Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 5/29/26
"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern + Scott Ritter:
Weekly Wrap 29-May"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Friday, May 29, 2026
"Middle East Wars, 5/29/26
Col. Douglas Macgregor, 5/29/26
"Iran Just Hit Israel So Hard
The Entire War Changed Overnight"
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Scott Ritter, 5/29/26
"Hezbollah Struck Golan Heights &
Israel's Strategy Just Collapsed Forever'
"Hezbollah's latest actions in the Golan Heights have sparked intense debate about regional security and Israel's military strategy. In this analysis, Scott Ritter examines the battlefield developments, strategic implications, and the broader impact on Middle East geopolitics. Discover how these events could reshape the balance of power and influence future regional conflicts."
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Full screen recommended.
Dialogue Works, 5/29/26
"Chas. Freeman: Hezbollah Strikes Israel Hard –
Israel Now Prepares for War with Egypt & Turkey"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "Summer Of Free Gas Has Officially Begun"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 5/29/26
"Summer Of Free Gas Has Officially Begun"
"Gas prices are crushing families across America, and now businesses are getting desperate to bring customers through the door. In today’s video, I break down how companies like Cracker Barrel, Circle K, Quick Trip, Maverick, and others are launching massive “free gas” giveaways and incentives just to keep people spending money. Cracker Barrel alone is giving away $250,000 in gas cards and restaurant gift cards as the cost of living continues to explode nationwide. This is becoming the summer of free gas, and it says everything about the state of the economy in 2026.
We also dive into rising oil price fears, predictions of $300 oil, California’s proposed mileage tax, housing market claims nobody believes, retail vacancies, restaurant desperation, and the latest scams targeting struggling Americans. From fake HOA foreclosures to rental scams and fraudulent ticket collection texts, the financial pressure on average people is creating chaos everywhere. If you’re feeling squeezed by inflation, fuel prices, taxes, food costs, or the overall economy, you are not alone. This video connects the dots on what’s really happening right now across America."
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"What Geniuses Think"
"What Geniuses Think"
by Paul Rosenberg
"It struck me some time ago that the people we think of as “geniuses” tend to arrive, over time, at surprisingly similar sets of conclusions. It further strikes me that a simple list of such thoughts might be of value. And so, here is a list pulled from my quotes file and presented without commentary. Enjoy:
Albert Einstein: "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
"Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war."
"Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it."
"The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it."
"Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."
Rod Serling: "The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling."
Arthur Schopenhauer: "We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people."
Thomas Jefferson: "I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."
Allan Bloom: "The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside."
John Stuart Mill: "The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it."
Leo Tolstoy: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens… Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere."
Will Durant: "Above all, the ruling minority sought more and more to transform its forcible mastery into a body of law which, while consolidating that mastery, would afford a welcome security and order to the people, and would recognize the rights of the “subject” sufficiently to win his acceptance of the law and his adherence to the state."
George Bernard Shaw: "All government is authoritarian; and the more democratic a government is the more authoritative it is; for with the people behind it, it can push authority further than any Tsar or foreign despot dare do."
Aldous Huxley: "So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable."
"Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government."
Richard Feynman: "Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity – and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand."
Buckminster Fuller: "Dear reader, traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are about to be rendered obsolete."
"If you take all the machinery in the world and dump it in the ocean, within months more than half of all humanity will die and within another six months they’d almost all be gone; if you took all the politicians in the world, put them in a rocket, and sent them to the moon, everyone would get along fine."
"We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think."
"Either you’re going to go along with your mind and the truth, or you’re going to yield to fear and custom and conditioned reflexes."
Erich Fromm: "The history of mankind up to the present time is primarily the history of idol worship, from primitive idols of clay and wood to the modern idols of the state, the leader, production and consumption – sanctified by the blessing of an idolized God."
"Obedience to God is also the negation of submission to man."
"If one has no possibility of acting, one’s thinking becomes empty and stupid."
"Is there really as much difference as we think between the Aztec human sacrifices to their gods and the modern human sacrifices in war to the idols of nationalism and the sovereign state?"
