, and in a seeming implicit contradiction, he said the USA is not at the moment “selling them to others” but is producing and stockpiling at “levels never seen before.” This is amid an ongoing scramble for Europe to find an avenue to transfer more Patriots to Ukraine, as Zelensky is essentially betting for more missiles.
Trump once again further blamed the prior Biden administration for handing “hundreds of Billions of Dollars” to Ukraine and NATO “free of charge” in connection with the war with Russia. From think tanks to NY Times to Wall Street Journal to independent media, pundits, journalists and officials have been raising the alarm on the issue. This also comes after Trump told journalists in the Oval Office on Monday that the “older stuff” can always be used, when he was pressed over whether the United States is running out of standoff munitions:
Q: Several military leaders have reportedly told Hegseth that a prolonged, large-scale operation in Iran weakens our ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the homeland. Have you heard that?
TRUMP: We’re very respected. Nobody else would be crazy enough to do it… We have unlimited amounts of… older stuff.
And then on Wednesday in formal remarks Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blasted the media for its recent coverage. He went so far as to scold the media for being the best allies that the Iranians have. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has over the past months made similar remarks, invoking themes of ‘treason’. “One of the best allies that the Iranians have on this is the media because the media immediately publishes all the lies that they say,” Bessent had proclaimed at the G20 meeting in Asheville. “Everyone in this audience and every news outlet should be ashamed for publishing that, taking a lying regime at face value,” Bessent added.
Bessent on Iran:
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 1, 2026
One of the best allies Iran has is the media.
The media immediately publishes all the lies that Iran says.
There are no mines in the strait. Two ships did not hit mines. pic.twitter.com/SdhyOOye1BBessent has given other statements this week advancing Bush-style “you are either with us or against us” talking points related to the Iran war. The Iran war this week reached the six-month mark, after White House officials initially repeatedly sought to ‘assure’ Americans it would be a four to six week operation.
All the way back in May, Trump rebuked a well-known NY Times reporter for a line of questioning that the president framed as “treasonous” coverage of the “victory” accomplished by the United States. “I had a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you, write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy. We had a total military victory. I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you write. You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it’s treason,” Trump had told David Sanger at the time aboard Air Force One.
“Never before has there been a case of the head of one state threatening civilian aircraft in the skies of another.”
• Russian Experts Respond To Zelensky’s Threats To Attack Civil Aviation (RT)
On the first day of September, Vladimir Zelensky declared that Russian civil aviation is under threat because of Ukrainian drone attacks.Read more …
Russian authorities and diplomats saw clear signs of terrorism in this barely concealed threat and stressed that this is not the first time Ukraine has demonstrated its commitment to the cruelest and most inhumane methods of warfare. Former president and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev called for retribution and even hinted at strikes against the sponsors of this terrorism – the leaders of Western countries.This article presents comments by leading Russian military and aviation experts, analysts, and publicists reacting to this latest escalation by Kiev.
Roman Gusarov, aviation expert, Editor-in-Chief of aviaru.net
Any sane person can interpret this only as a direct threat to civil aviation, to aircraft in the sky, and to ground infrastructure. This is simply beyond the pale. Never before has there been a case of the head of one state threatening civilian aircraft in the skies of another.And here, unfortunately, what depresses me even more is the silence of Western public organizations and human rights groups. I am not even talking about aviation organizations like the International Civil Aviation Organization. Zelensky’s threat is a violation of all international conventions. There should have been an immediate reaction. These are threats to the safety of civilian flights. What more is needed? Yet there is no reaction at all. And in essence, this is silent consent. Or perhaps even approval. It is simply very sad.
The world has been turned upside down. Until recently, we could not even imagine that something like this could be said – and then met with silence. Still, behind such a statement I see not so much a real threat as a certain act of desperation. I believe that after a week of massive strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure – its ports, energy facilities, storage depots, warehouses, and everything else – Zelensky is looking for at least some way to stop all of this, but can find no other means than to resort to direct threats and intimidation.
The purpose of this statement is not so much actual strikes and the possibility of carrying them out, as intimidation in the hope that foreign jurisdictions and airlines will be frightened and stop flying to Russia. In other words, the main target was not really Russia, but our partners, in order to provoke fear and a reaction from them.
Because if we look at the practical possibility of carrying out these plans, I do not see it. We have had massive raids, for example against the Moscow region, with more than a thousand drones in a single day. And here it does not matter whether they are flying to strike a particular airport or simply in the direction of Moscow. Our air defense system and our security system work preemptively, cleanly, and in coordination.
