Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/4/26
"Alert! WTF!? 7 Doomsday Planes Were Airborne!
Trump Threatens Pickaxe Mountain!"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Friday, September 4, 2026
Gerald Celente, "Iran Fires Back at Trump, Dow Slides, Oil Prices Rise"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 9/4/26
"Iran Fires Back at Trump,
Dow Slides, Oil Prices Rise"
"Iran fires back at President Trump as tensions in the Middle East escalate, pushing oil prices higher and raising fears of a broader conflict. Meanwhile, Wall Street slides after a stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs report reignites concerns that interest rates could remain elevated longer than investors hoped. On this episode of Trends in the News, Gerald Celente breaks down the market selloff, the geopolitical risks driving energy prices higher, and why the mainstream narrative is missing the bigger story. From soaring oil costs and inflation pressures to the growing threat of war and economic uncertainty, Celente delivers the bold trend forecasts you won't hear anywhere else. Tune in for the latest developments and what they mean for your future."
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Jeremiah Babe, "Business Has Never Been So Bad, FED Ordered To Cut Rates"
Jeremiah Babe, 9/4/26
"Business Has Never Been So Bad,
FED Ordered To Cut Rates"
Comments here:
"Political Alchemy"
"Political Alchemy"
by Joel Bowman
“I believe in the Individual; I disbelieve in the State.
Perhaps I am nothing more than a peaceful and silent
anarchist who dreams of the disappearance of governments.”
~ Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "The world is brimming with genius, dear reader, and yet we are governed by knaves and fools. What gives? Hot wars with enemies afar... trade wars with friends anear... plus debts, deficits and delusions as far as the eye can see. The latest headlines, from the Same Olds...
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Ho hum... And now that the Ships of State themselves are beginning to slip beneath the waves, laden with hubris and fatal conceits, we see too that their once-hallowed institutions, tethered to the hull, are going under, too. More on that below, but first, we are reminded there is a season for everything...
Back on Earth: “¡Se vino la primavera! (Spring is suddenly upon us!),” declared Rosanna, a kindly woman from the provinces who helps out around the apartment. “Ya se siente el calorcito. (You can already feel the ‘little warmth.’)” Like the seasons themselves, Rosanna seems to come and go more or less as she pleases... or at least in accordance with arrangements largely unknown to your editor. “No hace falta que salgas con la campera hoy (You won’t need your coat today),” she smiled, handing us our hat instead. “Que disfrutes la caminata. (Enjoy your walk.)”
Traipsing the grand Avenida Libertador, with the sunlight gathering in irregular, shadow-swept forms along the sidewalk, we were happy to find Rosanna right on all counts. Our fellow flâneurs, too, delighted in the propitious turn in the weather. Newspapers on their laps and caffeine on their lips, café-goers basked in the morning rays. A cheerful vagrant, stretching on a park bench, let out a mighty yawn to meet the new day. Even the joggers, faces contorted in silent protest at their self-inflicted condition, appeared less miserable than usual.
How does one capture a moment in time, we mused, as a pack of dogs passed us by, leashes taut, dragging “their walker” in tow? In an infinitely complex reality, how are we to comprehend the order of events cascading before us? And what vanity leads one featherless biped, or chest-thumping congress thereof, to suppose such spontaneous order ought to be centrally planned, directed, managed, or otherwise governed from the top down?
Spooky Alchemy: As patient readers well know, we distrust prescriptivism of all stripes here in these humble Notes, preferring the descriptive to the normative. Ever wary of Hume’s pending guillotine, we leave the “oughts” to those brave and reckless souls who claim to know better, finding sufficient cause for awe and confusion in pondering what “is” (or “is not”) instead.
Observing the State of the State, for example, we cannot help but notice that a creeping sickness, potentially terminal, has set into the bones of the world’s governments. On the one hand, warfare state apparatchiks promise to rain down ever more tragedy... while on the other, welfare state apologists propose policies of determined trickle-up poverty. Both “strategies,” if they can be called that, result in all the relevant and predictable bankruptcies... moral, financial, political, spiritual, etc.
In this manner, the ruling parties – it hardly matters the particular State in question – share a common conceit: through the spooky alchemy known as Modern Democracy, the will of the majority is magically transformed into Pure Knowledge, Truth and Beauty, a Law above all Laws, to be obeyed without question, forever and ever, Amen.
This glaring absurdity we addressed in our recent Note, Mobjority Rule. And yet, the modern nation state is hardly a non-negotiable part of the cosmic firmament, as its weak-kneed exponents and slack-jawed sophists would have us believe. It is, in truth, nothing more than an imagined reality, dreamed into being during the fearful adolescence of our species.
That is not to say it doesn’t exist (alas!) Only that, unlike change, it is not a universal constant. Most historians cite the “birth of the modern nation state” as sometime in the late 18th Century, around the time of the French and American revolutions. A blink of an eye, in other words, especially in an age where time itself (measured by human experience and the technology that shapes our world) continues its breakneck acceleration.
Political Animals: It is true what Aristotle says, of course, that man is a “zoon politikon” (“political animal”). But the old Peripatetic was referring to man’s interest and involvement in city life (that of the “polis”), and in the shared norms, lores and cultural mores of his kin. He was not referring to fiddling interest rates, passing minimum wage laws or deciding collectively which foreign nation – friend or foe – is most deserving of the Dear Leader’s rancor from one week to the next. Nor did he envision the insatiable snorkel snouts of a sprawling spoils system, or the theatrical outrages of a focus-grouped media carnival, bent on monetizing the anxiety of the hoi polloi.
To the “peaceful and silent anarchist,” Jorge Luis Borges (quoted above), the individual comes long before what he considered the great “political abstraction” that is government. Similarly culture, too, is something that forms in the imagination long before it manifests itself in the halls of Congress. Language, literature, mythology, customs, beliefs, norms, heuristics, etc. It is this deep, connective tissue that holds a society – a body politik – together... not the dunce’s crown that sits upon its head.
Casting back through the pages of history, we notice that when a particular culture finds itself in decline – when it is philosophically infirm... afflicted morally, aesthetically, spiritually etc. – the degradation tends to manifest itself in precisely the kind of bottom-feeding politics that pollute our attention spans today. And therein lies the trap...
Searching for political solutions to cultural challenges becomes something of a category error, rather like amputating an arm to cure a migraine, or fussing over the thermostat when the house is burning down. One can no more hope to elect gods from among men than to derive gold from lead. The right question, therefore, might not be “Which political party can best lead us?” but rather “How can we transcend politics altogether, such that a superior, more vibrant culture is possible?” More on this, anon. As always, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World..."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.
Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."
Gengu AI, "The Workshop of Echoes"
Full screen recommended.
Gengu AI, "The Workshop of Echoes"
"Welcome to Gengu AI – your ultimate destination for AI-generated music and next-generation sound experiences. This channel is dedicated to creating unique, high-quality tracks powered by artificial intelligence, blending creativity and technology to deliver music that feels fresh, emotional, and immersive. AI was the tool. The story came from human feeling. If this film gave you a quiet breath, a memory, or a moment of peace, thank you for being here."
"A Good Dog Will Teach You More Than Some People"
Full screen recommended.
Delta King's Blues,
"A Good Dog Will Teach You More Than Some People"
“A Good Dog Will Teach You More Than Some People” is a warm, heartfelt blues about loyalty, patience, and the simple wisdom found in a faithful dog. The singer reflects on a lifetime of meeting people who made promises, changed their minds, or disappeared when things got difficult - while a good dog simply stayed by his side. Driven by warm blues guitar and the soulful cry of the harmonica, the song blends humor, gratitude, and old-fashioned Southern wisdom. The voice is weathered and sincere, celebrating a companion who never needed words to show what loyalty really means. A good dog doesn't ask for much… Just love, a little food, and a reason to stay close."
Native Elder, "When You Feel Completely Lost"
Full screen recommended.
Native Elder,
"When You Feel Completely Lost"
“Choose Your Words: Failure”
“Choose Your Words: Failure”
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM
“When the word failure comes up, it’s a call for us to apply a more enlightened consciousness to the matter at hand. The word failure puts forward a very simplistic way of thinking that allows for only two possibilities: failure or success. Few things in the universe are black and white, yet much of our language reads as if they are. The word failure signifies a paradigm in which all subtlety is lost. When we regard something we have done, or ourselves, as a failure, we lose our ability to see the truth, which is no doubt considerably more complex. In addition, we hurt ourselves. All you have to do is speak or read the word failure and see how it makes you feel.
At some point, the word may not have been so loaded with the weight of negativity, and it simply referred to something that did not go according to plan. Unfortunately, in our culture it is often used very negatively, such as when a person is labeled a failure, even though it is impossible for something as vast and subtle as a human being to be reduced in such a way. It also acts as a deterrent, scaring us from taking risks for fear of failure. It has somehow come to represent the worst possible outcome. Failure is a word so burdened with fearful and unconscious energy that we can all benefit from consciously examining our use of it, because the language we use influences the way we think and feel.
Next time you feel like a failure or fear failure, know that you are under the influence of an outmoded way of perceiving the world. When the word failure comes up, it’s a call for us to apply a more enlightened consciousness to the matter at hand. When you are consciously aware of the word and its baggage you will not fall victim to its darkness. In your own use of language, you may choose to stop using the word failure altogether. This might encourage you to articulate more clearly the truth of the situation, opening your mind to subtleties and possibilities the word failure would never have allowed.”
- http://www.dailyom.com/
"Buying Time"
"Buying Time"
Author Unknown
"A man came home from work late again, tired and irritated, to find his 5-year-old son waiting for him at the door. "Daddy, may I ask you a question? " "Yeah, sure, what is it?" replied the man. "Daddy, how much money do you make an hour?" "That's none of your business! What makes you ask such a thing? " the man said angrily. "I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour? " pleaded the little boy. "If you must know, I make $20.00 an hour. " "Oh," the little boy replied, head bowed. Looking up, he said, "Daddy, may I borrow $10.00 please?"
The father was furious. "If the only reason you wanted to know how much money I make is just so you can borrow some to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. I work long, hard hours everyday and don't have time for such childish games. " The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door. The man sat down and started to get even madder about the little boy's questioning. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?
After an hour or so, the man had calmed down, and started to think he may have been a little hard on his son. Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $10.00, and he really didn't ask for money very often. The man went to the door of the little boy's room and opened the door. "Are you asleep son?" he asked. "No daddy, I'm awake," replied the boy. "I've been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier, " said the man. "It's been a long day and I took my aggravation out on you. Here's that $10.00 you asked for."
The little boy sat straight up, beaming. "Oh, thank you daddy! " he yelled. Then, reaching under his pillow, he pulled out some more crumpled up bills. The man, seeing that the boy already had money, started to get angry again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, then looked up at the man. "Why did you want more money if you already had some? " the father grumbled. "Because I didn't have enough, but now I do, " the little boy replied. "Daddy, I have $20.00 now. Can I buy an hour of your time? "
"Some Oddities..."
"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams
"A Lot Of People..."
"When science discovers the center of the universe,
a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it."
- Bernard Baily
"The Deadly Gaze of American Love"
"The Deadly Gaze of American Love"
By Mark Sashine
"The cat then hugged the mouse and purred, 'I love you to death.'"
- Old Turkish saying.
"The Deadly Gaze in the U.S.: Several years ago I wrote that the U.S. behaved toward Iraq like a rapist who, after raping a woman, tells her to clean herself because of her disgusting appearance. I was expecting a barrage of comments, but, instead, I got silence. In the U.S., however, silence doesn't mean assent; it means a deliberate ignoring. Somehow they are okay with an act of killing performed by a man with a gun.
In my research to understand that pattern of brain passivity, I several times stated my perceptions directly into the faces of my fellow Americans. Whenever I did that, the reaction was the same. The person would look sideways and say nothing. I tried to catch that frozen gaze on the person's face, and, when I managed to do that, I recognized it as a gaze I hadn't seen for a very long time. It was the gaze of a bully from my childhood. You can sometimes notice such a gaze in dogs. It is the deadly gaze.
The Boy With the Deadly Gaze: He was transferred to our school when we were in the 5th grade, so most of us were about twelve at the time. That was the age when a teenager "grows out of his uniform," as one teacher said. Of course, in Russia at the time, we didn't have cell phones or the Internet; we didn't even have good clothes. Most of us wore uniforms: greenish-gray pants and jackets for boys, white blouses and brown skirts for girls. We were the "young pioneers," and each of us had a triangular red tie, symbolizing equality, fraternity and liberty, as well as the sacrificial blood of the martyrs of the Revolution. The strict collective code of honor included studying hard, helping other people to learn, helping the weak, and respecting society by behaving properly.
At the same time, every teenager of our time lived most of his or her life on the beat, and we learned the unwritten "street rules' by experience. As an overweight kid, I had a tough time. No matter what happened between us kids, the worst possible thing you could do was to rat on your peers to adults. We had our rules, though: It was a shame for a boy to hit a girl and for a girl to instigate a fight. It was a shame to hurt someone weaker than yourself, unless that someone had asked for it. And it was a shame to tease old people and to torture animals. Not that we were perfect: We smoked, drank (sometimes with tough health consequences), stole things, fought ferociously and cruelly, cheated on homework and exams, lied repeatedly, and disturbed the peace. But I could say we were honorable. The bully wasn't, however. We saw this from the start.
