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Debt Rattle March 22 2025

Mar 222025
 
 March 22, 2025  Posted by at 10:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  18 Responses »


Caravaggio The calling of St. Matthew 1599-1600

 

• Trump Accuses Federal Judge Of Trying To ‘Usurp’ His Presidential Power (NYP)
• Trump Is Fighting A Cartel Of Vile, Corrupt And Far-left Judges (Miranda Devine)
• DOJ May Invoke State Secrets Privilege in Showdown With Federal Judge (ET)
• Judgepocalypse Now (James Howard Kunstler)
• Trump Eyeing Crimea As ‘International Resort’ – Seymour Hersh (RT)
• Azov Gaining Power is ‘Symptom of Collapse’ of Ukraine’s Civil Society (Sp.)
• Zelensky Slaps Trump in the Face by Subverting Ceasefire Deal (Sp.)
• Kiev Blew Up Metering Station For EU-Bound Gas – Russia (RT)
• Why Diplomacy With Kiev Is A Dead End (Romanenko)
• Democrats Lurch Ever Further Left (Palathingal)
• Sen. Kennedy Delivers Epic Takedown of Chuck Schumer (Margolis)
• There’s a Mutiny Brewing in the Democratic Party (Margolis)
• AOC, Sanders On Multi-state Tour To Rally Democrats Against MAGA (JTN)
• EU Finds Way To Bypass Hungary – Politico (RT)
• Seizing Russian Assets Would Be ‘An Act of War’ – Belgian PM (RT)
• Kill Europe’s Future Competitiveness Through Exorbitant Military Expenses (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

This answers all Trump related questions today

Optimus

Lutnick

USIP

LBJ

Miller

Lutnick

 

 

 

 

It is all here in this video. The Dems have over 200 judges on their side, ready to do their bidding. These judges don’t have to win, they only have to spend time. Until the next case opens. Multiple cases at the same time is even better.

• Trump Accuses Federal Judge Of Trying To ‘Usurp’ His Presidential Power (NYP)

President Trump accused US District Court Judge James Boasberg of trying to “usurp” his presidential power by temporarily halting his attempts to deport illegal immigrant gangbangers in firey Truth Social posts Thursday night. Trump labeled the federal judge as a “radical left” and ranted that he was welcoming “unparalleled” danger into the country. Boasberg set himself at odds with the commander in chief earlier this week by blocking the administration’s attempt to deport alleged migrant gang members — a move which may have exceeded his judicial authority.“Judge James Boasberg is doing everything in his power to usurp the Power of the Presidency,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “He is a local, unknown Judge, a Grandstander, looking for publicity, and it cannot be for any other reason, because his ‘Rulings’ are so ridiculous, and inept.”“SAVE AMERICA!,” the president ended the post.

In another Truth post, Trump expounded on the problems stemming from a federal judge attempting to overrule a decision made by the president of the United States. “Unlawful Nationwide Injunctions by Radical Left Judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country! These people are Lunatics, who do not care, even a little bit, about the repercussions from their very dangerous and incorrect Decisions and Rulings,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “The danger is unparalleled! These Judges want to assume the Powers of the Presidency, without having to attain 80 million votes,” he continued.Trump further characterized the judge’s actions as wanting all of the advantages of being president without taking any of the risks. He then called on Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts to intervene.

“If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble,” the missive concluded. Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order on Mar. 15 that halted Trump from invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport criminal aliens, including members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The Trump administration defied those orders initially, deporting hundreds of migrant alleged gang members to El Salvador the following day. Boasberg attempted in court Monday to order the deportee-carrying flights to return home with the migrants onboard — much to the irritation of the Trump Justice Department. “These are foreign terrorists. The president has identified them and designated them as such — and we will continue to follow the Alien Enemies Act,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an interview on Fox News on Monday.

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The Trump camp better find something fast.

• Trump Is Fighting A Cartel Of Vile, Corrupt And Far-left Judges (Miranda Devine)

If you ever doubted that Washington’s corrupt cartel of Democratic law firms, judges, NGOs, and deep-state bureaucrats is a machine designed to thwart the Trump administration, just watch as judge after judge blocks the president’s ability to keep his campaign promises. It may not be brown paper bags changing hands, but this lawfare that defies the people’s will is every bit as corrupt. It will be up to the Supreme Court to define the limits of presidential authority, but Chief Justice John Roberts’ preemptive scolding of Trump for musing about judicial impeachment doesn’t bode well for the president. Trump won a resounding mandate in the November election, winning every swing state, the popular vote and both houses of Congress. Democrats are rudderless, fighting each other and incapable of mounting an effective opposition.

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The entire Department of Justice vs one judge. And they still have trouble prevailing.

• DOJ May Invoke State Secrets Privilege in Showdown With Federal Judge (ET)

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering invoking its state secrets privilege in its showdown with a federal judge over the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and deportation of illegal immigrants, a high-ranking DOJ official said in a new court filing submitted Friday. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former criminal defense lawyer for President Donald Trump, confirmed a statement issued by Robert Cerna, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official, in court papers filed earlier this week in the case that Cabinet secretaries under Trump “are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secrets privilege.” “I attest to the accuracy of those statements based on personal knowledge of the events described by Mr. Cerna,” Blanche wrote, “including my direct involvement in ongoing Cabinet-level discussion regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege.”

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg told government officials that they have a Friday deadline to submit a sworn declaration by a person “with direct involvement in the Cabinet-level discussions” about the state secrets privilege and to tell the court by next Tuesday whether the government will invoke it. Invoking the state secrets privilege—an evidentiary rule used under U.S. legal precedent—means that government lawyers can assert that court proceedings may divulge sensitive state information that may endanger national security. Boasberg this week ordered the government to explain why it did not turn around flights carrying deportees to El Salvador and to argue whether the move violated his court order blocking the Alien Enemies Act deportations of those individuals last week.

Boasberg had directed the government to return flights with Venezuelan illegal immigrants alleged to be members of the Tren de Aragua back to the United States. The judge, who is based in Washington, had given the government until noon Thursday to either provide more details about the flights or make a claim that it must be withheld because it would harm “state secrets.” The government resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition. In a written order, Boasberg called government officials’ latest response “woefully insufficient” and said that the Trump administration “again evaded its obligations” by merely repeating “the same general information about the flights.” The judge ordered the government to “show cause” as to why it didn’t abide by his court order to turn around the planes, increasing the prospect that he may consider holding government officials in contempt of court.

The order issued by Boasberg has drawn sharp condemnation from Trump and some Republicans, who have said the judge should be impeached. At least one Republican lawmaker introduced articles of impeachment targeting the judge, although it’s unclear whether GOP House leaders will pursue their usage.House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told news outlets that they may pursue an alternative legislative remedy other than impeachment but will hold hearings on Boasberg and other judges in the coming days. Calls for impeachment, meanwhile, sparked a response from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who released a statement suggesting that it’s unprecedented to impeach a judge for issuing an order that the government disagrees with.

“Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in his statement.While no other Supreme Court justices have publicly commented on the matter, retired Justice Stephen Breyer told CNN this week that he agrees with Roberts’s assertion and said that instead, the government should appeal the matter rather than focus on impeachment. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has said in court papers and in media appearances that she believes Boasberg is exceeding his authority by issuing a nationwide injunction blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that typically is invoked in times of war. While issuing the proclamation on the Act, Trump said that his administration believes that the United States is being invaded by Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang that was declared a foreign terrorist organization last month.

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“Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ ‘due process.'” — Buck Sexton

• Judgepocalypse Now (James Howard Kunstler)

Impeachment would be too mild for the claque of Woke-activist federal judges attempting to nullify the executive branch with hectoring writs against any and all sorts of executive actions. If simply bounced off their benches, they could just take up new careers as NPR legal commentators or transsexual pole-dancers. Rather, what you’ve got here is an obvious seditious conspiracy, plain for all to see, orchestrated by the same legal Nosferatus as RussiaGate, the 2020 election, and the J-6 witch hunt.The catch is, this time it is discoverable and subject to prosecution because the party running this legal insurrection no longer has its hands on the levers of power in the DOJ and the FBI as it did when they ran the aforementioned ops. And so, the mighty silence emanating from those two agencies just now should tell you something: namely, that cases are being carefully constructed to finally bring these despicable caitiffs to real and chastening law.

If you want to know one paramount reason for institutional failure in our country, look to the evil enterprise that calls itself “Lawfare.” It originated as a blog launched on September 1, 2010, founded by three key figures: Benjamin Wittes, Jack Goldsmith, and Robert Chesney. Over time it evolved into an activist operation, The Lawfare Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to (cough cough) “Hard National Security Choices,” and run under the shady umbrella of the Brookings Institution. The point of Lawfare is self-evident in its name: it is an instrument of warfare against a perceived enemy which, for the past decade, has been the political faction led by Mr. Trump, the once-and-current chief executive of the federal government. Mr. Trump is a danger to the bureaucratic arm of the federal government because he has defined it as a racketeering operation and moved decisively to end its depredations.

Lawfare is the praetorian guard of the permanent DC bureaucracy, including especially its rogue intel actors, who function as enforcers for the Democratic party that largely staffs the bureaucracy. Norm Eisen, a Brookings senior fellow, is the chief operational strategist for the Lawfare enterprise. He has been active in all its ops, capers, and mind-fucks since Mr. Trump came on the scene in 2015 vowing to “drain the swamp” (i.e., end the racketeering). Norm Eisen holds leadership roles in two subsidiary Lawfare orgs: States United Democracy Center and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Eisen’s broader connection stems from his history of orchestrating legal challenges against Mr. Trump — advising the Mueller investigation, drafting impeachment articles, and leading CREW’s 200-plus lawsuits in Mr. Trump’s first term.