As soon as it becomes clear that drones are moving toward a given region – that is, once there is information from air defense systems – the airspace is immediately closed, all aircraft leave that air zone for alternate airfields. Aircraft do not take off, do not climb, airports are shut down. And during all the years of the Special Military Operation, thankfully, there has not been a single dangerous encounter between a civilian aircraft and a drone. Precisely because this system works. And it will continue to work in exactly the same way. Therefore, I do not see any particular danger here for aircraft in the air.
I do not rule out the possibility of deliberately damaging ground infrastructure, specifically strikes on airports. Theoretically, such a thing may be possible to carry out somehow. But hardly in the Moscow area, because it is completely secured – and that accounts for 80% of flights in the country, the lion’s share. Somewhere in the regions they may try to do something like that. But given that foreign airlines mostly fly to Moscow, I also do not see any reason for them to panic and cancel flights or stop operations.
Viktor Litovkin, retired colonel and military commentator
This can only be viewed as an act of state terrorism. When the towers in New York were struck in 2001, only afterward did we learn who had claimed responsibility. But this underdeveloped clown is announcing in advance that he and his clique will carry out terrorist acts against aviation flying over Russia and around the world. This is a serious statement that should, of course, attract the attention of the international community. I think Western countries will simply turn a deaf ear to all this, because they believe Zelensky and his accomplices are unlikely to dare carry out some strike that would harm Western companies.But for Russian aircraft and other aircraft over Russia, this threat exists, and it can be countered in only one way – by destroying the criminal terrorist regime that exists in Kiev. There is no other way, because with terrorists the conversation is short: they must be exterminated like cockroaches, there can be no other outcome.
Western authorities aren’t interested in international law in this case – anything that is done against Russia, they will support all of it. They should remember that Russia is a nuclear power. This bear is very patient, very calm for the time being, and then suddenly it swings a paw – and half your head is gone. That is how a bear behaves when it is provoked. So if they continue – they may only have themselves to blame later.
Dmitry Kornev, military expert, founder of the Military Russia project
First of all: Zelensky says that the number of Ukrainian drones striking targets deep inside Russian territory will be so great that civilian air traffic will become impossible. That is, he is not speaking of striking civilian airfields, he is not speaking of striking civilian aircraft; he is speaking of such a high intensity of Ukrainian drone raids that, during such raids, civilian airports would cease operations and civilian air service across the entire European part of the Russian Federation would be shut down.Question number one: where will Ukraine get so many drones to organize such a large-scale attack? It may well be that they have built up certain reserves. In the coming weeks we will see, we will find out whether that is the case or not. God willing, I may be wrong. The second point is that they may deliberately send drones specifically toward civilian airports so that the mere appearance of a drone would halt airport operations. In that case, for dozens of civilian airports in the European part of the country, Kiev could probably find dozens of drones. Unfortunately, this is possible.
Where do these drones even come from, given the systematic strikes by the Russian Aerospace Forces and missile troops against facilities on Ukrainian territory, including those linked to drone production? This can be explained in only one way: they have succeeded in creating such a distributed drone production system that knocking out individual or even dozens of facilities does not lead to the cessation of output. Theoretically this is possible – if they have learned to scale production across hundreds of production sites, then yes, it is expensive, yes, it entails additional costs, but it ensures the uninterrupted assembly of drones even if some links in that production chain are taken out.
It is quite likely that, if over several years we have not been able to destroy and stop drone production in Ukraine, then even massive strikes over several days or even weeks will not produce such a result. And one must understand that Kiev has been preparing for this; Kiev has been preparing for distributed production capable of withstanding prolonged Russian missile raids. Whether it works or not, we will find out in the coming weeks.
“The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that the quality of relations is already at an all-time low due to London’s conduct..”
• Moscow Has Stopped Calling Britain ‘Great.’ Here’s why (Alexander Bobrov)
Recently, Russian officials and state media have been deliberately using the toponym ‘Britain’ instead of ‘Great Britain’ and ‘United Kingdom’ to refer to the nation that, just a few decades ago, was known as ‘the empire on which the sun never sets’. Speaking at a press conference dedicated to reviewing the results of Russian diplomacy in 2025, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on this rhetorical innovation. “No offense meant, but I think that this is what it should be called, because Great Britain is the only example when a country calls itself great. Another example was the Great Libyan Jamahiriya, but that country is no more,” Lavrov said.Read more …
Although the prefix ‘great’ was not originally intended as a symbol of significance, but was adopted for geographical reasons – to distinguish the nation of Britain from the French region of Brittany – it is clear that the choice of wording is not simply a diplomatic ploy reflecting the subjective opinion of the Russian Foreign Ministry, but a paradigmatic shift in Russia’s perception of the country.Taking into account the completion of the diplomatic mission of Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrei Kelin and the lack of an immediate successor, the Times has spread rumors about a possible downgrade in diplomatic relations between Moscow and London. The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that the quality of relations is already at an all-time low due to London’s conduct, and British Ambassador to Russia Nigel Casey expressed hope for the current status quo to be maintained; however, it is absolutely clear that the dialogue between the two nuclear powers is on the brink of collapse.
