Nov 172024
 


Jerry Bywaters Oil Field Girls 1940

 

The Revolution of 2024 (Jeffrey A. Tucker)
Trump Will Bring Justice, Not Revenge (Jim Rickards)
Tulsi Gabbard, The New US Intel Chief (SCF)
RFK Jr. Is Poised To Save The Health And Lives Of Millions Of Americans (Hill)
What Could Trump 2.0 Mean for US Healthcare? (Sp.)
Why Voters Trusted The GOP More On Democracy (Turley)
Rachel Maddow Claims Trump is Trying To “Destroy The US Government” (MN)
Pentagon Spends $187 Mln on Audit, Fails Seventh Year in a Row (Sp.)
Trump Team To Write Off ‘Project Ukraine’ as Sunk Cost (Sp.)
Zelensky Wants To Intensify Military Draft (RT)
Ex-FM Warns Of Potential ‘Internal Collapse’ In Ukraine (RT)
Moscow Continues To Warn The West About The Risk Of Nuclear Escalation (SCF)
War Games Show UK’s Flagship Aircraft Carriers ‘Get Sunk’ Every Time (Sp.)
The Novichok Attack Was A British Operation, Not A Russian One (Helmer)
Climate-Change Debate ‘Heats Up’ With Collum, Keen, Fleckenstein (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Bannon

Rogan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857512537752785156
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857708065191338428

Leavitt

Mollie
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857599848062628084

FBI J6
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857494322624737729

Alina
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857500858746835041

Jail

Trover

 

 

 

 

“We are barely ten days into the realization of what just transpired and the entire lay of the land seems different, like a tectonic shift in politics, culture, mood, and possibilities..”

The Revolution of 2024 (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

People are out and about, smiling at each other. It’s been true since the morning after the election, the results of which defied every prediction. Who doesn’t like to see the smug elites who have ruled the world for five awful years taken down a peg? More than that, there are hints of a return to sanity. Mainstream advertisers are suddenly returning to X, putting their economic interest above their tribalist loyalties. The editor of pro-lockdowns Scientific American, which had long blessed totalitarian measures as true science, has resigned. The attempt to pillage InfoWars and give it to The Onion has been reversed by a federal judge. That might be a fluke or might not be: maybe the lawfare is dialing back too. The cabinet of the incoming administration is being filled by voices that were fully censored for years. Employees are reportedly packing their bags at the FDA and other agencies.

Mainstream news commentators are sputtering around with less bravado than they have shown in years. CNN is firing major personalities. Trump is talking about abolishing the income tax and granting $10K in tax credits per homeschooled child, not to mention blowing up college accreditation systems, among other sweeping changes. The American Bastille day is coming, not only freeing the political prisoners of January 6 but also many of the unjustly persecuted including Ross Ulbricht, Roger Ver, and Ian Freeman, among so many others. That will be a day of rejoicing. Oh, and peace seems to have broken out in some contentious areas of the world, for now. What is happening? This is not the usual transfer of the resident of the White House. This is starting to look like an actual transfer of power, not just from Biden to Trump but from the permanent government – ensconced in many sectors – that has been long in hiding to an entirely new form of government responsive to actual voters.

As it turns out, there was no late surge for Kamala Harris. All the polls were wrong, and the rest was media blather. What was correct were the betting odds on Polymarket, and only days later, the FBI raided the 26-year-old founder’s home and confiscated his phone and laptop. There are still many millions of missing voters, people who supposedly showed up for Biden in 2020 but stayed home this time. Meanwhile, there has been a historic shift in all races, ethnicities, and regions, with even the possibility of flipping California from blue to red in the future. After decades of academic slicing and dicing of the population according to ever more eccentric identity buckets involving race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual interest, along with countless thousands of studies documenting deep complexity over intersectionality, the driving force of the election was simple: class, and the few intellectuals and some wealthy entrepreneurs who understand that.

The division was not really left vs right. It was workers vs laptoppers, wage earners vs six-figure stay-at-homers, bottom half vs top 5 percent, people with actual skills vs weaponized resume wielders, and those with affection for old-world values vs those whose educations have beaten it out of them for purposes of career advancement. The silent majority has never been so suddenly loud. It just so happened that the heavily privileged had come to inhabit easily identifiable sectors of American society and, in the end, had no choice but hitch the whole of the overclass wagon to the fortunes of a candidate like themselves (Kamala) but who was unable to pull off a compelling masquerade. Not even a parade of well-paid celebrity endorsements could save her from total rebuke at the polls. Sylvester Stallone called Trump a second George Washington but another reference point might be Andrew Jackson.

The overwhelming victory for Trump is on a scale not seen since 1828 when, four years after the presidency was stolen from Jackson, Old Hickory came back in a wild landslide and cleaned up Washington. Trump arrives in Washington with a mandate for the same, with 81% of the public demanding that the government shrink in size and power. It has all happened so quickly. We are barely ten days into the realization of what just transpired and the entire lay of the land seems different, like a tectonic shift in politics, culture, mood, and possibilities. We are even seeing blunt and open talk about the horrendous Covid response that so utterly demoralized the country and the world, after years of silence on the topic. We have promised hearings coming, and court cases galore now on fast track. The sudden coming together of three great sectors of anti-establishment fury – MAGA, MAHA, and DOGE – in the last two months of the election of 2024 is one for the ages.

It provides the beginnings of an answer to the great question on our minds for decades: how precisely does an authentic revolution take root in an industrialized Western democracy? Are elections capable of delivering real results? For now, the answer seems to be yes. That should thrill any responsible observer of social, cultural, economic, and political affairs. It means that the early architects of the American system were not wrong. The intolerable costs of political upheaval of ages past can be mitigated by planting power firmly in the hands of the people through the plebiscite. This was their view and their gamble. All the evidence of our time points to the wisdom of the idea. In the darkest days of the last year of the first Trump presidency, the bureaucracy was riding high, in full revenge mode against an elected government it hated and sought to overthrow. The agencies were passing strange edicts that felt like laws but no one knew for sure. You are essential, you are not. You must stay home, unless you have an emergency. Your elective surgery needs to wait. The kids cannot go to school. That European vacation cannot happen.

You can eat at a restaurant but only if you are six feet away from other patrons and you must put this China-made cloth on your mouth if you get up to go to the restroom. The flurry of edicts was mind-boggling. It felt like martial law, because it was some form of exactly that. The best research points to the astonishing reality that this was never really a public-health response but a scheme by security and intelligence sectors to enact some kind of global color revolution, which is why the policies were so similar the world over. It was indeed an awesome display of power, one that invaded all our communities, homes, and families. No one knows this better than Team Trump, even if there has been near silence on the topic for all these years. They have had time to put the pieces together and figure out what happened and why. And they carefully, and in seclusion worthy of a Cistercian monastery, plotted their return, leaving nothing to chance.

Read more …

“The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled.”

Trump Will Bring Justice, Not Revenge (Jim Rickards)

The persecution and prosecution of President Donald Trump is finally winding down. Jack Smith, a primary player in the lawfare campaign against Trump, has filed to dismiss the case involving classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Rep. Jim Jordan has instructed Special Counsel Smith to preserve all records related to the cases. The Deep State tried everything to make Trump lose. In total, 91 frivolous felony charges were thrown at the former president. All so they could brand him a felon, tie up resources and prevent him from campaigning. Then there was the January 6th “insurrection”, multiple Russian collusion hoaxes and countless media lies. The Deep State even prosecuted his advisers, such as 75-year-old famed economist Peter Navarro, who was the first former White House official ever imprisoned on a contempt-of-court charge. This dignified gentleman was frog-marched into prison as part of a political persecution campaign.

The entire affair was a disgrace to the nation. On Election Day, Americans rejected this vile lawfare. And soon, it will be time for justice. With GOP control over both sides of the Congress and a near-landslide win, Trump has a mandate from the American people to pursue it aggressively. President Trump has not been shy about his intentions, stating, “The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled.” On day one, he promised to reissue his executive order allowing the President to remove “rogue bureaucrats” from their positions. Trump promised to “wield that power very aggressively” against the Deep State. Our once and future President even promised to establish a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, opening the books on issues including the JFK assassination, illicit spying, and government corruption. I can’t wait to see what it uncovers. Trump’s recent speech was packed full of details on how he plans to drain the swamp. He starts strong and keeps going:

“This is how I will shatter the Deep State and restore government that is controlled by the people and for the people… Make every Inspector General’s office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State… Launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the fake news to deliberately create false narratives and to subvert our government and our democracy… Clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus… Push a constitutional amendment to oppose term limits on members of Congress. “Shatter the Deep State”. No ambiguity there.

Some will call what is coming revenge. But this will not be revenge. It will be justice. The distinction is important. I would fully support justice here if the shoe was on the other foot, and the GOP were the offending party. This type of behavior simply cannot stand. It undermines and corrupts the entire system. Re-establishing a just and fair government is critical. It will be difficult, but I believe Trump will succeed this time. He has learned from the mistakes of his first term. Trump has the right people around today. He has already rejected the idea of inviting Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo to join the new administration.

This is an excellent sign of things to come. Given the mandate, the appointment of Attorney General will be particularly important. I have my eye on Mike Davis. He is the exact type of person this position calls for. Tough as nails, fair, and dedicated to cleaning up the system. I’ve met the man, and he’s just the type of person required for this job. The stage is set for a historic draining of the swamp. Of course, there is still the potential for last-minute desperation moves by the Democrats, including their plan to disqualify Trump using the “insurrection clause”. But given my prediction that Congress will be controlled by Republicans, I think we’ll be in the clear in that department.

Read more …

“..in The Atlantic, an establishment mouthpiece, Gabbard was denounced as a “threat to the security of the United States.” That’s a staggering charge to levy on the person who is going to be head of national security..”

Tulsi Gabbard, The New US Intel Chief (SCF)

The nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as the United States intelligence supremo has sent shockwaves through the American and NATO establishments. The Western news media – always a dutiful echo chamber for deep-state policymakers – is reverberating with horror at her nomination by President-elect Donald Trump. That reaction is a good sign that something significant has happened. The potential appointment of Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) could be the most consequential decision yet by Trump in forming his cabinet. If one move could signal the foreign policy direction under the 47th president, Gabbard’s nomination is the most salient and potentially the most constructive on the key issue of world peace. Time magazine headlined with the U.S. intelligence community’s response to Gabbard’s selection. “We are reeling,” it was reported. Reuters reported that the Western “spy world is vexed.” Meanwhile, in The Atlantic, an establishment mouthpiece, Gabbard was denounced as a “threat to the security of the United States.”

That’s a staggering charge to levy on the person who is going to be head of national security. It is almost hilarious to see the apoplectic reaction in the U.S. establishment and its servile mainstream media. CNN’s news anchor Jim Sciutto was distraught in sharing his concerns with colleague Richard Quest, remarking that Gabbard’s views “contradict” almost everything about U.S. foreign policies. If we may paraphrase that exchange, the sentiments were: Oh my God, how terrible! Whatever shall we say now about all the lies we have been spinning for years and getting fat salaries for? After all, as far as the U.S. corporate media are concerned, especially those channels and newspapers associated with the Democrats, the establishment, and the deep state intelligence apparatus, Tulsi Gabbard has been smeared as a “Russian asset.” It is indeed profoundly challenging – one might even say, earth-shattering – to the deep state if Gabbard becomes Director of National Intelligence.