Now, following the Biden interregnum, Norm Eisen leverages a network of nonprofits (ACLU, Public Citizen, etc.) and left-leaning judges to file hundreds of new lawsuits to thwart the MAGA clean-up effort under Elon Musk’s DOGE. Tax filings show that CREW’s funding, in part, comes from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Item: during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, CREW received $432,000 in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans from Newtek Small Business, which evolved into a financial holding company after acquiring National Bank of New York City in January 2023, rebranded as Newtek Bank.

The money-laundering through multitudinous foundations, NGOs, and “non-profits” is the essence of the Democratic Party’s racketeering mode in league with federal bureaucracies such as USAID that dispensed billions of dollars to a vast network of activist recipients. Translation: it provides salaries (often six-figures) to party foot-soldiers whose only duties are to move the money through the organizational layers and to be available for such party tasks as ballot harvesting, vote-counting, and organizing riots. This is the mischief that Mr. Trump seeks to put an end to, and so he must be thwarted at all costs by those whose lifeblood depends on the ongoing rackets. The so-called “Resistance” alliance between the Democratic Party and the bureaucracy seeks to prevent reform by any means necessary.

Since they no longer control potent executive agencies such as the DOJ and the FBI for intimidating and punishing their enemies, their only recourse is the federal judiciary and its officers of the courts, that is, lawyers and judges practicing Lawfare. The federal judges are political appointees, such as John J. McConnell from the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, who was a personal injury lawyer (i.e., “ambulance chaser”) and major Democratic Party doner, giving nearly $700,000 to party causes, and serving as Rhode Island Democratic State Committee treasurer. Judge McConnell issued a wide-ranging restraining order against the DOGE-advised freeze of federal funding launched in February of this year. McConnell’s daughter, Catherine, is a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education, appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022. See how that works?

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That must have put a smile on Putin’s face.

• Trump Eyeing Crimea As ‘International Resort’ – Seymour Hersh (RT)

US President Donald Trump is reportedly considering lifting sanctions against Moscow in order to turn Russia’s Crimean Peninsula into a major international resort, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has reported, citing a White House official. Since his inauguration in January, Trump has pursued direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the conflict in Ukraine. His administration has indicated that it is open to recognizing Moscow’s sovereignty over Crimea and some of the Donbass as part of a potential peace deal. The Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol officially joined Russia in 2014 following public referendums; they were followed in 2022 by the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye. Kiev continues to claim the territories as its own and has vowed to take them back, but Moscow has insisted that their status is non-negotiable.

In a post on his Substack blog on Thursday, Hersh reported that Trump’s broader aim is to improve US-Russia relations through economic cooperation. The president, he says, is seeking to lift sanctions imposed since 2014 and 2022 and “form a partnership with Putin aimed at turning Crimea into a major international resort.” The official source cited in Hersh’s report added that “they might do the same in Donbass.” The journalist noted that Trump’s approach is markedly different from that of the administration of Joe Biden, with his unnamed source describing the current president as an “economic winner.” Trump’s reported interest in Russian energy and natural resource assets includes oil, gas, and unmined rare earth metals.

Since taking office in January, Trump has reversed several foreign policy positions on Moscow. Following a phone call with Putin in February, US and Russian delegations met in Saudi Arabia, with both sides agreeing to restore diplomatic ties and explore joint business ventures after the Ukraine conflict is resolved. Trump and Putin held another phone call on Tuesday to discuss a US-proposed ceasefire. According to statements from both sides, the conversation was productive, with Russia agreeing to a one-month halt on strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure as talks continue.

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“The anger of the Azov will not be quenched, even after Zelensky is gone and a new president elected.”

• Azov Gaining Power is ‘Symptom of Collapse’ of Ukraine’s Civil Society (Sp.)

The destruction of the gas pumping station in Sudzha by Ukraine makes it look like Volodymyr Zelensky has “limited control” over the Ukrainian military and “limited to no control” over the neo-Nazi “Azov* forces,” USAF Ret. Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski tells Sputnik. Due to their belief in their superiority over the rest of the Ukrainian troops, Azov militants “believe that the war was theirs, always, not the politicians, and certainly not Zelensky’s as a propped-up politician who actually ran on enforcing the Minsk II treaty, a ‘peace’ platform.” “I think Azov, like many effective, violent and nationalistic military groups, disrespect politicians on principles, as compromisers and double dealers. Traditionally, these are the ‘generals’ that the politicians fear, not the other way around,” says Kwiatkowski, a former US Department of Defense analyst.

Thus, there appears to be a danger of Azov exercising the “real political power” in Ukraine. “It is a symptom of imminent collapse of what is left of Ukraine’s civil and political society, and it underlines the real problem that [US President Donald] Trump will have to face and has not yet — and that is how to help Ukraine recover a liberal and rights-based society at the conclusion of hostilities,” Kwiatkowski says. “The anger of the Azov will not be quenched, even after Zelensky is gone and a new president elected.

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“Trump should immediately halt all military aid and demand the withdrawal of American personnel..”

• Zelensky Slaps Trump in the Face by Subverting Ceasefire Deal (Sp.)

Volodymyr Zelensky appears to be challenging Donald Trump “after realizing his stance on the Ukraine conflict differs sharply from Joe Biden’s,” Professor Stevan Gajic of the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade tells Sputnik. How could the US force Ukraine to honor the ceasefire? “Trump should immediately halt all military aid and demand the withdrawal of American personnel,” Gajic suggests. The US must declare Zelensky illegitimate and refuse to negotiate with him. Washington should pressure him into holding long-overdue elections. Since Ukraine has lost its independence, Trump should also pressure its backers, including the EU and UK.

On March 20, Ukrainian forces struck the Sudzha gas metering station, violating the energy ceasefire deal agreed upon by Zelensky and brokered by Trump on March 18. Despite the truce, Ukraine attacked Russian infrastructure in Krasnodar that same day. Moscow views this as a deliberate provocation, yet Kiev denies any involvement. Ukrainian media suggest Washington wants a ceasefire to push Zelensky to lift martial law and hold elections in August, but Zelensky has rejected this, fearing he’ll lose his grip on power.

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“The station, located close to the border, was deliberately blown up as part of the Ukrainian retreat..”

• Kiev Blew Up Metering Station For EU-Bound Gas – Russia (RT)

Ukrainian forces retreating from Russia’s Kursk Region have destroyed the Sudzha gas metering station, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has reported. The incident took place early on Friday, roughly 20 minutes after midnight, the ministry said in a statement. The facility had been previously used to deliver fuel to consumers in European nations. Ukrainian forces seized the site in early August during their incursion into Kursk Region and used it as a secure logistics base, the ministry explained. The station, located close to the border, was deliberately blown up as part of the Ukrainian retreat, the military added.

”The demolition of the key Russian energy site was nothing short of an intentional provocation” in the context of the US-mediated partial ceasefire, under which Moscow pledged to refrain from attacks against Ukrainian energy infrastructure in exchange for a similar moratorium by Kiev. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has cited the incident as evidence that Kiev cannot be trusted, saying during a regular media briefing that Russian officials “have repeatedly warned our interlocutors about this.” He said that President Vladimir Putin’s order not to attack Ukrainian energy sites remained in force, per his agreement with Trump.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a criminal probe into the incident as an act of terrorism. It said Ukrainian military personnel currently involved in the Kursk Region incursion were responsible for the gas station’s demolition. Kiev launched an assault into Kursk Region in hopes of seizing Russian territory as leverage in negotiations. Russian forces have since largely ousted Ukrainian troops, with Sudzha, previously a linchpin of Ukrainian operations, being liberated earlier this month.

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“Ukraine blew up a Russian gas facility just days after a mutual agreement not to do just that. As if anyone expected something different.”

• Why Diplomacy With Kiev Is A Dead End (Romanenko)

In a brazen act of duplicity, Ukraine has once again demonstrated that it is not a reliable partner for diplomacy – let alone peace. Mere days after a US-brokered agreement saw Moscow and Kiev commit to a mutual moratorium on targeting each other’s energy infrastructure, Ukrainian forces reportedly launched a deliberate strike on a gas metering station in Russia’s Kursk region. This was no accident, no miscommunication, and no unfortunate timing—it was a calculated breach of trust and yet another glaring signal that Ukraine cannot be reasoned with. The agreement in question was a result of a bold and rare diplomatic effort led by President Donald Trump, who had secured direct conversations with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky.

Despite the immense complexities of this long-running conflict, Trump managed to extract a commitment from both sides: a 30-day freeze on attacks against energy infrastructure. It was a starting point – modest, but meaningful. And yet, even that modest agreement was too much for Kiev to honor. Russia, for its part, not only adhered to the ceasefire but did so with a level of discipline and self-restraint that should have been headline news across the globe. In a show of integrity seldom seen in modern warfare, Russian forces actively intercepted and shot down their own drones – already airborne and en route to targets – because those drones had been launched prior to the agreement’s announcement. That is a serious country taking a serious peace process seriously.

Contrast that with Kiev’s conduct. According to reports from the ground and satellite imagery, a Ukrainian strike targeted the gas infrastructure facility near Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region. The attack caused a fire, damage to critical energy infrastructure, and sent a clear message: Ukraine is not interested in honoring its word, and it certainly isn’t interested in diplomacy – only escalation. This latest incident is not occurring in a vacuum. It is part of a long and well-documented pattern of deception and provocation, especially in the face of good-faith overtures by Russia.

