People of a certain age will remember the name “Donald Segretti.”

In the 1972 re-election campaign of President Richard Nixon, this youthful campaign aide made the phrase “dirty tricks” part of the American political lexicon.

Segretti’s mischief included sending embarrassing letters under the names of Nixon’s political rivals.

Although his dirty tricks had little or no effect on the election’s outcome, Segretti served four and a half months in prison.

With Segretti’s four and a half months as a baseline, the 51-plus dirty tricksters who conspired successfully to get Joe Biden elected president in 2020 would seem to deserve no less.

Confident to a fault about the Democrat control of the media, 51 intel officials signed on to the most flagrant disinformation campaign in anyone’s memory.

A very interesting study appeared last week by two researchers looking into the pandemic policy response around the world. They are Drs. Eran Bendavid and Chirag Patel of Stanford and Harvard, respectively.

Their ambition was quite straightforward. They wanted to examine the effects of government policy on the virus.

In this ambition, after all, researchers have access to an unprecedented amount of information. We have global data on strategies and stringencies. We have global data on infections and mortality.

We can look at it all according to the timeline. We have precise dating of stay-at-home orders, business closures, meeting bans, masking, and every other physical intervention you can imagine.

The researchers merely wanted to track what worked and what did not, as a way of informing future responses to viral outbreaks so that public health can learn lessons and do better next time.

They presumed from the outset they would discover that at least some mitigation tactics achieved the aim.

Technology is about to accelerate because Chevron deference is over and regulators can't just make up laws anymore. So, countless new startups just became feasible. This is often spoken about in the abstract, so let's do three examples and two visuals.

THREE EXAMPLES:

1) Genomics. Did Congress explicitly give FDA authority to regulate genetic tests in a bill like Kefauver-Harris (1962) or PDUFA (1992)? No, it did not.

But in the early 2010s, FDA attacked 23andMe and forced them to take personal genomic tests offline.

Implicitly, this was under Chevron.

2) Nuclear power. Did Congress explicitly give EPA and NRC the authority to implement ALARA? No, it did not.

But these agencies came up with this "as low as reasonably achievable" standard, forcing nuclear energy to become as expensive as other energy sources by spending all the cost-savings on "safety."

Implicitly, this was under Chevron, too.

3) Cryptocurrency. You guessed it. Did Congress explicitly give the SEC authority to regulate crypto? No, it did not.

Cryptocurrencies didn't exist when the 1933 and 1934 acts were written. However, the SEC says it has regulatory authority over crypto, even when Congress is deliberating on bills to the contrary.

Implicitly, that claim of SEC authority too was under Chevron.

In other words: if a regulator can't point to the law that gives them the power, they may not have the power. And you might be able to win in a court of law.

The U.S. State Department said that recent remarks from Russian President Vladimir Putin suggesting he would supply North Korea with weapons are “incredibly concerning.”

Earlier this week, in a visit to North Korea, Mr. Putin suggested that weapons supplies to the isolated, communist country would be a similar response to the West arming Ukraine in the midst of the two-year-long war with Russia.

The Russian leader also warned South Korea against supplying arms to Ukraine.

In comments at a news briefing on Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was asked about the Russian president’s comments about possible arms supplies to Pyongyang. “It’s incredibly concerning,” he said in response.

“It would destabilize the Korean Peninsula, of course, and potentially ... depending on the type of weapons they provide, might violate U.N. Security Council resolutions that Russia itself has supported,” he added.

The spokesman said the United States “will continue to work with our allies in the region” such as “South Korea, Japan, others ... to respond to the threat posed by North Korea.”

California has become a test case of the suicide of the West. Never before has such a state, so rich in natural resources and endowed with such a bountiful human inheritance, self-destructed so rapidly.

How and why did California so utterly consume its unmatched natural and ancestral inheritance and end up as a warning to Western civilization of what might be in store for anyone who followed its nihilism?

The symptoms of the state’s suicide are indisputable.

Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed a recent $98 billion budget surplus — gifted from multibillion-dollar federal COVID-19 subsidies, the highest income and gas taxes in the nation, and among the country’s steepest sales and property taxes.

Yet in a year, he turned it into a growing $45 billion budget deficit.