He was a tall, lanky, blondish boy with a strange, sticky voice. When he talked, it seemed the words came out of him in slow-motion. We noticed his voice first, because it was full of sh*t. He used profanity as a primary way of communication. It was kind of like the way movie characters talk these days. We all used bad words, but coming from him they sounded exceptionally dirty. He had two followers who looked very much like him, though not as repulsive, and this unholy triad roamed the school hallways and nearby streets night and day. Nobody knew where he lived; it seemed as if he could appear and disappear at will. You could go out for groceries and bump into him. He would then perform his ritual of pretending to be your friend, pawing you, especially if you were a girl, then complaining that you didn't appreciate him, so he had to hurt you for your own good.
All that would usually end with some really dirty thing, like throwing your groceries on the pavement and stomping on them, throwing stones at your pet, or lighting a match near a girl's skirt so that it created a huge hole in the only uniform she had - etc, etc. While his goons laughed their ears off, he never laughed. Instead, his frozen smirk seemed to become more like a mask and his expressionless gaze would get uglier than ever. Sometimes he would force a kid to do something dirty to others; he called it a coalition. That wouldn't last for long, however, because you could never satisfy his perverse appetites. Eventually, he would discard his temporary allies and hurt them even more. At that time, I didn't know about moronic evil, or such terms as "sadism." If had known about them, I would have recognized the pattern in the bully. But I was a bookish boy, and I recognized him instead in references I encountered to the Hitlerjugend and the SS. The bully was like them. In books about the Nazi culture, the training of young children that deprived them of a social conscience was described in gory detail. One of the main goals was to develop in them a sense of total indifference to, and contempt for, "others"- the inferior beings, whether animals or humans. The children were also pushed to have fun hurting people. In that context, our own bully was a "natural."
People noticed his behavior and tried to change it. Teachers warned him repeatedly, and the pioneer organization threatened to take away his tie (a very tough public punishment). One day, when he had been caught in some bad action, he put on quite a spectacle, promising to change and become a better person. To the kids who were his victims, though, this was a disgusting sight. We all knew he didn't mean it. The smirk was there all the time.
That's when those of us who had been hurt by him decided to take the matter into our own hands. On that rainy evening, we took off our red ties after school as usual, but we didn't go home. Instead, I went to intercept the bully, leaving the others ready to back me up. He was at his usual place and called me to approach, but I told him to f&ck himself, and when he started toward me in his deliberately menacing posture, I ran. Then the bully, accompanied by his two allies, followed me down the street and into the dark stone passage, through the cast-iron gates. Those gates were usually closed, but this time they were open. Right after they passed the gates, I reached the end of the passage, where the exit gates were closed. And at that moment a screeching sound told us that the entry gates were also closed. I stopped and looked at them. Then the shadows along the passage walls came alive and the enemy triad found itself surrounded, with nowhere to run.
As we presumed, the two butt kissers betrayed the bully in a second. We pushed them away, threw a blanket over him and started hitting. At that moment, we forgot that he was always bragging about carrying a knife. But, in this circumstance, he was lucky not to have one; if he had been carrying a knife, the enraged kids would likely have killed him with bricks. We knew this was our day. The deal between us was that we would stop punishing the bully when he began to cry. But he didn't cry. For some time we could only hear ourselves, our own animalistic rage. Suddenly, however, we heard a howl. He howled like a wounded beast in a paroxysm of helplessness and desperation. Then we stopped. We opened the gates on both sides and left in silence. None of us felt any satisfaction. We were just tired and empty. The one girl among us saved our souls that evening. When we all stopped to go our separate ways, she took out our red ties, which we had given her for safekeeping, and neatly put a tie on each of us. Then she smiled at us all and vanished into the darkness. The burden was lifted. We knew we had done the right thing.
The bully didn't come to school in the morning. The two others came, but they knew nothing of him. Eventually, we heard that his parents had transferred him to a special school for kids with psychological problems. We never saw him again and, for some reason, the bullying among ourselves also stopped entirely. None of us wanted to be like him, ever. We had all grown up.
When as a parent you introduce shame to your child, you do that by appealing to the child's sense of empathy and of self-preservation. Those are connected in a thoughtful human. Empathy tells you that you inflicted something on another person that you would not like to be subjected to yourself. And the sense of self-preservation tells you that the same kind of hurtful action could be directed toward you. Those realizations make you feel ashamed of your actions: you see them as not only mean, but also stupid. A person with no concept of shame, who sees the world only as an object for self-indulgence, is the bad seed. Such a person belongs in an asylum. From Reagan to Cheney and Obama, we have such people at the highest levels of power in the U.S. It is bad enough if one person is shameless. But what if this disease were to spread through the entire nation?
Our Gaze at the World: I have been living in this country for 28 years now, and through all those years we have been at war, either directly or indirectly. Here are the places I remember since Y1989: Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Panama, Sudan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Haiti, Iraq again, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. In all these cases, we had our fun. We killed a lot of people after leaning on them, pretending to be their friends, and proclaiming our love. In all these cases, we denied any atrocities and vehemently called ourselves the best people in the world. In these cases, too, as well as in numerous cases before, we forced other people into a "coalition" with us.
Yet, NONE of these cases produced any positive outcome. In fact, we considerably worsened the world economy and devastated political structures, creating chaos and misery whenever we went. Those are the facts, and they are indisputable. If it wasn't for that insane gaze of ours, all of us here in the U.S. would be on our knees begging God's forgiveness. Instead, we celebrate after we've destroyed anything that even remotely resembles honest work for honest pay. We are truly unbelievable, and my little psycho-bully would fit in here very nicely. He would be in charge of some important department, and the media would be calling him "Slow, but Smarty, Mike," or whatever his ugly name was. The presence of the bully here has become so obvious that every morning I am afraid to see his face on TV. Sometimes the bullies come back, courtesy of Stephen King. They eat their breakfast, send their kids to school, and then proceed to spread their deadly love over other people, leaving dead bodies behind.