As with Trump’s other cabinet picks, the nominations will have to be approved by Senate panels. So there is a while to go before her post is confirmed. A lot can change or be derailed. Trump’s cabinet picks this week have been keenly watched by observers trying to discern the future foreign policies of the next presidency, which begins in January after his inauguration. Trump’s early call-ups this week of hawkish figures Pete Hegseth for defense and Marco Rubio for secretary of state caused dismay among some critics of U.S. foreign policy who wanted a fundamental break from warmongering and hostility toward Russia, China, and Iran, among others. Then came Trump’s selection of Tulsi Gabbard. The former Congresswoman has gained wide popular American and international respect for her outspoken and independent criticism of U.S. militarism in the Middle East and Ukraine.

However, the U.S. political establishment and media have slandered her as a “traitor” and a “Russian asset” for her views criticizing Washington’s regime change wars in Syria and the Middle East. In 2017, Gabbard traveled to Syria and met with President Bashar al-Assad. She spoke out against Washington’s covert policy of sponsoring terrorist militia for regime change in Damascus. For telling the truth, she was vilified as an “apologist” for Assad. More recently, the “apologist” slur was thrown at her again after Gabbard opposed the U.S. and NATO’s arming of the Kiev regime and the proxy war against Russia. She said that the conflict in Ukraine could have been avoided if Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s threatening expansion had been taken into consideration. How refreshing to hear that sanity and objectivity.

In a twisted way, the CNN clapping seals are correct. Her views on the conflict in Ukraine do indeed contradict the U.S. establishment and media’s propaganda about “Russian aggression.” Her views unequivocally debunk the wall-to-wall “news” propaganda as false and serve as a warning to the public that NATO’s lies are dragging the world into a nuclear war. The role of Tulsi Gabbard in the second Trump administration – if she makes it through Senate vetting – cannot be overstated. In her DNI capacity, she is the intel supremo who oversees the CIA and NSA. Through her daily briefings to the president, Gabbard will play a crucial role in President Trump’s foreign policymaking. Given Trump’s freewheeling style, it can be fairly assumed that Gabbard’s input into policymaking will have much greater influence than the secretaries of defense or state. She will call the shots, and Trump will designate Hegseth, Rubio, and others to follow suit on the policies.

Wasserman

Read more …

“..the secretary of State, Defense, Treasury or Interior is a very important position. But measurable progress can often be incremental. But imagine being the “Secretary of Saving Human Lives.”

RFK Jr. Is Poised To Save The Health And Lives Of Millions Of Americans (Hill)

What is the value of someone who has the potential to literally save millions of lives and improve the health of tens of millions of children and adults? We may be on the verge of revolutionizing America’s failing health care system for the better, and two men will be responsible: President-elect Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Trump has long been a fan of Kennedy’s intellect, independence from special interests, passion, empathy and connection with the American people. Trump also no doubt realizes that Kennedy’s value to his incoming administration is immeasurable, as RFK Jr. can wear multiple hats of expertise. Trump has picked him to run the Department of Health and Human Services. And it is from under that HHS hat that Kennedy will transform our “sick-care” industry and literally save millions of lives in the process.

Anyone paying attention to the utter catastrophe that has become America’s “health care” industry knows that this is not political hyperbole or an exaggeration. It is an outright obscenity that we are losing so many Americans to entirely preventable causes. Three days before the election, I wrote about “The 2 decisions that crushed Harris’s momentum.” One was Harris’s selection of Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. The other, and more important of the two, was Kennedy suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump. “One of the main reasons is the ‘mom vote,’” I wrote. “Kennedy’s endorsement will potentially bring millions of previously ambivalent female voters to the table for Trump. Why? Because they are moms who are worried about the health and wellbeing of their children and have long believed that Kennedy was one of the few people in public life who would protect those children. This is a much bigger deal than the media realizes or will acknowledge. It is a real game changer. Toward that end, these moms want Trump to win so he will bring Kennedy into his cabinet.”

After the column ran, I heard from many mothers confirming that exact point. Said one: “Yep, as one of those ‘mom votes’ who was dying to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I will now vote for the unity party.” After Kennedy got out of the race and Trump welcomed him with open arms, the two created what future historians may record as the most important health care movement in the history of our nation. It is a grassroots phenomenon spreading like wildfire as more and more parents and adults wake up to the chemicals and poisons being introduced into their bodies against their will. On Nov. 6, Kennedy posted: “President Trump has asked me to do three things: 1. Clean up the corruption in our government health agencies. 2. Return those agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science. 3. Make America Healthy Again by ending the chronic disease epidemic.”

In the speech announcing the suspension of his campaign and his unequivocal endorsement of Trump, Kennedy ticked off some truly horrifying statistics. “We spend more on health care than any country on Earth,” he said. “Nobody has a chronic disease burden like we have … Two-thirds of American adults and children suffer from chronic health issues. Fifty years ago, that number was less than 1 percent. So, we’ve gone from 1 percent to 66 percent. In America, 74 percent of Americans are now overweight or obese, and 50 percent of our children… Half of Americans have pre-diabetes or type two diabetes…And this is a crisis that 77 percent of our kids are too disabled to serve in the United States military. What is happening to our country and why isn’t this in the headlines every single day?…

“Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and the old. Young adult cancers are up 79 percent … So, what’s causing this suffering? I’ll name two culprits. First and the worst is ultra-processed food. About 70 percent of American children’s diet is ultra-processed. That means industrial manufactured in a factory … The second culprit is toxic chemicals in our food and our medicine, in our environment … The assault on our children’s cells and hormones is unrelenting.” Unfortunately, what is also “unrelenting” is the opposition to Kennedy from Big Pharma, Big Agriculture and special interests that realize hundreds of billions in profits at the direct expense of the health of every man, woman and child in America. In opposing that massive force, Kennedy is in the fight for our lives.

To be sure, being the secretary of State, Defense, Treasury or Interior is a very important position. But measurable progress can often be incremental. But imagine being the “Secretary of Saving Human Lives.” If Kennedy is even halfway successful in his quest to save the American people — and especially our children — from the life-robbing threats of ultra-processed foods and toxic chemicals, he can potentially save or improve tens of millions of lives over the next four years. That “cure” that will transcend every demographic and income level. Under the direction of Trump, Kennedy may turn ignorance to acceptance, acceptance to hope, hope to belief and belief to results. Again, what is the value of someone who literally has the potential to save millions of lives and improve the health of tens of millions of children and adults? I suspect we are about to find out.

RFK

Dr. Oz

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“If we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people, our population, less money, and provide better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it.”

What Could Trump 2.0 Mean for US Healthcare? (Sp.)

US President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his Department of Health and Human Services Secretary tasked with fixing America’s raging health crisis. Donald Trump has promised to “bring down costs” and increase the quality of US healthcare. What changes can be expected?
• During his first term, Trump tried but failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare. Trump called Obamacare “lousy health care” and floated replacing it, saying, “If we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people, our population, less money, and provide better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it.”
• Trump has vowed to protect Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older and younger people with disabilities.
• Cuts to Medicaid, the largest government health-insurance program that covers low-income Americans, may be expected under Trump.
• During his first term, Trump proposed cutting the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and eliminating the Medicaid expansion that was passed as part of the ACA.
• A work requirement might be added for some able-bodied adult beneficiaries, with federal spending on the program capped.
• Trump has promised to veto a federal abortion ban “under any circumstances”, saying, “It is up to the states to decide.”
• Trump didn’t rule out banning certain vaccines, promising to “make a decision” after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – now tapped to be his HHS chief – hinted at the possibility of ending vaccine mandates. With an estimated 108,000 people dying from drug overdoses in the US last year, Trump blamed it on the migrant crisis. Although he criminalized all fentanyl-related substances in 2018, overdose deaths continued to soar.

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“..there is work to be done as a nation committed to the rule of law. We cannot win at any cost when that cost is the very thing that defines us.”

Why Voters Trusted The GOP More On Democracy (Turley)

“People violate laws any time they want.” Those words, shrugging off an alleged unlawful move last week, did not come from some Chicago gangbanger or Washington car thief. Those words of wisdom came from Democrat Commissioner Diane Marseglia in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They came in response to the fact that the Democratic majority on the election commission had decided to ignore a binding state Supreme Court ruling in an attempt to engineer the election of Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). Rather than prompting a degree of introspection, the loss of both houses of Congress and the White House has had a curious effect on many Democrats, dropping any pretense of protecting democracy over partisanship.

Despite polls showing that the public trusted former president Donald Trump more than Vice President Harris in combatting threats to democracy, Democrats made “saving democracy” the thrust of this election. The polls reflected a certain common sense of the public when harangued with predictions from President Biden, Harris and a host of politicians and pundits that this would likely be our last election. Few believed that after over two centuries as the most stable and successful democracy in history, all three branches would collapse in unison and embrace dictatorship. Even fewer believed the predictions of the rounding up of homosexuals, journalists and political critics for camps in what some described as an American Third Reich. American voters are not chumps and what they saw were strikingly anti-democratic positions from those claiming to be the defenders of democracy, including:

• Seeking to strip Trump from ballots under an unfounded theory rejected unanimously by the Supreme Court.
• Fighting to block opponents of Biden from ballots in the primary and general elections.
• Suing to keep Robert F. Kennedy on ballots after his withdrawal in swing states, in order to confuse voters and reduce the vote for Trump.
• Calling for blocking dozens of incumbent GOP officials and legislators from ballots as “insurrectionists.”
• “Protecting democracy” through the most extensive censorship in history and the blacklisting of opponents.
• Engaging in open and raw lawfare in the prosecutions of Trump in places like New York.

Each of these efforts ultimately failed to stop Trump and was opposed by a majority of voters even before the election. So now, Democrats are dropping the pretense of raw partisanship. That was evident in Bucks County, when a motion arose to reject a challenge to count provisional ballots, including undated or invalidly dated mail ballots. It should have been easy. To its credit, the majority-Democratic Pennsylvania Supreme Court had already refused a Democratic push to change the rules shortly before the election and to ignore the plain language of the election laws. In ordering the rejection of ballots without dates, Justice Kevin Doughtery (joined by Chief Justice Debra Todd) wrote a concurrence declaring “‘This Court will neither impose nor countenance substantial alterations to existing laws and procedures during the pendency of an ongoing election.’ We said those carefully chosen words only weeks ago. Yet they apparently were not heard in the Commonwealth Court, the very court where the bulk of election litigation unfolds.”

It is apparently still not being heard. In the Bucks County hearing, Marseglia spoke as she and Democratic Board chairman Robert Harvie, Jr., dismissed the earlier rulings in order to accept ballots without required signatures or mandatory dates. She declared that she would not second the motion to enforce the rulings “mostly because I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country and people violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.” That was a lot of words to say that she does not really seem to care if this is lawful. For his part, Casey has shown the same abandon as he clings to his Senate seat at any cost.

That cost, in this case, was an alliance with Marc Elias, the controversial Democratic lawyer at the center of the infamous Steele Dossier scandal. Elias has been sanctioned in court and criticized for his work to flip elections. He is known for baselessly blaming voting machine errors for electing Republicans and pushing gerrymandering plans rejected by the courts as anti-democratic. Casey is unlikely to change the result without counting defective or challenged ballots. Fortunately, law and precedent “does matter in this country.” There are still officials who can transcend their political preferences to maintain the rule of law. After the last presidential election, many Trump appointees ruled against the former president, and many Democratic judges rejected the effort to strip Trump from ballots.