For as long as I can remember, the Left has been sneering at anyone who points out that the United States is a republic, not a democracy.

They find the notion almost as unsophisticated and fascistic as flying a revolutionary-era flag. Others dismiss the democracy/republic debate as pedantic or a semantic distraction. They shouldn't.

The other day, CNN's Donie O'Sullivan tried to make Trump fans who repeat this factual contention look like a bunch of dumb, lockstepping authoritarians.

To explain the problem, CNN even recruited "democracy" expert Anne Applebaum, who noted that, "America is a democracy. It was founded as a democracy ... the word 'democracy' and the word 'republic' have often been used interchangeably. There isn't a meaningful difference between them ..."

Sure there is.

Normally, the self-important, gazillionaire libs of the All In Podcast can be tiresome. But their recent 49-minute Trump interview demands watching, as a window into Trump's agenda, particularly in the economic realm.

Trump's remarkable ability to magnetically pull disparate constituencies into his orbit is proceeding exponentially.

Consider Bitcoin. He has made it mandatory for participants in that sector to support him, otherwise the Janet Yellens and Elizabeth Warrens will outlaw its existence.

Or his tax-free tips proposal, attracting millions of service workers -- a proposal that drew laughter from 80 elite CEOs Trump recently met behind closed doors. Trump will laugh all the way to the November polls.

Trump has adopted politically astute positions for issues across the board. Democrats are trying equally hard to drive away as many constituencies as possible, an extraordinary political moment.

Trump practices unification; Democrats excel at division. When Trump warns what will happen if he is not elected, no one doubts him.

Contrast Trump’s continuous stream of nuance and substance below with fake “news” accounts of his meeting with CEOs: [They] “said that he was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought, was all over the map.”

The reality is quite different.

[TTP:  This is quite a long article, but it is so worth the time. The subtitle says it all:  “What is at stake in our ability to see the threat plainly? Nothing less than the preservation of our way of life.”]

If you wonder why I—a woman of color, an African, a former Muslim, a former asylum seeker, and an immigrant—look at the antics of today’s anti-Israel, anti-American protesters with such fear and trembling, allow me to explain.

I was born in Somalia in 1969. The country had achieved independence nine years before. But less than a month before I was born—on October 21, 1969—a junior member of the brand-new Somali armed forces seized power with the help of the Soviet Union.

The first two decades of my life were shaped by the upheaval that followed that coup.

The Somalia that gained its independence was a young, optimistic society full of national pride.

We had such hope for growth, political stability, prosperity, and peace. But, in a story sadly familiar to many of my fellow Africans, those hopes were dashed.

What followed was a nightmare.

The discovery of the potential for thousands of tons of lithium to be extracted annually from wastewater generated by fracking in the Marcellus Shale leaves proponents of a green energy future at a crossroads, Republicans said Thursday.

A University of Pittsburgh study suggested processing byproducts from natural gas production in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale basin could potentially meet nearly half of U.S. lithium needs.

The typical electric vehicle (EV) requires nearly 18 pounds of lithium to power its battery. That figure grows exponentially for Teslas, according to reports.

Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., who represents much of the Marcellus territory, told Fox News he wants to see those on the left change their tune.

"Now nearly 40% of our nation’s domestic need for lithium can be found right here as a byproduct of fracking," he said. "I fully expect every single Democrat to join Republicans in supporting domestic natural gas development."

“There was a knock on the door.  A voice said, ‘It’s the IDF.  We’ve come to take you home.’”

This is how former hostage Noa Argamani described her rescue from Hamas on the Sabbath — Saturday, June 8 — which also happened to be her father’s birthday.

Israelis spent the weekend cheering her rescue, along with the rescues of three other former hostages — Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv.

All four, ranging in age from 22 to 41, were kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7, Hamas’s notorious day of atrocities.

Israeli intelligence recently determined with certainty that they were being held in two separate buildings in Nuseirat, in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli command — which rose to the level of the prime minister and the war cabinet itself — decided to conduct two raids simultaneously, at 11:25 a.m.

Both buildings were heavily guarded by Hamas fighters, though the buildings looked, to all appearances, like regular civilian apartments.