Americans are sick, and that sickness overtook them in the 20th Century when they benefited immensely from other people's miseries in two World Wars. Since that time, they have felt superior to other people and that feeling culminated in the BOMB. Not only do we have the BOMB; we actually used it and got away with it. Nobody threw a blanket over us and kicked us bad. Our hubris rules supreme. Our religion tells us that we are the freest, the smartest, the most righteous people on earth, and thus all our actions toward others are GOOD. We claim the right to dominate others, because we indulge ourselves and believe we are by default the ones who deserve it. Do you recognize the logic? It is the logic of a shameless, bratty toddler. There is no real love there, just self-adoration. We behave like a child who is "asking for it," and anyone who is at least a half-wit should become very worried indeed. Humankind is not very different from a middle school, and eventually the shadows will separate from the walls. Do we really want to risk being exposed?
I Am Not Fair: I concede that I am not entirely fair in comparing the whole American nation to a psycho kid from my childhood. There are plenty of good people in this country, and I have no right. No, I have every right! This is my home. Diversity: the real display of it is not in food, drinks and flowers. It is in the historical, generational experience, in the memory of the heart. I have an obligation before my people here to report a dangerous, maybe even fatal, psychic disease - a disease that once consumed the whole German nation and is now in full swing in America. I don't want to run again, panting and sweating into that dark passage. It is the light I seek, and in the light we fight. I am not fair. I am in love and I want to protect this beloved country of mine. In this battle I take no prisoners. It is easy to get cured. Just put the damned psychos into an asylum, where they belong!"
"This Is Happening All Over The Country And Americans Are Getting Scared"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 9/4/26
"This Is Happening All Over The Country
And Americans Are Getting Scared"
"The power goes out and a clock starts. Not on the utility - on the food in the fridge, the phone battery, the kids, the shower you did not take. Gary, Indiana with 240,000 people in the dark and a week already gone. Day seven with a restore time that keeps moving. Water shut off overnight with no warning. Day ten, day twelve, and an estimate of three more weeks. A woman loading a gun because people are being robbed for generators. $900 of Costco groceries bought 48 hours before the outage. $360 of groceries and 24 hours with no power. A food voucher line on day seven. St. George, Utah going dark city-wide, treadmills stopping mid-run. Day four on the west side of San Antonio with 20,000 still out. And a man in Gary saying the quiet part out loud: this has been going on over a week, and it has not been on the news. Every clip is a real person, filmed on their own phone, in their own words. Nothing here is staged - these are households waiting, in the dark, for someone to come."
Comments here:
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"Tinder© Tramps, InstaThots®, And The Attention Sump In Your Pocket"
"Tinder© Tramps, InstaThots®,
And The Attention Sump In Your Pocket"
by John Wilder
"I had my previous cell phone for nine years: from August of 2017 to August of 2026. That’s a good run. I bought a fairly nice one back in the day, and took good care of it. I lie. Somehow the screen cracked in November, 2020, so I had to make sure it stayed dry. The old phone did its duty. I would still be using it, but it’s full, and there are a number of faults going on that make me think that it is time.
On the advice of Pugsley, I swapped over from the Mao People’s Phone© (Android™) to the Fascist Fisher-Price™ phone (Apple©). I know, it sounds nuts. What a difference 10 years has made in technology! Steve Jobs once said that he wanted the iPhone© to feel so sexy that people would be tempted to lick it. This 17th version is a tightly integrated piece of technology. I mean, I haven’t licked it, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not WiFi-curious as to what licking it would feel like.
Civilization has been on a downward slide since, oh, whenever they started welfare and started encouraging poor stupid people to make more poor stupid people by paying them to be poor and stupid. Incentives matter. Welfare was bad, but the iPhone© really took societal collapse from “Hiroshima” to “full Tsar Bomba”. Never go full Tsar Bomba.
The iPhone© is the problem. It allowed interaction on a scale never before seen, and was the platform that empowered Tinder© tramps to seek out Chad to be used for a night and InstaThots® to feed their narcissism. That was bad enough, but it also became the attention sump, turning every waking moment into a distraction.
Distraction and dopamine hits are what the iPhone® was built to deliver. I’ve only had mine a week, but a friend indicates that it is also an amazing device for having Apple® to sink their fangs into my credit card and suck as hard as I’ll let them. They monetize everything.
Like? Location. How fast I drive. The number of steps I take in a day (not enough) and how steady my gait is (very). The last two are maybe going to be a net benefit for me, as I can certainly see myself always wanting to be above average, so soon enough I’ll be walking 100,000 steps a day. Well, me and Jason Arday.
Too soon? The phone is designed to distract, designed to turn every bit of life into a consumption event. With a dizzying array of apps pre-built in, it’s almost intoxicating flipping through the pages of things I could be doing right this second instead of... wait, why did I pick the phone up in the first place? Oh, yeah, got distracted. Oh, a notification! The Mrs. let the dogs out!
The first time I went to Las Vegas the sounds and sights were overwhelming after a few hours. I think that’s the point, but that was also in a world mainly free of the Internet back in 1997. It may seem like a super-power, but it is a pretty useless superpower, like having the ability to retract my fingernails or hair back into my body.
What is nice, though, is that it tracks and graphs which apps I’m using and when I’m using them, and the option to tell the phone to remind me, “Wilder, time to shut this damn thing down and go to bed”. That has actually been a positive for me. I shut down the distraction device, pick up a book, and read. I’d already gotten through a novel or non-fiction book every other week since the start of the year (last two: C.S. Lewis’ "Space Trilogy," Sweterlitsch’s "The Gone World," current: Hawkins’ "The Library at Mount Char"), but the other alternative is to be bored.
I avoid brooding and regret since they are a horrible ways to program yourself to think, and a trap that should be avoided. Besides, boredom is useful. Boredom is that innate spark in humans, that makes us feel uncomfortable in sitting in a warm, dark room, well fed, with low effort. Boredom pushes us to create, to learn, to invent. The first person to figure out a bow-drill or decided that stacking rocks in a pyramid shape might be cool or that being the first guy to make it to the South Pole was a good thing.
Boredom is also why some animals die or refuse to mate in captivity. Our full-on stimulation world might be part of the reason that mating seems to be no longer as important to many of the young in 2026.
People aren’t meant to be continually distracted. We are supposed to be bored sometimes because for at least tens of thousands of years that was our default programming. Boredom forces us to change. A society based on waiting for someone else to distract us is madness. Like licking an iPhone©. Yay! More microplastics in my testicles! That’s nuts!"
"Marching Toward Armageddon"
"Marching Toward Armageddon"
by David Haggith
"Israeli government cabinet member, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s hand-selected minister of national security. As such, he is in charge of Israel’s prison system. That makes the Palestinian internment video he has just posted doubly troubling. Ben-Gvir, never shy about fomenting hatred and heat, has raised a blistering level of international controversy by creating and posting the following pathetic and deeply disturbing AI video, promoting an obviously Hitlerian final solution for Palestinians as a campaign promise:
Full screen recommended.
