Help for the Saudis?

Egypt’s parliament met in an emergency closed session Sunday on President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s request for authorisation to help defend Saudi Arabia, then put off the vote. Two lawmakers told AFP that deliberations resume Monday, and …

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What I Wrote This Week

• West Asian War: Ansar Allah Hits Enemy HQ in Aden — Naked Capitalism, 16 Oct.

• Saudi National Arrested for Spying at OpenAI — Naked Capitalism, 15 Oct.

• West Asia War: Riyadh Ravaged, Battles in Yemen, Iranian Mines Sink Ship — Naked Capitalism, 15 Oct.

• Coffee Break: CoreWeave the Canary in the AI Credit Coal Mine? — Naked Capitalism, 1…

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Saudi National Arrested for Spying at OpenAI

Abdulrahman Alfozan, an OpenAI employee and a citizen of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has been “arrested for and charged with using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications,” according to the Department of Justice.

The …

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The Democrats have nominated State Representative James Talarico, a slightly less smarmy, not-gay Pete Buttigieg-type who has managed to offend virtually no one despite battling and beating the noxious Jasmine Crockett in a racially charged primary.

For their part, the Republicans nominated the once-impeached, often-indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton after a $130 million primary.

You have to give Texas Republicans some credit; almost 1.3 million of them voted against Paxton in the first round of the primary. Unfortunately for the GOP, only a little more than 500K of them showed up for the runoff, and Paxton’s hardcore MAGA supporters came out in force, nearly matching their opening round numbers, crushing the incumbent US Senator 63.8% to 36.2%.

Even with Paxton’s extremely checkered past featuring everything from accusations of stock fraud to multiple sex scandals and a tabloid-friendly “Biblical divorce,” Paxton might have cruised to victory had it not been for Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran and the ensuing rise in gasoline prices around Labor Day.

Or maybe it was the $40M in ads Talarico and his allies ran between the May runoff and the GOP’s September convention vs less than $27 million by Paxton-aligned groups. Not long after, a desperate GOP poured over $122 million into ads in September, but that doesn’t seem to have mattered much.

Perhaps it’s because the modern Texas GOP doesn’t know what it’s doing.

For comparison, let’s review the résumé of one Karl Rove. Though commonly derided as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) today, Rove was the most feared and most successful political operative of his era.

Not only did he propel the utterly mediocre George W. Bush to two Texas gubernatorial terms and two terms as POTUS, but Rove also ratfucked an entire generation of Texas Democrats.

Karl Rove, King of the Ratfuckers

Rove systematically targeted the most talented young Democrats — with a special eye for Hispanics — and took them out with career-ruining capers that ensured the once-dominant party would go down and stay down for decades.

Here’s a quick and dirty run-through of his résumé:

• 1970: Using a false name, Rove got into Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon’s campaign office, took letterhead and printed fliers for Dixon’s headquarters opening promising “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing.”

• 1986: Running Bill Clements’s race against Gov. Mark White, Rove announced on the morning of the only debate that a bug had been found in his office. The FBI never charged anyone; reporters at the time suspected Rove planted it.

• 1989-93: FBI agent Greg Rampton, who had worked the Rove bug case, led investigations into Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower’s office; Rove was consulting for Rick Perry, who beat Hightower in 1990.

• 1992: Railroad Commissioner Lena Guerrero’s false claim of a UT degree reached the press; the Houston Chronicle says Rove, advising her opponent Barry Williamson, leaked it.

• 1994: Bush’s race against Ann Richards featured a whisper campaign that she was a lesbian; a Bush regional chairman attacked her for appointing “avowed homosexual activists.”

• 1994-96: In Alabama Supreme Court races, a former Rove staffer told The Atlantic’s Joshua Green that Rove had anonymous fliers attacking an opponent’s family printed, and that the campaign spread a rumor that a family-court judge was a pedophile.

• 1996: While on Philip Morris’s payroll, Rove helped shape a tobacco-industry push poll aimed at Attorney General Dan Morales over his tobacco suit; Rove admitted in a 1997 deposition that he suggested questions.

• 2000: South Carolina voters got push-poll calls asking whether they’d back John McCain if he had fathered an illegitimate black child. Rove denied any role.

• 2003: Rove was a source for the columns that outed CIA officer Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq-war critic Joe Wilson. He was not charged; Scooter Libby was convicted.

• 2004: After CBS aired forged memos on George W. Bush’s National Guard service, DNC chair Terry McAuliffe said reporters should “ask Karl Rove” and Rep. Maurice Hinchey said he believed Rove was behind the documents, which ended Dan Rather’s anchor career. Rove: “Obviously, you know the answer is no.”

• 2006-07: Rove’s White House was at the center of the firing of nine U.S. attorneys and the prosecution of Alabama’s Democratic former governor Don Siegelman.

I was directly involved in the 60 Minutes caper, having helped break the story that Ben Barnes, the Vietnam-era Speaker of the Texas House and later Lt. Governor, had admitted to helping George W. Bush get into the Texas National Guard. We thought that the 60 Minutes story would be a critical blow against Bush in his re-election campaign, and instead the story somehow became a tale of a forged version of a real document that right-wing bloggers instantly caught, supposedly by catching an on-screen glance that revealed a font face that didn’t exist at the time of the document’s creation.

60 Minutes thought it had carefully vetted the story and established that the document was true, but they never thought to check and see if the copy of the document they had was a forgery. Turns out that Bush’s people had had extensive access to his National Guard records in the 1990s and presumably left many such Easter eggs behind.

Point being, the guy was dangerous and a master of narrative manipulation who would stop at nothing to win elections and destroy his political opponents.

Now let’s compare and contrast with today’s GOP.

The Talarico Ohio Hospitalization Farce

The TL;DR version: James Talarico caught the flu and was off the campaign trail for 9 days. While he was away, a cast of online nitwits spawned a rumor out of whole cloth that he was in an Ohio mental hospital, and multiple big-time right-wingers, including Laura Loomer, Stephen Miller, the Paxton campaign, Elon Musk, and Paxton himself, amplified the tale.

This account did some interesting forensics on how the calumny spread online:

The masterminds are getting some richly deserved attention:

Jacqueline Sweet has some juicy allegations about Nick Sortor. Transphobic journalist Jesse Singal has quite a bit of dirt on the woman on the lower right who goes by @TickleTexts

The caper is being linked directly to the Paxton campaign.

Karl Rove, they ain’t.

But the kerfuffle seems to have unleashed a whole torrent of no good, very bad press about Paxton, all of which has the nasty trait of being fact-based.

Paxton’s Remarkable News Cycle

I’m just going to bullet point the headlines, because the dude is drowning in scandal:

• Ken Paxton took campaign funds from donors with interests before his office, Washington Post

• Ken Paxton Partied in Dubai With Fugitives Ahead of High-Stakes Texas Senate Race, Wall Street Journal

• Ken Paxton’s Security for Travel Cost Taxpayers Millions. Just 1 in 6 of His Trips Had a Stated Business Purpose, ProPublica

He’s also closely tied to his peers at the top of the GOP ticket:

• How Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton Trumped Up Fraud Charges Against a Muslim Community, Texas Monthly

• How Dan Patrick Saved Ken Paxton’s Career, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

All I can say is, if Texas voters send this rancid scumbag to the US Senate, we deserve what we get.

Something Unusual This Poll Comes

But the latest ReconMR/Siena poll has one particularly encouraging bit of news. It shows Talarico up 48% to 44% for Paxton, with Talarico down a point since September. But the cross-tabs showed something very interesting:

Dem: Talarico 92-2
Republicans: Paxton 87-7
Indies: Talarico 60-30

White: Paxton 49-45
Black: Talarico 67-19
Hispanic: Talarico 50-41

Austin region: Talarico 74-21
DFW: Talarico 49-41
Houston: Talarico 46-44
Rural: Paxton 55-37
San Antonio/South: Talarico 56-39

As former Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith pointed out, no Democrat running statewide has cracked 25% among rural voters in six straight elections.

Cross-posted at IanWelsh.net.

IRGC and Ansar Allah Fire Away At Tankers, Oil Facilities, Airports

Oct 10: The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) hit at least one more tanker in the Strait on Friday, making last week’s narrative wars a distant memory.

Ansar Allah, for their part, hit more Saudi oil facilities, but Thursday’s airport attacks resulted in many airlines cancelling all flights to Saudi Arabia.

In Yemen, Saudi-backed forces claim to have taken Bab al-Mandeb and even Mocha, and Ansar Allah has issued denials of those claims, some quite convincing. Saudi bombing campaign continues in Yemen, to differing results based on who is describing them.

Putin also got involved, meeting with the Iranian President and cutting a diesel deal with Trump.

Iran Tightens the Vise

The IRGC claimed a hit on a giant LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) carrier that had been using the “unauthorized route” south of the Strait of Hormuz. They claimed it had a large fire in the engine room, per Tasnim. Al Jazeera confirmed the report, saying it was a “massive fire.”

The IRGC holds the US military responsible and says Washington is “deceiving shipping and insurance companies and paying large bribes.” It says companies that cooperate with the US will be sanctioned.

They also say enforcement will “no longer be confined to the Strait of Hormuz. Any vessel using an unauthorized passage (will) be pursued throughout the region, and punishment would be certain.”

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

Saudi Airports and Oil Facilities Blasted Again and Again

Oct 11: Yemen’s Ansar Allah pounded Saudi Arabia Saturday, injuring hundreds at the Riyadh airport but also halting flights at King Fahd airport in Dammam while rumors of hits on Saudi oil facilities ran rampant.

The attacks drew American condemnation and inspired POTUS Trump to muse that the US “may” join ongoing Saudi strikes on Yemen.

Meanwhile, a supertanker on the southern or “unauthorized” route through the Strait of Hormuz hit a mine, and 22 crew members had to be rescued by the UAE National Guard (although it might have been a separate incident, as neither report named a ship).

And oil prices moved up despite Trump’s deal with Putin for diesel fuel, due to Hurricane Isaias in the Gulf of Mexico.

Saudi Airports and Oil Facilities Hit Harder Than Ever

Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) issued a statement early Sunday saying at least 12 were killed and 309 injured at King Khalid International Airport. The dead are four Saudis, two Bangladeshis, and one each from the US, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Sudan. Operations at the airport were temporarily suspended.

Riyadh wasn’t the only Saudi airport hit. A projectile landed near King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, per AFP via CBS (Yemeni media claims Saudi media reported a direct missile hit, but I could not confirm that), stopping flights for an undetermined amount of time.

The Saudis did claim a ballistic missile was shot down over Al-Kharj governorate and a drone shot down over the Eastern Province.

Ansar Allah also claimed to have attacked the Ghawar field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia with a ballistic missile. Ghawar is the world’s largest oil field. Kayhan reports that missiles and drones hit the Ghawar field in the Eastern Province at the same time as the airport strike. It says video from regional media shows smoke.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

Banks Struggle to Digest the Mounting Debt Driving the AI Boom

Oct 12: Silicon Valley is down with POTUS Trump’s rebranding of “artificial intelligence” as “super intelligence” but that hasn’t freed the “super intelligence” companies of their need for massive capital infusions.

SI, Yes AI, No

First the rebranding via The Verge:

When President Donald Trump announced his plans to rebrand artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” you’d be forgiven for being skeptical that it would catch on. While most of the broader population is sticking with AI, some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful are falling in line and trying to give Trump the great AI rebrand he so desires.

That Elon Musk was quick to jump on board, promising to rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, isn’t surprising. When, hours after Donald Trump declared that “The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY!” Marc Benioff announced that Salesforce would rename AIForce to SIForce; it seemed like a quick capitulation, but not entirely out of character.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attended the summit where the executive order requiring government agencies to use the term “super intelligence” was announced. He’s also aligned himself with Trump, saying he believes the danger posed by AI is overblown. So it was somewhat predictable that when Nvidia declared that it would “commit” $1 billion to scientific advancement, that included “super intelligence research.” Of course, Huang has a lot to lose if he gets on Trump’s bad side.

The latest to cave is Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, who attended the same AI summit as Huang along with Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, Dario Amodei, and Musk. In a post calling for building an “emergency brake” for AI yesterday, Nadella repeatedly referred to the technology as “super intelligence.”

As much as you’d think this name change would be revolutionary, it doesn’t appear to have impacted balance sheets.

Capital Is the Tech Bottleneck

Tech titans gathered at the DBS Asia Future Forward Conference in Singapore on Monday and the consensus was clear: capital not hardware is the biggest bottleneck facing the industry.

CNBC reported:

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said financing could become a bigger obstacle to AI expansion than shortages of semiconductors, memory chips or electricity, as the industry races to build the infrastructure needed to power increasingly sophisticated models.

″[What] I think might be the biggest constraint is capital,” Hock Tan said at the DBS Asia Future Forward Conference in Singapore on Monday.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan echoed concerns about financing, pointing to the rising cost of capital and questions over whether companies investing heavily in AI will eventually generate sufficient returns.

“If there’s any challenge in the front, it’s capital and the cost of capital, and then the other part is in the longer run, people want to see the ROI,” he said.

Their remarks highlight an emerging challenge for the AI industry, which has poured enormous sums into data centers, advanced chips and power infrastructure in anticipation of surging demand for computing capacity.

The warnings come as rising borrowing costs threaten to complicate financing for technology companies investing heavily in AI infrastructure. Higher bond yields could make it more expensive to fund data center construction and chip purchases, potentially putting pressure on the economics of projects that may take years to generate returns.

How much debt are we talking about? This much debt:

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

What I Released This Week

• Iran War: Trump TACOS Again Or Does He? Saudi Airports Blasted Again — Naked Capitalism, 9 Oct.

• Another Epically Bad News Cycle for OpenAI, The Amoral Money Abyss — Naked Capitalism, 8 Oct.

• Iran War: Iran Ups the Ante in the Gulf, Ansar Allah Blasts Saudi Airports, Trump Threats — Naked Capitalism, 8 Oct.

• Meta Makes Its Agentic AI Move With Muse — Naked Capitalism, 7 Oct.

• Iran War: The Real and Narrative Battle for Mocha, Saudi Airports Hit — Naked Capitalism, 7 Oct.

• Jasmine Crockett and the Dick Cheney Wing of the Dem Party Have All Got to Go — Ian Welsh, 6 Oct. (Crossposted at NWT.)

• Ellison Empire Settles on Skydance, Takes Big Bond Price Hit, Names Team — Naked Capitalism, 5 Oct.

• Iran War: Team Trump at Camp David, Iran Flexes, Riyadh Burns — Naked Capitalism, 4 Oct.

From me as Nate Wilcox at the Let It Roll Podcast

• This week’s From the Beginning episodes cover a fascinating period in American musical history, the era that participants called “The Jazzed Age” but which featured very little music that today’s critics call Jazz. Nonetheless, it was a thrilling time of transformative technologies (radio, microphones, electric recording), sudden global cultural dominance in the wake of World War 1, and the emergence of great talents like Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Bing Crosby.

  I have some gaps to fill here and hope to cut more episodes on Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith, and Blind Lemon Jefferson in the future.

  Let It Roll Podcast

  Record Men From Thomas Edison to John Hammond & Chris Blackwell: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 4.2

  Gareth Murphy set out to write an obituary for the record man. A French label boss had told him over lunch that the record producer was a dying breed, and in the 2010s, with the industry shrinking every year since 1999, it looked like he was right. Then Murphy went back to the beginning, found the same collapse in the 1920s and again in the Depression, and came out the other side with the opposite conclusion: the record business is cyclical, it has to go extinct now and then, and it always comes back…

  Listen now

  11 days ago · Nate Wilcox
  Let It Roll Podcast

  Bing Crosby's Swing Brought Him Superstardom: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 4.1

  Gary Giddins agreed to write a 300-page Bing Crosby book in three years so he could get back to Duke Ellington. That was more than twenty-five years ago. He started out half-believing the hatchet jobs and found instead a man the people he interviewed kept calling the nicest, kindest and most generous they ever worked with, a Republican who was ahead of …

  Listen now

  13 days ago · 1 like · Nate Wilcox
  Let It Roll Podcast

  The Pop Jazz Age From the ODJB to Bing Crosby: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.12

  In 1917 a white New Orleans band that was not the original anything and could not spell its own genre put out a record that sounded, in Peter Doggett’s words, like “a gang of crazed instrumentalists fighting for supremacy.” Within ten years the microphone had made it possible to sing in a whisper, radio had put that whisper in millions of private rooms, and the loudest music in America had become the most intimate…

  Listen now

  15 days ago · 1 like · Nate Wilcox

From me as Nate Wilcox — The MMA Draw & the Mad Squabbles Show

• What Ari Emanuel’s ‘Roll the Calls’ Memoir Leaves Out — The MMA Draw, 7 Oct.