[TTP:  Whoa! Don’t pass over this article because you aren’t graduating this year. This professor from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce offers some marvelous (and amusing) reality here, that can be used to speak with liberal children of all ages. Besides, you’ll enjoy reading it! He even points out that the problem is envy, not inequality.]

If you are graduating from college this year, I suspect you’re not too familiar with George Carlin. So before you become inflamed about the (intentionally) harsh title, let me tell you I plagiarized it from Carlin, who was one of the best American comedians of the last 100 years.

His show, You Are All Diseased is available on YouTube, and it is so good that I was willing to start by alienating you a bit just to plug it here. You’re welcome. It is especially recommended if you’re in any kind of altered state of mind.

Speaking of states of mind: I’m worried about yours.

Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among people your age in the U.S. are skyrocketing. I myself lost a student to suicide a few years ago—an experience I wish on no one.

I’m here to tell you that I think it’s partly our (your professors’) fault. We, along with others, have been feeding you a distorted view of the world and your place in it, and I think this has caused a considerable part of the existential angst you all feel.

Well, well, well — how the tables have turned.

Hunter Biden's swift conviction on three felony gun charges, in the Biden family's home state of Delaware, changes everything. No longer can the Dems, and their enablers in the left-wing media, shout 'convicted felon' at Trump without suffering serious blowback.

The party line from President Biden, no doubt, will be that he is not a convicted felon — only his son. Really, Joe's 'only living son', as CNN and MSNBC immediately began repeating moments after the verdict.

You see, Joe Biden is, per his liberal media lackeys, the only guy who can beat Trump: a bastion of family unity, decency, and a warrior against corruption. And hey — if the media must almost entirely ignore every one of this family's glaring depravities to get him elected, just as they disavowed Hunter's laptop, so be it.

Here's the thing with Hunter's case: All roads lead back to President Biden.  Here’s why

When Geert Wilders's party won in the Netherlands election a few months ago, after many years of trying, some thought it was just an anomaly.

Actually, it was a warning shot.

Europe's EU parliamentary elections since yielded big gains for conservatives in major countries, dubbed "the far right" by the leftist press -- in France, Germany, Belgium and beyond.

According to Fox News:

“Germany's conservatives finished first in the European Union's elections, as far-right momentum within the bloc has sent France's leadership scrambling. 

Since October 7, Hamas has had the choice to return the hostages and end the war. It refused, and now its supporters are horrified that Hamas members, both in uniform and civilians. are paying a price.

In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, leaving the region Judenrein (“Jew free,” as the Nazis liked to say) and without an Israeli military presence. There was no occupation.

Gazans promptly—and overwhelmingly—elected Hamas, a designated terrorist group that Iran funds, to govern them. Hamas’s repeatedly stated goal is to erase the Nation of Israel. Gaza residents continue to love their terrorist government.

For decades, Hamas has killed Israelis whenever possible, making clear that it desires another Holocaust. On October 7, Hamas upped the ante, entering Israel and slaughtering 1,200 people with horrific sadism, especially sexual sadism, as well as kidnapping 252 people, regardless of sex and age.

Israel’s response was war. It has had two goals: to destroy Hamas’s operation effectiveness and to recover the hostages.

[TTP:  This article had been abridged for space. You can read the entire article here.]

Throughout time, there has always been a small group of people who ruled over the masses. They used their power to subjugate, suppress, dominate, and enslave the multitudes.

But the Founding Fathers of the United States disrupted this. They declared that we are not a nation of subjects. That our representatives are our servants, not our rulers. And that, because our rights come from God alone, governments do not have the authority to take those rights away from us.

They made it clear that we the people, not the government or the ruling elite, own this country.

But today, the ruling class seems more determined than ever to dominate us. And, unlike the days of yore, the potentates now have advanced technological tools at their disposal to do just that.

Governments around the world are putting in place a technological infrastructure that will give them and their corporate cohorts total surveillance and absolute control over the global population.

[TTP:  This article was posted in late May but the false narrative continues to be pushed, so we’re providing this bit of information for you. My question is, How many nations have ever supplied their ungrateful enemies while fighting them? I don’t think even the US has ever done that.]

The International Criminal Court has accused Israel of causing “deliberate starvation” in Gaza, but the prosecutor might want to read this report.