That does not mean that Democrats who value the weaponization of law will not continue to embrace lawfare warriors like New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). Others will use the rage of these times as a license to ignore legal and ethical obligations altogether. They are arguably the saddest manifestation of our political discord. They are people who have not just lost faith in our system but in themselves. They have become untethered from any defining principle for their own conduct. This election has left them adrift in a sea of moral and legal relativism, with only their rage as a following wind. They cling to that rage as reason vanishes like a distant shore. For the rest of us, there is work to be done as a nation committed to the rule of law. We cannot win at any cost when that cost is the very thing that defines us.

Read more …

She’s lost it all. But she can’t stop herself.

Rachel Maddow Claims Trump is Trying To “Destroy The US Government” (MN)

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow took a break from claiming she’s about to be thrown into a concentration camp to charge that president Trump is attempting to “destroy” the government. Maddow said, “I think the idea of the authoritarian promise is that everything shrivels in government other than the will of the leader, right?” She further claimed “You don’t necessarily put a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge if you’re hoping for great things from HHS.” “Matt Gaetz, he has explicitly proposed abolishing the Justice Department, not specifically abolishing the FBI and the ATF but talking about abolishing the Justice Department,” she added. Maddow continued to blather, “Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence is, I mean, the idea that Tulsi Gabbard, in a normal circumstance, could get a security clearance to be like a Walmart-style greeter at any U.S. intelligence agency, let alone get past the security barriers, is insane.”

“So, you do that because you want the worst for these agencies, because you want the worst for the U.S. government because you think that the U.S. government is worthless,” she asserted. Why would Trump do all this? Well it’s all a big conspiracy to become a dictator… or something. “That’s part of consolidating power, to make the U.S. government nothing other than the leader and people who will do what he says,” Maddow claimed. She continued, “Steve Bannon used to say, it’s a sort of Leninist project, right? Destroy the state. This is the cabinet that you nominate to, not to run the U.S. government, to do anything, but to destroy the U.S. government.” “So that the U.S. government can be fundamentally reimagined as something much more like a unitary authoritarian or autocratic, for lack of a better term, system,” Maddow concluded, ending her paranoid rant. Or maybe, just maybe, people voted for reform and gave Trump a mandate to implement that, meaning putting people outside of the Washington establishment furniture into key positions.

Yeah, probably more likely that, right. As we highlighted earlier, all the right people are big mad at Trump’s appointments. Add to that list the disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan, who parroted absurd claims that Gabbard is some kind of Russian asset. “Clearly, Tulsi Gabbard has taken actions and made statements over the past several years that raise serious questions about her common sense, judgment, and political sympathies,” Brennan proclaimed. “Cozying up to Putin as well as to Bashar al-Assad shows she doesn’t have the type of perspective needed for someone who is going to head up these 18 intelligence agencies,” he further declared, labelling Gabbard “an unserious pick for a serious position.”

This coming from a guy who pushed the Russia hoax for years, and claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian psy op. He says everything is a Russian plot. His credibility is shot. Meanwhile, AOC ranted about Gabbard, ridiculously claiming she is “pro-war.” Anyone who has listened to Gabbard talk for more than five minutes knows this is the complete opposite of her actual position.

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“It has never passed, and is the only Cabinet-level department of the federal government never to do so.”

Pentagon Spends $187 Mln on Audit, Fails Seventh Year in a Row (Sp.)

This year’s financial review, carried out by the DoD’s Office of the Inspector General and an independent accounting firm, employed 1,700 auditors and cost $187 million – slightly more than the entire defense budget of the West African nation of Mauritania. The US spent a record $824 billion on defense in 2024, $27 billion more than a year earlier. The US Department of Defense has failed its seventh consecutive audit, with more than half of its departments unable to provide auditors with sufficient data to accurately evaluate the status of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of assets under the Pentagon’s domain.

DoD comptroller and Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord – appointed by President Obama in 2014, and under whom the Pentagon failed every one of its independent audits since they began in 2017, assured in a statement that the Pentagon had “turned a corner in its understanding of the depth and breadth of its challenges” and promises to do better in the future. “Momentum is on our side, and throughout the Department there is strong commitment – and belief in our ability -to achieve an unmodified audit opinion,” McCord said. The Pentagon expects to receive a passing grade by 2028, as required in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (the annual must-pass Congressional legislation approving the defense budget).

The audit’s failing grade was based on financial inspections of 28 subordinated bodies, with 15 receiving disclaimers (which means auditors were unable to obtain sufficient evidence to form an opinion on the financial statements being audited), nine unmodified audit opinions (that is, a reasonable level of assurance that financial statements represented a true and fair reflection of audit results), one a qualified opinion (issued when auditors identify material misstatements in financial statements), and three opinions which remain pending. Agencies that passed included the DoD’s Defense Commissary Agency (responsible for food supplies to servicemen and their families), the Defense Financial and Accounting Service (which oversees payments to servicemembers, employees, vendors and contractors), and the Defense Health Agency (supplying an ensuring the readiness of military medical commands).

The Defense Information Systems Agency, which provides IT and communications support to the services, the Military Retirement Fund, the National Reconnaissance Office (responsible for the operation of space and ground-based intelligence collection systems worldwide), the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Civil Works agency and the Defense Contract Audit Agency (responsible for contract audits and related financial advisory services) also passed. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, mentioned in a series of damning intelligence briefings by Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops on US illicit military biological activities in Ukraine and across the globe, also got a passing grade. McCord defended the results at a press conference on Friday.

“This was not a surprise and I know that on the surface it doesn’t sound like we are making progress,” he said. “I do not say we failed, as I said, we have about half clean opinions. We have half that our not clean opinions. So if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure,” he said. Passing an audit by the 2028 deadline is “achievable,” he said. Also this week, the DoD Inspector General’s Office calculated that Congress has now appropriated nearly $183 billion in assistance to Ukraine since February 2022, including $131.36 billion for security-related assistance and activities, and $43.84 billion for ‘governance and development’. The Department of Defense carried out its first independent audit in 2017, and has been legally mandated to do so since 2018. It has never passed, and is the only Cabinet-level department of the federal government never to do so.

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“They don’t feel “invested” in propping up Zelensky’s corrupt regime in the same way that the current Biden administration does..”

Trump Team To Write Off ‘Project Ukraine’ as Sunk Cost (Sp.)

Donald Trump repeated his pledge to end the Ukraine conflagration as he addressed a gala organized by the America First Policy Institute at his Mar-a-Lago resort on November 15, saying that “the conflict has got to stop.” There is a general consensus within President-elect Donald Trump’s team that the failed “Project Ukraine” needs to be shut down, British political analyst Alexander Mercouris speculated on his YouTube channel. “Overall, despite different opinions and nuances among them, they have reached a general consensus that ‘Project Ukraine’ has absorbed a huge amount of energy and resources on the part of the United States, but it has not delivered what it promised. Ukraine has not been successful on the battlefield, there has been no economic collapse in Russia, and President Putin is still very firmly in control of things in Moscow,” the expert said.

In his opinion, these people, who come from the business world in many cases, have taken a simple “cost-benefit view”, and have agreed that “the time has come to close the whole thing down.” They don’t feel “invested” in propping up Zelensky’s corrupt regime in the same way that the current Biden administration does, according to the analyst. “They are resisting falling for the sunk costs fallacy, the one that says that you have already invested so much in terms of funding, weapons and resources that you can’t stop now,” Mercouris noted. Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he could end the fighting “in 24 hours” if reelected; he slammed US aid to Kiev, and vowed not to put US troops on the ground in Ukraine.

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“..numerous Ukrainian officials – as well as their backers in the West – have proposed that Kiev lower the draft age even further..”

Zelensky Wants To Intensify Military Draft (RT)

The tightening of mobilization rules earlier this year has failed to solve Ukraine’s manpower shortage on the battlefield, Vladimir Zelensky has admitted, adding that the relevant legislation should be adjusted. In an interview with Ukrainskoye Radio on Saturday, Zelensky said that Ukraine “has not mobilized” enough troops under two new laws were passed this spring after significant back-and-forth in parliament. The first lowered the draft age from 27 to 25, while the second cracked down on draft dodgers, forcing all citizens eligible for conscription to report to military authorities for “data clarification.”

At the same time, Zelensky rejected speculation that Ukraine had drafted half a million men while pointing to problems with the available replenishments for frontline units. “The brigades in the East are exhausted, rotation is needed. The guys are getting tired and leaving. They must be replaced with fresh units,” Zelensky said. He also admitted that the frontline situation is “really difficult” and that Russia has indeed managed to accomplish “slow progress.” Before this year’s tightening of the rules, Kiev had announced a general mobilization, barring most men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. Recruitment has been marred by widespread bribery and draft-dodging, with some Ukrainians trying to flee the country at all costs, even at a serious risk to their lives.

Meanwhile, social media is filled with videos of military patrols trying to catch eligible men in the streets, shopping malls, and gyms, often resulting in clashes. Despite the intensification of the draft, Ukrainian soldiers have consistently complained of the lack of reinforcements and inadequate training for new recruits, leading to long rotations and exhaustion. In light of this, numerous Ukrainian officials – as well as their backers in the West – have proposed that Kiev lower the draft age even further. Some Ukrainian politicians have also argued that all the country’s citizens should dedicate themselves to fighting Russia either directly on the front lines or indirectly by helping the army in the rear.

Read more …

“..Trump “cannot afford for Ukraine to become his Afghanistan.”

Ex-FM Warns Of Potential ‘Internal Collapse’ In Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine could face civil unrest and even a full-blown “collapse” if US President-elect Donald Trump reverses the outgoing administration’s policy of unconditional support for Kiev, former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has warned. The election of Trump on November 5 prompted fears in Kiev that Washington would end financial and military aid and would strong-arm the country into an unfavorable settlement with Russia. “If the money were to dry up, a new dynamic would come into play, and not all of it on the battlefield. True, bereft of funding, Ukraine could lose ground completely,” Kuleba wrote in an op-ed published in The Economist on Wednesday. He argued that Ukraine could plunge into a civil conflict if the US forces it to sign a bad peace deal.

“If the Trump administration then imposed unpalatable peace terms on Ukraine, and if Mr. Zelensky agreed (an unlikely scenario), part of Ukrainian society would resist. Domestic unrest would risk the country’s internal collapse,” Kuleba wrote. This would give Russian President Vladimir Putin “the victory he has long desired, painting Ukraine as a failed state,” Kuleba suggested, warning that Trump “cannot afford for Ukraine to become his Afghanistan.” Throughout his election campaign, Trump claimed that he would quickly mediate a peace agreement between Kiev and Moscow, without specifying the terms. During a televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he refused to directly answer a question on whether he wants Ukraine to win. “I want the war to stop,” he said at the time.

In June, Reuters reported that two of Trump’s advisers had drawn up a plan to reach a ceasefire based on the current front lines. The Trump campaign distanced itself from any concrete proposals, however. Kiev has long insisted that a peace deal can only be based on Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’, which includes the restoration of the country’s 1991 borders. Russia has rejected these terms wholesale, insisting that Ukraine should drop its aspirations to join NATO in favor of becoming a neutral country and renounce its claims on Crimea and other regions which voted in referendums to join Russia. Speaking to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz over the phone on Friday, Putin reiterated that the conflict “was a direct result of NATO’s long-standing aggressive policy” of ignoring Russia’s security concerns.

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“..authorization of the use of long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia would place Moscow and NATO facing the near inevitability of a nuclear confrontation..”