Charlie Chaplin: "As for politics, I’m an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can’t stand caged animals. People must be free."
Carl Jung: "For in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him."
Ray Bradbury: "We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for thinking."
Abraham Maslow: "I can certainly say that descriptively healthy human beings do not like to be controlled. They prefer to feel free and to be free."
Simone Weil: "The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State. Conscience is deceived by the social."
"Human history is simply the history of the servitude which makes men – oppressed and oppressors alike – the plaything of the instruments of domination they themselves have manufactured, and thus reduces living humanity to being the chattel of inanimate chattels."
"What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war."
"Huxley vs. Orwell"
"Huxley vs. Orwell"
by Neil Postman
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.
What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to
ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one...
Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those
who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism...
Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.
Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance...
Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we
would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent
of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy...
As Huxley remarked in 'Brave New World Revisited', the civil libertarians and the rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In '1984,' Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In 'Brave New World,' they are controlled by inflicting pleasure...In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."
Huxley was very obviously right...
"Exactly Which Dystopian Novel Are We Living In?"
"Exactly Which Dystopian Novel Are We Living In?"
by Tyler Durden
"There’s a debate going on among the disaffected/terrified over which dystopian novel we’re now living in. As John Rubino remarks, some point to social media addiction and designer drugs to suggest "Brave New World." Others see mass surveillance and pandemic lockdowns as putting us squarely in "1984". Still others cite online censorship and cancel culture as favoring "Fahrenheit 451".
Each of these opinions seems valid, which is confusing. A prisoner should know the shape of their cell. So it’s a relief to find out that someone (not sure who) has settled the argument by creating the following Venn diagram (Tweeted by our friend David Morgan).
Turns out we’re not in a single dystopian novel. We’re in all of them simultaneously."
"A Primer For The Propagandized: Fear Is The Mind-Killer"
"A Primer For The Propagandized:
Fear Is The Mind-Killer"
by Margaret Anna Alice
“Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.”
- George Orwell
"The noose is dangling gently around our necks. Every day, they cinch it tighter. By the time we realize it’s strangling us, it will be too late. Those who – gradually and gleefully – sacrifice their freedoms, their autonomy, their individuality, their livelihoods, and their relationships on the altar of the “common good” have forgotten this is the pattern followed by every totalitarian regime in history.
Everyone wonders how ordinary Germans could have been manipulated to participate or stand dumbstruck while their government was transformed into a genocidal juggernaut. This is how. Read Sebastian Haffner’s "Defying Hitler" memoir to see how this can happen anywhere - including here.
Everyone wonders how Russians could have permitted and even zealously reported fellow citizens for imprisonment and execution under "Article 58", the penal code invented to incarcerate anyone who dared express the slightest whisper of noncompliance under Stalin’s homicidal state. This is how. Read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s meticulously documented "The Gulag Archipelago" to witness this progression of authoritarian lunacy.
Everyone wonders how Hutus could have suddenly started axing their Tutsi neighbors to death after being inundated with waves of anti-Tutsi propaganda from "Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines." Read Philip Gourevitch’s "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda."
The list goes on. And on. And on. From Machiavelli’s "The Prince" to Étienne de la Boetie’s "The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude" to Edward Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s "Manufacturing Consent" (and accompanying documentary) to BBC’s "The Century of the Self," mechanisms of mass control have been chronicled for millennia.
George Orwell wrote, "As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.”
Can you imagine what master propagandist Edward Bernays would have done with access to today’s mainstream media conglomerate combined with the global surveillance infrastructure of Big Tech? And you really think that’s not happening now - with another century of psychological, neurological, and technological research under their belts?
The present ability to curate reality and coerce obedience is unprecedented, far beyond what Orwell envisioned in "1984", Bradbury in "Fahrenheit 451", Huxley in "Brave New World," and Burgess in "A Clockwork Orange."
A textbook example of "Problem Reaction Solution", the tsunami of worldwide Covid hysteria was the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history. The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining - despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.
Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic. Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.
Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases - especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias - against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst each other to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.
This ideological mass psychosis is religion - not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth.
Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” He also said: “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
The next time you’re watching the news, reading a social media post, listening to a friend repeat a scripted talking point, pay attention. Learn to identify the earmarks of propaganda, the clickbait used to trigger your emotions, the mechanisms employed to engineer your cognitive biases.
Don’t let your pride prevent you from seeing - and admitting - the Emperor is naked. We are losing our last sliver of opportunity to resist authoritarianism. This is not a partisan issue. Those who wish to control us have made it such because disunited lemmings are easier to steer than independent, critical thinkers.
This is a human issue. This is about crushing the middle class - the backbone of a democratic republic - and transferring trillions from the middle and lower classes to the ruling plutocracy. This is about demolishing the foundations of a free society and building it back - not better, but better-controlled.
I will close by recommending a series of illuminating videos on menticide (“the systematic effort to undermine and destroy a person’s values and beliefs … to induce radically different ideas”) throughout history by "Academy of Ideas." This analysis of mass psychosis is nonpartisan and of value to every thinking human being.
"Dare to question. Dare to disbelieve.
Dare to defy ideology in favor of science while you still can."
"Burning Books In A Brave New 1984 World - The Age Of Censorship"
"Burning Books In A Brave New 1984 World -
The Age Of Censorship"
By Jim Quinn
Excerpt: "In Part 1 of this article, I explored how Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury foretold the use of technology by totalitarians to subjugate and control the masses. Now we move on to a currently hot topic – censorship.
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” - Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"
Censorship: “There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves” - Ray Bradbury, "Fahrenheit 451"
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” – Ray Bradbury
The primary theme of "Fahrenheit 451" is censorship. In Bradbury’s dystopia, burning books was the principal method of censorship, directed by the government, but generally supported by the masses. A form of self-censorship developed, as the dullards, intellectually lazy, and willfully ignorant, preferred books to be burned so they felt that would put them on a level playing field with the critical thinkers and intellectually curious minded.
It always comes back to the government doing everything in their power to keep the masses apathetic, ill-informed, entertained, and distracted, to ensure their continued control over society. Bradbury believed the masses would go along with censorship because they already had television, radio, and fast cars, with vacuous programming, loud music, and unceasing advertising creating over-stimulation and distraction for the populace. They were too distracted to read a book, learn, think critically, or question the authorities.
In Part 1 of this article, I explored how Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury foretold the use of technology by totalitarians to subjugate and control the masses. Now we move on to a currently hot topic – censorship.
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” - Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"
Bradbury doesn’t have much faith in either government or the people they rule. His view of humanity in general was not positive in the early 1950s. Imagine what he would think of American society seventy years later. The hostility towards books in "Fahrenheit 451" for many was based on envy. The lazy, willfully ignorant masses didn’t want to feel intellectually inferior to those who wanted to read books, learn, inquire, think, and question the government narrative.
Seeing your neighbor’s books burned gave a warped sense of satisfaction to the intentionally ignorant. When your government wants to keep you ignorant to better control you and you choose ignorance because it’s easier to not think, you’ve achieved dystopian perfection. Thinking is hard. Watching a screen is easy.
The 1930’s and 1940’s saw the height of book burnings, with Goebbels and the Nazis burning books contrary to their ideology in the early 1930s, and then the counter book burnings of Nazi literature after 1945. It spread to the U.S., with the Karens of their day burning textbooks and literature they didn’t agree with. There will always be an authoritarian-minded segment of the population who seek power to decide what you should read or see. They do not believe freedom of speech as defined in the Constitution should be available to those they disagree with.
“I wasn’t worried about freedom, I was worried about people being turned into morons by TV…the moronic influence of popular culture through local TV news and the proliferation of giant screens and the bombardment of factoids.” – Ray Bradbury
Censorship is the cudgel they utilize to keep you from making up your own mind about ideas, historical events, opinions, and facts. If you don’t want the masses to know the truth, don’t let them see both sides of issues, keep them distracted by technology, and overload their brains with meaningless drivel. Bradbury’s dystopian fears have come to fruition, seventy years later. We are now a nation of low IQ sheep who “feel” smart because their overlords have lowered the bar so low, every dullard believes themselves to be smarter than Einstein, even though they can’t subtract 57 cents from $1.00 in their head. Generations have been indoctrinated to feel rather than think. They don’t even know what thinking means.