Let’s go back. In 2014, the Minsk agreements were hailed as the roadmap to a peaceful resolution in the Donbass. Russia backed them, and Western leaders nodded approvingly. But years later, former Western officials themselves openly admitted that Minsk was never intended to be implemented – it was merely a ploy to buy time for Kiev to rearm. In other words, a lie from the very beginning. In 2022, there was another real opportunity. Talks in Istanbul between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators reportedly came close to a viable ceasefire. But just as Kiev was nearing a deal, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened, reportedly urging Ukraine to walk away from the table. The result? Thousands more lives lost and the door to peace slammed shut once again.

Now, in 2025, with yet another window of opportunity pried open through diplomacy – this time led by Trump – Ukraine has apparently chosen to burn it down. Literally. The Kursk attack is not a deviation from Ukraine’s diplomatic record; it is the continuation of it. To President Trump’s credit, his efforts thus far have been the most realistic of any Western leader since the conflict began. Unlike the performative moralizing of his predecessor or the reckless interference of EU and UK heads of state, Trump’s approach has been grounded in pragmatism: reduce civilian suffering, de-escalate the war incrementally, and restore a framework for diplomacy. But those efforts require a willing partner.

Russia has signaled, time and again, that it is ready. Even now, despite this attack, Moscow has not withdrawn from the agreement. It is attending talks. It is engaging. It is showing up to the table. But the table is increasingly starting to look like a trap, set for anyone naive enough to believe Kiev’s promises. And that is the central, bitter truth: Kiev has shown not just unreliability, but outright duplicity. It will sign agreements, only to break them. It will smile for the cameras, only to sabotage talks behind the scenes. It will invoke Western values while acting in direct opposition to the very foundations of diplomacy and peace. For Washington – especially President Trump – this should be the wake-up call. The Kursk strike wasn’t just an attack on Russian infrastructure; it was an attack on diplomacy itself. It was an attack on the possibility of peace.

The world has now seen, repeatedly, who honors their word and who discards it the moment it’s politically convenient. Russia has shown that it is willing to pause, to restrain, to negotiate. Ukraine has shown that it will exploit every agreement, twist every olive branch into a weapon, and backstab at every opportunity.There can be no more illusions. No more Minsk-style traps. No more Istanbul disappointments. If there is to be peace, it cannot be built on the quicksand of Kiev’s promises. Any further negotiations must be predicated on reality – not hope – and the reality is this: one side is showing maturity, consistency, and openness. The other is showing that it cannot be trusted, or even talked to.

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” They’re not just fighting Trump; they’re fighting the future. And in the process, they’re making themselves obsolete..”

• Democrats Lurch Ever Further Left (Palathingal)

The Democratic Party is in free fall. Once a party of pragmatic leadership, strong borders, fiscal responsibility, and law and order, it has devolved into a chaotic, leaderless mess. While President Donald Trump and Republicans rally around an “America First” vision prioritizing economic growth, national security, and government efficiency, Democrats seem more focused on tearing down their own past successes, rather than presenting a coherent vision for the future. With Joe Biden and Kamala Harris out of office, the Democratic Party should be resetting itself for a comeback. Instead, it is rudderless and lost, with no serious leadership stepping up to challenge Trump on substance. The loudest voices—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and their ideological allies—have driven the party into a radical fringe, where woke activism overshadows the core concerns of working Americans.

But it wasn’t always that way. The Democrats of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama once promised hope, change, and reform—Clinton championed fiscal responsibility, strong borders, and tough-on-crime policies, while Obama’s 2008 “Hope & Change” mantra inspired millions who believed he would unite the country, end corruption, and restore faith in government. Yet, instead of delivering on those visions, today’s Democratic Party leadership has abandoned pragmatism in favor of radical identity politics. Many Americans now feel that Trump 2.0—not the Democratic Party—is fulfilling the very “Hope & Change” promise that Obama once made, while Clinton and Obama stand by silently as their party turns into a circus sideshow of gender activism and woke extremism.

Bill Clinton famously declared, “The era of big government is over.” His presidency was defined by pragmatism, working with Republicans to balance the budget, reform welfare, and enforce immigration laws. He understood that unchecked government expansion led to inefficiency, and he wasn’t afraid to challenge progressive orthodoxy when necessary. His 1995 State of the Union address would be unrecognizable in today’s Democratic Party. Clinton stated: “All Americans … are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders.” That speech could have been delivered by Trump himself, yet back then, Democrats applauded. Today, any Democrat saying those words would be attacked by his or her own party.

Obama, too, understood the importance of strong governance. He championed cracking down on government waste, promising that Obamacare would be funded by eliminating “fraud, waste, and abuse.” In 2010, he reassured Americans: “We are scrutinizing spending for waste, looking for ways to achieve savings for taxpayers, and we will continue to enforce the law to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.” Yet today’s Democrats mock those very principles, calling fiscal responsibility a right-wing obsession. Obama also had a firm stance on illegal immigration—one that modern Democrats would denounce. Under his administration, the U.S. deported nearly 3 million illegal immigrants, peaking at more than 410,000 removals in 2012—far higher than anything Trump ever achieved during his first term.

Yet now, even suggesting border enforcement gets you branded a “racist” by the Democratic Party. For all their flaws, Clinton and Obama also took Islamic terrorism seriously—something today’s Democrats fail to do.Clinton launched missile strikes against al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Sudan in response to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings. He recognized the growing threat of Islamic extremism, though he lacked the political will to fully eliminate it.Obama went even further. His administration drastically expanded drone strikes, authorizing more attacks than Bush and Clinton combined.He personally ordered the special forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden, often overruling left-wing activists who wanted softer policies on terrorism. However, his refusal to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” signaled a dangerous unwillingness to confront the ideological roots of the problem.

Trump, by contrast, obliterated the ISIS caliphate in record time and took out Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top terrorist mastermind—something neither Clinton nor Obama had the courage to do.Under today’s Democrat leadership, even acknowledging that terrorism has ideological roots is considered “Islamophobic.” The party has drifted so far left that even Clinton and Obama now look conservative by comparison.Many of us voted for Obama in 2008 because we believed in “Hope and Change.” We thought he would challenge the corrupt system, particularly the Bush-Cheney administration, for lying America into the Iraq War—a war that cost thousands of lives and destabilized the entire region. But Obama didn’t just fail to prosecute Bush and Cheney—he became them. Instead of exposing the military-industrial complex, he expanded it. Instead of ending regime-change wars, he continued them.

Trump, on the other hand, punished Bush and Cheney by taking over the Republican Party, purging neocons from power, and realigning the GOP toward an America First agenda. Obama had the opportunity to be that kind of leader—but instead, he joined the club he promised to dismantle. Elon Musk is delivering the kind of hope and change Americans expected from Obama—but never got. Instead of cutting red tape and fueling innovation, Democrats are blocking progress, filing lawsuits, and relying on partisan judges to do their dirty work. They’re not just fighting Trump; they’re fighting the future. And in the process, they’re making themselves obsolete. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency launch proves that America’s biggest advancements are happening in spite of the Democratic Party, not because of it.

While Republicans, independents, and free-thinking liberals support innovation, today’s Democrats look like a bunch of clowns, desperately trying to suppress progress through lawsuits and regulations. Clinton and Obama must decide: Will they watch their party collapse, or will they step in and save it? The Democratic Party is collapsing under its own weight—but that’s only half the story. The other half is Trump’s speed, strength, and relentless punch. While Democrats flounder in confusion, Trump is moving fast—rebuilding the economy, securing the border, and reshaping America’s global standing in record time. The longer Democrats delay a course correction, the harder his impact will hit them. America needs a serious opposition party, not a circus. If they don’t act soon, Democrats will be remembered not as leaders, but as the ones who let the party die. The choice is theirs. But time is running out.

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“I don’t hate anybody, and that includes Senator Schumer. He’s very smart. On the other hand, Chuck’s often wrong. He never makes the same mistake twice; he makes it five or six times just to be sure.”

• Sen. Kennedy Delivers Epic Takedown of Chuck Schumer (Margolis)

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has learned the hard way that he can’t buck the radical wing of his party without consequences. The Senate Minority Leader’s decision to support the GOP funding bill has unleashed a torrent of progressive fury that’s tearing the Democratic Party apart at the seams. During an appearance on Fox News, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) delivered his trademark straight talk about the Democratic meltdown with a diagnosis that only he could provide. “Among them right now, we’ve all seen the news, he’s about as popular as chlamydia,” Kennedy quipped about Schumer’s current standing with his fellow Democrats.

The progressive rage machine is running at full throttle, with House Democrats now demanding Schumer’s resignation, and some calling on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to challenge Schumer for his seat. Notably, their Senate colleagues haven’t joined this circus yet, probably because they have to actually work with the guy. But the damage is done, and the left’s circular firing squad is locked and loaded. I’m enjoying the show. Kennedy, who’s never met a metaphor he couldn’t make memorable, summarized Schumer’s leadership style perfectly. “I don’t hate anybody, and that includes Senator Schumer. He’s very smart. On the other hand, Chuck’s often wrong. He never makes the same mistake twice; he makes it five or six times just to be sure.” While acknowledging Schumer’s intelligence, Kennedy made it clear that being smart doesn’t always translate to good judgment — he is a Democrat after all.