Moscow Continues To Warn The West About The Risk Of Nuclear Escalation (SCF)

Tensions over the issue of “deep” strikes continue to escalate. Kiev continues to demand permission to strike targets in the Russian Federation’s demilitarized zone, while Moscow continues to make it clear that it will interpret such maneuvers as a declaration of war by NATO. In a recent statement, Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, emphasized how Ukrainians and their partners are “playing with fire” with such threats, promising an “immediate and devastating” response in the event of a long-range strike.

The Russian government has repeatedly stated that the long-range weapons systems supplied by the West to Ukraine cannot be operated without the presence of NATO specialists, who would provide the necessary training and logistical support to the Ukrainians. This is because such weapons are not compatible with the Ukrainian military infrastructure, which depends on continuous intelligence support and strategic guidance provided by the Atlantic alliance. Moscow’s position is clear: authorizing the use of these missiles for strikes outside the official conflict zone, in addition to representing an expansion of Western involvement, would constitute direct NATO intervention in the conflict. Russia would regard any use of these weapons in such circumstances as a direct aggression against its sovereignty by the Western countries themselves, which would require an “immediate and devastating” retaliation.

The discussion about the deployment of Storm Shadow missiles and other advanced weapons systems in “deep” Russian territory is a clear demonstration of the dangerous game the West is playing, ignoring all the limits imposed by Russia. NATO’s role in the war in Ukraine has been a sensitive issue since the beginning of the conflict. Although Western powers insist on their position of supporting Ukraine as a legitimate right to defend it against what they call a Russian “invasion”, many analysts and officials point out that the interventions of the powers of the Atlantic alliance, both in terms of weapons and intelligence, have led to an unnecessary prolongation of the conflict, dragging Ukraine into a proxy war that puts the world on the brink of a nuclear confrontation.

By offering more powerful and sophisticated weapons, the West is not only strengthening Kiev’s military capabilities – which seem to have little strategic relevance at the moment – but also risks turning the local conflict into a war of global proportions. Moscow’s concern is legitimate, considering that the absence of limits on Western involvement in Ukraine could lead to a situation of unrestricted aggression against the Russian people, including even demilitarized cities far from the zone disputed by Kiev.

Indeed, the eventual authorization of the use of long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia would place Moscow and NATO facing the near inevitability of a nuclear confrontation. As spokeswoman Zakharova has made clear, Russia is on high alert for the use of advanced missiles against its territory. Moscow has repeatedly stated that if such attacks occur, Russia’s response will be strong and decisive. This would not only imply a military escalation, but also a redefinition of relations between Russia and the West, with the possibility of unpredictable consequences for international stability.

The recent changes in Russia’s nuclear doctrine, allowing a nuclear response to deep strikes by non-nuclear powers supported by nuclear states (just like in the Ukraine-NATO case), were a clear attempt by Moscow to de-escalate the current situation through rhetoric and indirect deterrence. At first, the measure seemed sufficient to calm public pressure from some NATO figures for the authorization of the strikes. However, it is difficult to predict what the Democratic “administration” plans to do in its final days in power, and it is possible that Biden and his team will go into “suicide mode” and put the entire global security architecture at risk, despite Russian warnings.

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“..large assets like the aircraft carriers are under heightened scrutiny to decide whether they are still a vital staple for modern warfare.”

War Games Show UK’s Flagship Aircraft Carriers ‘Get Sunk’ Every Time (Sp.)

In a reflection of the UK’s host of internal political and economic problems, its Armed Forces have likewise been grappling with financial and operational woes. In most war games carried out by the UK military, its costly flagship aircraft carriers “get sunk”, The Times cited a source as saying. HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, commissioned into the Royal Navy in 2017 and 2019, respectively, together cost £6.2 billion. (approx. $7.8 billion) to build but are reportedly vulnerable to missiles. A “whole load of scenarios” was run during war games to test the Royal Navy’s “ability to survive” against an “overwhelming force”, a British military source was quoted as saying, adding: “We stretch everything to the limit. At some point you will get to a scenario where it [the carrier] is sunk.”

The report cited Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, as speculating that the great stride made in missile technology development was the ability to “locate and track” aircraft carriers. This comes amid an ongoing Strategic Defence Review commissioned by Britain’s Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and overseen by the Defence Secretary John Healey. The review is due in the first half of 2025. Both ministers and military chiefs have been pressured to implement cost-cutting measures due to financial constraints. Hence, large assets like the aircraft carriers are under heightened scrutiny to decide whether they are still a vital staple for modern warfare.

“There will be casualties,” a source hinted, indicating that the prospect of scrapping at least one of the carriers was raised. Former Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Lee of Trafford told the outlet that the military was struggling to afford the requisite numbers of F-35 aircraft for the carriers, along with escort ships and support vessels. Decades of defense cuts by successive British governments have left the country’s military understaffed and underequipped, resulting in delays in production and upgrades. The HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales have both been plagued by technical malfunctions, with humiliating breakdowns affecting Britain’s ability to participate in large-scale joint NATO drills. Furthermore, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is facing a £16.9 billion ($22.17 billion) deficit, the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed in 2023.

Read more …

“Hughes has also banned Yulia and Sergei Skripal from testifying at the Inquiry.”

The Novichok Attack Was A British Operation, Not A Russian One (Helmer)

Yulia Skripal communicated from her bedside at Salisbury District Hospital on March 8, 2018, four days after she and her father Sergei Skripal collapsed from a poison attack, that the attacker used a spray; and that the attack took place when she and her father were eating at a restaurant just minutes before their collapse on a bench outside. The implication of the Skripal evidence, revealed for the first time on Thursday, is that the attack on the Skripals was not perpetrated by Russian military agents who were photographed elsewhere in Salisbury town at the time; that the attacker or attackers were British agents; and that if their weapon was a nerve agent called Novichok, it came, not from Moscow, but from the UK Ministry of Defence chemical warfare laboratory at Porton Down. Porton Down’s subsequent evidence of Novichok contamination in blood samples, clothing, car, and home of the Skripals may therefore be interpreted as British in source, not Russian.

This evidence was revealed by a police witness testifying at the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry in London on November 14. The police officer, retired Detective Inspector Keith Asman was in 2018, and he remains today the chief of forensics for the Counter Terrorism Policing (CTPSE) group which combines the Metropolitan and regional police forces with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Security Service (MI5). According to Asman’s new disclosure, Yulia Skripal had woken from a coma and confirmed to the doctor at her bedside that she remembered the circumstances of the attack on March 4. What she remembered, she signalled, was not (repeat not) the official British Government narrative that Russian agents had tried to kill them by poisoning the front door-handle of the family home. The new evidence was immediately dismissed by the Sturgess Inquiry lawyer assisting Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley), the judge directing the Inquiry. “We see there,” the lawyer put to Asman as a leading question, “the suggestion, which we now know not to be right, of course”. — page 72.

Hughes then interrupted to tell the witness to disregard what Skripal had communicated. “If the record that you were given there is right, someone suggested to her ‘Had you been sprayed’. She didn’t come up with it herself.” — page 73. Hughes continued to direct the forensics chief to disregard the hearsay of Skripal. “Anyway the suggestion that she had been sprayed in the restaurant didn’t fit with your investigations? A. [Asman] No, sir. LORD HUGHES: Thank you.” So far in in the Inquiry which began public sessions on October 14, this is the first direct sign of suppression of evidence by Hughes. Hearsay, he indicates, should be disregarded if it comes from the target of attack, Yulia Skripal. However, hearsay from British Government officials, policemen, and chemical warfare agents at Porton Down must be accepted instead. Hughes has also banned Yulia and Sergei Skripal from testifying at the Inquiry. The lawyer appointed and paid by the Government to represent the Skripals in the inquiry hearings said nothing to acknowledge the new disclosure nor to challenge Hughes’s efforts to suppress it.

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“Climate change could be roaring but the naked eye can’t see it.”

Climate-Change Debate ‘Heats Up’ With Collum, Keen, Fleckenstein (ZH)

Steve Keen, while primarily an economist, is well-versed in the research and a firm believer in the danger climate change poses. Dave Collum, chemistry professor at Cornell, believes much of the science to be bogus. Legendary short-seller Bill Fleckenstein was kind enough to shepard them along. We hope you enjoy and that you give both Keen and Collum a fair shake: For those short on time, here were the highlights:

Poking holes in the ‘narrative’. Things heated up when Collum unleashed a flurry of charts documenting trends that run counter to what we hear from most climate alarmists: Today, we actually see fewer hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and forest fires than decades past. Collum: “There’s no obvious change in the frequency of global hurricanes back to 1980… Back to 1990, it actually has a distinct downward trend… Here’s one that goes back to 1960. These are violent tornadoes. Again, downward trend.” “Climate change could be roaring but the naked eye can’t see it.”

“Potentially Suicidal”. Natural disasters aside, Keen brought his own charts showing the recent and rapid ascent of global temperature. If accurate, the rise in temperature in the last 150 years when viewed on an axis of millions of years is staggering. Keen: “That’s the real danger of climate change. We’ve built [civilization] in a stable period of the climate. We’re destroying that stability and thinking we can still have the social system we’ve designed… I just don’t think that’s true.”

Keen’s sources provided below: Judd, E. J., J. E. Tierney, D. J. Lunt, I. P. Montañez, B. T. Huber, S. L. Wing and P. J. Valdes (2024). “A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature.” Science 385(6715): eadk3705. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.adk3705. Scotese, C. R., H. Song, B. J. W. Mills and D. G. Van Der Meer (2021). “Phanerozoic paleotemperatures: The earth’s changing climate during the last 540 million years.” Earth-Science Reviews 215: 103503. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103503

Green New Deal? Assuming humanity put all its resources and minds together to avert the Earth’s heating… can it be done? Fleckenstein asked our distinguished guests whether they would support a “Green New Deal” (massive public spending effort to combat climate change): Collum: “My dad taught me this: Never ask the government to spend your money. They’ll do a terrible job.” “If we were serious about climate change… They should never put guys like John Kerry in charge as Climate Czar.” “Steve’s enthusiastic about intervening as scientists. But here’s the question I have is who is going to make these tough calls? Who has the right to sign off the informed consent to say we are going to cover the world with a blanket of particles to block the sun?” Keen argued that — while governments are inefficient — we do not have a choice. Keen: “I’ll go on record on saying that if we continue down the trends we’re doing right now… we’re going to destroy civilization before 2050.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

SpaceX

 

 

Baron

 

 

Camelemon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857448564957327748

 

 

Phare du Four
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857826443180315012

 

 

Coconut oil

 

 

Wolf

 

 

Doggy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857433301658608128

 

 

Black hole
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857668215725285772

 

 

 

 

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Oct 292024
 
 October 29, 2024  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  82 Responses »


Jules Adler Panorama de Paris vu du Sacré Coeur 1935

 

Will Donald Trump Get His Revenge? (Susan Quinn)
Leftists Are Terrified About What Will Happen To Them If Trump Wins (ZH)
Worst. Nazi. Rally. Ever. (Margolis)
Kamala Is Just A Vessel; We Are Running Against Something Far Bigger (MN)
Speaking of Abortion (James Howard Kunstler)
Trump’s 19th-Century Solution to Fiscal Disaster (David Stockman)
Trump Campaign Slams Harris Over Beyonce ‘Lies’ (RT)
Trump To Make Ukraine The EU’s Problem – FT (RT)
I Don’t Want War With Russia – Vance (RT)
University Professors Approaching Near Unanimity as a Democratic Lock (Turley)
Bezos Explains Why WaPo Dropped Presidential Endorsements (RT)
Steve Bannon To Be Released From Prison One Week Ahead Of Election (JTN)
How America Was Destroyed (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Enormous Constraints Faced By Netanyahu (Juan Cole)
BRICS Make History – Can They Keep the Momentum? (Pepe Escobar)
Slovak PM Fico Warns Of Continued Attempts On His Life (RT)
Volkswagen Planning Mass Layoffs – Workers’ Council Chief (RT)

 

 

 

 

ABC

MSG


https://twitter.com/i/status/1850691657303519451
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850654136293024210
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850744962377510999

Elon

Stossel

 

 

 

 

Trump is not looking for revenge. He and his X-men team have bigger fish to fry. Trump’s “revenge” will be that what happened to him since 2015 -lawfare- can never happen again.