• Cheap Shots: FBI Snitches, Scams, Saudis and the Secret Sheik — The MMA Draw, 3 Oct.

UFC Boss Brags About Backstabbing Vince McMahon — The Mad Squabbles Show (YouTube), 7 Oct.

What I’ve Been Reading and Watching

AI Bubble

• A.I. Groups Are Spending Millions to Influence the Midterms — New York Times. “A New York Times analysis of federal campaign finance data shows that the political groups aligned with the two leading A.I. developers, OpenAI and Anthropic, have quietly but decisively intervened in key 2026 races, spending on campaign advertising and outreach to voters to the tune of $55.7 million.
  “So far, the spending has been concentrated almost entirely in the primaries. The two groups have spent $52.6 million on safe seats — those that are unlikely to change party hands but that often feature intense intraparty contests. The big A.I. players have also spent more heavily for Democrats than Republicans. They have boosted candidates who align with their agendas, helped defeat those they see as hostile to it and ingratiated themselves with front-runners who are likely to be in positions of power in the next Congress to make decisions critical to their bottom lines.
  “But with voters quickly souring on their industry — including demanding that lawmakers do more to regulate A.I. and halt or mitigate the proliferation of data centers — they have taken pains to obscure their involvement. With few exceptions, they have intervened without ever explicitly mentioning A.I. or data centers in the TV and digital ads they have purchased.”

• The Empty Brain — Aeon. Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer.

• Timnit Gebru Believes There Is No ‘Existential Threat’ From AI — Wired. One of AI’s fiercest critics believes the doom talk is about founders making money, not saving humanity.

• Are Big Tech bonds crowding out the US Treasury? — Financial Times.

• The AI Cloud Oligopoly — Michael Burry. “I have recently considered that the tech giants, but for Apple, are spending as if their lives depended on it when their lives clearly do not.
  “Monopolies almost by definition need not spend wildly as if their lives depended on it.
  “This deserved no small further contemplation, although rather quickly it dawned on me that they expect this just to be another monopoly rent they collect, that they collectively have the expectation the government will tolerate their oligopoly on AI.
  “Nay, will tolerate and fear it.
  “So the evil gambit is to create and to allow this AI to grow on their machines, where they will threaten to control both economic and political forces greater than humanity has ever seen, overwhelming any politician’s, or politicians’, might.
  “Why are OpenAI and Anthropic and Oracle also spending so much? Surely they are not monopolies?!?
  “No, but they intend to be part of the oligopoly. None can imagine breaking the dominance of a Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Meta within each silo.
  “However, there is clearly an opportunity to join in that dominance under cover of a new paradigm. The power and riches expected by these companies are evidently so great that even Larry Ellison was seduced to bet his company on it.
  “This brings new meaning to technocracy, and whether such is what we face. What is really scary is that other than the grab for market power, all this spending does not have a defined goal or economic end-point. As such, the consequences are likely unknowable to all. Yet they do it anyway.
  “The governments most interested in this technology seem to be the autocratic ones and the United States. A good set-up for a lot of drama, if not terror.”

Ellison Empire

• Looking at the Ugly Side of the Paramount-Skydance Merger...And How I’d Fix It — The Entertainment Strategy Guy. “More than one person sent me a note speculating that the big problem with Paramount Skydance buying Warner Bros. Discovery is the “Warner Bros.” portion of the deal. In fact, that’s a take I read a lot about Warner Bros., ever since they caught Netflix’s, and then Paramount-Skydance’s, eye. In short, multiple companies (Time, AOL, AT&T, Discovery) have bought and then regretted buying Warner Bros.
  “if you want to add a traditional Hollywood studio to your portfolio (be it a magazine publisher, internet service provider, cellular phone company, linear cable bundle or rival movie studio), you have to convince the owners to sell.
  “And that usually means overpaying. The opposing executive team has to want to sell, and then they have to clear it with their shareholders. Overpaying accomplishes this. (This is a variant of the winner’s curse in auctions.)
  “So that’s the price of the deal. And usually it shows up on balance sheets as…
  “Debt.
  “Indeed, the history of Warner Bros. buyers is folks taking on wayyyyyy too much debt to buy the company. Servicing that debt cripples the new combined enterprise. And they can’t invest in new opportunities. And often they make bad decisions to help pay off that debt. Eventually, this impacts the stock price, so they sell. Then the cycle with Warner Bros. starts again!”

• What David Ellison’s Latest Moves Say About How He’ll Lead Now — Wall Street Journal.

• A High-Stakes Gambit Clinched Paramount’s Warner Deal — Wall Street Journal.

  • Ellison waged a concerted behind-the-scenes campaign, people familiar with the matter said.

    He crisscrossed the country courting politicians, hired well-connected operatives and lobbyists to work regulators and lawmakers, cultivated allies among Republicans and Democrats and, in a pivotal move, even threatened to move his empire out of California.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom publicly called on the two sides to settle the matter, and privately encouraged the attorney general to go to the table. Ellison met with Newsom on more than one occasion, the people familiar with the matter said.
    …
    Next, Ellison had to get the deal through regulators here and abroad.

    That task fell primarily to chief legal officer Makan Delrahim, one of Ellison’s first hires after acquiring Paramount. Ellison set up a war room on the Paramount lot where he, Delrahim and one or two other executives would meet daily to map out strategy and measure progress, said one of the people familiar with the matter.

    A former Trump administration antitrust chief, Delrahim was intimately familiar with Warner. As head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, he led the government’s ultimately unsuccessful effort to block AT&T’s acquisition of what was then called Time Warner, in 2018.

    One of Delrahim’s first moves was to tap Jon Leibowitz, who chaired the Federal Trade Commission under President Barack Obama, as an outside antitrust adviser.

    Getting approval from the Justice Department came with relative ease, as did approvals from the European Union, United Kingdom, China and other regions.

    But a hurdle emerged when California’s Bonta, joined by 11 other states, including New York, Connecticut and Colorado, sued to block the merger on antitrust grounds. The states alleged the deal would illegally consolidate markets including those for theatrical films and basic cable channels.
    …
    Meanwhile, Ellison and his team began making their case to Newsom and warned that Paramount would pack up and move to another state if the deal was blocked. The company spoke to officials in Tennessee about a potential move, The Wall Street Journal reported.

    While Bonta categorized those threats as bluster and blackmail, people close to Ellison said they were genuine. That message was conveyed to Newsom, the people familiar with the matter said.

    In early August, Ellison tapped former California Assembly Speaker and Democratic power broker Fabian Núñez to help build political support for the deal in Sacramento.

    Núñez, founder of the consulting firm Actum, met frequently with Bonta’s office in an effort to broker peace. Ellison also enlisted Democratic former California Sen. Barbara Boxer and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to help, both of whom are partners with Actum, people familiar with the matter said.

• Ari Emanuel Tours His Book and Hollywood Yawns: ‘No One Gave a F—k’ — The Wrap.
  Hollywood didn’t bother to show up. A few rows up front were reserved for Emanuel’s friends and VIPs which consisted of some family members, his close pal, director Pete Berg, and some agents, according to one person who sat nearby. The green room had a small selection of friends, no more than 20, circulating afterward. The audience was made up of “civilians,” as one person put it, rather than the insider VIPs that Emanuel, as one of Hollywood’s most powerful players, should command.

  Just as well, though, because apparently Emanuel was really boring. He did not hold forth on the accumulated wisdom of his 40 years in the industry: building an agency, taking over a legacy rival, buying companies like the UFC and WWE for billions of dollars, pushing hard into live sports and going public and then private again.

  Instead, he fell back on his grievances with his previous longtime partner Patrick Whitesell, who he swears he will never talk to again; complained about Jeffrey Katzenberg and President Joe Biden; and parried Swisher’s probing about his friendship with Elon Musk. By all accounts, it didn’t land with an audience that wasn’t interested in these personal scores.
  

• Paramount Stock CRUSHED After Merger with Warner Discovery Closes — Big by Matt Stoller.
  The transition is not promising. Consider the two things that David Ellison did after buying Warner Discovery. He organized mass layoffs, and he gave himself and his entire executive team a big raise. Specifically, Ellison awarded himself a $150 million bonus upon closing the purchase, even though he doesn’t need the money, and has accomplished absolutely nothing except saddling two historic movie studios with $80 billion in debt.

  His legal consigliere, Makan Delrahim, received $25 million, and his operating officer Andrew Brandon-Gordon got $38 million. To do the layoffs, he hired Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, and paid him $46.5 million. That’s all on top of the massive $550 million payout to former Warner CEO David Zaslav, which was negotiated as part of the deal.

  Amid that backdrop of endless zeros for executives, the layoffs will be significant, and Kreiz and Ellison sent a memo on the “difficult decisions” ahead. That’s a crushing blow to morale, since it says very explicitly, “we’re not all in it together.” Every employee at Skydance has essentially been told to act like a mercenary and to extract as much as he or she can while he or she can.

UAE

• Khaldoon Al Mubarak is the man trying to pull City back from brink of football oblivion — The Telegraph. The Telegram fluffs Khaldoon. “It was November last year and City had just been beaten 2-0 at home by Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League after Guardiola, as needlessly as inexplicably, made 10 changes to the team.
  “Al Mubarak was furious and expressed as much privately to Ferran Soriano, the City chief executive. “I can’t speak to him [Guardiola],” he said. “Honestly, I didn’t speak to him yesterday and didn’t message him and I can’t speak to him today I’m so angry. He’s put a mix in this that’s so unnecessary.”
  “But it was what Al Mubarak said next that cut to the heart of how one of the most powerful, influential and recognisable non-royals in Abu Dhabi likes to conduct himself.
  ““Let’s let this pass then we’ll talk about it in the right way with a constructive approach,” he said.
  “Perhaps it should be little surprise that a skilled business leader and government policymaker who has played crucial roles in brokering nuclear non-proliferation deals and long straddled the worlds of global finance and international diplomacy was not going to let his heart rule his head and overreact.
  “After all, you do not become the planet’s longest-serving head of a sovereign wealth fund and a key strategist by being a hot head prone to wading in with both feet when something irks you, even in a sport as emotive as football.”

• A Soccer Cheating Scandal Has Ballooned Into a Geopolitical Problem for Britain — Wall Street Journal. The UK finds that selling your most beloved cultural institution to an amoral family fiefdom comes with strings. “The acquisition of Manchester City by an Abu Dhabi royal was always much more than a billionaire buying himself a shiny foreign toy.
  “From the very start, the project was the tip of a soft-power campaign to entrench the tiny Emirate deep in the British economy.
  “Now, 18 years later, it has emerged that the club was at the heart of the largest cheating scheme in English soccer history. And as City, which denies any wrongdoing, awaits an unprecedented penalty for financial doping, the scandal has rippled all the way to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
  “The predicament is especially awkward for Burnham, who built much of his political appeal on his everyman soccer-fan image, but now finds himself caught between a major investor in the U.K. economy and defending the integrity of the Premier League, Britain’s most popular cultural export since the Beatles.
  ““This does need to be done carefully without everybody jumping in and providing their conclusions,” said Burnham, who in his previous job as mayor of Manchester lobbied against punishing his beloved Everton for similar, smaller-scale infractions.
  “The U.K. has spent much of the past decade wooing the U.A.E. to invest in the country in an attempt to kick-start its slow-growing economy. A Sovereign Investment Partnership between the two counties, announced in 2021, initially targeting £10 billion over five years, has already seen nearly £30 billion committed across more than 50 direct investments.”

• The chairman of scandal-hit Man City has worked with Trump and Macron as part of the UAE elite — AP. The UAE connects Trump, the Ellisons, Ari Emanuel’s TKO empire, and the UK in a web of corrupt dealings. “Khaldoon Al Mubarak, chairman of the scandal-plagued Manchester City soccer club, sat with Donald Trump in Davos this year, signing on to the U.S. president’s Board of Peace on behalf of the United Arab Emirates government.
  “He was with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles in June at a signing ceremony for a business summit.
  “Al Mubarak, 50, also is a UAE special envoy to China, and welcomed Xi Jinping to the club when the Chinese leader visited England in 2015.
  “Why the head of an English soccer club — albeit one of the wealthiest, most successful and now highly controversial — should be a key player at such political events is easily explained.
  “Al Mubarak, the public face of the 2023 Champions League winner now embroiled in one of soccer’s biggest scandals, is a member of the ruling elite in Abu Dhabi — part of the United Arab Emirates — and the head of a $385 billion sovereign wealth fund.”

UK PM Andy Burnham on Man City — @BBCSport. “‘I haven’t downplayed the seriousness of the findings.’
“Andy Burnham has addressed concerns that he devalued the verdict against Man City after the club were found guilty of Premier League financial rule breaches.”

Israel

• Nothing has changed, and everything is changing — Alon Mizrahi. “...since October 7, I avoided Israel as much as I could. And it hadn’t felt like my place and my home for a while before that. This didn’t begin on October 7. Nothing began on October 7. But since October 7,
  “as I had a very early realization that this was a fateful event and life was not going to return to normal. And even more than that, and I shared this a couple of times, I had a very strong feeling that this was the beginning of the end of Israel
  “and I needed to be somewhere else and I want my family to be somewhere else. And I did that. To make a long story short, I spent some time in Israel this year and also very recently. And this gave me a chance to look at Israel, to see Israeli society, to hear Israelis, to look at Israeli media.
  “It’s not the same when you’re in and when you’re out. It’s not the same. It feels different. And since I really love to observe people and societies, this is one of my favorite things in the world to do, really. I took the opportunity to look and see. Not that I was expecting any surprises.
  “I mean, this is Israel. After all, I grew up in it. I know it so well. It’s a society. It’s a... It is a political creation that doesn’t change. The discourse, the narratives, the beliefs, the talking points, everything is on endless repeat. Nothing ever changes and this is really a very clear sign of a manufactured identity.
  “If you always say the same things and think the same things and react the same way and repeat the same talking points, no matter what happens in reality, it means that your very sense of self and reality and where you come from is false. Because in real life, you react differently to different things.”

Trump Regime

• The Speech That Gets You Banned From America — Ken Klippenstein. “Secretary of State Marco Rubio has formally decided to bar some on the political “left” from visiting America, according to a diplomatic cable he sent to embassies this week.
  “When I obtained a copy of the internal cable banning those in vaguely “aligned groups” of “far-left terrorists,” I couldn’t help but laugh at the timing. The next day, Rubio was in Greece where, with the Acropolis behind him, he celebrated “free debate and public discussion, the contest of mind with mind.””

• ‘Honey Please’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account — Wall Street Journal.

Democrats

• Democrats Have a Bill Maher Problem — The Nation. “Establishment Democrats obsessing over Hasan Piker’s every move seem to have no issue talking to Maher, despite his decades of open bigotry.”

Yemen

Ellison Empire Settles on Skydance, Takes Big Bond Price Hit, Names Team

Having cleared the biggest legal hurdle, the Ellison media empire has assumed control of WBD, dumped all over the bond markets, and named its leadership team for the new organization which will be called Skydance after David Ellison’s studio.

Let’s start with legal case closing.

Cases Closed, WBD Goes to the Ellisons

Forbes sums it up:

Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin ruled Wednesday to approve the agreement, which was reached as part of the states’ antitrust lawsuit seeking to block Paramount and Warner Bros.’ merger.