The Louisiana senator praised Schumer’s rare moment of clarity in supporting the funding bill and noted with characteristic wit, “Unless a football coach taught you history, you understand that shutting government down never achieves anything.” But the real gem came when Kennedy described the current state of the Democratic Party: “The loon wing of the Democratic Party is firmly in control.” Anyone who’s watched these progressives push their radical agenda – especially their bizarre obsession with denying biological reality – knows exactly what he’s talking about. “These people are deeply weird,” Kennedy observed in what might be the understatement of the year.

The GOP’s strategy for handling these Democratic extremists? Kennedy revealed it with a smile: “Our Republican secret plan for dealing with the Democrats is called Operation Let Them Speak.” It’s brilliant in its simplicity – just let them keep talking, and voters will run screaming in the opposite direction. However, Kennedy acknowledged a sobering truth about this Democratic descent into madness: “That’s good for our party, but it’s bad for America, and I think Schumer did the right thing.” He’s absolutely right. While Democratic extremism might help Republicans at the ballot box, watching radical ideologues hijack half of our political system is a tragedy for our republic. We’ve booted them out of power for now, but there’s no guarantee that they won’t get it back someday, perhaps sooner than later.

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The Democratic Party will continue to exist, just under different leadership. But with the same people behind the curtains.

• There’s a Mutiny Brewing in the Democratic Party (Margolis)

No one knows better than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer just how enraged the Democratic base is — and it’s not just a little frustration. According to Politico, the party is on the verge of mutiny. According to the outlet, the fury gripping the party has reached historic levels, creating a seismic rift between congressional Democrats and their grassroots. If this anger keeps boiling over, it could upend the 2026 primaries and reshape the party’s future. “Congressional Democrats have typically enjoyed higher popularity with their voting base than their Republican counterparts,” the paper notes. “But the trauma of the 2024 presidential election defeat appears to have ruptured that relationship. A review of Quinnipiac University’s annual first-quarter congressional polling reveals that, for the first time in the poll’s history, congressional Democrats are now underwater with their own voters in approval ratings.”

Just 40 percent of Democrats approve of the job performance of congressional Democrats, compared to 49 percent who disapprove. That’s a dramatic change from this time last year, when 75 percent of Democrats approved compared to just 21 percent who disapproved. The Democratic base’s disillusionment runs so deep that it’s eerily reminiscent of Republican grassroots sentiment in the period leading up to Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party. The numbers are clear: No longer satisfied with the status quo in their party, Democrats are on the verge of a Tea Party-style, intra-party revolt. The latest approval data for Democrats is unlike anything we’ve seen in recent history, and it’s not just the usual case of sore losers still stewing over an election defeat.

When Democrats first lost to Donald Trump in 2016, their congressional approval ratings within the party actually went up. Why? Because the Democratic base largely approved of the way their leaders fought back against Trump in early 2017. A similar trend played out among Republicans in 2021 — despite Trump’s loss and the left’s overblown hysteria over Jan. 6, GOP voters still viewed congressional Republicans favorably. But this time, something is different. The numbers suggest that Democrats aren’t just upset; they’re fed up with their own party. As Politico points out, the closest comparison to the level of fury gripping Democratic voters today goes back about a decade to when GOP outsider Dave Brat stunned the political world by defeating House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a shocking 2014 primary upset.

Just two years later, Donald Trump bulldozed his way through a crowded field of establishment Republican candidates, reshaping the Republican Party forever. If history is any guide, Democrats could be in for a similar reckoning. In the short term, this is great news for the GOP. The Democrats’ internal civil war is bound to create electoral headaches and give Republicans an edge. But the real concern is what comes next. Once the dust settles, we’re likely to be left with a Democratic Party even more radical than it is today. Some might argue that this shift will only help the GOP, as the left’s increasingly extreme agenda continues to alienate mainstream voters.

But underestimating the radical left is a mistake. For its part, Politico insists that this isn’t about dragging the party further left, but history suggests otherwise. Despite the restive energy in the party’s progressive wing, the Democratic discontent does not seem to be centered around a desire to pull the party to the left or the right. Democrats cannot seem to agree on which direction the party should move in — recent Gallup polling found that 45 percent wanted the party to become more moderate, while 29 percent felt it should become more liberal, and 22 percent wanted it to stay the same.

I’m not convinced that the Democratic Party won’t emerge more radical in the end. But the short-term outlook still looks good. Politico suspects that Democrats could experience “a potentially bruising string of primaries in both the House and Senate.” One of the biggest mistakes of the Tea Party movement was primarying Republicans in moderate to blue districts or states, resulting in the nomination of candidates who couldn’t win a general election. The most notable example would be Christine O’Donnell, who beat Rep. Mike Castle in the Republican primary and ultimately lost to Democrat Chris Coons in the general election in a seat that was actually competitive thanks to the political climate at the time. Will Democrats make the same mistake in 2026 as Republicans did in 2010?

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Might as well bring Kamala back.

• AOC, Sanders On Multi-state Tour To Rally Democrats Against MAGA (JTN)

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has embarked on a multi-state tour in what appears to be the most recent and organized effort to unify the Democratic Party against the Trump administration. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and Sanders, a Vermont Independent and former Democratic presidential candidate, stopped in Nevada on Thursday and will be in Colorado and Arizona on Friday.The tour is part of Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy: What’s Next” tour, in which the senator essentially argues the U.S. is headed toward an Oligarchy government as President Trump continues to fill his cabinet and other top-level posts with industry titans including billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, head of the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“This isn’t just about Republicans,” Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd in Las Vegas, according to NBC News. “We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us, too.” Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, considered among the most progressive lawmakers on Capitol Hill, are also touring together amid Democratic Party backlash against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for having supplied enough Senate Democrat votes for the passage of a GOP-led, stopgap spending bill earlier this month to avoid a government shutdown.

Ocasio-Cortez did not mention Schumer by name, but the crowd at times broke out into multiple “Primary Chuck” chants – a growing call within the party to challenge Schumer, a fellow New York Democrat, in a 2028 primary should he seek reelection. At the Las Vegas rally, Sanders said to regain voters’ support, the Democratic Party leadership must tell the truth about the influence billionaires have in U.S. politics. He told CBS News the face of the Democratic Party needs to be “working-class people, young people, people who get their hands dirty, people who may not have graduated college, people who do not have PhDs in economics, people who are struggling to put food on the table. They’ve got to be involved. We’ve got to listen to them.”

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Democracy in all its shining glory.

• EU Finds Way To Bypass Hungary – Politico (RT)

The EU has found a way to issue so-called “joint” statements on the Ukraine conflict, by bypassing Hungary’s objections to the bloc’s continued support for Kiev, Politico has reported. Hungary refused to endorse a bloc statement following Thursday’s European Council meeting in Brussels, which reaffirmed the Brussels’ stance on the Ukraine conflict, and the bloc’s intentions to continue arming Kiev. However a document ignoring Hungary’s position was published as a formal European Council conclusion, bearing signatures from only 26 member-states, instead of 27. The EU intends to continue using the exclusionary tactic in preparing key statements in the future, the outlet reported on Thursday. Issuing documents “on behalf of the 26… is the new normal. And it is useful when it comes to political intent. Maybe down the line though we will encounter other problems,” a senior diplomat told Politico.

A top EU official cited in the article, pointed out that “no one has any doubts that there is divergence with one member state. The objective should always be to have conclusions at 27 — if it is not possible, if the strategic division is maintained, and we have all the indications that it is maintained, that we would move forward at 26.” Another diplomat insisted that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has consistently criticized EU weapons deliveries to Ukraine and called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict, “chose isolation and a path of illiberal democracy against the obvious interest of the EU and, in fact, Hungary.” “The security of Europe is too serious of an issue to negotiate with one person who sees things 180 degrees differently than everyone else,” the diplomat stressed.

Hungary’s absence from bloc’s statements does not remove its ability to veto key EU policy decisions, as they still require unanimous support from all 27 members. “The EU wants to avoid the kind of public breakdown in unity” that would likely be triggered by the suspension of Hungary’s voting rights, it said. Orban told Kossuth radio on Friday that at the summit in Brussels he “saw in the eyes of every [EU leader] that Ukraine has lost this war. Getting involved was a bad decision. The Hungarians were right.”

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“..Euroclear is already entangled in legal battles with several parties, many of whom have turned to Russian courts to challenge the asset freeze..”

• Seizing Russian Assets Would Be ‘An Act of War’ – Belgian PM (RT)

Confiscating Russian assets frozen in the EU would be considered “an act of war,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has warned, according to Politico. He cautioned that the move would likely provoke a response from Moscow. Western countries froze an estimated $300 billion worth of Russian sovereign funds following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Around $213 billion of that is held by Euroclear, a Brussels-based clearing house. The frozen funds have already accrued billions in interest, of which Euroclear transferred €1.55 billion ($1.63 billion) to Kiev last July. Speaking to reporters after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday, De Wever warned that seizing Russian assets would pose “systemic risks to the entire global financial system” and could trigger retaliation from Moscow.

“We’re not living in a world of fantasy. We’re in the real world, where if you take €200 billion from somebody there will be consequences,” the outlet quoted the Belgian prime minister as saying on Thursday. De Wever’s warning comes as some EU countries including France and Spain have been pushing to confiscate Russian frozen assets as they seek to use the funds to strengthen Ukraine’s defense and improve its negotiating position in any future peace talks with Russia, the article noted. Earlier this month, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced that Paris will use interest accrued on Russian assets frozen in European banks to buy weapons for the Ukrainian military, a move condemned by Moscow. While proceeds generated from the frozen funds are already being used to back a $50 billion loan for Ukraine provided by the G7, most Western nations have stopped short of directly confiscating the assets.