“…the changes he will make will be in the way government operates, not mere petty payback to individual miscreants…”

Will Donald Trump Get His Revenge? (Susan Quinn)

There’s almost nothing that Donald Trump likes better than throwing his adversaries off their game; he likes to be unpredictable, confusing and in charge. It gives him an edge in achieving his goals. He’s kept his adversaries guessing to the extent that he will pay them back for their lawfare and deep-state machinations, and not surprisingly, they expect the worst. Yet he has said repeatedly that victory in the election will be his revenge. They don’t know what to make of it. A Trump senior advisor made the following observation: “President Trump has made clear that success will be the best revenge,’ Trump senior adviser Brian Hughes said. ‘When others have weaponized government and legal institutions against him for political interference, he will return these institutions to their constitutional purpose of protecting Americans’ liberty and creating a safe and prosperous nation again.

But since the political Left almost always chooses to see deceit in Trump’s comments, they don’t believe he is sincere. He made it even more unpredictable for them with this: “Look when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them,” Trump said. “And it’s easy because it’s Joe Biden, and you see all the criminality, all of the money that’s going into the family and him, all of this money from China, from Russia, from Ukraine.” And then Trump underscored it again, wanting to be sure there was no doubt in the minds of the Left that he could act against them: When asked during a Fox News interview on Wednesday if he plans to use the justice system to punish his political opponents, Trump said: “When this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them.” Note that in both of the previous quotations, Trump commented on what he could do, not on what he would do.

Given the incidents of lawfare that Trump has had to endure, the hyperbole spouted by the mainstream media and the political Left, it’s no wonder that Trump would want to take revenge against those who have relentlessly criticized and attacked him. Jonathan Turley, law professor at Georgetown University, has commented several times on the pathetic and weak lawfare attacks that have been launched against Trump from various attorneys and district attorneys. He made this comment a few months ago about Alvin Bragg, Manhattan District Attorney, who twisted the facts of a Trump misdemeanor to transform them into a felony: Like his predecessor, Bragg previously scoffed at the case. However, two prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, then resigned and started a public pressure campaign to get New Yorkers to demand prosecution.

Pomerantz shocked many of us by publishing a book on the case against Trump — who was still under investigation and not charged, let alone convicted, of any crime. He did so despite objections from his former colleague that such a book was grossly improper. Nevertheless, it worked. Bragg brought a Rube Goldberg case that is so convoluted and counterintuitive that even liberal legal analysts criticized it. It’s no wonder that Trump is relishing the discomfort and fear that he is eliciting in his opponents. They have spent years trying to ruin his reputation, insulting him, discrediting him and trying to humiliate him. Meanwhile, in reflecting on the 2016 election, Trump said the following about Hillary Clinton:

“I could have gone after Hillary. I could have gotten Hillary Clinton very easily. And when they say lock her up, whenever they said ‘lock her,’ you know, they’d start, 30,000 people, ‘lock her up, lock her up.’ What did I do? I always say take it easy, just relax. We’re winning. Take it easy. Take it easy.” He added: “I could have had her put in jail. And I decided I didn’t want to do that. I thought it would look terrible. You had the wife of the president of the United States going to jail. I thought it would be very bad if we did that. And I made sure that didn’t happen, OK? I thought it would be bad.” But now he has reached the point where striking fear in the hearts of his enemies seems righteous. Yet the changes he will make will be in the way government operates, not mere petty payback to individual miscreants. That will be devastating to the Leftist cause. It will also serve as his retribution.

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“They lament the undeniable shift of global politics to the conservative right while refusing to ask why it’s happening?”

Leftists Are Terrified About What Will Happen To Them If Trump Wins (ZH)

After being indoctrinated for almost a decade to believe that their political opponents are secret Nazis ready to install a fascist regime, it’s not surprising that Democrats are freaking out over recent polls indicating a potential Trump win in the November elections. Convinced that America 2024 is going to be a repeat of Germany 1933, ignorant leftists are scrambling to determine whether or not to leave the US or “start a revolution.” The anxiety is palpable. The New Yorker recently asserted in an arduous and rambling article spanning centuries of political history and every rhetorical cliche imaginable that, essentially, Trump is likely to win. The outlet describes Kamala Harris as “virtuous” (which is laughable), but they suggest this trait is not respected enough within the American political sphere. They lament the undeniable shift of global politics to the conservative right while refusing to ask why it’s happening?

They simply default to the old low-IQ and low effort accusations of “racism” and “xenophobia”. The New Yorker argues: “Even when it is utterly self-destructive – as in Britain, where the xenophobia of Brexit cut the U.K. off from traditional allies while increasing immigration from the Global South—the apprehension that “we” are being flooded by frightening foreigners works its malign magic. It’s an old but persistent delusion that far-right nationalism is not rooted in the emotional needs of far-right nationalists but arises, instead, from the injustices of neoliberalism…” The mass immigration from the third world continues in Britain because the same progressive elitists are still in charge despite the Brexit vote. That’s why the country is spiraling into a pit of criminality, mass stabbings and a rape epidemic. It’s the reason why the British voted for Brexit in the first place.

Brexit and the end of mass immigration is the will of the majority of the people, just as it’s the will of the majority of people in many parts if Europe and the US. Yet, leftists who pontificate endlessly about the virtues of democracy dismiss the majority when it suits them. It is this arrogance of the political left that has led directly to the rise of the right wing movement that so utterly terrifies them. The problem is, leftists never take responsibility because they see this as an expression of weakness, and also because their moral relativism allows them to rationalize any behavior as necessary “for the greater good.” Their main character syndrome spurs them to believe they are the ultimate good in the world, and if they are the ultimate good then anyone who dares oppose them must be the ultimate evil. This is why they have a tendency to demonize their political opposition in extreme ways. The New Yorker describes Trump as singularly dangerous, comparing him to mobsters, tyrants and even cancer:

“Trumpism is a cancerous phenomenon. Treated with surgery once, it now threatens to come back in a more aggressive form, subject neither to the radiation of “guardrails” nor to the chemo of “constraints.” It may well rage out of control and kill its host…” And this kind of rhetoric is exactly why there have been at least two assassination attempts on Trump’s life; attempts which the leftist media then shamelessly blamed on Trump. It’s also gaslighting, considering the level of tyranny Democrats have engaged in under Biden and the contempt they have displayed for American ideals over the past decade. The fantasy world of the left is rife with paranoia built on a foundation of emotional sand rather than evidence. They see a new Trump term as the end of everything:

“Having lost the popular vote, as he surely will, he will not speak up to reconcile “all Americans.” He will insist that he won the popular vote, and by a landslide. He will pardon and then celebrate the January 6th insurrectionists, and thereby guarantee the existence of a paramilitary organization that’s capable of committing violence on his behalf without fear of consequences. He will, with an obedient Attorney General, begin prosecuting his political opponents…” “When he begins to pressure CNN and ABC, and they, with all the vulnerabilities of large corporations, bend to his will, telling themselves that his is now the will of the people, what will we do to fend off the slow degradation of open debate? Trump will certainly abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin and realign this country with dictatorships and against NATO and the democratic alliance of Europe. Above all, the spirit of vengeful reprisal is the totality of his beliefs—very much like the fascists of the twentieth century in being a man and a movement without any positive doctrine except revenge against his imagined enemies…”

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Which was worse? 1939 or 2024?

Worst. Nazi. Rally. Ever. (Margolis)

When Donald Trump’s campaign announced plans for a rally at Madison Square Garden, Democrats and their media allies knew they had a problem. Trump was going to pack the house on their turf. So they wasted no time pushing the tired Hitler narrative and claimed that the choice of venue was an homage to a pro-Nazi rally held there in 1939. It wasn’t just liberals in the media pushing this narrative, either. Hillary Clinton accused Trump of “actually re-enacting the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939.” “President Franklin Roosevelt was appalled that neo-Nazis, fascists in America were lining up to essentially pledge their support for the kind of government that they were seeing in Germany. So I don’t think we can ignore it,” Hillary added. Then she doubled down.

“Now, it may be a leap for some people and a lot of others may think, ‘I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to say that.’ “But please open your eyes to the danger that this man poses to our country, because I think it is clear and present for anybody paying attention.” Even the Harris-Walz campaign joined in on the rhetoric. “Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Kamala’s running mate Tim Walz said at a campaign event in Henderson, Nevada. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden.” Walz added, “And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”

Well, the rally took place Sunday night, and boy, talk about the worst Nazi rally ever! In addition to the diverse speakers at the event, a black woman sang the national anthem.

And clearly, Jews didn’t get the memo that this was a “Nazi rally.”

The only Nazi symbols you saw at all came courtesy of the Democrats.

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“I’m asking you to be excited about the future..”

Kamala Is Just A Vessel; We Are Running Against Something Far Bigger (MN)

During a historic rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden, president Trump urged that Kamala Harris is purely “a vessel” and in reality the MAGA movement is fighting against “something far more powerful.” Trump told the crowd, “We are not just running against Kamala — She means nothing. She is purely a vessel — We are running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala and more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical left machine that runs today’s Democrat Party.” Trump further asserted that Biden and Harris are “perfect vessels because they’ll never give them a hard time. They’ll do whatever they want.” He continued, “I know many of them. It’s just an amorphous group of people. But they’re smart and they’re vicious, and we have to defeat them. And when I say the ‘enemy from within,’ the other side go crazy.”

Trump added that these people “are doing such harm to our country with their open border policies, record-setting inflation, ‘Green New Scam,’ and everything else they are doing. But we’re not going to let it happen any longer. We’re going to have the biggest victory in the history of our country on November 5 … We’re going to make America great again.” Elsewhere during his speech, Trump urged that his party is one of real unity and inclusion, while the other side is intent on fomenting hatred and division. “We bleed the same blood. We share the same home and we salute the same great American Flag. We are one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God,” Trump declared.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1850696878469337233

Trump vowed to make America stronger than ever before and to bring back the American Dream. Trump told the crowd “I’m asking you to be excited about the future,” further urging “this will be America’s new golden age.” The MSG event was a roaring success, despite deranged leftists demanding it be shut down claiming it was a literal ‘Nazi rally’.

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“You have not seen such a vivid demonstration of slowly-and-then-all-at-once since the implosion of Lehman Brothers as the collapse of the Democratic Party this fateful October..”