I guess making videos like this is what Ben-Gvir does for entertainment when he’s not trying to stir up riots on the Temple Mount, which he is also good at. The conveyor belt makes the fat Palestinians look a bit like sides of beef going into a slaughter house. In the very least, the Palestinians are going into a concentration camp but coming out as emaciated as holocaust victims. Clearly, Ben-Gvir made them fat at the start of the video so it would be clear they came out the other side looking like skeletons because he is campaigning on making Israel’s prisons harsher for Palestinians- not everyone, just all of them.That beady-eyed snake in the grass named Benjamin Netanyahu gave Gvir this big national security post to get him to join his Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) party to Netanyahu’s government in order to establish a governing majority. Netanyahu, a man who, himself, seems to be trying extra hard to court controversy and stir hatred, may have chosen him because that is exactly what he wants to have running national security and prisons for Palestinians, or perhaps Bibi was just so greedy for power that he’d join anything to himself like a whore in order to form a government. There is not much daylight between their two parties. Therefore, it’s unlikely Bibi will do what needs to be done here, which is to spit this hate-monger out of the Israeli government, as that would dissolve his government.
The thing to particularly become aware of here is that Ben-Gvir did not rise to power in a vacuum. Other far-right parties in Israel are competing for votes by promoting increasingly extreme visions. Moreover, this is hardly just a Jewish phenomenon as we can easily see the same thing has happened under extremist president, Donald J Trump, and his Warhead Pete Hegseth, who could be called America’s Ben-Gvir.
American and Israeli German-style concentration camps: I’ve argued almost all my life we need to get illegal aliens out of the country; so, I’m not against removing illegal aliens, but start by arresting and jailing the Americans who illegally hire them because that cuts right to the heart of the problem! Without those Americans providing jobs for them, many of the illegal aliens will leave on their own. Treat the aliens with dignity because most of them are simply desperate to stay alive and feed their families, and they did good work for the US while here, even if many, I believe with reason, resented the suppression of wages they cause. To the extent you do it by capturing aliens and deporting them, do it humanely and kindly where possible.
Why should you punish someone who was a good worker, WANTED by an American employer, whose crime was being desperate for work to survive? That doesn’t make her an evil person just because she’s illegal. In fact, she’s probably a very kind person with a child she needs to feed, and a US employer lured her into working for him because he wanted cheaper labor than what he’d have to pay to entice Americans to that kind of work.
Israel’s situation, of course, is much different than the US alien worker situation, though Israelis have hired Palestinians for decades because they are cheaper labor, too. It’s much harder to treat people humanely when they have been blowing you up in cafes and on buses; but that doesn’t excuse an Israeli government official from producing a teaser that promotes Adolf Hitler’s final solution as the right one for Palestinians or acting like this: (I mean the conveyor belt might as well have been box cars stuffed with the people you hate.)
Ben-Gvir … made international news when he filmed himself taunting bound activists who had been detained trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. He also rose to his present position by promising …to worsen conditions for Palestinian prisoners. An ambitious goal, considering conditions are already hellish: Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has likened the prisons where Palestinians are kept to “torture camps”… Ben-Gvir, by the way, has some imaginative ideas for punishment. One of his sick fantasies is to put crocodiles in moats around prisons where Palestinians are held to stop prison breaks.
Well, that just sounds exactly like Trump’s Alligator Alcatraz. If they are truly terrorists, they may need alligators around them to keep the rest of us safe; but we know most of the people in Trump’s internment camps were not; and no doubt many of the women G’vir was harassing in another report were not either.
From October 2023 until June 2026, at least 104 Palestinian inmates died in Israeli custody, according to Haaretz, while Physicians for Human Rights Israel said the number was at least 94 Palestinians. B’Tselem has reported that Palestinians have been subjected to sexual violence, abuse, humiliation, inhumane living conditions and denial of medical care under Israeli custody. That’s the treatment he’s already giving them, and he’s campaigning on making worse. However, it sounds a lot like many of Trump’s new US concentration camps, except maybe for the sexual violence; yet he uses his office to shelter those who used Epstein Island for that.
The Israeli rights group said: “Ben Gvir and [Israeli Prison Service] officers put the abuse of prisoners on display, with the media playing the role of mouthpiece to the minister’s racist and violent ideology, with little to no criticism of the crimes and grave human rights violations involved.” That’s a war crime under the Geneva Convention. In May, for the first time in its history, the UN put Israel on a blacklist of countries accused of committing sexual violence in warzones. Mention was made of the role of the Israeli Prison Service in the assaults.
Do religious paraders like Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu really think God would be pleased with men presiding over a government like this? Is that the Israel God envisioned in Jewish scriptures? “Rape and gang rape, in some cases repeated, were perpetrated against nine victims, the majority from Gaza.”
That part sounds like Trump’s America, too, especially like Epstein Island, which might as well have been a prison island for the girls, while this part sounds like Trump’s MO with aliens: Thousands of prisoners, including about 200 children, are held under “administrative detention”: a technocratic name for a dystopian practice….
When you hear the word “prisoner”, people like Ben-Gvir want you to think of dangerous terrorists who deserve everything they get. In reality, many are people like Layan Nasir: a 23-year-old woman who was taken away at gunpoint from her parents’ home for no clear reason and only made international news because she is a Christian.
Some ultra-conservative Jewish extremists in Israel—say, of the Hassidic type - have become violent toward Christians, too - not just Palestinian Christians, but American Christians and especially Jewish Christians. (Yes, they exist in Israel… perilously.) They throw rocks at Christians on their way to church and even vandalize churches.
What was just described for Gvir above, of course, has been Trump’s approach with illegal immigrants - to make people think everyone who was being arrested and placed in concentration camps in Florida was a terrorist or a rapist, even if the worst thing they did, outside of coming illegally into the country, was to pick pumpkins or watermelons or make beds or wash dishes for a lot less than Americans would need to earn in order to get them to take those jobs. For that, their children got torn from their hands, just as Ben-Gvir has done. Pity the innocent children who have no idea where their parents are or why the past year of horror has happened to them in America!
Ben-Gvir doesn’t just want to hang his enemies; he wants more bloodshed in Gaza – which is still very much a killing field despite a so-called ceasefire. “I think we should be doing 30 to 40 targeted assassinations [in Gaza] per night,” Ben-Gvir recently said on a podcast. “Not just those who pose an immediate threat. There are people there who don’t deserve to live… They are not even people.” Isn’t that what Hitler said???