According to Politico, Belgium has a major stake in the issue as Euroclear is based in Brussels. The country is reportedly concerned that handing over the funds to Kiev could expose Euroclear to additional legal claims from asset holders. Euroclear is already entangled in legal battles with several parties, many of whom have turned to Russian courts to challenge the asset freeze and demand compensation. The International Monetary Fund has also warned that seizing the funds without a clear legal framework could erode global trust in Western financial institutions. The Kremlin has condemned any attempts to confiscate Russian assets, labeling them “theft” and warning of serious legal repercussions. Russia has also hinted at potential retaliatory measures against Western investments in the country.

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Globalists dream.

• Kill Europe’s Future Competitiveness Through Exorbitant Military Expenses (Sp.)

NATO intends to ask its European members to boost their military gear stocks by about 30%, Bloomberg claims, citing its sources. Commenting on this development, German geopolitical analyst and AfD MP Dr. Rainer Rothfuss tells Sputnik that European countries today find themselves pressured by globalists and defense industry lobbyists pushing to ramp up military spending even as Trump in the US is doing the exact opposite. Just as countries in the northern hemisphere have an opportunity to lower defense spending, “the globalists groups and lobbyist groups lobbying for defense industry interests have found the European countries where most pressure can be exerted where most successfully arms sales can still be increased.” This situation, Dr. Rothfuss explains, does not bode well for Europe’s “future competitiveness” because European powers need to spend more on education, research, development and civil infrastructure instead of military pursuits.

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Giza

 

 

Birds

 

 

Mantis

 

 

Fold

 

 

Ray

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle May 21 2024

May 212024
 
 May 21, 2024  Posted by at 9:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  34 Responses »


Roy Lichtenstein Crying girl 1963

 

• Assange Secures Big Win In US Extradition Hearing: How It Happened (RT)
• Vladimir Zelensky: No Mandate, No Election. So What Now? (Drize)
• End of Zelensky’s Term To Have No Effect On Russia’s Operation – Kremlin (TASS)
• Zelensky Emerges as ‘First Obstacle’ to Peaceful Resolution of Ukrainian Conflict (SP.)
• Zelensky A ‘Legitimate Military Target’ – Medvedev (RT)
• Ukraine has lost 90% Of Energy Capacity – Ex-Minister (RT)
• ICC Chief Prosecutor Seeks Arrest Warrants For Netanyahu And Hamas Leaders (RT)
• There Is No Genocide In Gaza – Biden (RT)
• Why Are Israel And The West Unravelling In Tandem? (Alastair Crooke)
• Judge in Trump Case Says She’s Concerned With Special Counsel Jack Smith (ET)
• Michael Cohen Admits Stealing Tens of Thousands From Trump Organization (ET)
• The President Whose Voice Must Not Be Heard (Turley)
• China Offloads Record Amount Of Dollar Assets – Data (RT)
• Fugazy Land (Jim Kunstler)

 

 

Tapper

 

 

Biden SCOTUS

 

 

Fani
https://twitter.com/i/status/1792738591161901068

 

 

Totalitarianism

 

 

 

 

“Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Sputnik that the decision of the UK’s High Court of Justice in London doesn’t appear to be in support of the Wikileaks founder. “It is difficult to call the ongoing execution a ‘decision in favor of Assange,'” Zakharova said.”

“The UK High Court ruled that Washington’s assurances of a fair trial for the WikiLeaks founder were insufficient, allowing a full appeal.”

My first reaction: Until now, the appeals were always limited to a few small points, excluding most others. This appears different. RT claims it is a full appeal. Which would involve 1000s upon 1000s of pages of documents that may have to be revisited. I don’t see a positive confirmation of this. We’ll have to see. Knock on wood.

• Assange Secures Big Win In US Extradition Hearing: How It Happened (RT)

The High Court in London has ruled that WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has the right to appeal an extradition request by the US. Washington is seeking to put the Australian publisher on trial for espionage for disclosing alleged war crimes committed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The UK High Court considered Washington’s assurances that Assange would be given a fair trial if extradited to the US. The court had previously requested two sets of written guarantees from the US stating that the WikiLeaks founder would not be discriminated against due to his Australian citizenship, and would not be held in a maximum security prison or be given the death penalty. If the court had ruled that these guarantees were adequate, Assange would likely have been extradited to the US in a matter of days. While the US had provided the assurances, it did so with a number of conditions.

The American side promised not to immediately place Assange in a maximum security prison, but reserved the right to do so based on his conduct. US prosecutors also stated that the WikiLeaks founder would be able to rely on the First Amendment right to free speech during the trial, but noted that its applicability would be “exclusively within the purview of the US courts.” Assange’s supporters slammed Washington’s diplomatic assurances, with Amnesty International’s criminal justice expert Juli Hall calling them “inherently unreliable because the US government gives itself an out.” The publisher’s wife, Stella Assange, had also described the US guarantees as “blatant weasel words.” Ahead of Monday’s ruling, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the High Court in London calling for Assange’s immediate release.

During the hearing, Assange’s lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told the judges that the assurances of a fair trial given by US prosecutors could not be relied upon as American courts would not be bound by them. “We say this is a blatantly inadequate assurance,” Fitzgerald told the court. In a short ruling, the two senior judges of London’s High Court stated that the assurances provided by the US were not sufficient, and gave Assange’s legal team the right to a full appeal hearing. While the legal battle continues, Assange himself will remain in London’s top-security Belmarsh Prison, where he has been held for the past five years since his arrest in 2019 when his asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London was revoked.

The legal victory was immediately celebrated by Assange’s supporters, with Amnesty International’s Simon Crowther calling it a “rare piece of positive news for Julian Assange and all defenders of press freedom.” Stella Assange applauded the court’s verdict, calling it the “right decision.” She criticized the US for the ongoing persecution of her husband, and demanded that Washington “read the situation” and drop the case against him. Former Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn also celebrated Monday’s verdict, but stressed that there was still a lot to be done to secure Assange’s freedom.

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“On May 20, Vladimir Zelensky’s presidential powers officially expired..”

• Vladimir Zelensky: No Mandate, No Election. So What Now? (Drize)

On May 20, Vladimir Zelensky’s presidential powers officially expired. He retains power, however, because no elections can be held in Ukraine due to the current state of martial law. Responding to a question last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said peace agreements can only be signed with legitimate leaders. He added that the Ukrainian legal system should draw the necessary conclusions. Firstly, because there is the temptation, if not to cancel them altogether, then to postpone elections in Ukraine for as long as possible. Of course, even if peace is achieved, Ukraine’s infrastructure will have to be rebuilt in order to conduct a proper ballot. Political life also needs to be restarted. All this takes time. But the main point is that Zelensky may well lose the election. He no longer looks like a winner. Moreover, it’s relevant to ask if Ukraine will survive not just as a state but with some form of democracy. It is also unlikely to join NATO any time soon.

There is a growing sense that Zelensky’s backers are tiring of him. A true politician has to be able to run a long race, which is why US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has hinted at the desirability of holding elections. So what’s the bigger picture here? A high-level peace conference on Ukraine is scheduled for mid-June in Burgenstock, Switzerland. It’s highly likely that this will fall short of expectations, to put it mildly. If it takes place at all. At the very least, the participation of the Global South appears to be unlikely. And US President Joe Biden is apparently not coming either. What was the point of all this? Well, for Zelensky this is an important project – to get as many influential states on his side as possible. Instead, China is promoting its own peace plan, supported by Russia. And the West is subtly making it clear that, in theory, it would be open to discussions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent trip to Europe saw all this discussed. We also have to recognize that it’s very difficult for Zelensky to continue fighting without enough weapons and without clear guarantees that supplies won’t stop at some point. And with mobilization not going well, Russia advancing, and the West getting tired of him, if the conference in Switzerland also fails, it will be a big blow for the Ukrainian leader. On the other hand, a compromise might be even worse. This is where you need political experience – rather than making unreasonable demands or issuing statements about saving the West. But we aren’t going to give advice. It’s clear that there is no ideal way out for Moscow either, so everything is very complicated. The chances for peace are slim, but at least some do exist.

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“The powers of the current Ukrainian president under the current Constitution expire on May 21. There is no legitimate way of extending them..”

• End of Zelensky’s Term To Have No Effect On Russia’s Operation – Kremlin (TASS)

The expiration of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s term of office does not affect the special military operation, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has told reporters. “No, the special operation continues,” Peskov said when asked whether the expiration of Zelensky’s term of office might influence the special operation. The powers of the current Ukrainian president under the current Constitution expire on May 21. There is no legitimate way of extending them. Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that the issue of the Zelensky presidency’s legitimacy after May 20 should be resolved in Ukraine by its political and legal systems.

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“He is the first obstacle to any peace negotiation. If he comes to Switzerland, it would be for receiving the support of his Western supporters and to get more aid for the war. Not for peace..”

• Zelensky Emerges as ‘First Obstacle’ to Peaceful Resolution of Ukrainian Conflict (Sp.)

Nextpmonth, Switzerland is expected to host a conference ostensibly meant to help achieve a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian conflict, even though Russia was not invited while BRICS members and Global South countries seem reluctant to attend the event. The upcoming conference at the Burgenstock resort in Switzerland, touted by its organizers as an event to further the peace process in Ukraine, will most definitely be anything but a peace summit, says Swiss MP and former executive director of the Geneva Press Club Guy Mettan. “The deliberate rejection of Russia is now jeopardizing the success of the meeting and returning against its organizers,” Mettan tells Sputnik, pointing out that Russia was not invited to participate in the conference. “Aware of this problem, the Swiss official narrative is now trying to put forward that Russia didn’t wish to participate and that its absence came from its own decision, which is false and will not mislead anybody outside the collective West.”

