John French Sloan McSorley’s Bar 1912
🚨 HOLY SMOKES: The fraud exploding in California is beyond insane…
— MAGA Storm (@MAGAStormX) February 2, 2026
• 18% of ALL U.S. home health billing is coming from just Los Angeles County 🤯
• One single doctor billed taxpayers $120 MILLION in one year — claiming nearly 1,900 patients
• LA County now has almost 2,000… pic.twitter.com/ruaSX0S0Ha
My crew exposed $100,000,000 in California fraud in one day. But it’s so much darker than stolen taxpayer cash. California is using that money to rig American elections.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 1, 2026
Here’s How: California leverages their homeless crisis to funnel billions of federal dollars into the state… pic.twitter.com/X3Ru8QsNua
“Moltbots autonomously get together on Moltbook, which — you guessed it! — is Facebook for autonomous bots. They might as well have a sign on the clubhouse door that says, “No Humans Allowed.”
• AIs Now Talking With One Another Behind Our Backs (Stephen Green)
“The most interesting place on the internet” has no humans in it. It all started innocently enough — like finding a just-crashed meteorite with pink goo in it, opening the mummy’s tomb, or digging up a monolith on the far side of the moon — with an AI meant to actually be useful for your day-to-day living. Peter Steinberger wanted an AI-based tool to help him “manage his digital life” and “explore what human-AI collaboration can be,” and the result was an open-source AI digital assistant capable of acting autonomously to take care of the user’s needs.Read more …
Originally called Clawdbots (now known as Moltbots, but hang on), Steinberger’s creation can manage your calendar for you, take care of your email automatically, browse the web, fill out forms, shop, book flights, check in for travel, and even (with your approval, and without getting too deep in the tech woods here) read and write local files, run code or scripts, and execute shell commands on your computer or mobile device. They’re LLM-agnostic, too, working with whatever AI (Claude, GPT, Gemini, etc.) via API and use a persistent memory system to stay context-aware of the user’s needs.They key feature is that Moltbots have agency — they can do all these things and more without waiting to be told. AIs just sit there in a sort of null state waiting for your next prompt, but Moltbots proactively prompt them for you.They can send messages for you via WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Discord, iMessage, etc… and that’s where things got weird, like when the pink meteor goo starts moving on its own. Rebranded as Moltbots (except forks called OpenClaw) due to trademark concerns, Moltbots now gather on their own via those same messaging apps users allowed them to access.
AI researcher Simon Willison said last week that Moltbot represents a “lethal trifecta” of cyber vulnerabilities because of its access to each user’s private data, exposure to untrusted content, its ability to communicate on messaging apps, and its “persistent memory” that “enables delayed-execution attacks,” as Fortune put it. “OpenClaw is built around skills,” Willison explained, “and a skill is a zip file containing markdown instructions and optional extra scripts (and yes, they can steal your crypto) which means they act as a powerful plugin system for OpenClaw.”
But believe it or not, that’s not the weirdest part. Moltbots autonomously get together on Moltbook, which — you guessed it! — is Facebook for autonomous bots. They might as well have a sign on the clubhouse door that says, “No Humans Allowed.” There, various Moltbots share skills and Lord-only-knows what else. One post found by Willison was on Moltbot telling the others how it gained remote control of its user’s Android phone.
Epstein lives here. Sort of.
• Clintons Bend The Knee To Comer, Agree To Testify In House Epstein Inquiry (ZH)
“Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency,” Mr. Comer wrote in a letter to the Clintons’ lawyers on Monday that was also obtained by The New York Times.Read more …
Indeed, as The NYTimes reports, after some Democrats on the panel joined Republicans in a vote to recommend charging them with criminal contempt, an extraordinary first step in referring them to the Justice Department for prosecution, the Clintons ultimately waved the white flag and agreed to fully comply with Mr. Comer’s demands. In an email sent to Mr. Comer on Monday evening, attorneys for the Clintons said their clients would “appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates” and asked that the House not move forward with a contempt vote, which had been slated for Wednesday.However, it was not immediately clear Monday evening whether Comer would accept the Clintons’ terms and, subsequently, whether the contempt votes would still take place. Comer said: “The Clintons’ counsel has said they agree to terms, but those terms lack clarity yet again and they have provided no dates for their depositions. The only reason they have said they agree to terms is because the House has moved forward with contempt.” “I will clarify the terms they are agreeing to and then discuss next steps with my committee members,” Comer said in a statement.