I could go on and on: Ben-Gvir is a busy man. He recently filmed himself entering prison cells containing Palestinian women and taunting them. On the same podcast where he urged nightly killings in Gaza, he went on to say that he thought Israel should occupy the entirety of Gaza. And, on Monday, he stormed the al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem, accompanied by extremist settlers and with the protection of the Israeli military. He’s just itching to instigate riots.
Evil twins: The critical point I’m coming to is that we have two governments running major wars in the Middle East right now that are steeped in Hitlerian hatred. One of them is run by Trump, who has more than once publicly praised Hitler as a “great leader,” and many of his followers are Neo-Nazis that he courted in order to gain power. A love for Nazi tactics is evidenced by Trump’s unnecessarily violent, almost Gestapo-like immigration department, which separates children from their pumpkin-picking mothers in order to pile the mothers up in a prison surrounded by the nation’s largest alligator-and-snake-filled mote.
I’m not trying to get sentimental here about Palestinians who have perpetrated innumerable horrors of their of own by bombing cafes and buses full of civilians. I just want to point out that Israel and America have transitioned to extremist and dishonorable governments. Netanyahu even matches up well to Trump in the scale of scandals (if not also Trump’s extreme number of scandals) over which he has been tied up in legal actions. Many even believe Netanyahu was behind Epstein, whom they claim was used to compromise American businessmen and politicians for control and used to spy and with whom Trump seems wickedly connected, given how hard he is using his office to cover for all of that. (I don’t know if those theories are true or not, but they are popular beliefs that might be true.)
As both nations - Israel and America - have elected leaders who have shifted government toward those nation’s furthest-right fringes, the zealots who have been brought into their circle of power to run the government no longer represent true Jewish values or deeper American or Christian values. Both the Jewish religion and the Christian religion teach kindness and hospitality and JUSTICE specifically toward aliens… from the same books of the Bible.
That doesn’t mean you have to let as many aliens into your country as want to pour in, any more than hospitality requires you to let everyone into your house. It certainly doesn’t mean you need to let into your country anyone you have solid reason to believe wants to harm you, anymore than hospitality and kindness requires you to let burglars into your home.
However, it does mean you don’t treat every alien whose time it is to leave as if they are de facto terrorists and rapists. Most are just moms or dads cleaning hotel rooms for the governing elite who own the hotels and resorts and who knew they were hiring illegal aliens to save themselves money. Those migrant workers, as I’ve written before, have become the modern-day peasant class that the wealthy class in both nations long chose to turn a blind eye to because big hotels and restaurants (and farms) wanted cheap labor. Their governments were complicit in allowing the breaking of their own laws, which seemed to exist only to force the peasants to keep their heads down and not complain about conditions.
In Israel, the situation is far more complicated than just cheap labor, but some of the leaders carrying out policy in Gaza and the West Bank are as awful as the people they hate and as bad as the current leaders in America. Both Netanyahu and Trump now share the risk of having their power stripped away from them in the next election because their extremism is turning the middle away from them, and they are both losing some of their extremists, as well. (Trump’s betrayal of some of the major objectives promised to his own supporters has lost him influential support.)
The prime minister has released several video and social media messages in recent weeks, publicly pleading with Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Winter to unite as one bloc instead of running as smaller parties. But so far, the right-wing parties are focusing on their own campaigns and leaning into a message that is becoming more extreme.
Such is the state of affairs going into fall elections for both nations. Iran is counting on watching them both flounder around in their own divided extremism to see their governing power fall apart. It’s treading water with mines and torpedos to buy time until the governments of those nations start to crumble because, if Republicans lose as largely as polls (often wrong) are indicating, Trump likely spend the rest of his presidency tied up in trials and unable to get anything passed through congress. Yet, who knows how wild that will make him - like a caged animal.
The center fringe: The cockroaches under self-serving commanders-in-chief like TheRump and NetanYAHOO have been given a voice and have been stirred up by these two men, who will gather forces from wherever they can find force by tapping into the rising magma of rage. So fringes, which were once largely ignored and a lot quieter, have crawled out from under the woodwork onto the center stage and have been empowered by the leaders whom they empowered with their votes. Together, they have forged a coalition—a support base that has been made into the core of government in order to form a government. In both nations.
Ben-Gvir is so shameless that there is no way to spin his conduct. He has been condemned and sanctioned by politicians and governments around the world. Nevertheless, Israel’s apologists have tried to cast him as a fringe figure. But that is just it, both governments have made the fringe the new center. Ben-Gvir is an example of that.
“Ben-Gvir’s statements do not reflect the policy of the State of Israel and should be condemned by all who care about Israel’s future,” the American Jewish Committee stated in August, after the politician’s comments about settlement in Gaza. But they DO reflect the official policy of Israel because the official government of Israel chose him to administer that policy, knowing full well what he is like and where he campaigned to run with those programs! The government can try to distance itself like that, but the fact is the coalitions in Israel and the US were built by intent in order to bring those same governments into existence.
Trump, for example, has tapped into years of rage that has built up from the insane triumphs of liberalism over conservatism in America that have delivered gay marriages, trans-genderism, men in women’s bathrooms at the same time the women are in them, children born whose parents and teachers pretend they are without gender like “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” mass immigration (which rich conservatives also wanted). A lot of nutty, once ultra-fringe, ultra-cringe ideas that liberals made central in American politics have made the Americans who once were at the center feel increasingly marginalized. So, the pendulum is swinging now to the opposite extreme.
Just look at the oddballs Biden put in office and how poorly they tended to the normal business of their departments because they were too busy using their departments to find ways to normalize and centralize their own fringe groups … like this ludicrously ugly male pair of wives:
My point is not to argue those issues, but just to say, as society moved so extremely to the Left, anger burned on the Right until those who felt marginalized found a person through whom they could gain power to restore the balance, which is what Ben-Gvir probably sees himself as doing.
My secondary point would be that someone like Trump doesn’t even care about many of those issues, such as sexual deviancy (being a deviant by his own boasting about how he grabs women) or abortions. He’s just tapping into the anger to use it for his own empowerment because anger is powerful, even if disorganized and chaotic; but Trump loves chaotic, just like his father, the devil. And so the two nations are both cracking and crumbling from years of social wars between Left and Right that have pushed people toward extremes, and thinned out the middle that once could get along.
This is, in other words, the outcome of longtime culture wars that constantly divided nations, which are now being reaped by power-hungry, maniacal leaders who are exploiting the anger to empower themselves. Trump’s evil genius is seeing how he can exploit anger for his own uses. Netanyahu, not much different. We now live in nations where humankind is falling apart at the seams with wedges being driven everywhere by intentionally divisive leaders.