According to Mettan, the countries of the Global South may end up sending their representatives to this gathering, though they will likely dispatch “medium-level participants with no-decision power, in order to avoid being accused of being ‘against the peace’ or of ‘boycotting the West’.” “For the Global South, the present questions are: why should it participate in a summit which is no longer a summit, which is not focused on peace due to the non-invitation of Russia, and which will certainly be a failure?” he adds. Mettan also argues that Zelensky is in fact opposed to the “real negotiation process” as he signed a decree banning any peace talks with Russia and with his so-called peace formula essentially calling for Russia’s capitulation. “He is the first obstacle to any peace negotiation. If he comes to Switzerland, it would be for receiving the support of his Western supporters and to get more aid for the war. Not for peace,” Mettan remarks.

The lawmaker suggests that Western support for Zelensky’s regime, aimed at weakening Russia, may persist until the US presidential election in November, but afterwards, the strategy’s failures might become more apparent across the military, economic, financial, and political domains. Meanwhile, it appears that the summit in question has been snubbed by many of the prospective participants due to the “unrealistic approach” adopted by the event’s organizers, says Paolo Raffone, a strategic analyst and director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels. During an interview with Sputnik, Raffone points out that not only Russia was not invited to the summit, but the conference itself is aimed at promoting the so-called Zelensky ‘peace formula,’ a scheme that includes the demand for Russia to cede a part of its territory to Ukraine as a precondition for ending the Ukrainian conflict. “Such an unrealistic approach is the reason for many invitees not attending. The countries that have chosen not to attend are aware that a dialogue in the absence of Russia does not represent ‘the legitimate interests of the parties’,” he explains. “Moreover, no peace talks are well funded if not based on reality. Any meaningful peace talks imply that the Ukrainian government must recognize the ‘new territorial realities’.”

“World leaders are aware that any resolution to the war in Ukraine can only find a settlement between the real world powers underpinning the events, notably Russia and US,” he adds. “While behind the scenes contacts and talks are continuing, the majority of world leaders believe that the time is not yet ripe for ‘peace talks’ and that in any case the starting point cannot be other than the document drafted and mostly agreed in Turkiye in March 2022.” The analyst also observed that the implementation of Zelensky’s plan would be impossible without the “direct military intervention of Western countries,” and that it has already become clear that “none of the Western countries will officially send troops to fight in Ukraine against Russia.”

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“He spat on the Constitution of his ‘country,’ ignored the Constitutional Court, and did not even extend, but usurped the supreme power..”

• Zelensky A ‘Legitimate Military Target’ – Medvedev (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, as the leader of a “hostile political regime,” is a legitimate military target, Dmitry Medvedev, the head of Russia’s Security Council, has said. Speaking to TASS on Monday, Medvedev said that the question of Zelensky’s legitimacy as president is of no particular importance to Moscow. “For Russia, the final loss of legitimacy by the pseudo-president of the former Ukraine will not change anything,” the former Russian president said, noting that the leaders of countries waging war are “always considered” a legitimate military target. Medvedev called Zelensky a “war criminal,” who should be caught and brought to justice or “liquidated as a terrorist” for his crimes against Russians and Ukrainians.

Zelensky appeared on the Russian Interior Ministry’s wanted list earlier this month though no data has been released about criminal proceedings against him. The constitutional powers of the current Ukrainian president expired on May 20. A presidential election was originally scheduled for March, but was postponed under the pretext of martial law, which was imposed after the start of the conflict with Russia in February 2022, and has repeatedly been extended by the nation’s legislature. Zelensky announced in December 2023 that no presidential or parliamentary elections would be held as long as martial law remains in force. In early May, lawmakers prolonged martial law by another three months. According to Medvedev, Zelensky “effectively seized power” in the country after elections were annulled.

“He spat on the constitution of his ‘country,’ ignored the Constitutional Court, and did not even extend, but usurped the supreme power,” Medvedev argued, adding that Zelensky “covered himself with an inarticulate declaration of the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) on the abolition of presidential elections in times of war.” In March, Ukrainskaya Pravda claimed, citing members of parliament, that Zelensky had virtually stripped the legislature of its powers and established de facto personal rule. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said recently that a “moment will come soon when many people, including those inside Ukraine, will question [President Zelensky’s] legitimacy.”

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“..Galushchenko urged Ukrainians to prepare for outages during spring and summer, and advised the population to stock up on electricity generators and power banks..”

• Ukraine has lost 90% Of Energy Capacity – Ex-Minister (RT)

About 90% of Ukraine’s power generation capacity has been taken out by Russian missile attacks, according to former minister of infrastructure Aleksey Kucherenko. The situation is not expected to improve dramatically, as the damaged infrastructure cannot be restored quickly, the member of parliament warned during an interview with the YouTube channel Vishka. “We have lost around eight thousand megawatts of electricity, that’s a lot, out of eight thousand, 800 are currently working,” he said, citing power engineers, and warning of extensive power outages through the summer and winter. Moscow began targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure in the autumn of 2022, after Russia’s Crimean Bridge was bombed that October.

In recent months Russia has intensified its strikes on Ukrainian military and energy facilities. In April, the Russian Defense Ministry said the bombardment was in response to Kiev’s attempts to target Russian oil infrastructure. Since January, Ukraine has launched multiple long-range attacks on energy facilities deep inside Russia, including oil depots and refineries, using kamikaze drones. In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia’s strikes on energy facilities “directly affect the defense industry of Ukraine,” calling them part of “demilitarization” efforts. Moscow reiterated the attacks are only aimed at Ukrainian military targets and facilities that support their operations, and never at the civilian population.

To alleviate the pressure on the power grid, Ukraine has introduced temporary blackouts for industrial and household consumers in all regions. The nation has also ramped up imports of electricity from neighboring EU countries – Romania, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary – and also from Moldova. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko claimed that the combined financial losses from Russian attacks amounted to more than $1 billion, and warned that the figure is likely to rise. He noted that the main damage was to thermal and hydro generation, as well as power transmission systems. In April, Galushchenko urged Ukrainians to prepare for outages during spring and summer, and advised the population to stock up on electricity generators and power banks.

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Not everyone will be pleased…

• ICC Chief Prosecutor Seeks Arrest Warrants For Netanyahu And Hamas Leaders (RT)

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has said he’s seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the wanted persons are responsible for “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in Gaza and in Israel, Karim Khan outlined in a statement on Monday. Along with Netanyahu, the prosecutor is looking to arrest Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The wanted Hamas officials include the Palestinian armed group’s leader Yahya Sinwar, the commander of its military wing –al-Qassam Brigades – Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, and the chief of Hamas’ Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh, the prosecutor’s statement reads. According to Khan, Netanyahu and Gallant are suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza such as intentional attacks on a civilian population, willful killing and causing of suffering, using starvation as a method of warfare, “extermination and/or murder” as well as other “inhumane acts.”

The wanted Hamas leaders allegedly “bear criminal responsibility” for murder, rape and other acts of sexual violence, and for taking hostages, torture and other “inhumane acts,” the prosecutor said. On October 7, Hamas fighters carried out an incursion into Israel, which resulted in about 1,200 people being killed and 250 taken hostage. The Israeli government responded to the attack by launching a large-scale military operation in Gaza that is still ongoing. According to data from the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry, 35,456 have been killed and 79,476 others wounded as a result of Israel’s airstrikes and ground offensive. Israel is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize the jurisdiction of the UN court, but the State of Palestine joined the organization in 2015. Once warrants against Netanyahu and Hamas leaders are issued, any of the court’s 124 member-states will be obliged to arrest them if they set foot on their territory.

Benny Gantz, the centrist member of Israel’s three-person war cabinet, labeled the decision by Khan to seek arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant as “a crime of historic proportions.” Israel is waging “one of the just wars fought in modern history” and drawing parallels between its top officials and Hamas leaders is “a deep distortion of justice and blatant moral bankruptcy,” he claimed in a statement. The country’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich said that “we have not seen such a show of hypocrisy and hatred of Jews like that displayed by the court in the Hague since Nazi propaganda.” Another rightist cabinet member, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has urged the Israeli PM and defense minister to “ignore the anti-Semitic prosecutor and order a stepped-up assault against Hamas until they are completely destroyed.”

Back in April, when reports of a possible arrest warrant against Netanyahu emerged, the PM blamed the ICC for seeking to “paralyze Israel’s very ability to defend itself,” while fanning the “fires of anti-Semitism.” Axios reported earlier this month that a group of Republican lawmakers in the US House of Representatives had been devising sanctions against the ICC in a bid to deter it from prosecuting the Israeli leaders. The US, Israel’s major ally, is not a state party to the Rome Statute, which founded the ICC in 2002.

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We’re beyond semantics, Joe…

• There Is No Genocide In Gaza – Biden (RT)

US President Joe Biden has dismissed arguments that Israel’s military operation in Gaza can be described as genocide, reiterating Washington’s support for West Jerusalem as he hosted an event for Jewish American Heritage month at the White House. On Monday, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, announced that he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh, accusing them of “war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Speaking at the White House later in the day, Biden condemned the ICC move as well as separate allegations by the UN’s International Court of Justice that Israel’s actions in Gaza could be genocidal.