Speaking of Abortion (James Howard Kunstler)

What were they thinking after they shoved “Joe Biden” into the abyss, like an old refrigerator over the edge of the landfill, and afterward settled — instantly it appears, with no process at all — on Kamala Harris to lead the party to victory in the fall election? I will tell you: they were not thinking at all. The collective mind of the Democrat elite was a vast vacuum devoid of thought, mass, or light, like a corner of deepest space, lacking even a particle of cosmic debris to evoke the existence of existence. Such mindlessness was the consummate expression of a party that for eight years worked every angle of political mental illness toward the loss of its mind, driven by whatever dark energy seeks escape from truth, life, and God — whatever is opposite of creation and being. What you are witnessing is a colossal act of being un-born. The party put out a call to the universe and the universe ordered. . . an abortion of the Democratic Party! You are reminded again: be careful of what you wish for.

And so do things stand one week before the election. You have not seen such a vivid demonstration of slowly-and-then-all-at-once since the implosion of Lehman Brothers as the collapse of the Democratic Party this fateful October. Poor Kamala is just collateral damage at this point. She goes out before some manufactured audience and seven-minutes onstage delivering a door-dash order of precooked blather is all she can stand before being overwhelmed by the emptiness and futility of her task. . . and then she flees back to the waiting limousine (and the chardonnay bottle). Meanwhile, her allies — that is, the Democratic Party’s allies — play their own roles in this political abortion. The LA Times and the WashPo declined their usual proforma endorsements, two kisses of death. Those actions last week provoked nervous breakdowns in both newsrooms, cries of anguish, resignations, professional suicides.

The news media find themselves in a peculiar position, having gone along for years with the gathering mental illness of the Democratic Party, like incompetent parents in a large dysfunctional family, offering unconditional support for their kids’ intolerable and unacceptable behavior. They are flying to pieces now on the CNN chat panels. James Carville, the party’s shriveled Gollum, has gone to IV infusions of Jim Beam, seems like. Jake Tapper gets Sunday schooled by JD Vance and turns into a mewling cat-lady right before your eyes. Anderson Cooper goes all waxy and mute. Joy Reid surrenders to echolalia as her MSNBC fans are subjected to the guest list of P. Diddy’s “freak-offs,” ranting about Hitler. Lawrence O’Donnell is looking more and more like Vincent Price in Return of the Fly. Reality-optional hardly suffices to describe cable news these days.

You’ve got to ask: can they just let it be? Can they just let go of their insane Jacobin rebellion now and let it fade into history? Then, kick back, recuperate, get their minds right, put their house and family in order, and move on as a legit political faction in a functioning republic? Or, do they burn the asylum down? The signals are troubling. They are chattering about Mr. Trump “using the military” against them in the months to come — as if the Abrams tanks were going to roll up to DNC headquarters and blast away. By now, you know that such thoughts expressed by Democratic pols and news pals are always projections of their own wishes. The New York Times published just such a classic paranoid projection exercise last week “. . . telling Americans that if he [Trump] wins, he plans to bend, if not break, our democracy.”

Surely it is too late, with early voting well underway, to stop any ballot harvesting and other election shenanigans as engineered by master fraudster Marc Elias. In fact, frauds are already being discovered (e.g., Lancaster County, PA.) Not a good look. It is exactly what a conspiracy (to commit election fraud) means in law, and the actual people who cooked the ballots and transported them are going to rat-out those who instructed them to do it. Wait for that, and wait for it to pop up elsewhere around the country. This time, watchers are watching, much more carefully.

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Stockman knows his numbers. Take the following, and then remember (you too, David) that Elon Musk says he can save $2 trillion on spending.

“Trumpian revenue tariffs would generate about $9 trillion over the next decade, or nearly 80% of the $11.5 trillion revenue loss from drastically shrinking the income tax coverage..”

Trump’s 19th-Century Solution to Fiscal Disaster (David Stockman)

In the last weeks of the campaign, Donald Trump is slicing and dicing the Federal income tax nearly as fast as he served up fries at the McDonald’s drive-thru window last weekend. So far, he has proposed to extend the lower rates, family tax credits, and investment incentives of the 2017 Tax Act after they expire in 2025 and to also exempt tips, Social Security benefits, and overtime wages from the Federal income tax. Those items alone would generate a revenue loss of $9 trillion over the next decade, but he has recently proposed to also exempt firefighters, police officers, military personnel, and veterans from the Federal income tax as well. We estimate the latter would cost another $2.5 trillion in revenue loss over 10 years. As it happens, there are 370,000 firemen, 708,000 policemen, 2.86 million uniformed military personnel, and 18.0 million veterans in the US.

These 22 million citizens have an estimated average income of $82,000 per year, which translates to about $60,000 each of AGI (adjusted gross income). At an average income tax rate of 14.7% these exclusions would generate $250 billion per year of reduced income tax payments. In all, Trump has thus tossed out promises to cut income taxes by $11.5 trillion over the next 10-year budget window. In turn, these sweeping reductions would amount to upwards of 34% of CBO’s estimated baseline income tax revenue of $33.7 trillion over the period. Alas, even in the halcyon days of Reagan supply-side tax cutting no one really dreamed of eliminating fully one-third of the so-called crime of 1913 (the 16th Amendment which enabled the income tax).

10-Year Revenue Loss:
Extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts: $5.350 trillion.
Exempt overtime income: $2.000 trillion.
End Taxation of Social Security benefits: $1.300 trillion.
Exempt Tip income: $300 billion.
Exempt Income of Firemen, Policemen, Military and Veterans: $2.500 trillion.
Trump Total Revenue Loss: $11.500 trillion.
CBO Income Tax Baseline Revenue: $33.700 trillion.
Trump Revenue Loss As % of Baseline: 34%.

Then again, Trump may have something virtually epic in mind. To wit, scrapping the income tax entirely in favor of taxing consumption via levies on imported goods and merchandise. “In the old days when we were smart, when we were a smart country, in the 1890s and all, this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax,” Trump said at a sit-down with voters in New York on Friday for Fox & Friends. “Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying.” The New York Times is deeply alarmed: “The former president has repeatedly praised a period in American history when there was no income tax, and the country relied on tariffs to fund the government.” Actually, however, 19th-century America was even smarter than Trump realizes.

In 1900 total Federal spending amounted to just 3.5% of GDP because back then America was still a peaceful republic and had no Warfare State or even significant standing army at all. And save for the most advanced precincts of Europe, the Welfare State hadn’t yet been invented, either. So, yes, the so-called “revenue tariffs” of the 19th century did meet the income needs of the Federal government to the point of actually balancing the budget year after year between 1870 and 1900. Indeed, the actual annual surpluses were large enough to pay down most of the Civil War debt, to boot. Today, of course, the Warfare State, Welfare State, and the Washington pork barrels account for 25% of GDP. So Trump may be directionally correct in wanting to tax consumption rather than income, but, as usual, he’s off by about seven orders of magnitude when it comes to the size of the Federal budget that needs to be financed.

Still, Trump has stepped up to the plate when it comes to a 21st-century version of the revenue tariff. He has pledged to impose a 20% universal tariff on all imports from all countries with a specific 60% rate for Chinese imports. Based on current US import levels of $3.5 trillion per year from worldwide sources and $450 billion from China, Trump’s tariffs would generate about $900 billion of receipts per annum. To be sure, Trump’s claim that these giant tariffs would be paid for by Chinamen, Mexicans, and European socialists is just more of his standard baloney. Tariffs are paid for by consumers, but that’s actually the hidden virtue of the Tariff Man’s favorite word. The truth is, government should be paid for via taxation on current citizens, not fobbed off in the form of giant debts on future citizens, born and unborn.

So if we are going to have Big Government at 25% of GDP rather than a 19th-century government at 3.5% of GDP, and Trump is a Big Government Man if there ever was one, better that the burden be placed on consumption, not production, income, and investment. After all, today the “makers” get hit good and hard by the current exceedingly lopsided income tax system. Thus, the top 1% pays 46% of income taxes, while the top 5% pays 66% and the top 10% pays 76% of all income taxes. On the other end, by contrast, the bottom 50% pays just 2.3% of individual income taxes, while 40% of all families pay no income tax at all. In any event, the math works out such that the proposed Trumpian revenue tariffs would generate about $9 trillion over the next decade, or nearly 80% of the $11.5 trillion revenue loss from drastically shrinking the income tax coverage and collection rate. So that’s a big step in the direction of fiscal solvency rather than more UniParty free lunches.

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“They have to use people to get people to come, and then they send buses..”

Trump Campaign Slams Harris Over Beyonce ‘Lies’ (RT)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused Democratic rival Kamala Harris of misleading voters by attracting them to a rally in the belief that they would see a performance by pop superstar Beyonce. Over 30,000 people turned up at the Democratic event on Friday in Houston, Texas, with some expecting a free concert after it was announced that Beyonce would be present. MSNBC and the Washington Post reported ahead of the rally that the superstar singer would appear with Harris during the event, while NBC cited a source as saying that Beyonce was “also expected to perform.” Beyonce earlier approved the use of her song ‘Freedom’ as a soundtrack for the Harris campaign. The 43-year-old Houston native did take to the stage at the event with her former Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland, before announcing that she was there as a mother and not as an entertainer.

In a speech that lasted less than five minutes, Beyonce urged rallygoers to support abortion rights, after Harris called on voters to “mobilize” on November 5 in support of reproductive freedom. “It’s time for America to sing a new song,” Beyonce added. “Our voices sing a chorus of unity. They sing a song of dignity and opportunity. Are y’all ready to add your voice to the new American song,” the singer said, welcoming Harris onto the stage. Speaking at a Michigan rally on Saturday, Trump hit out at the apparent failure of the Harris campaign to meet supporters’ expectations. “Beyonce went up and spoke for a couple of minutes and then left, and the place went crazy,” Trump stated, adding that “they booed the hell out of everybody.”

“They thought she was going to perform… it’s crazy. They have to use people to get people to come, and then they send buses. We don’t send buses. Everybody comes. We’re just going to make America great again. It’s very simple,” the former president added. Tim Murtaugh, a senior adviser to Trump, claimed that organizers of the Democratic rally had “lied to build a crowd.” While the front rows at the rally appeared supportive as Harris proceeded with her speech after seeing Beyonce off the stage, clips on social media indicated booing and heckling at the back, with some apparently leaving the venue in disappointment. The vice president has been backed by American pop sensation Taylor Swift as well as Usher, Eminem, and Cardi B, while Trump has received endorsements from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, rapper 50 Cent, and popular journalist Tucker Carlson.

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“Russia gets a guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine,” while Germany and other EU countries foot the bill for Ukraine’s reconstruction..”

Trump To Make Ukraine The EU’s Problem – FT (RT)

Donald Trump will leave the enforcement of any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine to European powers, one of the former US president’s advisers has told the Financial Times. The plan is one of several floated by Trump’s advisers and allies, all of which involve the US refusing to deal with the aftermath of the conflict. Trump has promised to bring a rapid end to the ongoing conflict if he is elected president in November. However, he has offered few specifics as to how he would do this, save for pressing Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky into peace talks with US aid to Kiev as leverage. In the absence of any concrete peace plan, a host of Trump’s current and former advisers have outlined how they think the former president could achieve this goal.

One unnamed “long-term Trump adviser” told the Financial Times on Monday that the Republican candidate could resolve the conflict with “a reimagining of the failed Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015,” under which Kiev agreed to grant some autonomy to the majority Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. This time around, the adviser said, the deal would be enforced by EU peacekeepers. “There are two things America will insist on,” he said. “We will not have any men or women in the enforcement mechanism. We’re not paying for it. Europe is paying for it.” Reviving the Minsk agreements would likely present several major challenges.