Make no mistake: Ben-Gvir may be an embarrassment, but he is no anomaly. He is very much the face of modern Israel and his vision for the country accurately reflects the reality on the ground. Same can be said of Trump, elected twice. The second time America knew what it was electing (or had no excuse not to), so he is what the majority of voters chose.
Marching toward Armageddon
I’ve said this before, but people like Ben-Gvir in Israel’s government will make Biblical prophecies like this one for Israel come true, and it won’t take much more time (particularly verse 14):
12 “This is what the Lord says:
“‘Your wound is incurable,
your injury beyond healing.
13 There is no one to plead your cause,
no remedy for your sore,
no healing for you.
14 All your allies have forgotten you;
they care nothing for you.
I have struck you as an enemy would
and punished you as would the cruel,
because your guilt is so great
and your sins so many.
15 Why do you cry out over your wound,
your pain that has no cure?
Because of your great guilt and many sins
I have done these things to you. (Jeremiah 30:12-15)
Back in 2024, I wrote about that prophecy and another prophecy that says,
25 Therefore the LORD’s anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down. The mountains shake, and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.26 He lifts up a banner for the distant nations, he whistles for those at the ends of the earth. Here they come, swiftly and speedily!
I.e., he calls in the nations against Israel to make war on it.
27 Not one of them grows tired or stumbles, not one slumbers or sleeps; not a belt is loosened at the waist, not a sandal strap is broken.
They arrive around Israel ready to make war!
28 Their arrows are sharp, all their bows are strung; their horses’ hooves seem like flint, their chariot wheels like a whirlwind.
29 Their roar is like that of the lion, they roar like young lions; they growl as they seize their prey and carry it off with no one to rescue.
30 In that day they will roar over it like the roaring of the sea. And if one looks at the land, there is only darkness and distress; even the sun will be darkened by clouds. (Isaiah 5:25-30)
That is saying the nations will overwhelm Israel because so many have been made angry with it, creating a time of darkness and distress in Israel - ha’aretz, the land.
I noted back in that article, "It’s not hard to see the many nations of the world that are Muslim would turn in unison against Israel if the sites Muslims consider sacred on the Temple Mount were threatened [which Ben-Gvir has done], but those nations may also include Russia as an ally of Iran and other nations that turn against Israel- Islamic Turkey seeming more on sides with Russia now than with the US or Israel (“Thundering Toward Armageddon”)"
We now see that exact formation shaping up, as I suggested, as we read in the news that Russia is now supplying Iran with the cruise missiles it needs, which Iran is using to attack its enemies in the Middle East, which means Russian missiles may soon be directed at Israel if it steps back directly into the Iran war, though for now Israel seems to be sidelined from making direct attacks on Iran. Israel’s relationship with Turkey has also become much more strained since I wrote that comment. So, it is all quickly moving in that direction.
Electioneering: Ben Gvir is perhaps the best known of Israel’s far-right politicians, a provocateur with his hands on the country’s levers of power. As the minister of National Security, he is in charge of the police and the prisons as his politics have become a defining feature of Israel’s image abroad. With two months until the elections, Israel’s far-right field is becoming increasingly crowded, packed with small parties vying for a finite pool of votes. To stand out, politicians are unabashed in their messaging and their vision for the country.
It’s a race to the extremities almost perfectly timed to match up with US elections. In both countries right now, the extreme right is driving the nation. The far-right is a dominant feature in Israeli politics – and a key component of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. It is obviously the dominant feature in US politics, too, although many of Trump’s own supporters are not happy with the Israeli war path Trump has run down, nor with his deployment of everything he can find to obscure the Epstain scandal to save his cronies and likely himself. MAGA has splintered badly over these issues.
In Israel, the situation is a little different. The old splinter groups are competing to be more extreme than each other, and new splinter groups are forming. There is no cohesion in the madness in either Israel or America. Anger doesn’t know cohesion. In Israel, we read, "That electoral arithmetic is intensifying competition for right-wing voters and pushing politicians to adopt even harder-line positions….
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich repeatedly celebrates the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, openly boasting of destroying the possibility of a Palestinian state. A cornerstone of his election campaign is called “Yes. Let’s Judaize!” – a plan which aims to change the demographic reality in the Negev and Galilee, areas of Israel with substantial Arab populations, by applying settlement strategies from the West Bank: bringing a million additional Jewish residents and establishing about 40 new communities alongside dozens of individual farms."
Meanwhile, Ofer Winter recently launched his new “Your People Israel” party. The retired brigadier general is popular among Israel’s right-wing and religious Zionist movement. At the party’s launch event in late-August, he said, “There will never be a Palestinian state here. The solution in Gaza is simple – emigration.”
It may be that no solutions worked out by humankind for the violence that Palestinians have also rained down on Jews in Israel will ever work, but neither will this one as the extremists separate Israel from the rest of the world, until they leave Israel without any allies because they have made it into its worst version of itself. That’s when Israel will be pressed toward a nuclear solution that will only bring global catastrophe.
America is also becoming its worst version of itself in the eyes of all the world over which Trump has rampaged, seriously threatening to grab the land of long-time allies, bulldozing through their economies with tariffs, flip-flopping all over the place so they don’t even know where the solid ground on treaties is, deriding their leaders constantly, driving wedges between America and its old allies from World War II days. Trump, too, said this week he has been seriously considering a mini-nuclear solution, which could open Pandora’s Box, but has decided not to go that route … for now.
False religion: All of these guys are guided by bastardized religion. Gvir believes he is guided by biblical prophets and prophetic rabbis and that God will empower him for helping to bring the Jewish messiah to rule Israel. Such brazen beliefs embolden him to take actions others despise because he believes God will make him triumphant if he is so bold. Trump is surrounded by his own nest of prophets, led by prophetess Paula White Cain and joined by Lance Wallnau, who all tell him that God will empower him if he defends Israel.
Pete Hagsbreath is filled with violence and machismo guided by Christian Nationalism (and his own ego), which is built on a twisted view of biblical prophecy that says, just like Wallnau, that it is the manifest destiny of Christians to rule the earth now. That is a doctrine of the “Church triumphant” that once empowered Catholic pogroms against Jews and crusades against Muslims and inquisitions against Protestants. It is a misconstrued prophetic belief, but a long popular one, with a history of epic destruction. The belief has long been used to co-opt religion to gain political power.