“Let me be clear, contrary to allegations against Israel made by the International Court of Justice, what’s happening is not genocide. We reject that,” Biden said. Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out an incursion into Israel on October 7 which resulted in about 1,200 people being killed and 250 taken hostage. The Israeli government responded by launching a large-scale military operation in Gaza, which according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry has killed over 35,000 people and left almost 80,000 others wounded. Israel has vowed to continue the offensive until Hamas is completely eliminated. “We stand with Israel to take out Sinwar and the rest of the butchers of Hamas,” Biden said on Monday. “We want Hamas defeated. We’ve worked with Israel to make that happen.”

In January, an interim ruling by the ICJ, the UN’s top court in The Hague, ordered Israel to take steps to prevent genocide and improve humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s population. The lawsuit, filed by South Africa late last year, accuses West Jerusalem of committing systematic war crimes in the Palestinian region. Ireland announced in March that it would support Pretoria’s case, calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law on a mass scale.” Last week, Egypt also called on Israel to “comply with its obligations as the occupying power.”

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“..more and more Israelis on both sides of the divide see their country as essentially split into two distinct (non-reconcilable) entities”. Does this sound familiar, albeit in another context?..”

• Why Are Israel And The West Unravelling In Tandem? (Alastair Crooke)

Alon Pinkas, a former senior Israeli diplomat (well plugged in at the White House), says aloud the ‘reality’ about Israel which he underlines cannot be hidden further: “[There are now] two [Jewish] states – with contrasting visions of what the nation should be. There is an elephant in the Israeli room – and ‘no’: it’s not occupation, though that is its main cause”. “The elephant in the room is Israel gradually but inexorably being divided [into a high-tech, secular, liberal state] … and a Jewish-supremacist, ultranationalist theocracy with messianic, antidemocratic tendencies that encourage isolation”. “Zionism … has morphed and mutated through the settler movement and extreme right-wing zealots into a Masada-like political culture, based on the concept of the redemption of the ancient kingdom in the ancestral land. (Masada was a Sicarii cult in CE 73)”. Pinkas continues:

“[I]n essence, there is a civil war raging in Israel. It has not reached Gettysburg levels, but the deep and wide schism is becoming glaringly evident. The two political value systems are just not reconcilable. “We are fighting the Arabs (or Iran) for our existence” remains the only common thread, but it is weakening. That is a negative definition of national identity: a common enemy and threat, but very little of what unites us in terms of the type of society and country we want to be”. “Even the most fundamental common narrative, the Declaration of Independence, is now being questioned with some of its basic tenets and guiding principles a source of political contention”. Of course, one can see from which side of the divide Pinkas views his world – yet “above and beyond pondering 7 October, there is a growing realization that ‘unity’, ‘one destiny’ and ‘we have no choice and no other country’ have become meaningless and hollow clichés. Instead, more and more Israelis on both sides of the divide see their country as essentially split into two distinct (non-reconcilable) entities”. Does this sound familiar, albeit in another context?

It should. For it is a metaphor for the inexorable divide in the West, too. The war in Gaza has precipitated and sharpened the latent schisms within in the West. It too can be hidden no longer. On the one hand, there is an (illiberal) social engineering project posing as liberalism. And on the other, a project to recover the ‘eternal’ values (however imperfect) that once lay behind European civilisation. The conflict in the Middle East has thrown the parallels between the two spheres in the West into clarity. Again, the parallels and similarities are discomforting: As Pinkas says: “the divide is real, widening and becoming unbridgeable. The political, cultural and economic gaps and rifts are growing, accompanied by toxic vitriol that masquerades as political discourse. Even the most fundamental common narrative, the Declaration of Independence, is now being questioned with some of its basic tenets and guiding principles a source of political contention”.

He is referring to Israel, but the same is true in the U.S., where the basic tenets and guiding principles of the Constitution (i.e. free speech) are a source of political contention. He talks also of the Right’s claim that Tel Aviv ‘is a bubble’, but adds: “As for the bubble claim, they’re right – but New York is a bubble, Paris and London are bubbles” – geographical, as well as ideological bubbles. Yet Pinkas does not ‘get’ the paradox he creates: Is not that the core of the problem? The ‘Techie-obsessed’ Metro-Élites of America versus the Rest (i.e. ‘flyover America’)? The bubbles are the problem, not something to be brushed aside. Today, tens of thousands of students in the West are protesting the on-going massacre of Palestinians, whilst the institutional place-holders fully support the annihilation of Hamas and any ‘complicit’ civilians (which is extended by some to include all who live in Gaza). The two worldviews share no common perception. They represent contrasting visions for the future – and of the essence of their nations. October 7 exploded the simulacra of the ‘status quo’ in Israel – and at the same time, unravelled the political order in the West – as in Israel.

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“The sealing and redaction rules should be applied consistently and fairly upon a sufficient factual and legal showing..”

• Judge in Trump Case Says She’s Concerned With Special Counsel Jack Smith (ET)

The federal judge overseeing one of the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump on May 19 expressed concern and disappointment with special counsel Jack Smith. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, an appointee of President Trump, said that Mr. Smith and his team have taken inconsistent positions during the case as it pertains to keeping some information sealed, or hidden from the public. “In two separate filings related to sealing, the special counsel stated, without qualification, that he had no objection to full unsealing of previously sealed docket entries related to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. In light of that repeated representation, and in the absence of any defense objection, the court unsealed those materials consistent with the general presumption in favor of public access,” Judge Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida wrote in an order.

The materials that were unsealed, though, contain information such as grand jury details that the special counsel has and continues to say, in all other filings, should be kept sealed. Judge Cannon asked for an explanation of the inconsistency. “In response to those inquiries, counsel explained that the special counsel took the position on unsealing in order to publicly and transparently refute defense allegations of prosecutorial misconduct raised in pretrial motions,” Judge Cannon wrote. “Fair enough. But nowhere in that explanation is there any basis to conclude that the special counsel could not have defended the integrity of his Office while simultaneously preserving the witness-safety and Rule 6(e) concerns he has repeatedly told the court, and maintains to this day, are of serious consequence, and which the court has endeavored with diligence to accommodate in its multiple orders on sealing/redaction.”

Judge Cannon described herself as being “disappointed in these developments.” “The sealing and redaction rules should be applied consistently and fairly upon a sufficient factual and legal showing. And parties should not make requests that undermine any prior representations or positions except upon full disclosure to the court and appropriate briefing,” she added.

The case was brought against President Trump over his alleged mishandling of sensitive documents. The order came after Mr. Smith and President Trump filed competing proposals for redactions, in response to a May 9 order from the judge that directed the parties to submit the proposals. The order concerns several motions filed by President Trump, including a motion to dismiss the case based on allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, which have not yet been placed on the docket. The proposals for redactions are also not yet public. Both parties and the judge agree that the names of potential witnesses or information that would clearly identify them should be kept hidden, along with “ancillary names” and personal identifying information such as addresses. Redactions agreed upon by both parties were accepted by the judge in the new order, with a few exceptions. President Trump’s proposed redactions to some witness statements were rejected.

“No basis is provided for these redactions, and the court has previously denied requests to redact the substance of potential witness statements are relied upon in pre-trial motions,” Judge Cannon said. The judge also turned down a request by the special counsel to redact some of the same information. Judge Cannon said that for redactions where the parties disagree, she would “accept for now” President Trump’s characterization of portions of the material falling under privilege, pending her review of privilege arguments. She would also accept the special counsel’s position on Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, despite the concerns outlined in the order. The filings with the authorized redactions are now expected to be docketed in the coming days. Rule 6 states, in part, that a number of people, including government attorneys, must not disclose any matters occurring before a grand jury, with limited exceptions.

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“The former president has denied her claims, describing her and Mr. Cohen in April as “sleaze bags” who are making false statements against him.”

• Michael Cohen Admits Stealing Tens of Thousands From Trump Organization (ET)

Former Trump associate and lawyer Michael Cohen on Monday admitted to stealing thousands of dollars from the Trump Organization as he testified during the former presidents’ trial in New York City. Mr. Cohen made the admission while facing cross-examination from defense attorney Todd Blanche. “You did steal from the Trump Organization based upon the expected reimbursement from Red Finch,” Mr. Blanche asked him, making reference to a repayment plan that was intended to pay adult film performer Stormy Daniels $130,000 and tech firm Red Finch $50,000. “Yes sir,” Mr. Cohen said in response. The former attorney then said he went to the bank and took out cash over several days, totaling about $20,000 before keeping it in a small brown paper bag. Then he gave it to the tech firm, he testified, adding he never gave the full $50,000 amount.

The Trump Organization ultimately repaid Mr. Cohen $50,000 and then doubled that payment in a practice known as “grossing up” to cover taxes he’d incur by declaring the money as income rather than a tax-free reimbursement. Mr. Blanche noted that despite Mr. Cohen’s guilty pleas in 2018 to federal charges including a campaign finance violation for the hush money payment and unrelated tax evasion and bank fraud crimes, he’d never been charged with stealing from President Trump’s company. “Have you paid back the Trump Organization the money you stole from them?” Mr. Blanche asked. “No, sir,” Mr. Cohen responded. President Trump was seen by courtroom reporters looking directly at the witness stand as Mr. Cohen made the admission about stealing. Eric Trump, Trump’s son, who is in the courtroom, posted on social media around the same time: “This just got interesting: Michael Cohen is now admitting to stealing money from our company.”

The 34 charges of falsifying business records stem from internal Trump Organization records where payments to Mr. Cohen were marked as legal expenses, when prosecutors say they were really reimbursements for Ms. Daniels’ payment. President has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers say there was nothing criminal about the Daniels deal or the way Mr. Cohen was paid. Last week, Mr. Cohen told jurors that President Trump was allegedly involved in the scheme to pay Ms. Daniels to prevent her from going public in 2016 about an alleged 2006 affair between her and President Trump. The former president has denied her claims, describing her and Mr. Cohen in April as “sleaze bags” who are making false statements against him.