A possible downgrade in diplomatic relations doesn’t simply mean recalling the ambassador and entrusting the mission to a lower-ranking diplomat known as ‘chargé d’affaires’; it is a calculated political signal of dissatisfaction with the foreign policy of the other side that reduces relations to a bare minimum. Worse still, this could be followed by a complete rupture of diplomatic relations, which typically occurs at the start of a direct military confrontation.
Therefore, to understand whether a further deterioration of the situation, fraught with the most serious consequences for global politics, should be expected, it seems logical to ask two classic questions found in both British and Russian literature: “Who is to blame?” and “What is to be done?”
“Who is to blame?” Back in the mid-19th century, British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, attempting to convey the idea that the country’s foreign policy should be based not on personal sympathies but on the cynical defense of its own national interests, formulated London’s subsequent foreign policy doctrine, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” This formula most accurately captures the essence of British policy in regard to Russia.
Despite ad hoc agreements between the two countries in the 16th century (e.g., Richard Chancellor’s expedition in 1553) and a military alliance during the First and Second World Wars (the Northern Convoys are usually considered the apogee of this military brotherhood), relations between the two countries were never truly allied, as the British monarchy viewed Russia (regardless of its political system) as a geopolitical adversary. This sentiment was reflected in the popular Russian saying, “The Englishwoman is up to no good!”
At the time of the Russian Empire, Great Britain was the leading world power, and was responsible for assembling a hostile anti-Russia coalition during the Crimean War (1853-1855) and systematically pursuing a policy of weakening Russian influence in Central Asia (which birthed the geopolitical term ‘The Great Game’). In the period between the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, London did everything in its power to deepen the political crisis in Russia.
First, King George V refused to fulfill the request of his relative, Nicholas II, for political asylum, which resulted in the execution of the Russian royal family; and then he took a direct part in the military intervention during the Russian Civil War. As a result, British forces were present in various corners of Russia: in the north (Murmansk and Arkhangelsk), in the Black Sea region (Odessa, Crimea, and Novorossiysk), in the Caucasus (from Batumi to Baku), and even in Central Asia (in Turkmenistan and along the Central Asian Railway).
Finally, during the Soviet era, then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous Fulton Speech, marking the beginning of the Cold War following his government’s failure to implement Operation Unthinkable, which envisioned a massive attack on the Soviet armed forces.
It’s hardly surprising that today, London plays a key role in supporting Ukraine in its quest to inflict a so-called ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia. Having signed a critical minerals agreement with Ukraine and acting as the informal leader of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, the British authorities are doing everything they can to prevent reconciliation between Kiev and Moscow. They have the simple goal of ensuring that Ukraine continues to serve as a springboard for attacks on Russia, enabling the UK to rapidly militarize its own economy and rearm in preparation for a future military conflict.
It would suffice to recall how in April 2022, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on Russia to withdraw its troops from Kiev, giving Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky the opportunity to both preserve his shaky power and regroup forces with the goal of transforming the Special Military Operation into a protracted military conflict. Current British Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues his predecessor’s work.
Despite initially promising to focus on resolving the country’s many domestic problems, he is spending his time and money lobbying for more military aid for Kiev and coordinating the illegal detention of the vessels of the so-called ‘shadow fleet’ in international waters.
Trump likes the British Royals.
• President Trump Was Just Asked About Harry and Meghan (Victoria Taft)
President Donald Trump says that he, for one, is “happy” that the boorish Prince Harry and Meghan self-deported from the United States, at least temporarily. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex fled California to put their children in proper British schools where children learn things about Western Civilization — and how to count.Read more …
The two, who quit the royal family, were loaned a Cotswold manse by a British billionaire hedge fund manager who’s been a friend of both Prince William and Harry for years. Ian Wace’s financial help is why Harry and Meghan didn’t have to give up their Montecito manse or their Portugal vacation home when they wanted a house to live in while they came back to Britain.Of course, Harry and Meghan were gifted a royal house, Frogmore Cottage, by the Queen when they were first married, but they gave it up when they quit working for the royal family. Had they stayed in The Firm, as the royals call the family business, they would have had a house and free schooling, and would have been earning money from a titled property by now, but oh, well.