Yesterday [May 21, 2024] we reported on one of the many problems with International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister. Namely, the fact that there is scant evidence of the “deliberate starvation” that forms the heart of the ICC’s case, and that Khan ignores abundant evidence that Hamas is hoarding food and medical supplies.

Now, a new study published by the Hebrew University’s Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science, and Nutrition brings clarity to the contested question of food security in the Gaza strip.

The working paper analyzed the adequacy of the food supply Israel has facilitated into Gaza since January. And the results are devastating to Khan’s case.

The state is a transformer that takes on different appearances in different ages, depending on resources, traditions, technologies, and geography.

History chronicles theocratic despotisms, feudal lords, exploitative slavocracies, imperial autocracies, peaceful republics, small-scale democracies, divine-right monarchies, murderous party dictatorships, and many more besides.

What is the 21st-century form of the state? There are plenty of opinions on this and the reality and change are still unfolding before us with dramatic upheavals and great resets.

But it seems to be some form of omnipotent managerial technocracy, as if to fulfill the most pessimistic predictions of 20th-century thinkers who saw this form developing after the second world war.

In this system, the elected representatives of the people are reduced to bit players on the scene, marionettes whose main job is to keep up appearances that the systems of the past are still operating and that the voice of the people still matters.

In reality, the state consists of three distinct layers, which we can call deep, middle, and shallow. All three play crucial roles to exercise and retain hegemony over the population domestically and globally.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is a wily old fox: he knows that, with an economy 800 per cent larger than Russia's, and with ten times its population, he holds all the cards. Increasingly isolated on the international stage by its actions in Ukraine, Russia is fast becoming a vassal state of China.

After last month's summit between the two countries in Beijing, President Xi bid farewell to Vladimir Putin with a warm hug: a gesture widely construed as a vivid illustration of their burgeoning bromance.  But the pow-wow in the Chinese capital was no meeting of equals.

For example: Apart from supplying it with a wide range of industrial and consumer goods, Beijing has also propped up its war machine by providing critical components, such as machine tools and microelectronics.

In effect, Russia sells its sanctioned oil to China on the cheap and then sends back the cash these sales generate to China to pay for replacements for goods that have been sanctioned. There can hardly be a better definition of a 'client state'.

[TTP: Skye asked the question, “Is this a case of DEI = DIE?” when he shared this article about our Woke Army’s relief efforts. Mike Ryan responded to his question and TTP thought his insight should be shared. His response is at the end of this article.]

Four of the U.S. Army vessels supporting the “floating pier” in Gaza broke from their moorings Saturday and ran aground, with two of the four beaching themselves on the Israeli coast.

The Navy Times reported:

Four U.S. Army vessels supporting the maritime humanitarian aid mission in Gaza broke free from their moorings due to heavy sea states Saturday, U.S. Central Command said.

Every once in a while, there is a seminal article written that elucidates political calculations not obvious on their surface.

In particular, foreign policy matters tend to be complicated to the point that most Americans focus little attention on understanding the motivations of presidents’ foreign policy decisions despite their broad national security implications.

One of the most important columns that comes to mind is Michael Doran’s brilliant essay from 2015 entitled Obama’s Secret Iran Strategy in which Doran explains Barack Obama’s motivation for empowering Iran as a regional hegemon at the expense of U.S. national security and regional alliances.

That column was followed in 2021 by another must-read essay co-written by Doran and Tony Badran entitled The Realignment in which the authors conclude that in the Middle East, “Biden is finishing what Obama started. And his top advisers are on board.”

The authors discuss the influence of returning Obama advisors on a policy intended to realign the Middle Eastern order into “one that relies more on partnership with Iran.”

Bad ideas are sometimes the hardest to dethrone.

It’s probably accurate to say most people think of money as the paper currency printed by governments. And it is money in the sense that it functions as a medium of exchange, but is it sound? Is it vulnerable to inflation?

Its very existence is evidence that it is, so why are so many people reluctant to switch to a money that isn’t?

There any many myths surrounding hard money currencies, and one of them is that money, both its nature and supply, is best left to the alleged guardian of our rights, the state.

The fact that money came into existence on the market, and that its ultimate form and supply were determined by economic law, is disregarded.