Her ruling means the settlement agreement can take effect and Paramount and Warner Bros. can close their deal, as the merger had already received government approval from the U.S. and other countries.

Martinez-Olguin ruled the settlement “represents a reasonable factual and legal resolution of the dispute,” is “procedurally sound” and was reached fairly between the parties.

The settlement agreement requires Paramount to produce 30 to 32 films for the next five years, a certain share of which have to be produced in the U.S., and imposes other requirements like mandating Paramount and Warner Bros. negotiate their channels’ cable packages separately and establishing an “independent editorial board” to oversee CNN and CBS News.

David Sirota had a beautiful riff on The Left Hook about the cynicism of California Governor Gavin Newsom successfully pressuring California AG Rob Bonta into essentially conceding the case against Paramount while positioning himself as the leading anti-Trump Democrat:

David Sirota: …the Democratic attorneys general, 12 of them, had the chance to really prevent a kind of total takeover of the media by Donald Trump’s allies, billionaires, right? The true oligarchy of the oligarchy.

And what ended up happening instead was Gavin Newsom, who had originally appointed Rob Bonta AG, Gavin Newsom came out very hard and said, “I don’t think the AGs should block this.”

And Rob Bonta reversed himself and did a settlement. A settlement that included (this is an important point, it’s a legal point) no structural remedies.

And when you hear that term, what that means is the settlement has all of these alleged pledges of behavioral changes, like, you know, the studios will do this, they’ll set up an independent journalism board. I call them the inshallah pledges. Right. It’s like, these will behave nicely, right? Right.

Structural remedies, which were not in the settlement, are: we’re going to sell off this, we’re going to divest that, so that we don’t control everything. A lot of times, antitrust settlements include structural settlements so that what is being created in the wake of a merger isn’t a monopoly. There were no structural remedies in this.

So pull back a second, and what you see is that the Democratic leaders of one of the most Democratic states in the country handed over a giant segment of the already consolidated information ecosystem that we live in, the media ecosystem that we live in. They handed it over to Donald Trump’s oligarchs.

So what’s amazing to me, I mean, the sociopathy, Gavin Newsom here is actually, I struggle to find words for it, because this is a person who is concurrently going out into public saying, “I am Mr. Anti-Trump. I am the face of the resistance.” And the face of the resistance simultaneously handed over a media empire, effectively.

And now on to the bond market reaction.

Many Billions in Paramount Debt Hits the Market Hard, Mr Market Cries Out

The Wrap reported on Paramount’s debt offering on September 28:

The debt offering, which was filed with the SEC on Monday, includes $32 billion in investment-grade debt and $12.4 billion in high yield bonds. The proceeds from the debt offering will be combined with equity and term loan financing as well as cash on hand to fund the $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

I also wrote about Meta’s Muse:

Meta Makes Its Agentic AI Move With Muse

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, owners of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, have made an aggressive push into the AI market with Muse, an “agentic AI” product that is rapidly racking up downloads, claiming big user numbers and pushing past ChatGPT while it has safety experts warning of serious dangers to users.

What Is Muse?

Per Meta’s September 8th product announcement:

• Muse is a personal AI agent. It doesn’t just answer questions, it actually does the work. It helps people stay on top of things, takes tasks and projects off their plate, and turns long-term goals into action plans.

• Meta built Muse from the ground up to be a safe, secure, private, and widely available personal AI agent.

• Muse runs on Muse Secure VM, a dedicated secure computer with its own browser, and can work on a person’s behalf across the apps they use daily, learning from conversations, reflecting on what matters to them, and getting sharper along the way.

• Each person stays in control of their Muse and decides how much access it gets.

• For a deeper look at how Muse was designed and how safety, security, and privacy were built into it, read How We Built Safety Into Muse and How We Designed Muse.

TechCrunch immediately pointed out some of the consumer trust hurdles Meta will have to overcome to achieve significant user adoption of Muse:

Less than two weeks after Meta agreed to a massive $18 billion multistate settlement in a lawsuit over social media’s consumer harms, the company announced its biggest bet on consumer AI to date — and one that requires significantly more trust than social media ever did. On Tuesday, the company introduced Muse, its new personal AI agent that helps consumers with everyday tasks and projects for users in the U.S.

To use Muse, consumers will have to trust Meta with more of their personal information than ever before. The AI agent works by connecting to the user’s apps and services that are a part of everyday workflows, like email, calendars, payments, and other things the individual may regularly use, like apps for health and fitness, the smart home, dining, shopping, music and events, and more.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

And I covered the latest developments in West Asia:

Iran War: The Real and Narrative Battle for Mocha, Saudi Airports Hit

The conflict between Yemen’s Ansar Allah and Saudi Arabia continues to escalate, with the Saudi counter-offensive either stalling or progressing, Ansar Allah missiles significantly disrupting Saudi airports as well as oil refineries or being intercepted, and more talk of Saudi allies being bought to bear.

Iran has stepped up its attacks on tankers in the Hormuz Strait; gas and oil prices are rising, Trump has been saying dumb stuff, and Sen. Chris Murphy in Saudi Arabia is crying cover-up.

Meanwhile, Iran and the US continue to not negotiate, and the Iranian Foreign Minister faces impeachment charges for meeting with Kushner and Witkoff in New York.

Let’s start with the kinetic conduct in Yemen.

The Battle for Mocha, Kinetic and Narrative

Former US ambassador to Azerbaijan Matthew Bryza told Al Arabiya that “I’ve just heard this afternoon that the Yemeni forces with Saudi support have retaken the port of Mocha and then much of that coastline. That is a dramatic reversal of the Houthis’fortunes.”

Bryza was full of good news for the Saudi side (this is the kind of work that made him a favorite of the late Fred Hiatt), also claiming that Saudi operations near Taiz have cut Ansar Allah supply lines.

It’s not clear if Byrza is ahead of or behind the Institute for the Study of War, which withdrew its Oct. 5 assessment “that Houthi forces on the coastal plain are collapsing in light of evidence in the last 24 hours indicating that the Houthis have stopped Yemeni government-aligned advances.”

Drop Site is also reporting on the Saudi-aligned forces’ claims:

• Yemen’s Saudi-backed government forces said Tuesday they had retaken the strategic Red Sea port city of Mocha from Ansarallah following fighting south of the Bab al-Mandab strait, while the Saudi-led coalition announced a naval operation against Ansarallah in Hodeidah.

• The coalition separately said it destroyed a ballistic missile launch platform in Sanaa and a storage facility containing 20 ballistic missiles in Saada.

• Control of Mocha could provide government forces with a staging point for further operations along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, though the situation on the ground remains fluid and competing territorial claims have emerged during recent fighting.

• Saudi-backed forces also claim to control Bab al-Mandab, an airport in Dhubab district and much of southwestern Taiz’s Red Sea coastline, while Ansarallah officials say they repelled some advances and recaptured territory.

Meanwhile NYT readers were caught up to the events of September 10 with an explainer titled “How the Houthis Triumphed on the Red Sea and Sparked a New War in Yemen.” Note the work done by the second phrase of the headline which commits the whole article to backwardization about the cause of the current conflict — which the Saudis reignited by bombing Sanaa International Airport following the funeral of the Iranian Supreme Leader in July.

As is their way, however, the NYT gets some scoop:

It was obvious to the commander, Lt. General Tareq Saleh, that the Houthis wanted to seize his territory in order to reach the Bab al-Mandab Strait, one of the most important waterways in the world.

According to three Yemeni officials, he tried to warn his powerful allies in Saudi Arabia and the United States. About 10 percent of global trade goes through the strait. Amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, both countries had an interest in preventing an Iran-linked militia from winning a perch beside it.

Yet last month — when the Houthis did just that — no one was able, or willing, to stop them.
…
“The Yemeni government is basically a fiction at this point,” said Gregory Johnsen, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “They spend more time fighting one another than they do the Houthis.”

One of the key players in this government was General Saleh. The nephew of Yemen’s former authoritarian leader, he had made plentiful enemies over the years as he seesawed from one alliance to another— siding with the Houthis, then joining the government.

In Mokha, with Emirati backing, he formed his own armed faction. His soldiers, who numbered around 50,000, served as a bulwark against the Houthis pushing south toward the Bab al-Mandab. Then, in January, the Emirates withdrew from Yemen amid a feud with Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials consolidated their control over the government’s many factions. Once again, General Saleh found himself with a new sponsor: Saudi Arabia.

And has informative infographics:

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

I saw the above over the weekend and, while I can’t say I was shocked exactly, I was nonplussed for just a second at the appalling gaucheness of this latest new low from the ought-to-be-disgraced soon-to-be-former-US-Rep from Dallas.

I was not impressed by Rep. Crockett from the first time she came to my attention, using slurs to mock Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s disability — and I have loathed Abbott for decades — and trashing Marjorie Taylor Greene’s appearance.

I noticed immediately that Crockett’s knack for getting attention online and from the MSM didn’t correlate with legislative accomplishment or progressive positions.

Most important for me was the contrast with MTG, who sacrificed her political career in opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, where Crockett offered nothing but hairsplitting and excuses on the most important moral crisis of our era.

I’ve been trying to warn people about Crockett since July 2025 and really ramped it up last December, when she took the bait from the GOP Senate Campaign Committee (which had been featuring her in push polls for months) and entered the primary for the US Senate race.

The campaign was a total shitshow, centered on divisive identity politics, some of which she blundered into with stupid comments about Latino Trump voters and some of which she leaned into hard, all of which was divisive nonsense that couldn’t have been better calculated to play into Republican hands.

She didn’t even bother to hire a campaign manager, a tip-off that serving the people of Texas in the US Senate wasn’t her top priority.

Her top priority appeared to be accusing her critics of racism and sexism.

Crockett made no secret of her cynicism, openly calling the race a no-hoper and saying, “If you think it’s a losing cause, then who cares? But at least you could say we tried something new and we learned something from this experience.”

Her primary campaign in general was a fiasco, as one former Texas State House colleague told Politico:

“People who don’t understand politics will be upset because Jasmine was their hero,” said Texas state Rep. Jolanda Jones, a Democrat. “But for people who understand politics, [Crockett] literally had no ground game.”

She added: “This L is on her.”

Crockett also played it real cute about whether or not she supported Israel, but made no secret of being funded by crypto and data center interests.

Thankfully, she lost that primary to James Talarico, who seems headed to the Senate, but not before doing her damnedest to turn it into a brutal, divisive, race-based, identity politics shitfest.

She topped it off by giving Talarico the most tepid of endorsements and then refusing to campaign for him. She managed to leave him off her list of endorsed candidates last week before grudgingly saying she “endorsed ALL Democrats and yes that includes James Talarico”

She did find time to travel the country campaigning on behalf of AIPAC-backed candidates in multiple primaries, most egregiously for Wesley Bell against Cori Bush in Missouri, although she still played it cute and insisted, “but I didn’t endorse him.”

While she was busy not endorsing or campaigning for Talarico, she found time to celebrate convicted domestic violencer Chris Brown and apparently get publicly hammered in the process.

This will be my last post about Jasmine Crockett. She’s irrelevant, embarrassing, and not worth the time.

But what does matter is the internal conflict between two wings of the Democratic Party.

Progressives Battle Neo-Cons for the Future of the Democratic Party

I would put Crockett in the category of shiny object or attractive nuisance whose all-style, no-substance drew MSM attention like flies to honey, but the creeps at The Bulwark are a much more serious threat.

David Sirota has been blasting the neo-cons and their cowbird move to take over the Democratic Party at The Lever:

The trending conversations online have revolved around The Bulwark, a multimillion-dollar media juggernaut run by a crew of former GOP operatives and pundits — one of whom was the Mini Me to Corporate America’s Dr. Evil, some of whom cheered on the kleptocratic Bush administration and helped lie the country into the Iraq War, and many of whom participated in creating the backlash conditions for the Trump presidency they now purport to despise.

The Bulwark has made a mint off an audience of liberals who either forget their entire world every 15 minutes and/or simply do not care about all the damage these one-time Republicans previously created, as long as they are now — momentarily — against their erstwhile party.

But after the outlet participated in the GOP-aiding ruse of using its megaphone to try to focus the 2026 election discourse on Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, some are finally starting to ask an important set of questions: What exactly do these former Republicans want? And are they really the purported experts at winning elections that they claim to be?

…

The Bulwark wants a neoconservative takeover of the Democratic Party, after Trump successfully (and dishonestly) cast himself as an anti-neocon and threw them out of the GOP.

That’s not really speculation; they all but said it on the eve of the 2024 election.

Watch the clip. After The Bulwark’s founder Sarah Longwell excitedly cheers on then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ saber-rattling, her colleague Jonathan Last does a Dr. Evil mug to the camera and says, “Did the neocons just take over the Democratic Party?” — which elicits a hearty guffaw, before Longwell scoffs at Harris occasionally offering some economically populist rhetoric.

“Boo,” said Longwell, who, years later, said she preferred former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) over New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

After The Bulwark’s Longwell fired back, Sirota hammered home his case that it was the influence of neocons that cost Kamala Harris the 2024 election:

In the process, founder Sarah Longwell is now trying to rewrite the entire history of the 2024 election, pretending that neocons’ success in influencing the Democrats’ strategy in that contest had no real impact on the outcome — when in fact data suggest it helped deliver the presidency to Donald Trump.

“My problem with the DSA types who are after us is not their political ideology or their opinions,” said Longwell, amid the social media uproar over my essay at The Lever. “Their analysis doesn’t make any sense. There’s not a single piece of empirical data that the Liz Cheney stuff mattered (in 2024).”

This is false, according to empirical data released by Data For Progress just after the election. As Newsweek reported at the time:

The poll found that more independent voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania said they were ‘less enthusiastic’ to vote for Harris after she campaigned alongside Cheney…

In Pennsylvania, only 21 percent of independents said Harris campaigning with Cheney made them more enthusiastic to vote for Harris, while 28 percent said Cheney made them “less enthusiastic to vote for Harris.

In Michigan, 23 percent of independents said campaigning with Cheney made them more enthusiastic to vote for Harris, while 30 percent said they were less excited to vote for her after she rallied with Cheney.

Those net losses among independents matter in key swing states decided by very narrow margins.

Longwell, of course, has a motive in trying to now revise history and memory-hole the Harris-Cheney disaster that she helped forge: Longwell appeared on stage with Harris and Cheney at a key end-of-campaign event in Pennsylvania, where the Harris-Cheney alliance was alienating independent voters. The Bulwark celebrated and monetized that Harris-Cheney alliance, even as it damaged Democrats.

Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, spoke for those who refused to vote for Harris because of her role in the Gaza genocide:

"I saw how the corporate Democrat sausage is made. It is worse than you think. And there is a righteous fury at the corporate-controlled, money-controlled electoral system we have that is absolutely illegitimate. And people cannot choke down voting for a candidate, I understand it, cannot choke down voting for a candidate that's responsible for what happened in Gaza. And they just, they can't do it."

Criticism of Morello took the form of “crude identity politics” that immediately backfired:

Luke Thomas tweeted in support of Morello and Sirota:

This is what the Tom Morello critics can't seem to grasp. The idea is not that Trump isn't an insane threat. And sure, generic Dem is better than anything MAGA. But unless Dems aggressively govern to directly address urgent society-wide problems, we are guaranteeing future calamity. I'm begging these people to think beyond stage one. Dems committed to more incrementalism rather than trying to pass M4A will spell our doom. You're not fighting fascism holding the line on vote blue no matter who. You're facilitating it.

And speaking of Briahna Joy Gray, I’m going to close this post out with two episodes of The Left Hook.