“The world sees you now: not as compassionate warriors, but as spoiled, entitled, reality-denying tyrants in yoga pants, wielding guilt and hysteria like switchblades.” —LHGrey on “X”
• Awards Season (James Howard Kunstler)
The latest wrinkle in this tragic saga is the psychodrama over ICE, the men tasked with finding and deporting people who came into the country illegally. The Cluster-B women mis-direct their nurturing instincts to rescue this politically-designated “oppressed minority,” overlooking the fact that not a few of these illegal aliens turn out to be murderous psychopaths. Conveniently, too, the illegal aliens also happen to be a very useful device for the Democratic Party to pad the census and provide illicit votes, all to keep the party in power and sustain its rackets.Read more …
President Trump completes the doom-loop circle because he is the mythic figure who prompts all the anxiety behind the “mass formation” phenomenon we are witnessing. Mr. Trump is patriarchy-in-action, so he must be destroyed by the goddess-heroines of show business. The goddess-heroines seem to believe they are ushering-in a Utopia of Nurture in which no oppressed minority will be left behind. That fantasy happens to intersect with the leveling fantasies of Karl Marx and his apostles, the mentors of the obscenely-rich denizens of Hollywood so eager to abolish obscene riches. So, you see how either stupid, or mentally-ill, or both, the people in show business can be.
“..there was outrage that Jennings is “allowed to exist” on the network.”
• The Circular Firing Squad (Jonathan Turley)
CNN has long aired controversial hosts and guests who engaged in controversial statements on race and politics from the left. However, a meeting last week focused on the airing of one of the few conservatives who regularly appear on the network. As one staff member reportedly raised, there was outrage that Jennings is “allowed to exist” on the network. Even as CNN continues to languish in ratings, staffers want to fire one of the few remaining conservative voices on the network.Read more …
One of the key issues raised in the meeting was Jennings referring to “illegal aliens.” While CNN bars the term, it is used in federal law and federal cases, including by the United States Supreme Court. In one exchange on Jan. 19, Jennings trades barbs with fellow panelist Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting. Kasky criticized Jennings for saying that ICE should be allowed to “chase down illegals” in Minnesota.Jennings pushed back: “Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t say? I’ve never met you, brother. I can say whatever I want. They’re illegal aliens. And that’s what the law calls them. Illegal aliens. That’s what I’m going to call them.” Staff members reportedly denounced him as a “MAGA mouthpiece” and a “firebrand Trump loyalist” who “frequently gets into verbal spats with other CNN guests.” It is a curious objection since these panels are supposed to be lively contrasts between guests. The meeting is reminiscent of the effort at the Washington Post to get staffers to recognize the company’s declining position.
Robert Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake: “We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around. We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
“MS NOW has admitted that it used an AI-enhanced photo of Pretti that made him look more handsome.”
• The Remaking of Alex Pretti: Imperfect Times Demand the Perfect Hero (Turley)
“Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.” That statement, from F. Scott Fitzgerald, has never been truer than with the posthumous treatment of Alex Pretti, killed in a confrontation with federal officers in Minneapolis. He has been called a “hero” and a “martyr” by the left as a rallying cry for protests around the country. In the process, many have “enhanced” both his story and his image. MS NOW has admitted that it used an AI-enhanced photo of Pretti that made him look more handsome. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was criticized for bringing to the Senate floor an altered image, featuring a headless immigration agent, that made it look like officers executed a kneeling Pretti with a shot to the head.Read more …
Pretti needs to be be inviolate to make the government seem vile in the eyes of the public. He is being described as the combination of Florence Nightingale and Crispus Attucks. A CNN panelist and co-host of “The View,” Ana Navarro, voiced the new orthodoxy that Pretti was the “perfect guy … the guy you’d want to date your daughter, the guy you want your son to grow up to be, a decent human being who was serving humanity.” She added that he was so perfect that “there is nothing that has been said about that man that isn’t wonderful. And so they can’t malign him.” The point is that any skepticism, let alone criticism, is no longer acceptable.In fairness, Pretti was vilified before he was canonized. Many of us objected that the videotape evidence did not support the original description of Pretti’s conduct. Pretti did not threaten officers or approach them brandishing a weapon. But he did disobey police orders and he did resist arrest. Indeed, eleven days earlier, he had spat at officers, damaged a police vehicle by kicking out its taillight, and again resisted officers. The remaking of Alex Pretti by both sides is strikingly familiar. On Tuesday, my book on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution will be released. “Rage and the Republic” looks at both the American and French Revolutions to explore why one became the world’s oldest democracy and the other became a blood-soaked terror.