Money matters belong to the state because the state, unlike the rest of us, is in a position to remove itself from market discipline. Since the state is necessary to our survival, the story goes, it cannot do its job unless it can control the growth of money.

Money, therefore, must be of such a nature that its supply can grow in accordance with the orders of a state-appointed committee.

Even the classical gold standard was under control of the state.

When that control proved too limited for those eager for war, it was abandoned.

The gold standard did not fail. States failed to keep the gold standard.

[Editor:  This falls into the “stating the obvious” category – but sometimes the obvious needs stating.]

“How big is the sun?

We just heard right this minute

A million of our earths

could all fit right in it.”

Those words can be found in Dr. Seuss children’s book There’s No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System.

About what you’re about to read, it won’t be a statistical or scientific argument supporting or disdaining the theory that is global warming. No such skills exist to make either, but even if they did exist, the view here is that statistical arguments about anything involving personal freedom are loser arguments.

Think back to the spring of 2020 and the coronavirus to see why.

Strategic sealift is an essential element of the U.S. military’s logistics system. Sealift provides weaponry, fuel, ammunition, and other support needed for warfighting on the battlefield. Roughly 90% of all needed supplies and equipment travel by sea.

There is no viable alternative to sea transport. The distances are too great and the vast tonnages of military weapons and support equipment dictate transportation by sea. What is logistics, and why is it important? Let’s hear from some historical figures on the importance of logistics:

“Logistics [is] … as vital to military success as daily food is to daily work.” —Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (USN)

“Amateurs worry about strategy. Dilettantes worry about tactics. Professionals worry about logistics.” —Unknown

“You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.” —General Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I don’t know what the hell this logistics is that [Gen.] Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it.” —Admiral E.J. King (USN)

“My logisticians are a humorless lot. … They know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” —Alexander the Great

All humor aside, the importance of sea transport of our military assets to war cannot be overemphasized.

Anti-Israel/pro-Hamas campus protests have engulfed hundreds of college campuses. But the more coastal, blue-state, and supposedly elite the campus was, the more furious the violence that sometimes followed these demonstrations.

Even rowdier and more vicious street analogs shut down key bridges, freeways, and religious services. Protestors often defaced hallowed American monuments, national cemeteries, and iconic buildings. Visa-holders were among the worst perpetrators, adding ingratitude to their criminality.

The vast majority wore masks, not to protect from infection but to hide their identities. It is received wisdom, however, that those who wear masks do so for obvious reasons: so authorities cannot identify and punish those who commit crimes (e.g. the Klan, antifa, bank robbers, criminal gangs), or so that anonymity can help incite mob furor, given that participants feel that their vehemence increases once it cannot be traced.

More mundanely, why don’t the students simply identify themselves, insist they want their “resistance” to be known, and then hope their arrests will be proof of their courage to galvanize like-minded people to join them?

Why? One, because the students are sunshine and careerist revolutionaries. They see no inconsistency between shouting “Death to Israel,” “Global Intifada,” or “River to the Sea” one day and then the next, applying for a top spot at Goldman Sachs, a tony university, or a federal bureaucracy. Jacobin professors protest like it is 1793, but when politely arrested, they collapse into fetal positions and scream hysterically that consequences cannot follow their illegality, given they are privileged, superior intellects and moralists, with titles and degrees no less.

News broke a few hours ago that the helicopter carrying Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, has crashed in the mountainous, wooded terrain of Eastern Azerbaijan, with a search ongoing for the crash site.

Sometimes bad things happen, but when the President of Iran’s helicopter crashes, and his foreign minister was on the copter, too, one wonders if it's more than coincidence. People are already wondering whether this was an accident or something more.

It’s no secret that Iran is a worldwide state funder of terrorism. Along with Qatar, it’s the money behind both Hezbollah and Hamas, which are fighting Israel from the East and the North. Violence in the Middle East would be dramatically diminished if Iran’s bankroll were cut off. The same is true for the military support it provides in terms of weapons, training, and strategy.

But it’s not just Israel that’s a target of Iranian malevolence. Since 1979, Iran’s battle cry has been “Death to America.” The official government policy is that it is in an existential war with the United States. Israel is the “Little Satan,” while America is the “Great Satan.”