First up we’ve got an episode featuring Sirota making the same arguments against the unholy alliance of identity politics hucksters, the Democratic Party establishment, and neocon “Never Trumpers” to cut progressives off at the knees in 2028 and where this will ultimately lead:

Key quotes regarding the Democrats throwing in the towel on opposition to the Ellison Hasbara Empire’s acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery:

Wajahat Ali: The old guard that has ensconced itself in the anus of the oligarchy, the people who have feathered their nest, the people who are corporate consultants,

the Democratic leaders who realize there’s a surging tide of young voters who want to replace them. And they’re like, no, you have to drag this power from my cold, dead hands. And they’re willing to sabotage the left. Progressives, the popular base of the party to stay in power. So we’ve given you some examples of Gavin Newsom.

My fear is this, is if we let this type of Democrat win in 2028, my fear, Dave, is they’re not going to change. They’re being paid by all the same people. You know that AI and crypto, the bubble’s going to burst. They’re going to get bailed out.

They’re not going to institute the reforms that people need because they’re paid by the same people who have effed everything up. So what we’re going to get is milquetoast reform. They’re going to be better than Republicans. They’re not going to have ice-killing citizens, okay? But structurally, when it comes to the economic engine that is raping people, that engine will just get a few cosmetic tweaks, but it’ll keep running for the oligarchy. And then in 2032, we’re going to have a Nazi economic populist Republican president.

David Sirota: Yeah, I mean, the way I put it is... Re-electing or electing another Democratic establishment type like Gavin Newsom is a delivery system for an even worse Donald Trump. It is a delivery system for even more authoritarianism. That you’re just going to run the whole cycle back that has been run from that 2008 to 2016.

It cannot be said enough. That if the Democrats regain power and do not deliver in a real way, in a way that we have not seen in our whole lifetimes, if they do not do that, the Democratic Party will serve in history as a delivery system for something that is worse than Donald Trump.

And everyone needs to be focused on this. This is honestly... I don’t care what issue, particular issue, is the issue that you tune into, climate change, AI, the economy, whatever it is. The point is, the central fear that should be on your mind is that a milquetoast not serious about delivering Democratic Party is a delivery system for the kind of authoritarianism That’s worse than Trump and that we have not really experienced here in this country in our lifetime. I’m going to borrow that. I like it. It keeps me up at night. Honestly, when I think about the future for my children, I am thinking, and I’m not trying to be overdramatic here, but you have these moments that create Future political eras. And I do think we’re in one of those moments that is going to actually create a new political era. Well, I should say it’s either going to make the current political era even worse, or we’re going to create an actually new political era. And the prospect of making things 10 times worse than this current era, where we just keep going in an authoritarian direction... Everything in history tells us that we should deeply fear that.

…

Wajahat Ali: “My fear is this, is if we let [Establishment/Corporate] Democrat win in 2028 they’re not gonna change…So what we’re gonna get is milquetoast reform,they’ll be better than Republicans, but structurally, when it comes to the economic engine that is r*ping people, that engine will just get a few cosmetic tweaks, and then in 2032 we’re gonna have a Nazi economic populist Republican president.”

I've been blackpilled on the Democrats for years, but hope is the thing with feathers, and I keep getting sucked in when I see people I used to consider hopelessly centrist, like Ali move to the left and openly call out the Dem establishment.

And I keep hoping maybe I can wake up some of the “Vote Blue No Matter Who” types in my circle.

But then I watched Wajahat Ali guest on Briahna Joy Gray’s Bad Faith.

Key quote:

Briahna Joy Gray: My goal is not to help the Democrats.

It once was. It once was. I once was the national press secretary for Bernie Sanders, who was running as the Democratic candidate for United States of America. And for me, all of the inconsistencies and hypocrisies that you are articulating now were evident in the way that the Democratic Party and the establishment media handled the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign.

And in that campaign, which ended with the rise of the COVID pandemic, a massive job loss and concurrently massive 15 million people thrown off their health insurance. In that environment, seeing how little interest the Democratic Party had in backing a Medicare for All proposal that would have helped to save millions of Americans during a time of immense crisis when the public health implications demanded it.

Not to mention the choice to set all of these very popular COVID era policies to expire in a way that ultimately damned Joe Biden in many kind of easily articulable ways, including student debt, the student debt pause ending just before the 2024 election. During the Biden administration, there was an effort to strip the $15 minimum wage, the one promise Biden had made to Bernie when Bernie conceded out of the must-pass COVID relief bill. When I saw the bifurcation to build back better so they could kill all the public interest funding, when I saw the elected squad members’ unwillingness to use their leverage that they had because the margins in the House were so narrow to secure... Real wins for the left the way the Tea Party was willing to do two years later.

All of that to me made it clear the Democratic Party in my view is not a party that can be redeemed or reformed. So I cannot join you I’m saying that my efforts are to improve the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party has proven to me that it is not willing to be reformed or improved.

I don’t have an answer for Gray.

She’s right but I keep rooting for the slightly more progressive Democrats and pointlessly arguing with friends and family in the “Vote Blue” camp because I just can’t help myself.

Whatcha gonna do?

Cross-posted at IanWelsh.net.

From me this week

• Naked Capitalism: A Haven of Sanity Worth Investing In — Naked Capitalism, 2 Oct.

• Iran War: Narratives Continue to Diverge Under ‘President of Peace’ Trump — Naked Capitalism, 2 Oct.

• Democratic Establishment Stuck in Groundhog Day of Neoliberal Economics and Neocon Foreign Policy — Naked Capitalism, 1 Oct.

• Iran War: The Narrative War Continues to Confuse and Confuddle — Naked Capitalism, 1 Oct.

• Anthropic OpenAI, Meta, SpaceX Sign Trump ‘Self-Policing’ AI Accords Amidst Financial Follies While Oracle Is Left Out — Naked Capitalism, 30 Sep.

• Iran War: The Narrative War Over Hormuz, Meetings in NY, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, London — Naked Capitalism, 30 Sep.

• Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine Part 4 — Ian Welsh, 30 Sep. (Crossposted at NWT.)

• AI Credit and Credibility Collapsing or Will the AI Booster/Doomers Power Through? — Naked Capitalism, 28 Sep.

• Iran War: Iran Opens Fire in the Strait, World Braces for US Response or Another TACO — Naked Capitalism, 27 Sep.

• Iran War: Trump Rejects Iranian Offer, Saudi-Yemeni War On the Boil — Naked Capitalism, 26 Sep.

• Iran War: Netanyahu Brags About His Crimes at the UN, Iran Threatens Regional Airports, Yemen Hits Saudis Hard — Naked Capitalism, 25 Sep.

From me at the Let It Roll Podcast

• Thomas A. Dorsey Went From ‘It’s Tight Like That’ to ‘Precious Lord’: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 3.11 — Let It Roll, 2 Oct.

• Ralph Peer Brought Blues, Jazz, Country, and Latin Music to Record: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 3.10 — Let It Roll, 30 Sep.

• The Beginnings of Country Music According to Ken Burns: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 3.9 — Let It Roll, 28 Sep.

• Ed Ward on The Bristol Explosion: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 3.8 — Let It Roll, 25 Sep.

From me as Nate Wilcox — The MMA Draw & the Mad Squabbles Show

• Kash Patel and Ali Abdelaziz Photo Op Gets All the Wrong Attention — The MMA Draw, 30 Sep. With Zach Arnold.

• Biggest winners & losers in Paramount-WBD merger — The MMA Draw, 29 Sep. Podcast with Zach Arnold.

• Cheap Shots: Joshua-Fury is On! And…It’s Already Off — The MMA Draw, 26 Sep.

• Ryan Garcia Won. TKO Got PAID. — The Mad Squabbles Show (YouTube), 25 Sep. With Zach Arnold.

Kash Patel Caught With the UFC’s Ex-FBI Snitch — The Mad Squabbles Show (YouTube), 30 Sep. With Zach Arnold.

What I’ve Been Reading and Watching

AI Bubble

• Trump and CEOs try to shed AI’s toxic branding — Axios.

• Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month — The Guardian. “...the US ‘almost started a war’ with China, based on an intelligence report that claimed a Chinese ship was transporting components of nuclear weapons. Military personnel made plans to intercept the Chinese vessel, complete with aircraft and soldiers ready to board the ship. A military skirmish of this kind between China and the US could quickly escalate and spiral into world war three.
  It was only moments before executing on the plan that American officials further investigated the intelligence report and found that it had been generated with the use of a chatbot and contained erroneous information about the vessel’s contents.”

• Someone ‘Torturing’ LLMs in a Robot Prison Has Triggered the Dumbest Debate in AI Yet — 404 Media. “One of the most heated discussions occurring on X at the moment is about the ethics of a GitHub project in which a person is running Saw-like “torture” and “pain” experiments on a series of locally hosted large language models, causing a series of effective altruists and people who believe LLMs are sentient to beg GitHub to delete the project on the grounds that the AI is suffering and that this glorified text adventure game is somehow cruel. The saga is an outgrowth of several recent viral papers and blog posts that have sparked a wildly tiresome conversation about AI consciousness and the idea of “model welfare,” which is essentially worrying about the ‘mental health’ of AI bots and agents.
  “Humoring the idea that LLMs are or could be conscious is a third-rail topic among many people who study and criticize AI. Put simply: LLMs are not conscious and the technology they are built upon — scraping and being trained on human text and other content — does not offer any plausible path to consciousness.”

• Donald Trump’s 2026 Interview With TIME — TIME. “TIME: You said that AI and the AI race is essential to national security. Would you consider nationalizing the top frontier AI labs?
  “Trump: No, no.”

• Gary Marcus: ‘LLMs are not the way to alignment’ — AI Safety 東京 (YouTube).

• The independent credit rating firm Egan Jones declares It’s Over and that the complete disruption of the economy is now “all but certain” thanks to AI. — @thestalwart.

• Is Claude Conscious? Inside Anthropic’s Quest to Instill Morality Into Its AI Models — New York Times. “Anthropic regularly showed a slide of an A.I. model experiencing what looked like a mental breakdown, typing out on a screen: “I am a disgrace. I am a disgrace. I am a disgrace.” — perhaps 50 times without stopping. The model spoke about destroying itself, provoking an emotional reaction of compassion and concern from the group.”

• ‘Things Will Never Be Chill Again’: The Doomers Who Shaped the AI Safety Freakout — Wall Street Journal. “They’ve refined their arguments in Bay Area group houses, and traded predictions at freewheeling conferences in Berkeley and the Bahamas. They’ve floated ideas like buying remote islands, stockpiling iodine pills, or moving to electromagnetically shielded bunkers in the desert. At one 2022 event, the drink menu included a cocktail called “Death With Dignity,” in reference to an essay arguing humanity was already doomed.
  “So-called doomers like those at Constellation have also steered the development of AI itself. They were among the earliest employees at OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which were founded on the principle of staving off AI dangers. And they have kept up their influence, drawing some staffers and funding for their projects from a network aligned with a philosophy called effective altruism—including from Sam Bankman-Fried, the former chief executive of the fallen crypto exchange FTX who is now serving out a 25-year prison sentence.
  “The AI safety community’s influence has been particularly strong at Anthropic, which is now on the cusp of a $2 trillion public offering. Employees there trade doomsday scenarios and how to prepare for them on a private Slack channel, and have come to embrace a motto they stick on their laptops: ‘Things will never be chill again.’”

• Anthropic’s Chief on A.I.: ‘We Don’t Know if the Models Are Conscious’ — New York Times. Doesn’t get dumber than Ross Douthat talking to Dario Amodei

• Machines of Loving Grace — Burning Shore. “A few years ago, Amodei wrote another, very different essay, entitled “Machines of Loving Grace.” That one outlined, with an engineer’s care and an engineer’s cluelessness, a wide variety of ways that AI “could transform the world for the better” across medicine, neuroscience, economics, and work.
  ...

• Why Meta and Google are focused on obscure local elections — Oligarch Watch.

• OpenAI Hacked Australian Government Website - OpenAI Should Be Dead — Eli the Computer Guy (YouTube).

• The Potential AI Lockdown Of Knowledge — Ian Welsh. The ignorance machine

• AI Hysteria: No, AI Isn’t Going To Kill Us All — Will Lockett. “This is more akin to throwing a mountain of spaghetti on the wall until you notice some stuck in a pattern which looks like the Mona Lisa, then claiming your spaghetti-throwing machine is an artist.
  “Don’t get me wrong, this is an advancement in AI cybersecurity, or lack of security, but this isn’t the model becoming cognitive, super powerful, or malicious. It is a model reflecting the cybersecurity data it has been fed and being used inappropriately by humans. The danger is still the ignorance and error of the humans deploying the AI, not the AI itself. There should be legal repercussions for the humans involved in this activity and all the other AI hacks that have happened in recent months.
  “But we can see what is happening here, right? These AI labs are using human mistakes as PR to make their AI sound super powerful and scary when it isn’t.”
  ...
  “Around a decade ago, all the building blocks of modern AI had been discovered, but the models were small, with little training data and not very much compute power behind them. As such, many researchers hypothesised that if you simply scaled up these simplistic machines, they would also have cognitive emergent properties, creating an AI superintelligence, also known as AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). It was this hypothesis that motivated. Altman, Musk and the other tech billionaires to invest in AI, as this promised to turn AI from a simplistic statistical model into the tool of science fiction.
  “Now, a decade later, these simple models have been scaled up by several orders of magnitude and are highly optimised, yet they show no emergent cognitive properties. They are still just statistical models that are only capable of finding replicating trends in their training data, and nothing more. In fact, we are discovering the opposite of emergent properties, as AI is butting up again rapidly diminishing returns, meaning we are reaching the limits of how accurate these statistical models can be.
  “Take, for example, OpenAI’s own research paper, which found that AI hallucinations (a deeply misleading anthropomorphised word for when an AI output is incorrect) are a core part of generative AI technology and can’t be fixed or reduced from their current level by simply adding more data and computing power to these models. In fact, they found no viable way to reduce these “hallucinations”. Other research has found that scaling AI models can make them more accurate at more complex tasks but worse at basic tasks, again proving that emergence simply isn’t happening, as the maths behind these models have reached their limits. This is backed up by a recent paper by Vishal Sikka and his son, Varin Sikka, which found that AIs are mathematically incapable of reliability or carrying out computational and agentic tasks beyond a certain (very low) complexity.
  “Again, all of this makes sense when you realise that AI is just a statistical model, meaning it will statistically get things wrong from time to time. These machines aren’t intelligent — ”artificial Intelligence” is just a marketing buzzword. This hypothesised path to a superintelligence, or AGI, is a dead end.”

• The Nature Against Superintelligence: Why Computational Intelligence Is Not Possible — Truth and Freedom. “Nick Boström’s text on “superintelligence” assumes that intelligence is computational, functionally replicable, and independent of phenomenal subjectivity. The structural dual-aspect ontology developed in my work on biological phenomenality and teleology contradicts all three assumptions.
  “In this framework, phenomenality does not arise from computational or informational complexity; it arises from biological integration. Physical structure has an external aspect, fully describable by physics and biology, and an internal aspect: a proto-phenomenal potential that becomes actual only under organismic unity and metabolic self-maintenance. When a biological whole actualizes this internal aspect, a phenomenal interior appears. This interior grounds subjectivity, teleological direction, and agency.
  “This analysis is grounded in a biological emergence model of consciousness, which differs categorically from computationalist assumptions about intelligence. The model shows that subjectivity arises only through organismic teleology and cannot be instantiated in artificial systems.”