Full, most highly recommended article is here:
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Freely download "Fahrenheit 451", by Ray Bradbury, here:
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"The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that
Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
- Thomas Sowell.
Bill Bonner, "Big Fat Financial Blow Up"
Another year…another $2 trillion added to the national debt.
Source: US Senate Joint Economic Committee Monthly Report
"Big Fat Financial Blow Up"
by Bill Bonner
"Based on what I’ve heard, we could balance the federal budget
if only the dollars that went out of the Treasury went to
individuals who were lawfully, correctly entitled to receive them."
- Stephen Miller
Gualfin, Argentina - "What in the world is he thinking? He is one of the most powerful figures on the Trump Team. And it is this administration which is in charge of sending out the checks. If he believes the bookkeeper is embezzling the public’s money, why not call him into the office and give him a good thrashing?
The ‘experts’ were quick to point out that while the evidence of widespread waste, corruption and incompetence is unimpeachable - what fool would argue against it? - the sums don’t come anywhere near the amounts needed to balance the budget.
What the ‘experts’ didn’t say is that while the cast of scoundrels and scalawags changes every four years, the spectacle itself - with all its plots, subplots, and plotters - continues almost unaltered. Nor do they mention that the whole show is a farce. The villains of unnecessary spending...and the heroes who pretend to stop it...are all frauds.
Talk about money going to the wrong people...the Pentagon doesn’t even know where it goes. Military.com: ‘The Pentagon failed its eighth consecutive financial audit and says it is still working toward a clean opinion by 2028, keeping pressure on defense accountability and oversight.’
Our own tour of duty during the Vietnam War confirmed it. The officers and sailors were competent and well-meaning, but they were placed upon a multi-billion dollar battleship, with the latest firepower, and the most sophisticated and expensive materiel. Then, we were all sent out into the vast Pacific to protect the nation against an enemy that didn’t exist. (The Viet Cong had no heavy cruisers. It had no navy at all. China, then, was still recovering from the Cultural Revolution; it had no meaningful navy either. And neither did Russia. What were we protecting the Homeland against? Nobody knew.)
The source of the waste, as every swabbie knew, was the casta politica - the same clowns and pretenders who claim to be protecting the taxpayers’ money with every breath they take. Even back then - and that was half a century ago - the real idea was to spend money, not save it. And God forbid that you didn’t spend all the money you were allocated! The following year, your budget might be reduced.
But along comes Team Trump...with a new cause for hope and hosannas. The famous DOGE. The Department of Government Efficiency - was set up with the smartest, most competent human being who ever lived - Elon Musk - at its head. And then the fur flew...as Musk’s young geniuses began poking their heads into the feds’ warrens, nests, and hidey holes. They dug into the accounts...and pored over the organization charts. Surely, it was just a question of time until the federal budget was balanced. TimesNow:
"When Donald Trump took office in 2025, DOGE’s head at the time, Elon Musk, had pledged to cut spending by $2 trillion. DOGE claimed billions in government savings through cancelling contracts, terminating grants and renegotiating leases. According to its website, the department reached $214 billion in savings as of November 24, [2025] estimating this to be worth $1,329.19 per taxpayer."
And what was the result? The New York Times: ‘Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency said it made more than 29,000 cuts to the federal government - slashing billion-dollar contracts, canceling thousands of grants and pushing out civil servants. But the group did not do what Mr. Musk said it would: reduce federal spending by $1 trillion before October. On DOGE’s watch, federal spending did not go down at all. It went up.’
DOGE failed to make even a dent in federal deficits. And now, with the last conservative in Congress out of the way, what’s to keep the Big Man’s Big Government from its Big Spending rendezvous with a Big Fat Financial Blow-up?
If Miller were right, all it would have to do would be to stop sending checks to people who weren’t supposed to get them. That won’t happen. But Mr. Trump did not invent this arrangement; he merely succeeds, as he succeeds at every spectacle, in making it gaudier. Stay tuned."