During an Oval Office gaggle, the president, who might have Iran, the bond market, and more important things on his mind, was asked by a British reporter about the Sussexes leaving the States. Without hesitation, President Trump blurted out, “I’m happy about it! I was NOT a fan.”
President Trump said Wednesday he is "not a fan" of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and that he's "happy" the pair left the United States to return to the U.K.
— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 2, 2026
"I thought they treated the royal family with great disrespect," Trump said. "I didn't like it.… pic.twitter.com/2dy7q2mYx4Trump and Harry and Meghan have traded barbs before. In fact, the Sussexes indicated that Trump was one of the reasons they were leaving the U.S., but nobody actually believes that after they chose to jump back into public life in Britain, which they previously found too daunting.
But even people with titles must bow to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. A girl’s gotta eat, you know. The president said of the two royal ingrates that “They treated the royal family with great disrespect. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way she acted.” He wasn’t done yet, however, because he’s Donald Trump and can’t stop himself. “I have a very good relationship with the Queen. Really good,” he said.
“I have a really good relationship with King Charles — when he was Prince Charles and King Charles,” he continued. “I’ve known him for a very long time. Great guy.” Only Donald Trump can characterize a monarch by talking about what a “great guy” he is. But here was the kill shot, as only Trump could deliver it. “I thought she was terribly disrespectful to the Queen, to King Charles. I don’t know. Maybe I’m different. I wouldn’t have taken them back,” he said.
It’s unclear and probably unlikely that the royal family has “taken them back.” The royals have as little to do with the messy Sussexes as possible. Harry and Meghan have spilled tea about the family — some of it may actually be true — and burned bridges via their Oprah interview and Harry’s memoir. They’ve proven to be untrustworthy and grifting. They’ve been cut off.
In July, however, Harry and Meghan visited King Charles at Highgrove, which is in the Cotswolds, when they were in the neighborhood, staying at their billionaire buddy’s house. It could be their final family trip with the royals. Charles has an unknown form of cancer, and he’s getting his affairs in order. And the guy who will succeed to the throne is completely disgusted by his brother’s antics. I predict the Sussexes will sell their Montecito house in the next year or so, and Meghan will have begun doing her lifestyle brand videos and TV shows from her Cotswolds estate.
No more US-Canada?
• USMCA Termination Announcement Looming? (CTH)
For those waiting patiently for the USMCA termination announcement, this is a potential indication and/or signal of pendency. When President Trump and USTR Jamieson Greer send the official notification, a six-month countdown clock begins running. As of right now there are no official statements that indicate the likely triggering, it’s a guess. However, there are datapoints aligning in that direction.Read more …
No one outside our assembly has contemplated the termination of the USMCA (CUSMA) or what would occur in the aftermath; however, the Bank of Canada has gamed out the financial consequences, briefly in their forward guidance. The ramifications are significant, perhaps more significant than any other global trade announcement. […] “it more likely that a new shock or a combination of shocks could cause several vulnerabilities to crystalize at once. If this were to happen, these vulnerabilities could interact and reinforce each other.A cascading series of events could cause a sharp loss of investor confidence and lead to a spike in demand for liquidity or rapid asset sales. Funding markets could come under pressure, and stress could spread more broadly.” I suggest we keep a close eye on all U.S-Mexico discussions, as well as geopolitical leverage points that might surface in the U.S-Mexico relationship. My best guess is that once the U.S. and Mexico come to renewed terms on the ‘USMCA’ as a potential bilateral free trade agreement, that will be the moment when the planets are aligned for the termination notification.
The financial markets in Canada are tied directly to the independent strength of the Canadian economy. Which is to say, the financial system in Canada is dependent on historic ties to the United States. Pull out all of the dependencies within the economy, a result of a fracturing of the “geopolitical relationship,” and suddenly the Bank of Canada faces a “cascading series of events” they have not previously had to entertain.
A significant number of multinational corporations within Canada are geographically centered due to American proximity and the dependency that has historically been considered a partnership. That relationship has now changed, and despite Mark Carney saying that Canada can be stronger standing alone, there is no economic model for Canada to retain its wealth position without the inherent subsidy that proximity to America provides.