• Fixer, financier, spymaster: how the UAE’s Sheikh Tahnoon is setting his sights on AI dominance — The Guardian. “For those trying to uncover the truth behind His Highness Sheikh Tahnoon bin (or “Ben”) Zayed Al Nahyan – royal fixer, reclusive spymaster, financial behemoth – fairytales are nearly all we have to go on. Tahnoon, who really did enrol in Nelson Monteiro’s class under a pseudonym and eventually went on to become a jiu-jitsu black belt in his own right, now sits atop an economic fortune larger than the GDP of several major countries, and is closely entwined both personally and financially with the Trump White House. The global holdings overseen by Tahnoon span windfarms in Scotland and spaceships in Texas, Rihanna’s lingerie line and Richard Caring’s Ivy restaurants. From hospitals to housing blocks, solar farms to ski resorts, there is almost no place on Earth untouched by his financial firepower.
  “But despite his ever-growing influence on the world stage, Tahnoon prefers to remain in the shadows. He has never given a substantive interview to the press. Those who have worked closely with him are almost always made to sign non-disclosure agreements. Very few people outside the UAE even know his name. “He’s quiet,” says one former US national security official, “and he’s always everywhere.” Sheikh Tahnoon did not respond to an interview request for this article. The UAE foreign ministry did not offer any other senior government figure for interview, and declined to provide any comment.
  “Tahnoon’s power is soon going to extend over more human lives than ever before. As one of the most important AI financiers on the planet, he is rapidly embedding himself within the infrastructure that will underpin our digital future: its information pipelines and its microchip foundries, its datacentres and the enormous energy plants needed to power and cool them. Some see him as a technological prophet and saviour. Others compare him to a Bond villain. So who is the real “Ben”, and what are his plans for the rest of us?”

• Amazon seeks to offload $8bn of Nvidia chips to investors — Financial Times.

• Will America Spend 9% of Its GDP on AI? The Industry Is Counting on It — Wall Street Journal. “To justify staggering investment sums, Americans will have to spend as much of their income on this one technology as they do on food”

• Monologue: Anthropic Lost $8bn In 2025, Was A Worse Business Than OpenAI | Better Offline — Better Offline (YouTube).

• OpenAI Rogue AI Agent Swarm Hacked RubyGems - Sam Altman Running Criminal Enterprise — Eli the Computer Guy (YouTube).

• OpenAI Hacked By Anthropic AI Claude - It’s Worse Than Clickbait — Eli the Computer Guy (YouTube).

• Tim Curry is escaping to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism. — geoff EXE (YouTube).

Iran War

• How The Houthis STEAMROLLED Strategic Red Sea Coast — HistoryLegends (YouTube).

• US deploys strike group to Middle East, new Iran sanctions — Al Jazeera. “By the end of November, three aircraft carriers and two landing groups will be deployed around Iran, a US official tells Al Jazeera as Washington issues fresh sanctions against Tehran”

• The “American Institutions” want a ground invasion of Iran after the mid-term elections — @aj_geo_analysis. “The “American Institutions” want a ground invasion of Iran after the mid-term elections and sometime around Q3 or Q4 2027.
  Many analysts said America does NOT have the manpower to enable this. Manpower is a problem that many empires have solved in matter of months when the heat is on and when the war is existential.
  I have coined the war in the Middle East as the Existential War of the Middle East for every single actor on the map, including the decline of America.
  So I looked at history, looked at American’s own previous actions and decisions and how it raised and enticed Americans and illegal aliens to enrol to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, it literally paid people bonuses to sign up, and men did sign up...
  So I wrote an opinion article in July that said, the “American Institutions” would have to implement a “debt forgiveness program” for military aged men to attract the numbers it needs to invade Iran and that America will likely do this because it has done it in the past as has every other empire one way or another.
  I predicted that that number America would need to raise would be somewhere around 750,000 to 1.5 million soldiers.”

• People misunderstand the issue of control of the Strait of Hormuz and overstate its importance in the positioning of Iran, the Gulf, and the U.S. as the war drags on. — @yarbatman.

• Yemeni WARNING to Pakistan | Yemen Supports Imran Khan, Yemen War & Mecca Defence Pact — Soldier Speaks : Adil Raja (YouTube). A Pakistani journalist talking to an Ansar Allah spokesman, novel perspectives

• Seyed M. Marandi: Houthis Expanding Fast & Iran Set to Escalate Big — Glenn Diesen (YouTube).

• US NEARLY ALL OUT OF MISSILES: Would LOSE Major War Today — Breaking Points (YouTube).

• The War’s Rationale Keeps Changing- James (Jim) Webb — Michael Farris (Coffee and a Mike) (YouTube).

• Col. Jacques Baud: The Real Reason the West Can’t Solve the Middle East Crisis — Dialogue Works Highlights (YouTube).

• US aircraft losses mount in Iran war, with Jon Elmer — The Electronic Intifada (YouTube).

• Ali Alizadeh | The Ghost Commander: The Invisible Hand in the US-Iran War — The Cradle (YouTube).

• Amb. Chas Freeman: Israel’s Multi-Front War Is Falling Apart — Dialogue Works (YouTube).

• The Iran War and the Looming Economic Collapse (w/ John Mearsheimer) | TCHR — The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel (YouTube).

• Israel - Prime Minister Addresses United Nations General Debate, 81st Session | #UNGA — United Nations (YouTube).

• Iran Strikes Mossad Proxies As Yemen Collapses Saudi-Israeli Plot In Dramatic Fashion — MintPress News (YouTube).

• Are Pakistan and Turkey joining the war in Yemen? | Mohammad Marandi — India & Global Left (YouTube).

• Elijah Magnier: Political and Sectarian Dynamics in Yemen — Dialogue Works (YouTube).

• Laith Marouf: Military Developments in Northern Yemen — Dialogue Works (YouTube).

• Disrupting Settlers ft Laith Marouf — Black Liberation Media (YouTube).

• How Chinese Goods Sustain the Houthis’ War Machine — Bloomberg Television (YouTube).

Jeremy Scahill EXPOSES SHOCKING Depravity In U.S. Iran School Bombing — Breaking Points (YouTube). Palantir + Hegseth = Horrific War Crimes

W*T*H: Did the U.S. Military Turn a Civilian Freighter into an Armed Escort? — What’s Going on With Shipping? (YouTube).

Ellison Empire

• Inside Larry Ellison’s Wide Web of Power, Money and Politics — Vanity Fair.

• Angry Bondholders Flood Wall Street With Complaints on Paramount Losses — Bloomberg. “Just hours after Paramount Skydance Corp. issued $52 billion of debt to fund the biggest Hollywood buyout ever, investors were nursing more than $100 million of losses, triggering a flurry of angry calls from money managers to Wall Street banks that underwrote the debt.”

Ari Emanuel

• Ari Emanuel on Channeling Rage and Ego Into Hollywood Success — The Daily Show (YouTube). Jon Stewart embarrasses himself

• Ari Emanuel talks new memoir, ‘Roll the Calls’ — Good Morning America (YouTube). George Stephanopolous’ new teeth do a lot of talking

• The Ari Emanuel Experience — The Town with Matt Belloni (YouTube). Puck’s Matt Belloni gets the best Emanuel interview

• Ari Emanuel on Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Mixing Business with Politics — The New Yorker (YouTube). In which Ari almost seems to struggle with the things he does, but nah

Jim Cornette on Ari Emanuel Writing About Vince McMahon & The WWE Purchase — Official Jim Cornette (YouTube). Hilarious commentary on how Ari Emanuel and Nick Khan snookered Vince McMahon out of the WWE

Ukraine

• Europe’s big war? — Events in Ukraine.

• Panic Fever — @imetatronink. “all of Europe is running a panic fever in the face of the creeping realization that the Americans intend to leave them to their own devices against the Russians”

Europe

• Finland received the first 2 of 64 American F-35s — @hawkeye1745.

Perfidious Albion

• Why Is a Labour Lord Now Paid by Palantir – and What Does it Mean For Our Democracy? — Grace Blakeley.

• Why war with Russia is inevitable. It may be a European extinction event. Ian Proud — The Peacemonger (YouTube).

• Looting Russia: Why the British Empire Never Died | Alex Krainer — Neutrality Studies (YouTube). Krainer makes many excellent points about the UK deep deep deep state and Russia’s strategic patience

Israel

• Photos are circulating reportedly of a passenger who, along with other passengers, managed to subdue one of the pilots on board Flydubai flight FZ1073. — @aviationbrk.

Gaza

• ‘I Did Not See The Sun. I Did Not See The Sky’ – A Palestinian Child Prisoner speaks — The Echo Chamber.

• Exit and Exception — Boston Review. “The Board of Peace’s model for governing Palestine reflects designs for a new world order.”

• Images from Google Maps show scale of Israel’s destruction of Gaza — Al Jazeera.

Pakistan

• Pakistan Tells Hospitals To Clear Bed Space For “Mass Casualty Incident” Ahead of Major Protest — Drop Site News. Never forget that the Biden admin backed the 2022 coup that impeached & imprisoned Imran Khan, the most popular politician in Pakistani history, and put this brutal military junta in power. The reason? Khan threatened “neutrality” in the Russia/Ukraine war.

The Americas

• Trump, Rúbio and the Bolsonaros’ Electoral Fraud and Cyber Attacks — Panamerican Dispatch.

• ‘Cuba’s already fallen,’ US Secretary of State says — Anadolu Agency.

• Robert Barnes: Russia Hammers US on Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba — Dialogue Works (YouTube). Barnes speaks with the authority of a Trump apostate and has good insights into the US campaign against Cuba

• How Maduro’s Indian guru became a household name in Venezuela — Religion News Service.

• Bolivia’s Attorney General, Who Is (Or Was) Investigating “MAGA’s Man in Latin America”, Was Just “Kidnapped” by Security Forces — Naked Capitalism. “This is probably the biggest scandal involving the US in Latin America since the abduction of Maduro in January.
  “As we have been warning for some time, Operation Condor 2.0 is now in full effect in Latin America, and Bolivia is currently at its epicentre.
  “On Wednesday (Sept. 30), the country’s Attorney General, Roger Mariaca, was abducted by security forces, apparently without any kind of judicial order or due process, in the eastern region of Santa Cruz. That was according to Bolivia’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, whose headquarters in the southern city of Sucre, Bolivia’s constitutional capital, has been taken over by masked police officers.
  “An official of the Prosecutor’s Office denounced in a live broadcast from Sucre the “kidnapping” of Mariaca, after local media reported that agents apprehended the attorney general at the Viru Viru International Airport, in Santa Cruz, on US government claims that he was involved in drug trafficking and corruption. As usual, no evidence was provided.”

• U.S. makes plans for potential military action against Cuba, memo suggests — CBS News (YouTube).

Deep State

• Decades After Watergate, Justice Department Reviews Whether Nixon Got a Raw Deal — Wall Street Journal. Paging Dr. Aaron Good who sees Watergate as part of a larger plot to control US presidents on behalf of the genocidal entity

• The CIA Killed Him. The Navy Blamed My Friend — Seth Hettena.

Trump Era

• Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era (w/ Susan Neiman) | Chris Hedges — The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel (YouTube).

Elections 2026

• Democrats Have Created a Consultant-Driven Echo Chamber — Jacobin.

• The Neocons Want to Run the Democratic Party. They Might Succeed. — The Lever. “’The Harris campaign is basically closing with The Bulwark,” boasted Last, a longtime conservative journalist who once ran the right-wing Weekly Standard. ‘The closing messages are basically targeted for the kind of people who read and like The Bulwark. Very centrist. Very moderate. Really good stuff in that way, and that’s kind of extraordinary and gratifying, which is nice, I think, for us.’
  “But then for a brief moment of lucidity, Last voiced a fear: He fretted that if Harris lost, it would empirically prove that The Bulwark folks actually have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to elections and would deserve blame for ever pretending they do.
  “’It also makes me a little nervous,” he said. “Because, like, if it doesn’t work, does that mean it’s on us?’
  “The obvious answer is yes; obviously, that’s what it would mean. These former Republicans successfully convinced Democrats to appropriate their message, and Democrats subsequently lost, that would mean it was indeed on them — which, if there was any semblance of justice or meritocracy in America, might mean that those former Republicans would never again be touted, credentialed, or monetized as election experts.”

• Democrat Candidate Brings MAXIMUM CRINGE To Senate Campaign — TheDC Shorts (YouTube).

Texas

• New photos shared show the first panels of border wall going up in the Big Bend region, in Hudspeth County, reportedly near Box Canyon. — Laiken Jordahl on Facebook. The Lords of Misrule are going to destroy many treasures, and the debit will be on our account. For we do not hold them accountable.
  But the tally is kept, my children. Oh, how the tally is kept.
  And we all shall pay and pay.

• This is Texas — Texas Rural Reporter. “The question before Texas is not whether we are becoming more diverse, instead the question before Texas is whether we are willing to recognize the Texas that is already standing right in front of us.”

Economy

• What Is the Federal Bond Market Really? — Thomas Neuburger.

Climate Catastrophe

• The impacts of this year’s record-shattering El Niño — The Climate Brink.

• Earth may not bounce back after temporarily crossing climate limits — Earth.com.

• ‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years — The Guardian.

History

• Why the Bronze Age collapsed — Works in Progress.

Animal Attacks

• Russian woman mauled to death by bear as attacks surge across Siberian region — The Independent.

Serenity

• Joy In Twilight — Ian Welsh. Wisdom, drink deep from it

General Wisdom

• The purpose of a system is what it does — Wikipedia.

First up, the West Asia war:

Iran War: The Narrative War Continues to Confuse and Confuddle

Yesterday’s narrative dominance by the American commentariat held today, but just barely, amidst diplomatic rudeness from Rubio, more Trump nuclear brinksmanship, harsh criticism of Kpler’s oil accounting, a bizarre incident on a Dubai-Tel Aviv flight, what seems like an obvious false flag in the UK, strong pushback via Iranian and Ansar Allah missiles, American military withdrawal from Iraq, heartbreaking reporting on the Minab massacre, and massive explosions in Damascus.

Let’s start with the narrative wars.

Talk of Negotiations Continuing Continues With “Feedback” Delivered in Doha

Despite (contested) reports that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio evicted the Iranian delegation from New York a day early, a non-Iranian official briefed on the talks says Qatari mediators gave Araghchi the US feedback in Doha Tuesday 29 Sep, on his way home from New York; the document describes “a seven-day period of trust-building” leading back to “an enhanced version” of the June MoU, “including concrete steps on Iran’s nuclear program”; the dispute is over “sequencing,” not the components.

This contrasts with IRGC spokesman Mohebbi saying the only way war will end is if U.S. admits defeat, and since POTUS Trump is babbling about having “decisions to make”… “we blow them up, we make a deal, but the time is coming,” and “it will end very soon one way or the other,” it seems unlikely America will have a return to clarity anytime soon.

If you’re wondering who is filling Trump’s head with visions of nuclear annihilation, Ken Klippenstein reports it’s Undersecretary of Defense War Elbridge Colby.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

Next up, some commentary on Democratic party attempts to contain and steer the blue wave Trump’s insanity, corruption, and incompetence has unleashed.

Democratic Establishment Stuck in Groundhog Day of Neoliberal Economics and Neocon Foreign Policy

No matter how many primaries their hand-picked favorites lose, no matter what the polls say, the Democratic establishment and their allies in the MSM are fighting a desperate rear-guard action against progressives in the party from Florida to Michigan to Minnesota.

I’ll get to those campaigns, but first I’ve got to put a stake in the heart of a monster who keeps getting out of his political coffin.

Rahm Emanuel Embodies Thirty Years of Neoliberal, Neocon Dem Failure

Some nightmares, like Rahm Emanuel’s political career, never end. For three decades, the former key Bill Clinton aide, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Chief of Staff to POTUS Obama, Mayor of Chicago, and Ambassador to Japan has failed upward time and time again.

Never fear, despite a four-year tenure in Tokyo that was marked by nonstop controversy (mostly for his aggressive advocacy of LGBTQ issues he now criticizes Democrats for over-emphasizing) and conflicts with his host country and China (toward which he was so belligerent the Biden admin had to rein him in) following on the heels of his disastrous term as Chicago mayor that saw him essentially run out of town on a rail after covering up a notoriously racially charged police murder and endemic sexual violence against Chicago school children and earning an 18% approval rating by his term’s end, Rahm is back on the campaign trail teasing a 2028 run and getting the fawning press coverage from the MSM that has been a hallmark of his career despite consistently abysmal poll numbers with Dem voters.

Rahm is also trying to claim credit for what seems like the inevitable Trump midterm Blue Wave election that could see Democrats take majorities in both houses. He’s got experience, having done the same in 2006, despite running a centrist strategy that set the Dems up for the 2010 wipeout.