Jim Kunstler, "Like a Naked Emperor"
"Like a Naked Emperor"
by Jim Kunstler
"The case has stunned national security observers and raised serious
questions about the federal government’s security clearance and vetting systems."
- Newsmax
"In the annals of Deep State WTF-ery, is there a stranger case than CIA officer David Rush turning up with $40-million in 303 one-kilogram gold bars, plus $2-million in cash, plus a stash of 30 mostly Rolex watches? Well, yeah, the stranger story is how the guy got hired by the CIA in the first place.
Rush was arrested on Monday, May 18, by an FBI SWAT team at his home in Loudoun County, VA. Agents searched the house all day long and found the stash. Rush is currently charged with theft of public money and allegedly falsifying his military and academic credentials to obtain federal employment benefits, including roughly $77,000 in improper military leave pay. He’s scheduled to make a federal court appearance in Alexandria today.
Rush first applied for a job at the CIA in March 2006. He claimed to have a bachelor’s degree in math from Clemson University and a master’s from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He was rejected. He reapplied later that same year. Bumped again. He reapplied again in 2009, adding a new credential: that he’d been a US Navy test pilot and flight trainer. This time, he was hired.
Rush’s college credentials were found to be false, but it is unclear when that was discovered. Since he included them in his two earlier 2006 failed applications, why were they not flagged in his successful 2009 application? His claim of being a US Navy pilot was also found to be false (he was an information systems tech in his Navy service). The FBI affidavit unsealed recently details the pattern of lies across all applications.
Understand that CIA vetting procedures are supposed to be exceedingly rigorous. The process is stressful and invasive - many candidates drop out or are weeded out. The background check involves interviews with practically everybody who knows the applicant going back decades, his criminal history, work, financial history, education, military service. The applicant gets a polygraph exam. Even after getting hired, monitoring continues.
Rush was hired at the very start of the Obama admin; Leon Panetta was the newly appointed CIA Director. Wouldn’t you like to hear him ‘splain how David Rush managed to get hired? Was somebody smoothing his way in? Rush rose to become a senior executive service (SES) officer with a top-secret (TS/SCI) security clearance. His exact duties, the division he worked for, his day-to-day responsibilities have not been disclosed.
Rush allegedly requested the gold and foreign currency from the CIA for “work-related expenses” between November 2025 and March 2026. The agency later could not account for the assets or locate records explaining their official purpose. A search of a storage locker at CIA connected to Rush turned up only a small amount of the requisitioned cash.
“There is a whole process that we go through to get that money. I don’t just walk into the logistics office and say ‘Excuse me, I need $100,000 tomorrow.’ There is a form I have to fill out. It’s not a bank vault you walk into. It doesn’t work like that.” - Tracy Walder, 46, a former FBI special agent and CIA officer, quoted in The New York Post.
Wouldn’t you assume that some higher-up CIA officer would have to sign off on such a colossal requisition of gold and money? (And where does the CIA get so much gold on-demand?) Perhaps the very Director of the CIA approved it - which would be John Ratcliffe through 2025 up to right now. Doesn’t he have some ‘splainin’ to do? (Was Rush set-up? Was this a sting?)
Assuming Rush spent some period of time as an entry-level CIA employee, when did his rise to SES level happen? John Brennan became CIA Director in early 2013 (the start of Barack Obama’s second term). What were David Rush’s relations with John Brennan? Was Brennan his mentor? Does the gold stash have any connection with the current legal problems of John Brennan and other former high officials involved in the long-running “grand conspiracy” case about the attempted overthrow of a president?
You might imagine that Rush’s phone and computers were seized in the May 18th raid on his house - though it’s unlikely he used such conventional channels for black ops chatter. It’s conceivable, though, that any alt-communications of his were captured by the vast national security surveillance apparatus, and that DNI Tulsi Gabbard might have come across them this past year. How else might Director Ratcliffe have been tipped off?