There is no ‘partnership’ with Europe and/or China, or a combination of partnerships, that can replace the one-way nature of the subsidies from the U.S. economy that Canada enjoys. If the Canadian people, workers and companies therein, have to rely on their own domestic economic activity to fund their GDP, their lifestyle will have to modify in very significant ways. Now, I want you to think about the Bank of Canada’s previous statement against the backdrop of this announcement yesterday:
The Dutch central bank (DNB) has transferred approximately 86 metric tons of gold out of the U.S. and Canada to the U.K., seeking to shore up its contingency planning in view of “increasing geopolitical unrest.”Just over one-quarter of the central bank’s gold reserves held in New York and Ottawa had been shifted to London between March and August, DNB said Wednesday.
Prepare your affairs accordingly.
Paul Craig Roberts
• Multiculturalism, Diversity and the Destruction of Western Civilization (PCR)
Multiculturalism’s advocates present their agenda in terms of enhancing diversity. By diversity they mean more variety, not what the DEI advocates mean by the word–replacement of merit by some definition of privilege, such as race, gender, sexual preference.Read more …
The goal of multiculturalism is miscegenation. The result is the disappearance of diversity into a mixture born naked of a history, mores, a language, and a religion. The abstract universalism of multiculturalism is at odds with the multifaceted reality of different cultures. A people are rooted in an original genus. There is a common soul that endures, and whatever the adaption through time, there is continuity. A common history, beliefs, language unites them. Many peoples means much diversity. Miscegenation destroys diversity. In its place are new people without a history.The agenda of miscegenation has been institutionalized in corporate advertising, in entertainment, and in literature. White women are shown with black men. White men are shown with Asian and Hispanic women. What are the children?
Continuity, a sense of connectedness, is essential to society and to human happiness. Americans have expressed unease, sadness, and a sense of violation when returning to hometowns to find them occupied territories, inhabited by people of whom they know nothing. The same sense of loss is felt when returning to grandparents’ farm where one spent summers playing in creeks and picking blackberries, scuppernongs and muscadines and finding in its place a subdivision.
The same kinds of sadness and sense of loss has been brought to us by the white liberals’ social engineering schemes. Congressional authority has been eroded by being turned over to regulatory agencies who in turn are in the hands of the corporate interests they are supposed to regulate. Constitutional protections have been lost in pursuit of liberal “good intentioned” agendas and “national security.” American sovereignty has been compromised by international agreements serving utopian or misguided agendas or simply serving monied interests.
Moral character has been lowered by the acceptance of pornography, sexual perversion, coarse language replete with the F-word even among young girls. Older women report that one consequence of feminism is that today dating and marriage is not what it used to be, but about finding a sexual partner who delivers orgasms. People no longer have any pride in their appearance and appear in public dressed in ways that would have embarrassed their forebears. Over my life I have seen America’s goodness shrivel. What is claimed as progress is often at the expense of the Constitution. Child Protective Services, which did not exist during my earlier decades, has substituted itself for parental authority. Twelve-year old American girls are on contraceptive pills.
We can say that technology has brought degeneracy, which would be an admission that technology is the enemy of moral conscience, which in some ways it is. Today’s AI technology is eliminating human interaction. Imagine the sense of loss of connectivity and alienation that comes from having to converse with robotic voices with whom no empathy and no understanding can be established.
As a longtime friend of libertarianism because of its defense of liberty, and a longtime defender of capitalism because of its former efficiency in allocating resources, I acknowledge that the pursuit of profit has produced an anti-human technology that will aid and abet Multicultural severance of peoples from their roots and leave a rootless undefined mass in place of human societies. The AI technology is alien to human society. It is being imposed on us by fools who believe that their profits will rise by eliminating human labor. The fools need to ask themselves who among the unemployed whose labor is not needed is going to buy the products of their machines?
This question is not being asked, just as the question where are the better jobs that allegedly took the place of US manufacturing jobs. Academic economists are too occupied debating the properties of abstract models to even notice. The important question is: Who is looking at the cost of an anti-human technology, of the cost of humans living in a world in which they have no purpose? Another question: How did short-term greed–the next quarter’s profits–take over the economic organization of the American economy? What an enormous failure this indicates of our leaders’ inability to think beyond the next quarter’s profits.
The same failure permeates our political theorists, sociologists, philosophers. Why is American society content to be dominated by an anti-human technology such as AI? Anyone inclined to investigate such a question would not be able to get funding. Just as the US government is unable to extricate itself from its illegal, immoral assistance to Israel’s war against Iran and the Muslim Middle East, it is unable to contain an anti-human technology that is substituting robotic for human contact. Several years ago we already had Japanese men marrying their robotic sex dolls.