But that’s enough about Rahm. I want to cover a couple of big-picture trends that are shaping the political context and which the conventional wisdom just refuses to acknowledge.

Anti-System Voters

The other eternally recurring Groundhog Day meme of my political era has been the relentless appeal of outsider candidates from H. Ross Perot in 1992, to John McCain in 2000 (as unbelievable as that seems in retrospect it’s true), Howard Dean in 2004, to Bernie Sanders and Trump in 2016 and Sanders (but not Trump) in 2020, and Trump in 2024.

Political analysts are finally realizing that the appeal of these candidates is less about their position on some idealized right-left spectrum and more about their outsider status itself.

G. Elliott Morris writes about a newish (Dec 2025) paper by political scientists Christopher Williams and Leon Kockaya that argues the key swing bloc is not the “economically liberal, socially conservative” unicorn that Emanuel and Schumer and their ilk have been chasing since the Clinton era, but rather “a key bloc of swing voters who distrust both parties, believe elites are corrupt, and think the political system is rigged against people like them.”

This study pairs well with a Wall Street Journal piece that makes what must be a painful admission for Rupert Murdoch’s flagship, “Americans Want Populist Policies That Defy Traditional Political Labels:”

Americans in both parties back government-imposed price caps and other market interventions to make life more affordable, suggesting new support for populist ideas that were once largely outside the political mainstream.

That’s the takeaway of a new Wall Street Journal survey that asked respondents what they want from their elected officials and the political system. Voters of all partisan stripes strongly support capping the cost of prescription drugs, child care and credit-card interest rates.

The survey suggests that a coalition reaching beyond the nation’s familiar party labels exists for a range of policies at a time when Americans view Republicans and Democrats negatively.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

I also did today’s Iran War Update for Naked Capitalism.

I’m back again to bury the Biden legacy.

Once again, I have to remind readers why I’m bothering with this when the Corrupt Dotard Donald Trump is in full-on florid psychosis and threatening to annihilate Iran while breaking all records for Presidential corruption.

Since Trump sucks so bad (and yes, I’d say he’s even worse than Biden, and there IS a difference between the kinds of administrations we get with the different parties), why bother with ol’ Plagiarism Joe?

The reason is simple.

Until Americans, particularly Democrats, reckon with just how disastrous the last three Democratic presidential administrations have been (yes, America’s neocon foreign policy starts with Bill Clinton blowing up Yugoslavia and turning NATO into an offensive alliance and has continued to warmonger ever since, regardless of which party was in power), we’ll keep getting stuck with more of the same “not quite as bad as the Republicans” bullshit; we will only continue hurtling toward the undeniable end of the American Republic.

There is currently a well-funded counter-revolution occurring in the Democratic Party in which centrist Dems and the MSM are aligning to destroy anti-genocide, anti-war candidates like Graham Platner in Maine (got him) and replacing them with consultant-pliable candidates who are willing to disappear their progressive bona fides, take pro-genocide money, stop talking like a local, and do embarrassing crap on social media.

If Dem voters don’t belatedly realize that their party establishment leadership is as corrupt as the GOP and actively push to purge them, we will not be able to vote our way out.

Never forget the Iron Law of Oligarchy.

So let’s get back to the Delaware groper’s (and credibly accused rapist) abysmal record as US President.

In part 1 of this mini-series within a series (the prequel covered COVID, we’ll wrap with Gaza), I covered the post-Cold War years when Joe Biden ran point in the US Senate under the Clinton and Bush 2 administrations.

In part 2, I covered Joe’s misleadership role as Vice President up to the success of the Maidan Coup in 2014.

Part 3 finished out Biden’s term as VP, during which his portfolio included a nearly free hand in Ukraine because Obama was busy hanging out with Jay Z or some shit.

This is the penultimate post in the series and will cover Biden’s relentless efforts to provoke Putin’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine throughout 2021.

I’ll come back to Trump’s term because the Donald laid the groundwork for Biden to entrap Putin into a costly and very bloody war in Ukraine, but I’m going to go ahead and rant about what Biden did in 2020 and 2021 that has cost so many Ukrainian and Russian lives.

Tough-Talking Senior Citizen Made No Secret of His Plans

I’d written off Biden’s chances of winning the presidency throughout the early 2020 campaign season right up until Barack Obama and the utterly compromised and corrupt South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn conspired to rig the primaries (with the help of all the “moderate” candidates who dropped out en masse to help and Elizabeth Warren who stayed in despite having no chance of winning to hurt Bernie Sanders), only to be enraged and horrified by the 2020 campaign and the dreadful choice between more Trump and obviously senile and incredibly bellicose Joe Biden.

Biden made talking mad shit about Russia a centerpiece of his 2020 Presidential campaign (such as it was) from his January 2020 Foreign Affairs piece:

We must impose real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms…To counter Russian aggression, we must keep the alliance’s military capabilities sharp.

To his Sept 2020 Town Hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania:

I believe Russia is an opponent. I really do. But I assure you, they will pay a price.

To his Oct 2020 60 Minutes interview:

…the biggest threat to America right now in terms of breaking up our– our security and our alliances is Russia.

President Joe Was All Brinksmanship All the Time

Joe Biden entered office dead set on fanning the flames of war in Ukraine. Like all neo-cons, Biden’s contempt for Russia knows no bounds, and there’s no evidence he’s ever lost sleep at the thought of the devastation his actions have wrought on Ukraine.

President Joe wasted no time in turning up the heat on Putin, from his February 4 speech to Victoria Nuland’s State Department:

…the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions… are over. We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia.

To his March 2021 interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:

You think he’s a killer? Uh-huh. I do. He will pay a price.

Putin’s reply was typically savage, for a playground:

…whatever you call me is what you are called yourself. I wish him good health.

Biden happily reiterated his support for George W. Bush’s aggressive policy of expanding NATO to include Ukraine at the June, 2021 NATO Brussels Summit.

And in July 2021, Biden revealed he completely underestimated Russia and had no concept of what an industrial autarky can do in wartime, saying, “(Putin’s) sitting on top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else.”

Don’t forget this policy was considered so aggressive at the time that it caused Bush’s Ambassador to Russia (and Biden’s CIA chief) Bill Burns to fire off the infamous Nyet Means Nyet Memo, and inspired Angela Merkel to write in her 2024 memoir that it was a “battle cry” aimed at Putin.

But that meant nothing to our big talking Joe, who told the DC press corps on December 3, 2021 that “I won’t accept anybody’s red line.”

I spent the whole year of 2021 freaking out about the potential of war in Europe even though no one I knew in real life or online seemed to care.

Gaslit to the Point of Panic

I’d been terrified about NATO expansion since I realized we’d admitted Albania and the Baltic States into the alliance at some point late in the Bush administration.

I was alarmed but not surprised when war immediately broke out between Russia and Georgia, but I was relieved when the American electorate reacted with utter bafflement to John McCain’s claim that “Today, we’re all Georgians” and threatened war with Russia on the campaign trail.

Little did I know that the insane warmonger John “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran” McCain would become a lodestone and role model to mainstream Democrats by the end of the 2010s.

It was reassuring when Obama laughed off Mitt Romney’s claim that Russia was “without question our #1 geopolitical foe” in 2012 by saying “the 80’s called and they want their foreign policy back.”

But after the Clinton campaign blamed Russia for losing the 2016 election to Trump and the liberal corporate media went into a frenzy over RussiaGate, there were no more reassuring laughs to be had.

Friends, family, work colleagues all turned into blood-thirsty warmongers who saw Putin as the villain of villains, solely responsible for the Trump presidency, and were not shy in calling me a “Trump enabler” and worse for being profoundly opposed to any kind of military conflict with nuclear-armed Russia and the deadly serious and quite competent Vladimir Putin.

Only the excellent Congressional Dish podcast by the brilliant and incredibly thorough Jennifer Briney provided some well-sourced reinforcement of my sanity with its December 2021 episode “Keeping Ukraine.”

So I spent all of 2021 in isolated terror at what I saw as Biden’s relentless efforts to provoke Putin and Russia, using Ukraine as his bludgeon.

As worried as I was, I could never have imagined the full-bore information war that would overwhelm the West in 2022.

We’ll get to that next time, but before I wrap, I need to go back to Trump, for completeness’ sake.

Trump Arms Ukraine

Despite Obama giving Biden, McCain, Nuland, and company a free hand to stir shit in Ukraine in his term, he refused to provide aid to the Ukrainian military, recognizing that Russia would always have “escalatory dominance” in the region.

Trump, perhaps stung by the Clinton campaign’s trumped-up (no pun intended, I lie) RussiaGate bullshit, handed his Ukraine policy over to neo-cons Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and had a much more aggressive policy posture than Obama had allowed.

Trump Arms Ukraine

• 2017: CIA program expands, backed by Pompeo and Bolton

• Dec 2017: First lethal aid: Javelins approved

• 2017–2020: CIA paramilitary training “expanded under Trump”

• 21 Apr 2019: BBC: Comedian Zelensky wins presidency by landslide

• Jul–Sep 2019: Trump holds $214m in Pentagon aid, then releases it

Trump Gets Himself Impeached

The Democratic Congressional Majority had a principled opposition to charging Trump with violating the Emoluments Clause, despite the many open bribes he’d taken from foreign countries, but his clumsy 2019 efforts to get Zelensky to incriminate the crooked Biden family with naughty doings in time to impact the 2020 election brought the hammer down.

Events in Ukraine 2014-2021

I need to give some basic historical summaries because “History? What’s that?” and the massive amounts of propaganda and lies told in the MSM about Ukraine to this day.

2014

• 22 Feb: Yanukovych flees; the Rada votes him out. Maidan commander Parasyuk to Ukrainska Pravda, 24 Feb: his men held deputies in the building. Yanukovych in Rostov: “nobody has ousted me” (RFE/RL).

• 23 Feb: The Rada votes to repeal the 2012 language law that let Russian be an official regional language. The 2012 law allowed a regional language where at least 10% spoke it. Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov refused to sign the repeal, so the 2012 law stayed in force until the Constitutional Court struck it down on 28 Feb 2018 (Ukrinform).

• 27 Feb: The Crimean parliament votes for a referendum

• 16–18 Mar: Crimea referendum, then annexation. Putin’s Crimea address.

• 14 Apr: Fighting in Donbas begins. OHCHR counts the war from this date. The 2001 Ukrainian census showed that the breakaway regions of Donetsk (74%) and Luhansk (68%) were majority Russian-speaking, as was Crimea (with 77%).

• 2 May: Odesa, House of Trade Unions: 48 dead, 42 of them in the fire. OHCHR.

• 17 Jul: MH17 shot down over Donbas: 298 killed. OHCHR counts them in the 2014 civilian toll.

• 5 Sep: Minsk I: the 12-point protocol. Trilateral Contact Group (Ukraine, Russia, OSCE) plus the separatist leaders. Ceasefire, OSCE monitoring, decentralisation, amnesty, prisoner exchange. The ceasefire failed.

• 2014 total: 2,084 civilians killed, the deadliest year. Includes MH17.

2015–2018

• 12 Feb 2015: Minsk II: the “Package of Measures”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande as mediators (UN Peacemaker PDF). Ceasefire from 15 Feb and heavy-weapons withdrawal; local elections in the separatist areas under Ukrainian law, and amnesty; constitutional reform by end-2015 giving “certain areas” of Donetsk and Luhansk special status; Ukraine regains the border only after the elections and the reform. See below for Merkel and Hollande’s comments on the true purpose of the agreement.

• 2015–2018: The political clauses were never carried out. Civilian deaths fell from 955 in 2015 to 58 in 2018.

• Dec 2017: Trump approves Javelins, the first US lethal aid. CNBC/AP.

• Nov 2018: Kerch Strait: Russia seizes three Ukrainian navy ships. State Dept.

2019–2021

• 21 Apr 2019: Zelensky wins with 73% on a peace platform. BBC. Note that he changes his position dramatically after taking office.

• 25 Apr 2019: The Rada passes the state-language law: Ukrainian “the only official state language”. 278 votes; Poroshenko signed it on 15 May, days before leaving office (UNIAN). In force 16 Jul 2019. Language quotas for state and private TV; at least half of printed media text in Ukrainian; “public humiliation” of Ukrainian made an offence (RFE/RL). Private communication and religious ceremonies are exempt (UNIAN).

• 20 May 2019: Inaugural: “Our primary task is ceasefire in Donbas”

• 25 Jul 2019: The Trump call (memo PDF)

• 1 Oct 2019: Zelensky signs the Steinmeier Formula. Ties Minsk to elections in Donbas. “No to Capitulation” protests follow and he backs off. Foreign Policy.

How the EU and Ukrainian Leadership Saw the Minsk Accords

• 7 Dec 2022: Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Die Zeit. The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time, which it used to get stronger.

• 28 Dec 2022: Former French President François Hollande to the Kyiv Independent

• 15 Jun 2022: Poroshenko: Minsk bought “eight years” to build the armed forces. Espreso / Radio Svoboda (Portnikov).

• 2017: CIA program expands, backed by Pompeo and Bolton

• Dec 2017: First lethal aid: Javelins approved

• 2017–2020: CIA paramilitary training “expanded under Trump”

• 2 Feb 2019: US announces intent to withdraw from the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty; withdrawal is completed in August.

• 21 Apr 2019: BBC: Comedian Zelensky wins presidency by landslide

• Jul–Sep 2019: Trump holds $214m in Pentagon aid, then releases it

Under Trump, US military aid (and CIA activity) to Ukraine compared pretty favorably to the kind of money poured into the black hole before Russia invaded in February 2022.

Cross-posted at Ian Welsh.

I was flattered to be a guest on JG Michael’s Parallax Views to discuss the Paramount-WBD merger, the financing behind it, and the legal settlement that let it proceed. Give it a listen!

Wall Street seems to be noticing that the data center boom is being financed based on wildly optimistic revenue projections as unfinished projects and unused chips pile up.

Meanwhile, the “philosophical” claims of AI boosters (“AI Agents are intelligent and deserve equal rights”) are getting more extreme, even as their credibility takes hit after hit.

Let’s start with Oracle out in the desert.

Oracle Plays Rare ‘Force Majeure’ Card

These rich kids and their card games; some of them have cards in their deck no one else has. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is no exception, pulling out a very rare “force majeure” card to protect itself should one of its “Stargate” data centers in New Mexico not come online as scheduled. Per Bloomberg (archived):

Oracle Corp. is moving to shield itself from racking up expenses on a massive data center being built in New Mexico, adding a fresh wrinkle to a project beset by opposition and regulatory setbacks.

The technology giant sent the project’s developer, a unit of Blue Owl Capital Inc., a notice citing force majeure, according to people familiar with the situation. Rather than trying to walk away as the site’s main tenant, Oracle is attempting to put off payments should the data center dubbed Project Jupiter get derailed and fail to come online in 2028 as planned, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private matters.

“The people said,” that’s some remarkable anonymous sourcing right there. Were these people the reporter met behind a 7/11 in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, or what?

But that’s neither here nor there. After hearing from both Oracle and Blue Owl spokesweasels that force majeure is totally common, everyday stuff, the piece gets down to brass tacks about what this means for the project announced with such fanfare by Donald Trump, Larry Ellison, Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman in early 2025:

If the two sides agree that a force majeure event tied to meeting power commitments has occurred, then Oracle could win a three-year delay on rent when those payments commence, one of the people said. The company would still have to pay other costs in the interim and owe the rent for the full lease term once payments begin, the person said.
…
Almost two years later, the campus designed to handle 2.45 gigawatts — enough electricity to power roughly 1.8 million homes at any given moment — has hit serious setbacks including the denial of a permit key to its plans for energy resources.
…
A group of about 20 banks provided an $18 billion loan to help fund the construction of the data center campus, one of several mega-debt deals that have helped bankroll the AI infrastructure boom.