This story is not going away. The scale of the grift is spectacular and vivid - 303 gold bars! - like a Hollywood movie. Rush’s explanation of “work-related expenses” sounds preposterous. If the requisitions were made serially, over several months, as appears, then the agency had more than one opportunity to review and question them.
Rush faked his entire back-story. How incompetent (or corrupt) are the agency’s past managers that he got away with it for so long? How many other gross fakers, rogues, grifters, and tools are embedded in the agency, and who are they really working for? The institutional embarrassment is monumental. Trust in the so-called Intel Community is at an all-time low. Indictments and trials are coming. This is the Deep State on parade like a naked emperor."
Shortages And Rationing Loom As Global Oil Reserves Fall At The Fastest Rate In History
by Michael Snyder
"No matter what happens now, the world is facing a very painful energy crisis. Let’s be as wildly optimistic as we possibly can and assume that Iran agrees to allow free passage through the Strait of Hormuz with absolutely no tolls or restrictions starting tomorrow. Before normal traffic through the Strait could resume, Iran would first have to remove all of the mines that they have laid in the Strait, and that could take months. Once all of the mines have been removed, it will take the tankers that are currently trapped in the Persian Gulf weeks to arrive at their destinations. Moving forward, Persian Gulf countries will be exporting much less oil and natural gas for the foreseeable future because of all the oil and natural gas infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed during the war. It will take years before all of that infrastructure is fully repaired and rebuilt. Meanwhile, global supplies of oil and natural gas will be very tight for an extended period of time.
What I have just laid out for you is the best case scenario. Ultimately, what we end up facing could be so much worse. Over the past couple of months, global oil reserves have been falling at the fastest rate ever recorded…
Record inventory draw: Global oil stocks have fallen by 246 million barrels in March-April, with draws in May hitting a record 8.7 million barrels per day.
Hormuz closure impact: The Strait of Hormuz shutdown has cut off 25% of the world’s seaborne oil, compounding already low reserves and boosting prices.
US price outlook: Analysts expect U.S. gasoline prices could reach $5 this summer unless flows resume, with relief unlikely before autumn.
Needless to say, this is not sustainable. Here in the United States, the strategic petroleum reserve has been dropping at a record-breaking pace… The SPR’s most recent drawdown, covering the week ended May 22, shows a drop of 9.1 million barrels, leaving the reserves at 365 million barrels. The previous weekly drawdown, covering the week of May 15, was its steepest on record — the U.S. withdrew 9.92 million barrels from the SPR then.
Before that record-breaking decline, the largest weekly drop in the SPR’s history occurred in the week ended Oct. 7, 2022, when the reserves dropped by 7.41 million barrels, and was connected to the war in Ukraine.
Commercial oil inventories are being rapidly depleted as well. At some point the tanks are going to hit minimum operating levels and we are going to have an enormous crisis on our hands. The chief economist at Capital Economics is projecting that commercial oil inventories “could reach critically low levels by the end of June”…“At the current pace of drawdown, commercial oil stocks could reach critically low levels by the end of June,” Neil Shearing, chief economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research note on May 18. If supply conditions don’t improve soon, “prices could rise sharply,” Shearing warned.
Jeff Currie is warning that Asia is already very close to minimum operating levels, and he is projecting that the U.S. could potentially be dealing with shortages in July… Oil markets are nearing minimum operating levels in Asia, with Europe likely next and the U.S. potentially facing shortages by July, said veteran market strategist Jeff Currie on Monday, underscoring the global energy shock due to the Iran war.
Headline global inventory figures can be misleading as much of the oil stored worldwide cannot be used immediately, said Currie, Carlyle’s chief strategy officer of energy pathways and co-chairman of Abaxx Markets. A large portion of that oil is needed to keep pipelines and storage systems running safely, leaving only a smaller share available for the market. Asia is already close to these so-called “minimum operating levels,” Currie told CNBC on the sidelines of the UBS Wealth Conference in Singapore.