Today history is taught as white ethnicities oppressing peoples of color. It was once taught as the formation of a people, their development, the evolution of their language and beliefs that made them a people, their successes and failures, their rise and fall, their contributions to the continuing rise of humanity out of barbarism. Today the Western world descends into a barbarism ever more honored by Trump, the NY Times, CNN, NPR, and morally corrupt political parties throughout the once civilized Western world. Formerly “civilized” had a large meaning. Today it means nothing but a high technology society, regardless of whether it is civilized.
As I watch the totality of Western Civilization’s collapse, I am thankful that at my age I will not have to experience the final collapse as did, in The Camp of the Saints, the elderly French professor Calgues, as he watched the arrival of one million Indians in decrepit ships approach the undefended Mediterranean coast of France. Collapse can come from within as well as from outside. Western civilization is undergoing both kinds of collapse. To discuss it is considered racist.
“Congressional Democrats blocked an effort to introduce a constitutional amendment to bar the Court’s expansion, with many members reiterating their demand to pack the Court to create an instant liberal majority.”
• Democrats Seek to Reform Institution More Popular Than They Are (Turley)
Supreme Irony: The Democrats insisted the Court is broken and no longer legitimate because of partisan rulings they want reversed by a packed Court. Ironically, the vote came with the release of the latest Harvard-Harris polling showing that Congress itself is still the least respected institution, while the Supreme Court holds higher approval than either the White House or Congress. Congress is still wallowing at 34 percent approval among the American people. Both parties are equally disliked, with 55% disapproval of the GOP and 53% disapproval of the Democratic Party.Read more …
Conversely, the Supreme Court continues to enjoy far greater approval from the public, currently at 49% at “very favorable” or “favorable.” So which institution is being targeted for elimination or radical reform? Of course, it is the more popular Supreme Court. Packing the court and other measures are unpopular with the public. Instead, Democrats hope to achieve these reforms through legislation. However, it must then pass judicial review.Liberal professors and pundits have identified a court takeover as essential to, as one law professor put it, guaranteeing that the Democrats never lose another national election. As former Attorney General Eric Holder and Democratic strategist James Carville have made clear, it is about power and guaranteeing its retention.
There are now calls for a litmus test for Democratic candidates to pack the Court or get the sack. Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) wants to take over the Court to reverse rulings against racial gerrymandering while other Democrats have demanded packing the Court to reverse immigration rulings. They join a growing list of figures demanding the hostile takeover of the Court from Kamala Harris to Pete Buttigieg.
At its base is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Court’s role. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) not only renewed her previous call to pack the court but said the court was illegitimate for rendering decisions against “widely held public opinion.” However, the court was meant to be counter-majoritarian to protect minority groups and viewpoints from the majority will. Notably, this effort is not even popular with the majority. It is a power play to force major institutional changes through Congress, including radically changing a Court that is more popular than Congress itself.
“The democratic socialist approach relies on one central idea: tearing down all the nation’s existing institutions and replacing them with a system that eliminates inequality by redistributing wealth and status.”
• Democratic Socialism: A Limited Appeal to Voters (Karnick)
The defeat of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Francesca Hong in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary arrives as good news for the vast majority of Americans who are not among the DSA’s 120,000 members. It was, however, a very close race. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who was endorsed by Gov. Tony Evers (a fellow Democrat), received 39.8 percent of the vote, to Hong’s 39.3 percent. Hong was a weak candidate and a poor standard-bearer for the DSA agenda, possessing none of the charisma and political talent of DSA superstar New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.Read more …
Hong’s charisma shortage limited her appeal to voters and led to the refusal of prominent DSA favorites Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to endorse her. The missing endorsements were probably dispositive in such a close race. I think Hong’s failure to get past the post in the Democrat primary illustrates a greater problem for the collectivist “democratic socialist” movement. The democratic socialist approach relies on one central idea: tearing down all the nation’s existing institutions and replacing them with a system that eliminates inequality by redistributing wealth and status to those who have allegedly been unfairly denied these things.The movement necessarily relies on coercion, which it justifies through the fomenting of grievances against anyone who can be characterized as having done well for themselves under what the democratic socialists characterize as a fundamentally corrupt society built on racism, sexism, classism, imperialism, and other cruel isms that toxically masculine Euro-trash imposed on stolen land originally occupied by noble, ecologically conscious people of peace and universal benevolence who were cruelly eliminated by massacres, deliberately infected smallpox blankets, and truly awful real estate swindles.
Armed with the premise that freedom is the root cause of people’s suffering today and always, and intent on imposing universal equality (except for themselves, the pigs who are always more equal than others), the democratic socialists’ progressive predecessors (whom the media laughably call moderates) imposed collectivist remedies that inevitably backfired, making conditions steadily worse for decades.