The 34 charges of falsifying business records stem from internal Trump Organization records where payments to Mr. Cohen were marked as legal expenses, when prosecutors say they were really reimbursements for Ms. Daniels’ payment. President has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers say there was nothing criminal about the Daniels deal or the way Mr. Cohen was paid. Last week, Mr. Cohen told jurors that President Trump was allegedly involved in the scheme to pay Ms. Daniels to prevent her from going public in 2016 about an alleged 2006 affair between her and President Trump. The former president has denied her claims, describing her and Mr. Cohen in April as “sleaze bags” who are making false statements against him.

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Curious: President Joe Biden invoked executive privilege over the audiotape of his interrogation by Special Counsel Robert Hur. The transcripts of which were released long ago… So what’s on those tapes?

• The President Whose Voice Must Not Be Heard (Turley)

Below is my column in The Hill on the curious claim of executive privilege over the audiotape from President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. It is the first time that I know of where the content of a presidential conversation was treated as unprivileged but the audio of the conversation claimed as privileged. It is also an invocation on answering questions about alleged criminal acts committed while a private citizen. It is, in my view, entirely without merit but Attorney General Merrick Garland appears more interested in running out the clock than prevailing on the claim.

[..] While all eyes were focused on a Manhattan courthouse for Donald Trump’s trial, a curious thing happened in Washington. President Joe Biden invoked executive privilege in defiance of Congress. It is not the invocation that is particularly unusual. What is curious is that Biden is withholding the audiotape of his own interrogation by Special Counsel Robert Hur, even though the transcript has been released as unprivileged. It appears that Joe Biden is “he who must not be heard.” The invocation of privilege over the audiotape is so transparently political and cynical that it would make Richard Nixon blush. Multiple committees are investigating Biden for possible impeachment and conducting oversight on the handling of the investigation into his retention and mishandling of classified material over decades. Classified documents were found in various locations where Biden lived or worked, including his garage. The mishandling of classified material is uncontestable. Broken boxes, unprotected areas and lack of tracking are all obvious from the photos.

The comparison to the Trump case in Florida is both obvious and disturbing. Where Trump was charged with a litany of charges, including mishandling and retention of documents (in addition to obstruction), Hur decided not to charge Biden at all. His reason was outright alarming: The president is an elderly man with failing memory. Biden made the situation even worse with a disastrous press conference in which he attacked Hur and misrepresented his findings. Biden told the public that the special counsel did not find willful retention of material. This was untrue — Hur not only found that Biden had done this, but repeatedly detailed such violations in the report. Biden also claimed that he had not shown classified material to third parties, even though Hur specifically found that he had and established that there is a witness to that violation.

Biden also attacked Hur for bringing up the death of Beau, his son who passed away in 2018. In showing why Biden could use his diminished faculties as a defense, Hur had noted that Biden got the date wrong of his own son’s death. In the press conference, Biden angrily asked “How in the hell dare he raise that?” Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.” It was later shown that it was not Hur but Biden himself who raised his son’s death, which he often does in speeches. Hur’s view that Biden’s diminished cognitive abilities would undermine any prosecution left many dumbfounded. After all, the man who is too feeble to prosecute is not only running a superpower with a massive nuclear arsenal but running for reelection to add four more years in office.

From impeachment to oversight to the 25th Amendment (allowing the removal of a president for incapacities), there are ample reasons for Congress to demand information and evidence from the government on these questions. Congress is also interested in looking at repeated omissions for “inaudible” statements. Under this sweeping theory that Biden can legitimately withhold these recordings under executive privilege, any president could withhold any evidence of incapacity or criminality. The House is poised to find Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for refusing to release the audiotapes. It is a cynical calculation. Garland knows that his own department will never prosecute him for contempt of Congress.

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Worst: China stops buying US treasuries…

• China Offloads Record Amount Of Dollar Assets – Data (RT)

China sold a record number of US bonds in the first quarter of this year, highlighting the country’s shift away from dollar assets, the latest data from the US Treasury Department reveals. Beijing has divested a total of $53.3 billion in Treasuries and agency bonds combined in the first three months of the year, while at the same time increasing its purchases of gold and other commodities, data showed. Some analysts have suggested that this reduction in foreign exchange reserves could be part of China’s broader strategy to diversify away from US dollar-denominated assets amid rising geopolitical tensions with the US. Some experts have pointed to the economic impact of Western sanctions on Russia following the Ukraine conflict, saying that China seeks to mitigate similar risks.

“The handling of Russian reserves by the US and other G7 countries, including threats of expropriations and sanctions, likely prompted China to reduce its exposure to US Treasury assets to avoid being similarly targeted,” Craig Shapiro, a macroeconomic adviser at LaDuc Trading, told Newsweek on Saturday, referring to the seizure of Russian assets. The West has frozen roughly $300 billion in Russian sovereign funds since the start of the Ukraine conflict. The Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear, often seen as a custodian of China’s holdings, disposed of $22 billion in US Treasuries during the reporting period, according to Bloomberg.

As the second largest foreign holder of US Treasury securities after Japan, China’s sell-off could potentially unsettle the Treasury market and raise US borrowing costs, some economists argued. “As China is selling both despite the fact that we are closer to a Fed rate-cut cycle, there should be a clear intention of diversifying away from US dollar holdings,” said Stephen Chiu, chief Asia foreign-exchange and rates strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence. “China’s selling of US securities could speed up as the US-China trade war resumes” especially if Trump returns as president, he said. While China is selling dollar assets, its holdings of gold have surged in the country’s official reserves. The share of the precious metal in reserves climbed to 4.9% in April, the highest since records began in 2015, according to the People’s Bank of China.

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“It was a rather poor frontier province of Russia, and for a while was badly mistreated by Stalin, but it was not a problem outside of Ukraine and, frankly, it was none of our business..”

• Fugazy Land (Jim Kunstler)

Really, you must agree: just about anything can happen now, and probably will, and possibly all at the same time — war, sickness, a disordered economy, chaos in money and finance, savages pouring across the open borders, assassination, mayhem in the streets, systems failure, mental illness everywhere you look. You have a sinister, blob-infested government acting like a desperate, cornered animal, fronted by a venal phantasm trailing a personal history of crime. What could go wrong? All of it. The doings in Judge Merchan’s Manhattan present the rectified essence of America’s authority problem. You will stipulate that judges are authorities in a pretty pure sense of the word. Their role is to determine what is right and what is wrong, or, at least guide the proceedings that would result in such a fair determination.

And, of course, the officers of this court, the District Attorney and his prosecutors, are also entrusted with bringing comprehensible cases that follow the facts fairly, and the laws pertaining to those facts. This maliciously misguided prosecution has only accomplished one thing so far: to demonstrate to the American public that the authority of our law has been contorted to become a sick joke. That is a ruinous lesson for the country. The free-for-all of our national life has required reliable adjudication of all the quarrels and inequities that arose out of it. For a long time, the rule of law was America’s great draw. If that goes out the window, all you’re left with is the free-for-all which pretty soon devolves into Thomas Hobbes’s nightmare existence in the state of nature where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

The current Trump trial in Manhattan will likely resolve this week, one way or another, though there is no way that the candidate will land in jail, even if he is convicted and sentenced to go there. That will only be another quandary for the foundering rule of law, and a dreadful challenge. Altogether this trial has alerted even the deranged news channels that the nation is still capable of feeling grossly insulted by its own rulers, and insults will be answered. Tribulation may be the only answer that will avail to correct America’s tragic capture by blobs foreign and domestic. And you must understand that our nation’s bad choices have brought these tribulations upon ourselves. Fugazy finance is finally hitting the wall it has been seeking. Wealth based on pretense eventually runs out of hallucinatory mojo. Zooming gold and silver prices signal that the US dollar is in distress. The eagle is flying upside down.

A system based on credit is one thing, when credit can plausibly be paid back. But that system is gone. Finally, you must learn what truth or consequences really means, and the truth is that our debts are unpayable and everybody knows it. The consequences await. Any way you slice that — bond market blow-up, raging inflation, bank failures, stocks cratering, a “great taking” of collateral (your property) — the effect is the same: a crashing standard of living. That will get everybody’s attention in a way that Pride Month marches won’t. If “Joe Biden” thinks he will put over a central bank digital currency to cover for all this failure, he and the blob he rode in on will be in for a rude surprise. Fugazy war isn’t working either. When did Ukraine become a problem for Western Civ? When Victoria Nuland & Company in the US State Department decided to make it a problem in 2014. Before that, going back into the mists of history, Ukraine was not a problem.

It was a rather poor frontier province of Russia, and for a while was badly mistreated by Stalin, but it was not a problem outside of Ukraine and, frankly, it was none of our business. And in a matter of months, as Russia rolls up on the Zelensky regime, it will cease to be a problem for anyone. The notion that the USA and NATO can reverse this now is insane. The nations of Western Civ won’t draft troops to battle on the ground there. There’s no will to fight in Ukraine among the young people of Europe and America. And we have no more guns or ammo to give. The war will end in humiliation for all concerned in the West, especially the “Joe Biden” regime, which has been recklessly flirting with nuclear aggression — as if this would accomplish anything but turning Western Civ into an ashtray.

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Elon water

 

 

Lioness
https://twitter.com/i/status/1792578570889445445

 

 

Lions

 

 

Merlin

 

 

Table

 

 

 

 

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