After multiple European leaders admitted that they never intended to abide by the 2014 and 2015 agreements, Moscow does not believe that the EU can play the role of honest broker, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this month. Furthermore, Donetsk and Lugansk – along with Kherson and Zaporozhye – have since joined the Russian Federation, and any peace deal must take into account this “territorial reality,” the Kremlin has said. Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who served in Trump’s White House, told the British newspaper that the US could “freeze the conflict” along the current front line, and negotiate a lasting settlement with Russia at a later date. Ukraine would not give up its territorial claims in the meantime, Fleitz said, explaining that this plan counts on delaying a final agreement until “Putin leaves the stage.”

However, Fleitz conceded that he does not speak for Trump and does not know the former president’s foreign policy plans. The most detailed proposal has been put forward by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Speaking to former US Navy SEAL and podcast host Shawn Ryan last month, Vance said that the current frontline could be demilitarized and fortified, ensuring that “Russia doesn’t invade again.” In exchange, “Russia gets a guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine,” while Germany and other EU countries foot the bill for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The current American policy of “throw[ing] money at this problem, [and] hope[ing] the Ukrainians are able to achieve a military victory” is “stupid,” Vance told Ryan.

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“I think that we should try to pursue avenues of peace.”

I Don’t Want War With Russia – Vance (RT)

The US is not at war with Russia and should not seek one, Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance has said, when asked whether he would brand President Vladimir Putin an “enemy” of America. The senator from Ohio was asked during his appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday whether he saw the Russian leader “as an ally or an enemy.” Putin is “clearly an adversary, he is a competitor,” but Washington needs to be “smart about diplomacy too,” Vance responded. ”Just because we don’t like somebody doesn’t mean that we can’t occasionally engage in conversations with them,” he suggested. Host Kristen Welker pushed him further on whether he would directly refer to Putin as an enemy. ”We are not at war with him. And I don’t want to be at war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” the senator said. “I think that we should try to pursue avenues of peace.”

The same logic applies to China, Vance said, adding that he perceives it as a greater threat to American interests than Russia. The US may not like having to talk to its rivals, but in the case of the Ukraine conflict, resolving it will require negotiations, the senator pointed out. When asked whether former President Donald Trump would take the US out of NATO, Vance assured that he wouldn’t. If his running mate returns to office, the country will honor its commitment to the organization, but the bloc “is not just a welfare client, it should be a real alliance,” he said. Vance was referring to Trump’s criticism of insufficient defense spending by its European members.

Moscow has identified NATO’s enlargement in Europe as a threat to its national security and a key reason for the deterioration of relations with the West. The organization’s increasing involvement in Ukraine since the 2014 armed coup in Kiev and promise to bring Ukraine into the fold have contributed in a major way to setting off the ongoing hostilities, Russian officials have said. The current Democratic administration has pledged to stand by Kiev “for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia and has pushed other nations to do the same. Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on Ukraine aid, Kiev’s troops are currently retreating along many parts of the front. Trump has claimed while campaigning that he would end the hostilities in 24 hours, if elected.

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“..he and others continue to saw feverishly on the branch upon which we all sit in higher education..”

University Professors Approaching Near Unanimity as a Democratic Lock (Turley)

The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be the single most divisive election in our history. The public is split right down the middle with almost every group splintering between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. There is, however, one group that seems almost unanimous: professors. A new survey of more than 1,000 professors shows that seventy-eight percent will vote for Harris and only eight percent will vote for Trump. Other than a poll of the Democratic National Committee, there are few groups that are more reliably Democratic or liberal. For anyone in higher education, the result is hardly surprising. The poll tracks what we already know about the gradual purging of departments around the country of conservative, libertarian, and dissenting professors.

Indeed, the lack of political and intellectual diversity may be turning some donors and even applicants from higher education. With failing revenue and applications, universities are starting to re-embrace commitments to neutrality on political issues. Some, however, are doubling down on advocacy and orthodoxy. In an op-ed this week, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth called on universities to reject “institutional neutrality” and officially support Kamala Harris. Calling neutrality “a retreat,” Roth compared Trump’s election to the rise of the Nazis and insisted that schools should “give up the popular pastime of criticizing the woke and call out instead the overt racism.” He added, without a hint of self-awareness or irony, that “we should not be silenced because of fears of appearing partisan.”

In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculties replicate their own views and values. So not only are professors voting en mass for Harris, Roth would have the schools themselves work openly for her election. That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many who are facing rising high tuition costs with relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views. There are obviously many reasons why faculty may reject Trump specifically, but this poll also tracks more generally the self-identification and contributions of faculty. A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.

Notably, Roth acknowledged that the current lack of intellectual diversity in higher education had become so extreme that there might be a need for “an affirmative action program for conservatives.” However, he and others continue to saw feverishly on the branch upon which we all sit in higher education in calling for even greater political advocacy. There is little evidence that faculty members have any interest in changing this culture or creating greater diversity at schools. In places like North Carolina State University a study found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 20 to 1.

Recently, I had a debate at Harvard Law School with Professor Randall Kennedy on whether Harvard protects free speech and intellectual diversity. This year, Harvard found itself in a familiar spot on the annual ranking of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): dead last among 251 universities and colleges. Harvard has long dismissed calls for greater free speech protections or intellectual diversity. It shows.

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University professors are not the only group with such an outsized bias. MSM editors and writers have it just as much. And Bezos will not solve that by withholding an endorsement. His hiring practices need to change. Or his paper is toast.

Bezos Explains Why WaPo Dropped Presidential Endorsements (RT)

The Washington Post has abandoned its decades-long tradition of endorsing a US presidential candidate to earn back the trust of the American public, the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, has said. He explained his reasoning in an op-ed published by the Post on Monday after facing intense backlash from current and former staff. The newspaper has been endorsing candidates since 1976, but announced the suspension of the practice on Friday, prompting several editors to resign. The Post’s editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. According to CNN, the Post’s staffers had drafted an endorsement of the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, which was ultimately not approved by the management. Bezos began his Monday’s op-ed by citing a recent Gallup poll, which found that nearly 70% of Americans have little or no trust in the media.

“Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” the entrepreneur wrote, adding that “most people believe the media is biased.” “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” he continued. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.” The founder of Amazon and aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin admitted that the decision to drop endorsements so close to Election Day on November 5 was the result of “inadequate planning.” At the same time, he insisted that neither campaign had affected his decision-making, and that the move to abandon endorsements was not connected to last week’s meeting between Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, and Blue Origin top executives in Austin, Texas.

A total of 21 of the Post’s opinion columnists signed a statement, describing the non-endorsement as “a terrible mistake.” They argued that “this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.” Three of the newspaper’s 10-person editorial board have since stepped down. More than 200,000 people – or about 8% of the Post’s paid subscribers – had canceled their digital subscription by midday on Monday, according to NPR. The decision to end endorsements was criticized by many prominent journalists, including the Post’s former longtime executive editor Marty Baron.

Last month, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, announced that the newspaper would also not be making presidential endorsements. The move faced similar backlash, with editorials editor Mariel Garza resigning in protest. Throughout his campaign, Trump has blasted “the lying media” for what he said was a long history of unfair coverage of him and his time in office. The Harris campaign and allies have similarly accused pro-Trump media outlets of amplifying “desinformation.”

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“The Trump ally is expected to hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, just hours after his release.”

Steve Bannon To Be Released From Prison One Week Ahead Of Election (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump’s ally Steve Bannon will be released from prison on Tuesday, exactly one week ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison at a federal facility in Danbury, Connecticut, in 2022 after he was convicted by a jury on two Contempt of Congress charges for not complying with a congressional subpoena. A judge had allowed Bannon, who was a first-time offender, to delay his sentence while he appealed the convictions but was eventually ordered to report to prison in July. The Trump ally is expected to hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, just hours after his release.

Sam Mangel, Bannon’s prison consultant, told ABC News on Monday that Bannon taught U.S. history and government to other inmates while he was behind bars, and that he was respected by other inmates. “I’m sure he’s quite glad to put it behind him and move on with his life,” Mangel said. “From what I’m told, he feels he’s got a lot left to accomplish now.” Although Bannon will be released from the Connecticut prison, he still faces criminal charges related to an alleged scheme to defraud donors over the construction of a border wall on the United States southern border. That trial is scheduled for December, and he has pleaded not guilty to all charges, including conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering.

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“..the US military is there to use lethal force to suppress those who object. If Trump’s win is too lopsided to be subject to theft, there can be a cybersecurity attack that prevents a vote count..”

How America Was Destroyed (Paul Craig Roberts)

Those who control the Democrat Party are concerned about Kamala’s election chances. Little wonder. She represents the most anti-American, anti-Constitution, anti-white, anti-peace regime in US history. Top Democrats are concerned that Trump will not only take the swing states, despite the multiple theft mechanisms Democrats have in place, but also some blue states. Polls are revealing that a majority of men of color see Trump as a leader of America and Kamala as a destroyer of America. Those who control the Democrat party, most certainly not the people, are also disturbed by reports of the heavy early voting by Trump supporters. Trump encouraged early voting, because in 2020 Democrats managed to prevent many Trump supporters from voting on election day.

The downside to early voting by Trump supporters is it gives Democrats an idea how many votes they have to steal in order to “win.” It is a no-win situation for Trump supporters. If you wait until election day, voting machine failure, closed precincts, and other excuses can be used to keep you from voting. But if you vote early, you signal to the Democrats how many votes they have to steal. They are well set up to steal them. The Democrats in two swing states have already said that it will be days before they will have the vote count. These days are the time they need to produce the fraud that wins for them. A Democrat and a free election are mutually exclusionary. Arizona officials, for example, say it will take 2 weeks to tabulate the vote count. The Democrats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say they are unable to declare election results for several days after the election.

Until 2020–the Big Steal–the US has not had a problem of producing a vote count on time. Why do Americans accept the election theft implied by a delayed vote count with ballot boxes coming in by the truck loads long after voting is closed? On October 14, I reported on this website that the Biden regime had issued one month before the presidential election a military directive 5240.01. The directive says the US military can be used to come to the aid of civilian police to quell domestic disturbance and can use lethal force against US citizens. I provided a link to the directive. Fourteen days later I have seen no mention of this directive in the presstitute media.

Now ask yourself where the authority comes from for an executive branch cabinet department to overturn an act of Congress. Where did the Biden regime Department of Defense get the authority to overturn American tradition and the Posse Comitatus Act? That there has been no protest against this illegal and unconstitutional Defense Department directive indicates how close the US is to a tyranny. As we learned from the hoax “Jan 6 Insurrection,” it is a simple matter for those in authority to declare “insurrections.” They can do it again. It has now been admitted that 200 federal agents were at work on January 6 trying to orchestrate an insurrection. Next time there will be 2,000. As the Democrats are in power, they can create an “insurrection” prior to the vote count.

[..] So, some of the swing states have said that election results will not be timely reported. When the results are misreported, the US military is there to use lethal force to suppress those who object. If Trump’s win is too lopsided to be subject to theft, there can be a cybersecurity attack that prevents a vote count. Putin and Trump can be blamed for an insurrection orchestrated by the FBI, and the Democrats will be declared by the American whore media as the winner. This sounds far-fetched, but it isn’t.

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“Israel could not gain overflight permissions from Turkey, Iraq or any of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman). Sean Matthews at Middle East Eye points out that as a result, the Israelis would have had to fly down the Red Sea, go west across the Gulf of Aden, and approach Iran from the Arabian Sea. It is a long way around.”