High crime rates, mass homelessness, unaffordable housing, single-parent households, education decline, increasing economic inequality, and the like have all been caused by government policies ostensibly intended to help the needy. The proponents of these disastrous measures then use the increasingly dire resulting conditions to call for more power for themselves to solve the problems they created.
To deflect attention from their own culpability for these evils, the politicians and the media place the blame on people not on their team, such as “the wealthy.” They isolate and demonize these alleged enemies of all that is good and right, to delegitimize their unpleasant, embarrassing questions about causes and effects. That is how leftist politicians thrive even though their proposed solutions make things much worse. The greater the decline in economic and social conditions, the more blame and hatred they can heap on the out groups.
There is, however, an obvious problem with this type of scapegoating. If the out groups you are demonizing are too big, you won’t be able to gain a political majority, even with the help of a lot of cheating. Clearly, that is the real reason the DSA bigwigs refused to support Hong’s candidacy. In addition to calling for eliminating all police and prisons and claiming that “Police exist to uphold white supremacy,” Hong has a long history of Twitter/X statements targeting white people and “whiteness,” especially “old white dudes.”
Most notoriously, Hong wrote in 2019 of leaving a beloved Wisconsin fast-food restaurant because she was “on the verge of a [sic] anxiety attack” due to the presence of “to [sic] many old white people who didn’t think we spoke English.”
Four out of five people living in Wisconsin are white. The median age in the state is 40, above the national average, and 18.5 percent of Wisconsinites are 65 or older. Sixty-one percent self-identify as Christians. Donald Trump won the state’s presidential race with 49.6 percent of the vote in 2024. Just under half of Wisconsin’s population is male, of course. That is a lot of people to eliminate from your potential election coalition.
Hong’s defeat thus indicates a fundamental weakness of the DSA’s strategy and of collectivism in general. The necessary demonization of opponents eliminates ever-greater numbers of potential supporters. The party’s tent shrinks steadily as the list of scapegoated out-groups lengthens. This can work in places such as New York City and Chicago, at least for a while, as there are enough self-described victims (many of them very wealthy) to create majorities. In less-cosmopolitan locales like Wisconsin, aspiring autocrats must be much more careful about which voting groups they are willing to put publicly on the chopping block.
If DSA-affiliated candidates in those places speak too openly about their obsessions, their excessive zeal and candor could reduce the movement’s appeal significantly below its outlier status.It seems undeniable that the DSA and its political sympathizers agree with Hong on the issues. Where they evidently differ deeply is on the political viability of their agenda when its innate hostility to the great majority of Americans is honestly presented.
Clearly, leaders on the left believe concealment of the movement’s real foundations and extensive hatreds is far more important than the very small policy distance between Hong and Crowley. Similarly, suppression of the truth about democratic socialism is the obvious reason behind Ocasio-Cortez’s recent attempt to pretend she now believes “Woke One was crazy.” It’s all part of a strategy of hiding the full extent of the democratic socialists’ enemies list, not any change of policy, ideology, or the targets of their ire.
“..we are in a modern medieval world.”
• The Left Is Dragging America Back to the Dark Ages (Victor Davis Hanson)
The more you look around us today, I think a good description of 2026, culturally, economically, socially, politically, is that we are in a modern medieval world.Read more …
Maybe we’re progressive regressives, and I don’t mean that just in the sense that progressives are regressive, and they are, but that one part of our society is advancing at lightning speed to the future and progressing. But the other part is regressing, and regressing at a phenomenal pace back to what I would call the medieval period.Remember, the medieval period was roughly that area in time after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, roughly AD 500 to around AD 1300 to 1400, the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. In medievalism, we often talk about primitivism after the destruction of the classical world during the Dark Ages, the early medieval period, and it’s characterized by epidemics, bubonic plague, typhus, typhoid, smallpox, terrible sanitation in urban centers. They had forgotten the Roman use of sewage and aqueducts.
There were open borders. National states popped up that couldn’t defend themselves, so you saw castles and walls pop up all over the European countryside in a way you had not during the Roman period. In cities, they were walled, towns even, and the gates closed at dusk to prevent gratuitous crime.
But at the same time that this was happening, you had some of the greatest works of literature in the Western world. You had Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” Dante’s “Inferno,” St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica.” And if you look at the architectural expertise and scientific knowledge of architecture, it was progressing at a geometric rate when you look at the huge cathedrals at Seville or Cologne.
I should remind everybody that around 536, Santa Sofia was created, the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. It would be the largest church in Christendom for a thousand years. And everything from the mass production of crossbows to eyeglasses was a product of the medieval period, even if, as I said, the daily lives of most people were wretched.