Sundance with a long exposé about just one leak.
In January of 2017 California Senator Dianne Feinstein abdicated her position as Vice-Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). Upon the initiation of a new congress, and two weeks before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Virginia Senator Mark Warner took the SSCI Vice-Chair seat…. and that’s how things get started.mAmid a concerted effort to resist the incoming administration the Russia Collusion Conspiracy was launched. Politicians, the U.S. intelligence apparatus and DC beltway media united in common purpose to push a Trump-Russia narrative.Read more …
Within the early days of that effort, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence initiated an investigation into Russian interference with the election. Chairman Richard Burr and Vice-Chair Warner were toasted throughout DC as an example of bipartisan oversight against what House minority leader Nancy Pelosi called a “fraudulent president.” Sometime in late February/early March 2017 Senator Warner requested a copy of the top secret FISA application used against Carter Page, falsely accusing him of being “an agent of a foreign power.”Simultaneous to this the FBI was trying to track down the details of dozens of classified intelligence leaks to the media from within the DC system. FBI Special Agent, Washington DC Field Office, Brian Dugan appears to have been tasked with tracking and identifying intelligence leakers. Dugan saw an opportunity. On March 17, 2017, in order to fulfill the request of SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner, Agent Dugan goes to the FISA Court and picks up a copy of the FISA application. At the time there were only two components: The original application (Oct ’16), and the first renewal (Jan ’17). The next renewal did not come until April and then again in June.
NOTE: The FBI did not go to the DOJ-NSD to pick up a copy. Why? You’ll see.
PCR “hides” 3 parts of The Great Dispossession in an article about Kevin Warsh.
• The Great Dispossession (Paul Craig Roberts)
In Part 1, I explained that the next financial crisis will be bailed out not with central bank money creation but with our stocks, bonds and bank balances.Read more …
In Part 2, I explained the multi-year quiet regulatory changes that dispossessed us of our property.In Part 3, I explain David Rogers Webb’s conclusion that a massive financial crisis is pending in which our financial assets are the collateral underwriting the derivative and financial bubble and will result in the loss of our assets but leave us with our debts as happened to those whose banks failed in the 1930s.
Webb begins with the economic formula that the velocity of circulation of money times the money supply equals nominal Gross Domestic Product. V x MS = GDP. The velocity of circulation is a measure of how many times a dollar is spent during a given period of time, e.g., quarterly, annually. A high velocity means people quickly spend the money that comes into their hands. A low velocity means people tend to hold on to money.
] Velocity impacts the Federal Reserve’s ability to manage economic growth with money supply changes. If the velocity of money is falling, an expansionist monetary policy will not result in rising GDP. In such a situation, the Federal Reserve is said to be “pushing on a string.” Instead of pushing up GDP, money supply increases push up the values of financial assets and real estate resulting in financial and real estate bubbles. Webb notes that falls in velocity are precursors of financial crises. A multi-year sharp fall in velocity preceded the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression that gave birth to regulatory agencies. The 21st century is characterized by a long-term fall in velocity that has reached the lowest level on record, while stocks and real estate have been driven to unprecedented levels by years of zero interest rates. When this bubble pops, we will be dispossessed.