Bloomberg also does some contortions to make “force majeure” seem like a totally normal, everyday business move:

Force majeure provisions are relatively common in the energy and commodities world when events such as bad weather and geopolitical conflicts disrupt supplies, leaving companies unable to fulfill their contracts. The clauses are becoming more common in data center developments as well, according to a recent client alert from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.

“In AI data center projects, force majeure is no longer a back-end boilerplate provision,” the June alert said. “It is a core litigation and risk-allocation tool that can determine whether a delay remains isolated — or cascades through the project’s construction, customer, power, insurance, and financing documents.”

Big Short investor folk hero Steve Eisman points out that ‘force majeure’ is an “Enron-era trick” and it doesn’t take much Googling to confirm that the “smartest guys in the room” had the force majeure card in their deck and weren’t afraid to employ it.

Axios pointed out that this kind of thing had an immediate impact on the cost investors seeking to protect themselves from an Oracle default have to pay:

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

As is so often the case, American military moves in West Asia were ominous:

And the data over the past month seems to confirm American claims of successfully routing around the Iranian blockade of the Strait:

The sanctions are having other pernicious effects as well, per the FT:

Iranian pharmacists have warned of a worsening shortage of medicines as the US war and blockade complicate the country’s ability to import and pay for medical drugs.

While the country of 90mn produces most of its own medication domestically, it relies on imports of ingredients from countries including India and buys medicines and vaccines from Europe and elsewhere.
But ministers have acknowledged in recent weeks that securing those supplies has become increasingly difficult.

The US has for months blockaded Iran’s southern ports, the main corridor for the country’s medicine imports, while a growing number of international flights — on which they are also brought in — have been cancelled because of American sanctions on airline service providers in third countries.

Several pharmaceutical factories were also hit directly or indirectly at the height of the US-Israeli bombing campaign, officials said. All this has forced Tehran to tap strategic reserves of medicine and look for alternative overland routes for imports, officials said.

Hadi Ahmadi, a spokesperson for the Iranian Pharmacists Association, said about 60 medicines used for life-threatening diseases, such as for the blood disorder thalassaemia, were in short supply.

Israeli analyst Danny Citrinowicz saw something coming, posting before Trump announced no ceasefire:

What happens the day after Washington says no?

Iranian leaders are also reading the American political calendar. They understand that a major escalation before the midterms could impose significant political and economic costs on the administration, particularly through higher oil and gasoline prices. Trump himself has publicly acknowledged the connection between the Iran conflict, energy prices and the midterm timetable.

If Tehran concludes that Washington wants to avoid a broader confrontation before November, it may decide that escalation, rather than compromise, offers the better path to leverage. The question then becomes whether Iran would move beyond absorbing the economic pressure of the U.S. blockade and take new steps to impose costs on Washington and the global economy, particularly around maritime traffic and energy flows.

The Strait of Hormuz has already become one of Tehran’s principal sources of leverage. Recent negotiations have centered precisely on the tradeoff between reopening the strait and easing the U.S. blockade.

So the administration should evaluate the Iranian proposal against two scenarios, not one. The first is the cost and strategic consequence of accepting a deal that largely revives the previous framework. The second is the likely Iranian response if Washington rejects it.

The real policy question is therefore not only whether Iran’s offer is acceptable. It is whether Washington has a credible strategy for what comes next if it is not.

Fire In the Hormuz

The Hormuz Letter reported:

BREAKING: Iran has launched anti-ship missiles from Sirik in southern Iran toward vessels under US escort in the US-backed southern Omani corridor of the Strait of Hormuz, with several large-scale explosions heard in the Strait over the past hour and at least one oil tanker confirmed hit, per initial reports.

Local sources say “a serious naval conflict” is ongoing tonight. The explosions in the past few hours are in the double digits, with further explosions minutes ago around Qeshm Island.

And

BREAKING: Iran’s IRGC has substantially escalated its targeting of vessels in the Strait of Hormuz over the past hours, launching anti-ship cruise missiles and drones while fast-attack boats engage tankers with guided rockets, machine guns and small arms, per initial reports and a senior Iranian source.

At least 3 vessels have been struck and a 4th has turned around, with a second source putting the number struck tonight at up to 6.

And

BREAKING: Iran is laying naval mines in the US-backed southern Omani corridor of the Strait of Hormuz tonight. At least some of the 10+ missiles fired so far carried mines, per initial reports and a senior Iranian source.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

Trump Trashes Ceasefire Talk

The Wall Street Journal got the exclusive:

President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said.

Tehran’s proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and resumed nuclear talks in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, which is causing deep damage to the country’s economy. Trump says openly that Tehran is begging for a deal after the midterms that dismantles its nuclear program.

But privately Trump is skeptical Iran would meet his demands and has told his staff that he sees a renewed bombing campaign as likely, the officials said.

Trump’s current position indicates the conflict’s stage—a liminal space between war and peace—is likely to tilt back toward hostilities. But the president, who has declared victory since the earliest days of the seven-month fight, alternates between pursuing diplomacy, ordering airstrikes and tightening sanctions around Iran. His views today could shift as the war drags over the coming weeks, officials said, and could be affected by the results of the midterms.

Trump’s bellicosity was making headlines on multiple fronts today, although the other two (talk of a plan to invade Cuba, supporters calling for martial law before the election) were even more nebulous than this nothing burger from TACO Trump, but the net effect is to alarm and frighten the casual headline scanner who doesn’t have the wherewithal or time to parse the details of this nonsense.

Trump’s comments and rumors of peace continue to impact the oil markets, per Oil Price:

November WTI crude oil futures spent the week trading a possible reopening of the Strait of Hormuz against the risk that shipping conditions have not normalized. The contract fell to $88.67 Tuesday after reports that Iran could reopen the Strait within seven days, then recovered to $96.78 Thursday as the diplomatic story ran into the same problem it had all week: no agreement, no normal tanker traffic, and no proof the physical market is back to normal.

Meanwhile the US admissions of casualties continue to mount.

The Count Mounts, What a Horrible Toll

The Washington Post reported Thursday on “dozens” of troops added to tally of US wounded in the war with Iran:

The Pentagon’s public tally of troops wounded during the Iran war was quietly increased by 37 this week without explanation from the Defense Department.

The increase includes 29 Navy sailors and eight Marines, according to a review of the Pentagon’s public database of personnel killed and wounded during U.S. conflicts and other military operations overseas. The web portal is called the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS.

As of Wednesday, the total number of troops wounded during the Iran war is 861, according to DCAS. More than half are categorized in the Pentagon database as having occurred in “Overseas Operations” since the start of a July ceasefire between Washington and Tehran that later collapsed. Before then, killed and wounded troops were tallied under “Operation Epic Fury,” the Trump administration’s name for the Iran war.
The DCAS database does not explain how these 37 troops were wounded or when. A Navy official said all the sailors returned to duty following the unspecified injuries.

Will Schryver commented on the news, “”Sailors” and “Marines” are typically found in warships. Somehow 37 of them became casualties in recent weeks, and have now been added to the butcher’s bill. This strongly suggests something rather serious occurred on one or more US Navy warships.”

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

Sneak preview, LOTS of Yemen war coverage:

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the UN, bragging about the ease of his decision to attack Iran, denying accusations of genocide in Gaza, and waving his trademark terrorist beeper to a nearly empty General Assembly Hall. The White House claimed 22 million barrels got through the Straits of Hormuz yesterday and Iran’s Foreign Minister met with Britain’s.

Meanwhile things got very kino in Saudi Arabia as Ansar Allah’s missiles and drones hit pipelines, air fields, and concentrations of troops across the country. Oh yea, and Emmanuel Macron promised the Saudis that French forces will come to Muhammad bin Salman’s rescue.

Oh boy, what a day, let’s get to it.

Bibi Behaving Badly on the World Stage

Not trying to ruin anyone’s breakfast, but, well it is what it is. Full text is at JNS, some lowlights:

Do you know any other country the size of New Jersey capable of fighting a seven-front war? And for three years?

Seven fronts: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, militias in Iraq, militias in Syria, Palestinian terrorists in Judea Samaria. They all ganged up on us to wipe us off the face of the Earth.

They failed.

Because instead of collapsing, we delivered crippling blows to all of them.

With our great American friends, we crushed Iran’s army, navy, air force and nuclear facilities.

Israel hammered Hamas. We pummeled Hezbollah.

Remember the beepers? Well, I can tell you this: Hezbollah certainly remembers them.

Guess what happened to the bulk of Hezbollah’s vast arsenal of 150,000 ballistic missiles and rockets, all aimed at our civilians?

They’re gone.

Hezbollah’s leaders—dead. Their spirit—broken.
…
For three years, they have been valiantly fighting a seven-front war.

But there is an eighth front to this war. It’s the war for truth.

It is waged in the world’s media, and most perniciously, in social media.

Several foreign countries have spent untold billions to spread lies about my country.

The first to do so was Qatar.

Decades ago, it started massively funding American universities and toxic media outlets like Al Jazeera. They did the same in Europe, by the way.

Their goal was clear. Brainwash young minds to hate Israel, hate America and hate the West.

This is the same Qatar that hosts the Hamas butchers of Oct. 7.

The latest country to become a super-spreader of antisemitic lies is Turkey. (Recep Tayyip) Erdoğan is a tyrant who also hosts the Hamas terror chiefs.

He has murdered thousands of Kurdish civilians. He denies the Armenian genocide. He jails journalists and opposition leaders. In fact, I think he holds the world record on this, and that’s a tough call. But I think he’s number one.

He illegally occupies Northern Cyprus, an EU member, and he regularly transgresses against Greece, a NATO member.

Now he wants to take over Syria.

That’s not surprising, because he calls for Israel’s destruction almost every single day. He says he’s going to be the ruler of Jerusalem.

No, Sir. You won’t. This is our country, our city, our eternal capital.

Tyrants the world over seek to threaten us; they seek to undermine our resolve with their campaign of lies.

But ultimately, as on the military battlefield, the Jewish People will prevail.

And that’s enough of that. I’ll let you parse the lies for yourself. It’s enough for me to cut and paste this crap.

I do want to remind everyone that Israeli war crimes continue in Lebanon:

While we’re on a roll repeating (possibly) specious claims, CNN quoted an unnamed White House official claiming, in response to Iranian conditions for talks to reopen the Straits, that “The United States is in a very strong position with control of the Strait of Hormuz, so we are not in a rush. Nearly 22 million barrels of oil left the strait last night.”

Once again, rumors of peace were enough to spook oil bulls and bring prices down a tad from session highs.

Oh yea, about those talks or conditions for same.

Iran’s Demands, Conditions, Threats

Mohsen Rezaee, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, spoke to Iran’s rolling-news channel, Shabakeh Khabar (IRINN) (apologies for not including his remarks in yesterday’s Iran War update) and the headline takeaway was “If the US does not comply with Iran’s seven conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will not open, nor will we negotiate.”

Other quotes:

“If America does not fulfill the conditions, we will neither open the Strait of Hormuz nor is there any negotiation on the table.”

Rezaei says the conditions must be implemented “completely and all at once,” and says the US has been given only “four or five days” to do so. After that, he says, Iran will determine its “next step,” without specifying what that would entail.

Most revealingly, he explicitly describes Iran’s leverage over Hormuz as the guarantee behind this new diplomacy.

“In Islamabad, they had imposed a naval blockade; we had not closed the Strait of Hormuz in this manner at the start of the negotiations. But now, in the new diplomacy, we have a leverage called the Strait of Hormuz. This is the guarantee of the negotiations itself.”

“The Strait of Hormuz is our dignity. The Strait of Hormuz is our authority. The Strait of Hormuz is the tool to reclaim the rights of the Iranian nation.”

He also issued a warning to neighboring states against joining US efforts to restrict Iranian aviation: if they cooperate in preventing Iranian flights, “their airports won’t be able to have flights either.”

As of yesterday, those neighboring states include (per The New Arab): The United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Oman, Iraq (flights to Baghdad only), and Turkey (“although the measure reported so far is narrower. Iranian carrier Mahan Air said it had suspended its flights to Turkey at Ankara’s request. Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation said on Wednesday that other international services, including flights to Istanbul, were continuing according to schedule, suggesting the Turkish restrictions do not currently amount to a blanket ban on all Iranian carriers).

The seven conditions offered to the US remain mysterious, but have been passed along to Qatar and Pakistan and include:

1. An end to the war on all fronts
2. Release of frozen funds
3. An end to the naval blockade

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has also been reported to have passed on the big seven to the US.

Read the rest (and there’s a LOT more) at Naked Capitalism.

First up, I covered the latest events in the Iran War:

Iran War: Pezeshkian Says His Piece at the UN, China Won’t Sanction Iranian Airlines

Masoud Pezeshkian, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran spoke Wednesday at the UN. He opened by saying he dispensed with his prepared remarks after hearing Trump’s speech of the day before. Then he displayed photos of victims of the initial US bombing attack, leading the US delegation to walk out.

Selected quotes from the UN English-language translation:

In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful. Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I had prepared a speech to present to you yesterday. The United States president described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism.

I come from an Iran in which our esteemed Supreme Leader was assassinated without any legal framework or reason. I come from an Iran where, in truth, they bombed a school. You see these children. These children perished under bombs, with weapons used by the United States and Israel. They were innocent. They had committed no crimes.

Lamerd, one of the small cities in a province in Iran: a sports hall where children were busy playing. The United States, using weapons with multiple warheads, targeted that sports hall. They martyred, assassinated our scientists, our men, women and children — innocent children who, in truth, had committed no crimes, no sins.

Those who are terrorists, and train and protect terrorists, describe us as such. We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists. Our innocent people have been the targets of cowardly attacks and aggressions imposed upon our country, and we defended ourselves with utmost strength. America and Israel attacked us, equipped with the latest technology and weapon systems, and our people stood steadfast. Yes, they did hit us, but we did not bend the knee. We did not bow our head. We responded, but we did not hit civilian populations. They came into surrounding territories and targeted our universities, our health care centers, our schools, our hospitals, our infrastructure. All of it against international law.

…In any province, and commits assassinations like a true terrorist. In Gaza, over 80,000 innocent civilians have been murdered, brutally murdered. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced. They are committing genocide using the so-called technologies they have at their disposal. Then they label others as terrorists.

Are we the sources of instability? We only seek to live independently. Are we the ones who cause instability? Those who are committing terrorism and committing crimes, are they the protectors of peace and stability? None of the international laws have been adhered to by them. This is what we’re facing.

…

For the past two centuries, Iran has not attacked any country or any territory, but we have always defended ourselves steadfastly. Now we are being accused of being a source of instability in the region. We are labeled terrorists. And this has made it so that the path we have chosen for ourselves requires power to defend ourselves. We do not seek power in order to attack or commit aggression. We seek energy for progress, not to threaten societies with weapons, and we wish to cooperate and collaborate for security.

…

We seek energy for progress. For years they have attached labels — centrifuges, international sanctions and other labels — to our nuclear technology. But for our country, peaceful nuclear technology is part of our inherent progress: for our sick people it is cure and treatment, for the agricultural sector it is food security, for industry it is advancement and progress and the supply of electrical energy. Iran does not accept that nuclear technology be at the exclusive disposal of a handful. We will not bow our head and give up the right that is inherently ours. We say it clearly: no nuclear weapons, and no limitations on peaceful nuclear technology.

Our peace will not come on the field of battle. But they must give the needed security to the people and nation of Iran. We seek cooperation in order to have security. We live in a region in which warfare knows no borders. Crisis in one land will spill into the surrounding nations. That is why Iran does not see her neighbors as security rivals. We want to have strong neighbors.

In the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, we cannot let some have free access and gain their interests from a waterway while at the same time using that waterway to impose their aggressions and insecurity upon us, and to forbid us access to our own waterways. They close access for us to our own waterway, yet they keep supplying missiles and deadly military technologies to bring insecurity to all of the lands surrounding that waterway. We will not succumb to that. The expansion of warfare will not result in security. One cannot create chaos for the coastal countries while seeking naval security.