Now let’s switch to the modern period. All of us now can call anywhere in the world in seconds on our iPhones. Anything you want to know, past, present, future, you can just get on a cheap computer and ask an artificial intelligence program from the many free platforms. You can watch movies, you can watch entertainment on satellites. Anything you want is at your fingertips.
The nation itself is exploring space. We’re getting close to conquering cancer. I can attest to that. Computers allow you to write without even speaking. You can, unfortunately, compose a whole term paper or a book with AI. You can make a movie with AI.
Yet at the same time that’s happening, look at what’s going on in Berkeley here in California or Los Angeles. We’re seeing outbreaks of medieval diseases that we thought had been conquered years ago, given our sophisticated knowledge of sewage and water treatment. We had a typhus breakout in Los Angeles. We had leptospirosis, a rat disease, in Berkeley. You look at the homeless camps all over our major cities. People are just out in the open fornicating, urinating, defecating, injecting drugs. There’s tons of feces that has to be removed, and it’s so strange in this modern medievalism.
We have sophisticated researchers who go into a hospital in Chicago or go to a cancer center in San Francisco and have to check the bottoms of their shoes to make sure they don’t have feces as they go into their space-age laboratories. It’s really funny. In the medieval period, public hangings and beheadings were sort of public events that people flocked out to see. Is that any different than our glorification of murderers?
And there is a difference. Luigi Mangione, they named an opera after him in California. The killer of Charlie Kirk brought people jubilation. I won’t even get into Lindsay Clancy, who strangled her three children and became every woman to the feminist left. At least in the medieval period, they knew that the murderer had done something wrong and was being punished. In the post-medieval period, we are glorifying that murderer, and that’s really striking.
And so, what I’m getting at is we are the most regulated, the most advanced, the most modern, the most scientific society in history, even as we can’t solve problems that were solvable, and the medieval period would have died to know the solutions that we have in our hands to make sure we have clean water, to make sure there is no crime, to make sure there is no disease, to make sure that people don’t defecate on the street. But we don’t do it. We willingly don’t do it.
Now, the question to finish is why? We have an elite that has embraced a very toxic ideology throughout history, and that is mandated, government-sanctioned equality of result. And they have divided, therefore, to further that ideology, the world into victims and victimizers, an arbitrary classification, sometimes based on class, but increasingly on race.
And once they identify someone as a victim who’s not responsible for his plight, then it’s the duty of the society to allow him to express himself. If you have a lot of teenagers who want to loot a jewelry store, then you say they were hungry and they needed food. If you see homeless people living on the street, then it was because of something the majority culture did to them. And the result of that is when people engage in very dangerous antisocial behavior, an elite will tell the rest of us that they’re not subject to law enforcement or they’re not subject to the laws that apply to the rest of us. But there are two really pernicious addenda here.
No. 1, the people who do this on the left, who believe in this mandated equality and a binary of victim and victimizer, are never subject to the consequences of their own ideology. Nancy Pelosi‘s home is not surrounded by homeless people. Jane Fonda doesn’t have to trip over people injecting drugs when she walks outside her door. The Hollywood stars in Malibu who champion the homeless have very clear security. You can’t get near their homes.
In other words, we, the lab rats, are those upon whom they experiment. And there’s another reason as well. It’s not just that they experiment on us. and this ideology is not applicable to itself, but more importantly, they believe that they are morally superior because most of them are agnostics or atheists. They have lost their God, but they have found it in a post-Enlightenment caring, abstract though it may be, for victims.
And when you put this religious element to it, because it makes no sense to allow medieval diseases and medievalism to dominate your cities in crime, filth and homelessness, but they do it. They feel morally superior, and it gives them meaning in their life in a way that we, the majority, find not morally superior, but morally repugnant.
Why Cybercab is always spotless, fresh… and never smells like a typical Uber?
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) September 3, 2026
pic.twitter.com/LRaN2wmhfW
I am not exaggerating, there are Unsupervised Cybercabs without steering wheels or pedals all over Austin, TX right now at almost every corner.
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) September 2, 2026
It is SO BEAUTIFUL on the road. The glossy gold (first time seeing it) is stunning in the sun. I also LOVE how massive the wheels… pic.twitter.com/qlaZKT7m9M
Elon Musk runs Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. He says work is becoming optional and money is becoming irrelevant, both inside twenty years.
— Genius Thinking (@GeniusGTX) September 3, 2026
In a clip aired on CBN, he laid out 6 predictions about what comes next:
1) Long term means 10 to 20 years https://t.co/dOhCmOoyCH pic.twitter.com/eQ88mmBId3
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