This is really happening. The Australian government is so concerned about what is ahead that they have already prepared a plan to limit the amount of fuel each vehicle can purchase per day when that becomes necessary…Contained in documents obtained by Guardian Australian under freedom of information, one option the government had at its disposal to arrest a local fuel supply shortage would be to impose a “maximum transaction value per vehicle per day” – a rationing rule which would limit how much fuel a single vehicle can buy at a service station over a 24-hour period.
If the Strait of Hormuz does not get reopened, we could eventually see similar measures get implemented all over the world. Of course rationing of motor oil has already started… Nissan is rationing 5W-30 and 0W-20 Nissan Genuine Motor Oils. Starting this week, Nissan’s stock of these oils has dropped by 30% year-on-year. With only 70% left in the tank, the brand is already taking precautions, sending memos to dealers to manage its stock during the shortage.
The brand will prioritize certain owners, such as those claiming “warranty, extended warranty, recall repairs, goodwill, and prepaid maintenance,” according to Kim Less, the vice president of aftersales at Nissan Americas, in the bulletin addressed to Nissan dealers. “Given these constraints, it is critical to prioritize the use of Nissan Genuine 0W-20 (and 5W-30, where applicable) for warranty, extended warranty, recall repairs, goodwill, and prepaid maintenance,” Kim Less, vice president of aftersales, Nissan Americas, said in the May 15 bulletin to Nissan dealers.
I would encourage my readers to stock up on motor oil while they still can. Supplies are only going to get tighter from this point forward.
The pharmaceutical industry is also very dependent on raw materials from the Middle East, and one pharmacist is claiming that the current drug shortage is the “worst I’ve ever known”… Some people living with heart conditions, stroke risks, eye infections and bipolar disorder are among those unable to get the medications they rely on, a pharmacist has said. Graham Jones, who owns Shrivenham Pharmacy in Oxfordshire, said vital medication like aspirin was harder to obtain because of surging global prices and government funding which was not keeping up with costs. Jones said the current medication shortage was the “worst I’ve ever known”.
Personally, I am even more concerned about the global fertilizer shortage. The UN is telling us that we could be facing a worldwide food crisis that could last for “years”… The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz risks a global food crisis that could extend for years, the UN warned. Global fertilizer companies have slashed production over shortfalls of sulphur, required to make many farming inputs; about half of the global supply passed through the strait before the Iran war.
As a result, farmers are likely to produce lower yields in coming harvests. Richer economies like those in Europe are mulling building fertilizer stockpiles, reducing duties on imports, and onshoring production, but poorer ones have limited room to adapt.
I want to be very clear about what lies in front of us. No matter what happens now, there will be shortages and rationing. It is just a matter of how intense they will be and how long they will last. Needless to say, the outlook for the global economy in the months ahead is not promising at all. We really do have a major crisis on our hands, and it will become a historic nightmare if the Strait of Hormuz does not get reopened soon."
o
Thursday, May 28, 2026
"The Next Big Crash Is Lurking And It's Going To Get Nasty"
Jeremiah Babe, 5/28/26
"The Next Big Crash Is Lurking
And It's Going To Get Nasty"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Il Divo, "Wicked Game" ("Melanconia")
Full screen recommended.
Il Divo, "Wicked Game" ("Melanconia")
(Live In London 2011)
Il Divo, "Wicked Game" ("Melanconia")
English lyrics:
"The world was on fire and no one could save me but you,
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you,
I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you.
No, I don't want to fall in love,
[This world is only gonna break your heart.]
No, I don't want to fall in love,
[This world is only gonna break your heart.]
With you,
With you.
What a wicked game to play,
To make me feel this way.
What a wicked thing to do
To let me dream of you.
What a wicked thing to say,
You never felt this way.
What a wicked thing to do
To make me dream of you!
And I don't want to fall in love,
[This world is only gonna break your heart.]
No I don't want to fall in love,
[This world is only gonna break your heart.]
With you.
The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
I never dreamed that I'd love somebody like you,
I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you.
No I don't want to fall in love,
[This world is only gonna break your heart.]
No I don't want to fall in love,
[This world is only gonna break your heart.]
With you,
With you.
Nobody loves no one..."
"A Look to the Heavens"
Full screen recommended.