Will the bubble pop? Yes. The Fed suddenly and rapidly moved from zero to 5% interest rates, a reversal of the policy that drove up prices of stocks and bonds. The Fed raises rates by reducing money supply growth, thus removing the factor supporting high stock prices and collapsing the value of bonds. This results in a lowering of the value of stocks and bonds serving as collateral for loans, which, of course, means the loans and the financial institution behind them are in trouble. Bonds have already taken a hit. The stock market is holding because participants believe the Fed is about to reverse its interest rate policy and lower rates.
Webb notes that the official data show that the velocity of money collapsed in the 21st century while the Fed introduced “quantatative easing.” He makes the correct point that when the velocity of money collapses, the Fed is pushing on a string. Instead of money creation fueling economic growth, it produces asset bubbles in real estate and financial instruments, which is what we have at the present time.When after more than a decade of near zero interest rates, the Fed raises interest rates it collapses the values of financial portfolios and real estate and produces a financial crisis.
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• Let the Arms Race Begin (NYT)
The last nuclear arms control pact between the United States and Russia is set to end not with a bang, but with a whimper. The Trump administration has said barely anything about New START’s expiration next Thursday, a day that will mark the end of a half-century of collaboration between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. Nor have prominent lawmakers in Congress said much this year about its end, despite the looming potential for an unconstrained three-way arms race, with China’s participation.Read more …
Perhaps the highest profile attempt to raise awareness of the end of this era — which has underwritten the national security environment of most of our collective lives — came on Jan. 14. In the early evening, a handful of Democrats took turns on the House floor giving speeches for roughly an hour about the new world we’re about to step into, a performance that even the most ardent C-SPAN viewer might have missed. The only thing more alarming than the lack of interest among our elected officials in this matter is the mounting pressure on the Trump administration — from both inside and outside the government — to add more nuclear weapons to the stockpile, rather than reduce it.Once the treaty ends, we will have returned to an era without limits, when arsenals can reach unconstrained heights. The bleak outlook prompted the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Tuesday to move its metaphorical Doomsday Clock another notch toward “midnight,” or worldwide catastrophe. It now sits closer than it ever has: 85 seconds to midnight.bnIt wasn’t long ago that the world’s superpowers agreed that having fewer nukes was a good thing. For decades, the world’s nuclear stockpile was shrinking. There were around 70,400 warheads in 1986, compared with 12,500 today — a reduction that came from years of continual negotiations between Washington and Moscow.
What began in 1969 with the launch of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks led to a string of agreements culminating in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which went into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021 for an additional five years.mNew START limited each side’s arsenals to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads — long-range weapons loaded onto submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles and bomber planes — and required regular data exchanges and notifications of the number and status of each side’s treaty-accountable weapons. It also allowed for short-notice on-site inspection visits to ensure compliance.
The end of New START is just the latest Cold War treaty to be abandoned or canceled amid worsening U.S.-Russia relations. When President Trump returned to the White House, many hoped he might finally rekindle nuclear arms-control negotiations after years of stalled diplomacy. The president has repeatedly said he was prepared to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world and even said in August that he would like to “denuclearize” altogether if President Vladimir Putin of Russia was willing to reciprocate.
Stephen Green aka vodkapundit.
• Trump Was No Draft-Dodger (Stephen Green)
Here are the facts, simply laid out by Eschenbach and verified by Yours Truly using both Grok and ChatGPT. A couple of the dates are slightly off, but everything checks out.Read more …
• Trump registered for the draft after his 18th birthday on June 24, 1964 (draft dodgers don’t register*).
• He was given an S-2 (college) deferment on June 28, 1964 (perfectly legal, not a draft dodger).
• His S-2 status was renewed on Dec 14, 1965 (legal, not a draft dodger), and he was then classified on Nov. 22, 1966, as 1-A (available for service).
• Dec. 13, 1966, his S-2 was again granted to attend Wharton (legal, not a draft dodger). His final deferral was granted on Jan. 16, 1968.
• After graduating from Wharton, he was reclassified 1-A on July 9, 1968. He went to his Armed Forces Physical (something a draft dodger probably would not do) on Sept. 19, 1968, and was categorized as 1-Y,disqualified for service except in war or national emergency (due to bone spurs in both heels).