Christian nationalists believe under that “prophetic mandate” they are to seize power by military effort and violence, the exact opposite of everything Jesus lived and taught. Trump believes he is to do it for his own empowerment, and that’s all he needs for motivation. If God helps him, great; but he’d do it anyway. Zealot Ben-Gvir and many Zionists of a white and blue stripe (rather than red, white and blue stripes) are enlivened by similar beliefs that they are working out their Jewish destiny. All of these people working out their own versions of destiny, but none are waiting for God to deliver. They believe arrogantly they know the plan and the path, and it is their calling to make it happen. There is no humility in them whatsoever.
As a result, human evil is manifesting again in global imperial wars, and the world marches restlessly toward Armageddon as these people create massive hot wars that are now burning up the whole Middle East. The flaw is not in the ancient religions, which also contain harsh warnings against people who want to make the end come quickly in order to see it happen and specifically against taking the timing of prophecy into their own hands.
The actual religious writings are also filled with virtues that must govern all human action, which naturally curb the extremes. It is the human lust for power that drives narcissists and despots and maniacs to use those religions to empower themselves and to justify themselves while ignoring the imposed and inconvenient virtues. The words of the prophets draw out human nature as leaders lust for the powers talked about in those prophecies while ignoring all the impositions and warnings they don’t like. The prophets, thus, lure human nature to expose itself and bring on humanity’s own judgement because it is human nature to believe the parts that serve us and ignore what we don’t like.
Leaders like Trump and Netanyahu, and their underlords like Hegseth and Ben-Gvir, ignore the tempering parts of those belief systems that are inconvenient truths to their lust for power. Their own self-righteousness leads them to storm ahead of the texts they claim to believe in; or, in Trump’s case, his endless quest for self-aggrandizement with no interest in righteousness or virtue of any kind, causes him to cut his own trail. Perhaps instead of thinking from the standpoint of whether God is on their side, they should have started by asking if they are on God’s side."
Jim Kunstler, "Insurrection For Real"
Norm Eisen, Democratic Party Lawfare Ninja Supreme
"Insurrection For Real"
by Jim Kunstler
“The Democrat agenda is to legalize crime
and criminalize the middle class.”
- Stephen Miller
"Not to put too fine a point on it: but whenever a lawfare ninja of the Democratic Party utters the phrase “our democracy,” you must know that they are completely full of shit. For sure, they do not mean anything remotely related to an American commonweal, as understood by people of sound mind and good faith. What they mean by “our democracy” is the state as a racketeering operation run for the sole benefit of their party members, along with the ruthless power to annihilate their opponents and critics.
The war-cry “our democracy” only signifies how degenerate they have become. Though they yearn to win control of Congress in these midterm elections by any means necessary, the party’s actual prospects are not so great, having nominated a pack of obvious morons and reprobates such as Abdul el-Sayed (MI), James Talarico (TX), Angie Nixon (FL), Troy Jackson (ME), and Peggy Flanagan (MN) for the US Senate.
Now, it appears that President Donald Trump is determined to clean up our fraud-ridden election process this year, one way or another. Hopes are nearly dead for Congress passing a comprehensive election reform law, the SAVE Act, so he has looked to other measures. One is a procedure for the US Postal Service to match and track mail-in ballots to real persons with actual addresses listed on state voter rolls. The matter is still working through courts. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has pledged to send about 1000 election monitors to polling places around the country as “observers,” which could obviate arrant shenanigans like the broken toilet ploy in Fulton County, GA, 2020.
Mr. Trump could go further, as discussed here recently, and declare a National Security Executive Order with more exacting rules such as requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID at the polls, and reporting election results no later than the day following the election. The Democratic Party is fighting desperately to prevent any changes to current procedure with so much room for fraud. The effort is led by chief lawfare ninja Norm Eisen, who is associated with several activist NGOs: the States United Democracy Center (founder); State Democracy Defenders PAC; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW); the Brookings Institution; plus his own pro bono litigation practice, Norma Eisen PLLC.
Eisen enjoys many millions of dollars in backing that have enabled him to file hundreds of court cases against Trump administration actions, including the recent suits against the US Postal Service mail-in ballot plan. His own NGOs are backed by hundreds of other NGOs both here and globally, many of which have been involved in color revolutions in foreign countries. Eisen himself has played a part in many episodes of the long-running color revolution here in the USA, including RussiaGate, the 2020 fake impeachment, and the Jan-6 House Committee. All that could be described in totality as a seditious coup attempt - and it’s all currently under investigation by several federal grand juries.
Likewise, lawfare ninja Marc Elias, who operates his election activities through Democracy Docket (founder); the Free election Fund; the Democracy Forward Foundation (board chair); We the Action; plus his own firm, the Elias Law Group. He was formerly a lawyer with the DC law firm Perkins Coie, through which he served as general counsel to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. He shepherded the Steele Dossier into the Intel apparatus and around the news media.
All that is a prelude to a disturbing roll-out of events that anyone paying attention can see coming this fall. The Democratic Party has massive resources not just to stall and obstruct pre-election reform, but to mount a vicious resistance after the fact if it doesn’t produce their desired result. They could go as far as to repudiate the election, refuse to accept its results. If the president does issue that NatSec EO prior to the election, blue state officials could refuse to hold elections under new rules. Thirty states have already refused to comply with DOJ demands to submit their official voter rolls for evaluation. Some of the aforementioned activist NGOs have promised post-election street actions (demonstrations that could easily turn into riots).
In the face of that, you can foresee the necessity of the president having to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1878 (10 U.S.C. §§ 251–255). The act provides an exception to the Posse Commitatus Act, also 1878, which forbids the use of the US military to act as police inside the USA. Under the Insurrection Act, the president can federalize states’ national guard units to enforce federal law or protect constitutional rights when ordinary civilian means are not enough.
The Act has been used before in our history about thirty times by fifteen presidents, including the Great Railway Strike of 1877 (Pres. Hayes); the Pullman Strike of 1894 (Pres. Cleveland); the Little Rock School Desegregation resistance of 1957 (Pres. Eisenhower sent in the 82nd Airborne). Pres. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times: the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965; the Detroit riots of 1967; and the riots that followed the Assassination of Martin Luther King, 1968. Pres. George H. W. Bush used it in 1994 to quell the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles.
If Mr. Trump invokes the Insurrection Act around any violence or organized election rebellion this year, he will invite the Democrats to label him an autocrat, a tyrant, a wannabe king, as they have been taunting him and goading him with for years. Let’s suppose that will be enough to inflame the party’s activists. I think you can see how this lays the groundwork for something that looks like a new civil war. The repudiation of election results by blue states would be enough.
Know this: it won’t work. It will result in charges of sedition and many Democratic officials will be arrested and charged, probably some governors. It will be a really ugly episode in our history, but we’ll get through it. Of course, it will be the end of the Democratic Party."
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