The Enormous Constraints Faced By Netanyahu (Juan Cole)

The limited strikes on Iran carried out by Israeli fighter-jets early on Saturday morning Tehran time above all demonstrated the constraints under which even this extremist Israeli government has to operate. The bombings are said to have been limited to military targets, including missile manufacturing facilities.The first constraint Israel faced was logistical. The Netanyahu government could not have its fighter jets fly straight to Iran, which would have allowed a more extensive set of attacks. Israel could not gain overflight permissions from Turkey, Iraq or any of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman). Sean Matthews at Middle East Eye points out that as a result, the Israelis would have had to fly down the Red Sea, go west across the Gulf of Aden, and approach Iran from the Arabian Sea. It is a long way around. They would have had to bring along large hulking refueling planes. This long, clumsy flight path limited what the Israelis could accomplish.

Extremist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier not ruled out hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities or its oil fields. Iran, however, essentially held the GCC countries hostage, warning that if US-backed Israel hit Iranian oil fields, Tehran would retaliate against US-backed Arab oil monarchies in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia. The Biden administration is trying to woo those countries into recognizing Israel, and having a berserker Israeli government draw them into hostilities with Iran would instead make these Arab countries flee both the US and the possible Israeli embrace. For some diplomatic purposes, as with detente with Iran, Saudi Arabia has already gone to China instead. According to Middle East Eye, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had announced Tuesday that Iran had been promised by the Gulf Arabs that they would not allow their air space or soil to be used for Israeli attacks on Iran. At the same time, Joe Biden pressured Israel not to attack Iranian nuclear facilities or oil fields.

I view Netanyahu as an adventurer who has been attempting to widen the war so as to force the Biden administration to support him. Although Iran backs Hamas, the CIA assessed that the ayatollahs had no idea Hamas was planning to carry out the October 7 attacks, and, indeed, that the Iranian leadership had declined to support Hamas during the past year precisely because they were furious that Yahya Sinwar had tried to drag them into a war without so much as consulting them. Iran also put pressure on Hezbollah not to provoke a war with Israel. That is, though Iran certainly supports anti-Israel guerrilla groups in the region and enjoys harassing the Israelis through them and their rockets and drones, it doesn’t appear to have acted aggressively given the ferocity of Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza.

Netanyahu struck the Iranian embassy in Damascus last spring in an obvious attempt to bring Iran into the war, and Iran replied with a missile barrage that the US shot down. Then this summer Netanyahu assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the civilian head of the Hamas Party politburo (which is not the same as the al-Qassam Brigades paramilitary). The assassination was carried out in Tehran, in a clear attempt to get Iran’s goat. Likewise, Netanyahu’s creepy pager booby trap attack on Hezbollah personnel (and some Iranians, such as the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon) and his assassination of Hassan Nasrallah in September were in part aimed at humiliating Iran. Iran’s October 1 missile barrage at Israel was mostly shot down by the US, but some missiles got through and one hit an Israeli military base. This attack was revenge for the killings of Haniyeh and Nasrallah.

Israel’s riposte was so limited that it might well not elicit any response from Iran, drawing a line under this phase of the Israel-Iran conflict. But Netanyahu was forced into a limited response by the Arab Gulf states (two of which –Bahrain and the Emirates– recognize Israel) and by the Biden administration. The refusal of overflight permissions by the GCC states also limited what Israel could accomplished with its F-35s. I view Iran’s missile program as largely defensive. They have used it against Israel twice this year, and both came in response to Israeli provocations (provocations that I believe to be deliberate on Netanyahu’s part). Israel has made the point that its jets can now reach Iran with extensive refueling. Iran has made the point that a swarm of missile attacks can penetrate Israel’s missile defenses and hit an Israeli military base.

Each side is seeking some form of deterrence against the other, a deterrence that has broken down this year because of Israel’s aggression in Gaza and Lebanon and its anti-missile defenses. I think Iran will be satisfied if it feels that a restoration of deterrence has been achieved. I don’t think Netanyahu is defending; I think he is attacking and attempting to expand his influence in the region. For that reason, it will be difficult to reestablish deterrence between the two countries. For the moment, however, all-out war seems to have been averted.

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“..BRICS China crisscrossing Eurasia from east to west while BRICS Russia/Iran/India crisscross it from north to south..”

BRICS Make History – Can They Keep the Momentum? (Pepe Escobar)

The not so simple twists of fate always allow certain cities to make their mark in History in ineffable ways. Yalta. Bretton Woods. Bandung – a 1955 de-colonization staple. And now Kazan. The BRICS summit in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan, under the Russian presidency was historic in more ways than one – followed with riveting attention by the whole Global Majority and with perplexity by a great deal of the declining Western order. It did not change the world – not yet. But Kazan should be seen as the departing station of a high-speed train journey towards the emerging multi-nodal new order. The metaphor was also spatial: the pavilions at the Kazan Expo center “station” holding the summit simultaneously connected to the airport and to the aero-express train to the city. The rippling effects of BRICS 2024 in Kazan will be perceived for weeks, months and years ahead. Let’s start with the breakthroughs.

The Kazan Manifesto
1.The Kazan Declaration. That is no less than a detailed diplomatic manifesto. Yet because BRICS is not a revolutionary agent – as its members do not share an ideology – arguably the next best strategy is to propose real reform, from the UN Agenda 2030 to the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the WHO and the G20 (whose summit is next month in Rio). The kernel of the Kazan Declaration – which had been debated for months – is to move in practice towards in-depth institutional changes and to reject Hegemony. The Declaration will be presented to the UN Security Council. There’s no doubt the Hegemon will reject it. This paragraph sums up the reform drive: “We condemn the attempts to subject development to discriminatory politically motivated practices, including but not limited to unilateral coercive measures that are incompatible with the 5 principles of the UN Charter, explicit or implied political conditionality of development assistance, activities, aiming at compromising the multiplicity of international development assistance providers.”

2. The BRICS Outreach session. That was Bandung 1955 on macro-steroids: a microcosm of how the new, really de-colonized, non-unilateral world is being born. President Putin opened and handed the floor to the leaders and heads of delegations of other 35 nations, most at the highest level, including Palestine, plus the UN Secretary General. Quite a few speeches were nothing short of epic. The session lasted 3h25. It will be circulating all across the Global Majority for years. The session tied up with the announcement of the new 13 BRICS partners: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkiye, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam. A strategic tour de force including 4 Southeast Asian powerhouses; the top two Central Asian “stans”; 3 Africans; 2 Latin Americans, and NATO member Turkiye.

3. The Russian BRICS presidency itself. Arguably no other nation would have been able to pull off such a complex and impeccably organized summit, held after over 200 BRICS-related meetings throughout the year across Russia conducted by unnamed sherpas, members of working groups and the BRICs Business Council. Security was massive – for obvious reasons, considering the odds of a false flag/terrorist attack.

4. Connectivity corridors. That is the main geoeconomic theme of Eurasia integration, and Afro-Eurasia integration as well. Putin explicitly named, more than once, the new growth drivers of the near future: Southeast Asia and Africa. Both happen to be key partners of several high-profile Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. Additionally, Putin named the top two connectivity corridors of the future: the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese describe as the Arctic Silk Road – and the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), where the three drivers are BRICS members Russia, Iran and India. So that translates as BRICS China crisscrossing Eurasia from east to west while BRICS Russia/Iran/India crisscross it from north to south, with ramifications in all latitudes. And with all the energy add-ons, with Iran positioning itself as a crucial energy hub, opening the finally feasible possibility of building the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, one of the unfinished sagas of what I described in the early 2000s as Pipelineistan.

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“..because of his “attitudes towards Ukraine.”

Slovak PM Fico Warns Of Continued Attempts On His Life (RT)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt in May, has revealed that he faced a potential second attempt on his life, due to his stance on the Ukraine conflict. Fico was shot at close range by an activist who opposed the PM’s views on relations with Kiev. An armed man was detained at an event commemorating a World War II battle in eastern Slovakia in early October, the prime minister revealed in an interview to Bratislava-based internet outlet Standard on Sunday. Fico said the man “hates” him because of his “attitudes towards Ukraine.” According to the prime minister, “a fully loaded weapon” was found on the suspect when he passed through a metal detector. The event in question was held on October 6 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Dukla Pass between German and Soviet forces on the border with Poland. The celebrations were attended by Fico, Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, and members of the government and parliament.

Fico has been an outspoken critic of the EU’s policy of providing lethal aid to Ukraine in its fight with Russia, calling instead for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. In May, Fico was shot four times at close range by a man who, according to Slovakia’s Special Criminal Court, was largely motivated by the decision by the prime minister and his government not to send arms to Ukraine. “I was lucky,” Fico told Standard, commenting on the shooting. He went on to describe the alleged shooter, Juraj Cintula, as a political activist who had attended Fico’s public meetings while “probably” planning the attack. Following the shooting, Fico argued that the assassination attempt emanated from foreign-backed politicians who refuse to accept his government’s policies that prioritize Slovakia’s interests over the agendas of major Western powers.

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“Throughout its almost 90-year history, the carmaker has never closed a plant in its home country..”

Volkswagen Planning Mass Layoffs – Workers’ Council Chief (RT)

Volkswagen is looking to significantly reduce its workforce in Germany and shut down several factories in the country, amid a major overhaul aimed at lowering costs and increasing return on sales, the head of the carmaker’s Works Council has announced. Daniela Cavallo explained to employees in Wolfsburg on Monday that Volkswagen management is “absolutely serious” about the plans and that the move is “not saber-rattling in the collective bargaining round,” Reuters reported. Throughout its almost 90-year history, the carmaker has never closed a plant in its home country. The last time it shut down any of its facilities was in 1988 in the US. “It is a firm intention to let the locations’ regions bleed dry and the clear intention to send tens of thousands of Volkswagen employees into mass unemployment,” Cavallo said.

Her comments come as the automotive giant has been negotiating for several weeks with unions over plans to overhaul its business in order to remain competitive in light of weaker demand from China and Europe. She did not specify which of the ten Volkswagen plants operating in Germany would be shut down or exactly how many of its roughly 300,000 workers in the country would be laid off, but noted that all remaining facilities would be affected by the changes and that “none of them are safe.” Cavallo also stated that Volkswagen management is demanding a 10% pay cut and no pay raises for the next two years. Cavallo stressed, however, that the German government must urgently come up with a plan to ensure that the country’s economy does not “go down the drain.”

She noted that Volkswagen and other European companies are in agreement as to the nature of the problems they are facing, such as slower-than-expected electric transition as well as fierce competition from Chinese automotive brands entering Europe. “We are not far apart when it comes to analyzing the problems. But we are miles apart on the answers to them,” Cavallo said. Earlier this month, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported that the German economy is expected to contract for a second year in a row as it struggles to keep up with soaring energy costs after cutting itself off from Russian gas. Over the past year, the German government has noted a 5.3% drop in the country’s industrial output as orders for domestic-made goods have also plummeted. Experts at the Berlin-based Forum for a New Economy have warned that Germany’s failures are expected to turn the 2020s into a “lost decade” for the country as it suffers “the worst economic downturn since World War II.”

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Oxi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850729272089924043

 

 

Makary

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850974386528166152

 

 

Crow
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850822295465369739

 

 

Peggy and Molly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850930525021823087

 

 

Squid

 

 

Good old days

 

 

 

 

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