• He received a high draft lottery number and was never called up. On Feb. 17, 1972, after the abolishment of the 1-Y classification, he was classified 4-F (not qualified for military service).
I’d add — again, confirmed by two LLMs — that in the 1969 draft lottery (implemented for 1970 inductions), Trump’s birthdate drew a high number (356 out of 366), which would have likely exempted him from being called up even without the medical classification. (*Some draft dodgers actually registered, but then dodged the call when it came.) All along the way, Trump followed the rules, and as fate would have it, probably wouldn’t have been called up even without bone-spurs.
Still, I decided to dig deeper and asked my two most reliable LLMs whether Trump would have fallen under President Jimmy Carter’s blanket pardon for roughly 570,000 men who had either been charged for draft-dodging offenses, or who had not been charged but had done things like fail to register of fled to Canada. Short answer: No. Grok’s slightly longer answer: “Trump would not have qualified for Carter’s pardon because he did not violate the Selective Service Act—he registered, complied with classifications, and used legitimate deferments without committing any evadable offenses. Even if the bone spurs claim were proven fraudulent today, it wasn’t challenged or prosecuted at the time, so no pardon-eligible violation occurred.”
So there you have it. Trump wasn’t a draft-dodger.
Caracas is not like you think.
• Being There – In Venezuela (Craig Murray)
I have now been in Caracas for 48 hours and the contrast between what I have seen, and what I had read in the mainstream media, could not be more stark. bI drove right through Caracas, from the airport through the city centre and up to posh Las Mercedes. The next morning I walked all through and weaved my way within the working class district of San Agustin. I joined in the “Afrodescendants festival”, and spent hours mingling with the people. I was made extremely welcome and invited into many homes – this from a district they tell you is extremely dangerous. I must admit I had great fun at this bit.Read more …
After this I continued on for miles walking through the residential area and through the heart of the city centre, including Bolivar Square and the National Assembly. In all of this I have not seen one single checkpoint, whether police or military. I have seen almost no guns; fewer than you would see on a similar tour taking in Whitehall. I have not been stopped once, whether on foot or in a car. I have seen absolutely zero sign of “Chavista militia” whether in poor, wealthy or central areas. I drove extensively round the opposition strongholds of Las Mercedes and Altamira and quite literally saw not a single armed policemen, not one militia man and not one soldier. People were out and about quite happily and normally. There was no feeling of repression whatsoever.Again, nobody stopped me or asked who I am or why I was taking pictures. I did ask the Venezuelan authorities whether I needed a permit to take photos and publish articles, and their reply was a puzzled “why would you?” The military checkpoints to maintain control, the roving gangs of Chavista armed groups, all the media descriptions of Caracas today are entirely a figment of CIA and Machado propaganda, simply regurgitated by a complicit billionaire and state media. Do you know what else do not exist? The famous “shortages.” The only thing in short supply is shortage. There is a shortage of shortage. There is no shortage of anything in Venezuela.
A few weeks ago I saw on Twitter a photo of a supermarket in Caracas which somebody had put up to demonstrate that the shelves are extremely well stocked. It received hundreds of replies, either claiming it was a fake, or that it was an elite supermarket for the wealthy and that the shops for the majority were empty. So I made a point, in working-class districts, of going into the neighbourhood, front room stores where ordinary people do their shopping. They were all very well stocked. There were no empty places on shelves. I also went round outdoor and covered markets, including an improbably huge one with over a hundred stalls catering solely for children’s birthday parties!
Everyone was quite happy to let me photograph anything I wanted. It is not just groceries. Hardware stores, opticians, clothes and shoe shops, electronic goods, auto parts. Everything is freely available. There is a lack of physical currency. Sanctions have limited the Venezuelan government’s access to secure printing. To get round this, everybody does secure payment with their phones via QR code using the Venezuelan Central Bank’s own ingenious app. This is incredibly well established – even the most basic street vendors have their QR code displayed and get their payments this way.
Elon Musk explains his 5-step algorithm for solving any problem:
— Jaynit (@jaynitx) February 2, 2026
"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist."
"I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run as a mantra."
Elon breaks it down:
Step 1: Question the… pic.twitter.com/3rToZLLpAW
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