"Deep Field, The Impossible Magnitude Of Our Universe"
"Eric Whitacre's "Deep Field: The Impossible Magnitude of our Universe" is a unique film and musical experience inspired by one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time: the Hubble Telescope's Deep Field image."
o
"Gerald Celente, Iran War Spreading Economic Misery Across the Globe"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 5/28/26
"Iran War Spreading Economic
Misery Across the Globe"
"In this Trends in the News broadcast, Gerald Celente breaks down the escalating Iran War and the devastating economic fallout spreading across the globe. From surging energy costs and market volatility to collapsing currencies and rising inflation, the consequences are rippling through every sector. The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What's Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
"Moscow Metro: The Best Metro Line in the World"
Incredible what a sane, civilized society can achieve....
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell,
"Moscow Metro:
The Best Metro Line in the World"
Let's discover what the Moscow Metro looks like. Having just opened 3 brand new stations days ago. The new line consists of 7 new stations opened within the last 4 months. Discover with amazement just how complex the Moscow Metro really is.
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Window to Nightlife
"I Went Down to the Moscow Metro
At Night And This Is What I Saw! Real Russia!"
Big Circle Metro Line was opened in Moscow, Russia. BKL (Big Circle Metro) became the longest circular metro line in the world! Experience the beauty of the Moscow Metro at night in this video! Explore the top 9 Moscow Metro stations and see the stunning architecture and history of this iconic underground system in Russia.
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Window to Moscow,
"What Skyscrapers Look Like
In Moscow, Russia!"
In this video I will show you 8 skyscrapers +
Palace of Soviets in Moscow, Russia.
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell,
"Moscow Metro:
Travelling From Moscow City to Vnukovo Airport"
Just like where you live, right, Good Citizen?
I'm absolutely astonished, speechless...Comments?
Travelling with Russell,
"Moscow Metro:
Travelling From Moscow City to Vnukovo Airport"
The first airport in Russia with a Metro Station opened recently connecting Moscow City with Vnukovo Airport. Concidered Impossible, the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line of the Moscow Metro is the first Metro line in Russia to take you directly to Vnukovo Airport.
Comments here:
- https://www.youtube.com/Just like where you live, right, Good Citizen?
I'm absolutely astonished, speechless...Comments?
"15 Minutes Of What’s Coming To America And Why It’s Getting Worse"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 5/28/26
"15 Minutes Of What’s Coming To
America And Why It’s Getting Worse"
"Gas prices, grocery bills, hygiene products, and credit card statements are pushing everyday Americans to the edge, and you're about to hear them vent about it in their own words. This compilation pulls together TikTok creators reacting to the rising cost of filling up a tank, the shock of a $73 basic grocery run, the absurdity of $12 soap, and the quiet panic of looking at a bank account and wondering where it all went. If your wallet feels lighter every week, you're not alone.If this hit close to home, hit subscribe and drop a comment about the one item that shocked you most at the register this month. Share the video with a friend who keeps texting you screenshots of their gas pump total. New compilations on the cost of living drop every week, so turn on notifications. This video covers rising gas prices, grocery inflation, Costco hauls, credit card debt, budgeting struggles, the cost of hygiene products, and how American families are reacting to the price of everything in 2026 and beyond."
Comments here:
"Nobody Is Ready For What Happens When Gas Hits $12 This Summer"
Full screen recommended.
Finance Economist, 5/28/26
"Nobody Is Ready For What Happens
When Gas Hits $12 This Summer"
"A trucker’s pump hit $999.99 and shut off before his tank was full. He’s now losing money on every mile. Chicago diesel hit a record $6.30 five days ago. School districts need $1.8 billion they don’t have to keep buses running. 1,862 bus routes didn’t run in one Louisiana parish in a single month. Louisiana’s shrimpers fear a summer collapse. Fire departments are rationing diesel. And the EIA says global inventories are falling by 8.5 million barrels per day. At $12 gas, your groceries double, your pharmacy thins, your school bus stops, and 40% of Americans can’t afford to drive to work. You have 30 days."
Comments here:
o
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