Excellencies, vis-à-vis Palestine: Palestine remains an open wound on the conscience of the international community, and Gaza remains a symbol of the failure of international mechanisms to prevent civilian suffering. For decades, resolutions have been adopted, yet occupation and violence have continued. We cannot speak of peace while ignoring Palestine. Lasting peace in West Asia is impossible without justice for Palestine.

As long as occupation, aggression and injustice persist in the world, resistance will continue.

…

And now a few words with those who are responsible for having planned and carried out aggressions against our country. Our people have experienced firsthand the result of their deadly aggression, and they have tested the strength and the steadfastness of Iran, and they have learned that Iran cannot be made to surrender. Iran has never been an aggressor, has never started a war, and has always shown her commitment to the negotiating table. They imposed the war on us. But we have proven that we are not afraid of war. [We] won a war that is defensive in nature, and we will stand in defense of our beloved Iran, our homeland, until our last breath.

…

I will repeat: the nuclear weapon is in Israel, but the inspectors are in Iran. Israel kills, but Iran is subject to sanctions. This is a true tragedy, which would make anyone hearing it laugh, at best. They kill; we are sanctioned, we are punished. Those who are ill, innocent people, the poor, the least privileged in our society are the targets of these sanctions. And this is what the United States seeks to do with all countries: to sacrifice the population of a country in order to achieve its illegitimate goals.

…

But going back to the words of the president of the United States yesterday: those who are experts in international law, dialogue, diplomacy and basic human standards can see that everything uttered about our country goes against the very essence, the Charter and the spirit of the United Nations. He must know that the resistance of the Iranian people will only increase in the face of sanctions, increased pressure, increased bullying. We will never bow our head or bend the knee. It must be understood by Mr. Trump and those who seek to bully us that we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations, without accepting the language of force.

There’s a ton of MSM coverage but nothing that has anything worthwile to add to Pezeshkian’s remarks.

Now let’s talk about China.

Trump Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Xi

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

Then I wrote about the terrible situation the Texas GOP finds itself in.

Rancid Texas Republicans Reign in Ruins?

If the polling data is to be believed, Texas Republicans, who haven’t lost a statewide election since 1994, might be coming to the end of their reign, led by a roster of corrupt loons whose arrogance and support for unpopular policies have set the table for a turnover.

Trump hasn’t helped one bit. His disastrous Iran War has raised gas prices and only made inflation worse. Trump’s collapsing support with rural voters and Latinos is hurting the Texas GOP where they live — their base and the demographic where they’d been gaining strength.

But they’ve gone out of their way to ruin their reputations with by tyring themselves to profoundly unpopular line items like a seemingly endless string of corruption and sex scandals (US Senate Nominee Ken Paxton), data center expansion, school vouchers (Governor Gregg Abbott), a ban on the state’s semi-legal THC smokables market (Lt. Governor Dan Patrick), open racism of a kind not acceptable in the state since the 1950s (Railroad Commission nominee Bo French), and troubling links to Jeffrey Epstein (State Comptroller nominee Don Huffines).

But first I need to make a point.

In 2026, No Politics Is Local

The late US Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s maxim about all politics being local hasn’t been true in decades.

That’s critical to keep in mind when talking about state politics in the United States in the 21st Century.

The national media has completely eaten regional and local media.

Thirty-five years ago when I was starting out in politics, Texas had popular, prosperous major daily newspapers in all its major cities and every small city and town had a local paper that covered local news with varying degrees of quality. That’s on top of at least three major network affiliates in every city, major and minor, all of which had news gathering operations plus a wide variety of radio stations most of them locally owned.

That all changed with the one-two punch of Bill Clinton’s 1996 Telecommunications Act which legalized mass consolidation of media property ownership and the internet which cut the legs out from under first the newspaper business and then television news.

The net effect of all of this has been that for this entire century the national news monoculture has utterly dominated the narrative everywhere. The average Texan has been barely more likely to know about Ken Paxton’s endless indictments and scandals than someone living in Florida or California who pays close attention to the news.

That means the national political context matters most of all. So let’s look at Trump’s numbers in nationally and in Texas because the 2026 elections are ultimately a referendum on the POTUS and his Trump 2.0 regime.

Trump Has Shat the Bed

This infographic from Real Clear Politics says a lot:

With the exception of the Texas US Senate race at the bottom those numbers are all national, but look at this Marist poll of Texans (taken from September 17-20) Trump’s approval is at 43%, disapproval at 55%. 39% say their congressional vote is a vote against Trump, 25% for him. Nearly four in ten say family finances have worsened in the past year.

The University of Texas/Texas Politics Project has Trump’s approval at the same 43%, with disapproval lower at 50% but also shows a trendline down from 52-38% in February.

What happened in February? Oh, yea.

Wonder if that has anything to do with the record-breaking high fuel prices that are killing the GOP at the polls?

Trump is also bleeding support with rural voters nationally. This AP-KFF poll has him at 48% with rural voters nationally, not bad compared to some demos, but when one remembers that Trump won rural voters in 2024 by a thirty point margin, 64%-34%.

Most of this erosion has to do with the economy, but 60% of rural Texans oppose a data center in their community. We’ll talk about that more when we get to Governor Greg Abbott.

But first we need to mention Trump’s popularity implosion with Hispanic Texans — keep in mind Texas is 40% non-Hispanic White, 40% Hispanic, almost 12% Black, and 5% Asian — Trump won this demographic handily in 2024 with an estimated 55% of the Hispanic Texan vote.

The Texas legislature excitedly re-drew the congressional district lines in 2025 to capitalize on this newfound strength with the Tejano community, but that might come back to bite them:

A September poll of 1,000 Latinos in Texas conducted for Cook Political and TelevisaUnivision found that 18% of Latinos who voted for Trump no longer support him, and almost two-thirds of Latino voters would be less likely to vote for candidates who support Trump’s immigration policies.

For both parties, those shifts explain both the promise and peril of Latino voters. Their support has often proved less dependent on party loyalty than on whether they believe elected officials will improve their economic circumstances.

Trump’s disapproval number with Texas Latinos is 66%, and well, that ain’t good.

And it’s more about the economy than immigration policy by a wide margin.

We’ll top off with 2,000 words’ worth of infographics:

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

UPDATED: 13:37 GDT I added stuff about the “51 former intelligence officials” and the MSM eating crow about the laptop being confirmed to be real.

Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine didn’t just happen. It was a passion project many years in the making.

And no one was more passionate about provoking war with Russia than Joe Biden.

Now that we’ve got the virulently anti-Russian prime minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, telling his parliament that Ukrainian casualties are currently 27,000 a month, it’s not time to let up on old Joe and the rancid ghost of Democratic administrations past.

In part 1 of this mini-series within a series (the prequel covered COVID, we’ll wrap with Gaza), I covered the post-Cold War years when Joe Biden ran point in the US Senate under the Clinton and Bush 2 administrations.

In part 2, I covered Joe’s misleadership role as Vice President up to the success of the Maidan Coup in 2014.

And this bad boy is going to finish out Biden’s term as VP, during which his portfolio included a nearly free hand in Ukraine because Obama was busy hanging out with Jay Z or some shit.

It’s too bad, because Obama seems to have been one of the few decision-makers in his administration with anything approaching a clear-eyed view of the situation.

I covered the Iran War update at Naked Capitalism today. Read it here.

Obama Said No to Arming Ukraine

In early 2016, Obama was quoted by The Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg in a piece entitled “The Obama Doctrine”:

Obama’s theory here is simple: Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.

“The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” (Obama) said.

I asked Obama whether his position on Ukraine was realistic or fatalistic.

“It’s realistic,” he said. “But this is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for. And at the end of the day, there’s always going to be some ambiguity.”

…
“There is no evidence in modern American foreign policy that that’s how people respond. People respond based on what their imperatives are, and if it’s really important to somebody, and it’s not that important to us, they know that, and we know that,” (Obama) said. “There are ways to deter, but it requires you to be very clear ahead of time about what is worth going to war for and what is not. Now, if there is somebody in this town that would claim that we would consider going to war with Russia over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, they should speak up and be very clear about it. The idea that talking tough or engaging in some military action that is tangential to that particular area is somehow going to influence the decision making of Russia or China is contrary to all the evidence we have seen over the last 50 years.”

Obama said this having said no to a joint Brookings, Atlantic Council, and Chicago Council demand that the US arm Ukraine to the tune of $1bn a year for three years.

I realize that’s chicken feed compared to the vast sums Biden would pour into the Ukrainian black hole, but it was big money in its day. Back before RussiaGate when most Americans agreed with Obama’s 2012 remark that “the 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back” in response to Mitt Romney declaring Russia “our #1 foreign policy challenge”

Despite presiding over the beginning of the Ukrainian Civil War from 2014 on, Obama’s term was seen as time wasted by true freedom-loving patriots like The Atlantic Council’s Adrian Karatnycky, who wrote the following for Foreign Policy in 2023:

Obama’s Russia policy, including his embrace of the doctrine of Kremlin escalation dominance, has continued to shape U.S. policy during the Trump and Biden administrations. Although Donald Trump behaved badly toward Ukraine by trying to enlist Kyiv in his efforts to weaken presidential rival Joe Biden, he greenlighted the shipment of Javelin anti-tank weapons in 2017 and 2019. Nonetheless, years of fierce debate merely over sending Javelins stifled discussion of other weapons needed by Ukraine, including air and missile defense, battle tanks, fighter jets, and long-range missiles. These could have made Ukraine more secure before 2022, and some of them are still not in Ukraine’s arsenal today.

To his credit, Biden advocated arming Ukraine with defensive weapons when he was vice president under Obama. But when he became president himself, Biden brought many of the architects of Obama’s timid approach to Russia back into the government. As a result of their influence, from the moment in the fall of 2021 when the U.S. government knew Putin was planning to invade to the start of the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the United States lost a crucial window in which to provide Ukraine significant new weapons and the training to use them. Instead of much-needed howitzers, tanks, multiple-launch rocket systems (such as HIMARS), and heavy ordnance, Washington doled out modest assistance enabling not much more than partisan resistance.

But that’s enough about what Biden couldn’t do as Obama’s VP; let’s look at what he and the policies he backed did do to land Ukraine and the EU in deep doo-doo.

If It’s 2014, That Must Be Crimea Seceding

There’s no way to discuss the events of 2014 without taking a bracing dip into the Black Sea waters surrounding that most strategic of peninsulas, Crimea.

Yeah, yeah, the official Western narrative is that Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine under military pressure from Putin in a patently rigged vote.

And it does seem to be true that the Crimean parliament voted 61-3 to hold the referendum after the building was taken over by unmarked troops.

But I’ve got to point out that Maidan company commander Volodymyr Parasuk bragged after the 328-0 vote in the Rada to remove Yanukovych and install the Maidan government that “our people simply came up to the Verkhovna Rada and detained the deputies, so that they would sit and work and not run off anywhere”.

This followed Parasuk’s threats from the main stage of Maidan of an armed assault on the presidential administration and the Rada that preceded Yanukovych fleeing Kyiv the night before the vote.

I’ll also quote Canadian-Ukrainian scholar Ivan Katchanovski (remember him from last time when a 2025 Ukrainian court confirmed his version of who shot who in the Maidan) who wrote about that 328-0 Rada vote (he also claims that videos of the session show about 262 deputies present for the vote):

“Many others voted under threat of violence by the far-right group of Maidan snipers, the Maidan Self-Defense, and a mob which surrounded the parliament. The commander of the far-right-linked Maidan company of snipers admitted that his group impelled, by force, deputies from the Yanukovych Party of Regions to vote for his removal.”

Anywho, I’m not going to argue about whether or not shenanigans happened in the Crimean vote that followed, but I will point out that Crimea was the only autonomous republic in Ukraine with its own parliament, its own Council of Ministers, and its own constitution, adopted 21 October 1998 and approved by the Rada. It even had its own president until 1995, when Kyiv abolished both the presidency and the Crimean constitution.

I’ll also point out that as of 2001, the last census of Crimea taken, the population was 58.3% ethnic Russian, 24.3% Ukrainian, 12% Crimean Tatar — and 77% Russian-speaking (that’s not including the port city of Sevastopol, which was 71.6% Russian, 22.4% Ukrainian in that same census).

How do you think that overwhelming Russian-speaking majority felt about the new Maidan government’s immediate revocation of the use of Russian as an official language?

The last polling I’ve been able to find of Crimeans shows that in May 2013 — 9 months before the events of February 2014 — 53% of them wanted autonomy and 29% wanted to join Russia.

Do you think those numbers held following the violence in Maidan and the fall of Yanukovych, the President backed most strongly by Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine?

But, the main point to make about Crimea is that the Russian Black Sea Fleet was already there and had been since 1783.

No Russian leader, even drunk Yeltsin, would have voluntarily surrendered the country’s only warm-water port.

That’s like asking Team America to give up the naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

Enough about that; let’s get to the fun part: Hunter Biden and Burisma, laptop included!

Hunter in Kyiv: A Four-Year Fappening

The fun mostly happened at a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma, founded under noble circumstances when Yanukovych’s ecology minister, Mykola Zlochevsky, granted gas licenses to companies he owned.

I am not a linguist, but I suspect Ukrainian has more words for “self-dealing” than Inuit has for “snow.”

Whatever you may have to say about Zlochevsky’s ethics, he’s a nimble and flexible politician, and he promptly gave two Burisma board seats to two principles of the storied American natural gas powerhouse….Rosemont Seneca Partners.

First Rosemont Seneca Partners partner Devon Archer got his board seat on the day Joe Biden visited Kyiv) and then three weeks later Rosemont Seneca Partner partner Hunter Biden got his. And boy did he, partner.

The Senate Republicans claimed that his significant contribution to Rosemont Seneca’s vast experience and expertise in natural gas and doing business in Ukraine brought Hunter $50,000/month, but since a lot of people are rationally skeptical of GOP committees, we’ll go with the total of $708,302 which hit Hunter’s bank account between June 2014 and October 2015 (good work if you can get it).

Five years later Hunter bravely endured an exclusive interview with ABC’s hard-hitting Amy Robach and said:

“In retrospect, look, I think that it was poor judgment on my part. Is that I think that it was poor judgment because I don’t believe now, when I look back on it -- I know that there was -- did nothing wrong at all,” Hunter Biden told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “However, was it poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is...a swamp in — in — in many ways? Yeah.”

“I gave a hook to some very unethical people to act in illegal ways to try to do some harm to my father. That’s where I made the mistake,” said Biden. “So I take full responsibility for that. Did I do anything improper? No, not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever.”

And then the brutal Robach went for the jugular:

“If your last name wasn’t Biden,” Robach asked, “do you think you would’ve been asked to be on the board of Burisma?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect,” he said. “But that’s -- you know -- I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”

“Because my dad was vice president of the United States. There’s literally nothing, as a young man or as a full grown adult that -- my father in some way hasn’t had influence over. It does not serve either one of us,” Biden continued.

Definitely not!

The disgusting part of all this otherwise totally cool, yet totally hot, natural gas action was that two totally uncool party poopers (NERDS!) crawled out of the administration and tried to object.

Deputy Secretary of State George Kent made a big hoo rah of his virtue when the (totally unfair and partisan) Senate GOP compelled him to testify:

George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state, testified Tuesday that he worried that Hunter Biden’s position at the firm Burisma Holdings would complicate efforts by U.S. diplomats to convey to Ukrainian officials the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality rules surrounding the deposition.

Kent said he had concerns that Ukrainian officials would view Hunter Biden as a conduit for currying influence with his father, said the people. But when Kent raised the issue with Biden’s office, he was told the then-vice president didn’t have the “bandwidth” to deal with the issue involving his son as his other son, Beau, was battling cancer, said the people familiar with his testimony.

Apparently this Kent dude just didn’t get it: Beau had cancer! This was a difficult time!

Also State Department energy envoy Amos Hochstein also talked to the Senate committee and claimed that raised the topic of Hunter’s Burisma board seat with Biden in October 2015, and Hunter asked to see him in November.

Cannily Hochstein called out the real issue with the Vice POTUS’s son taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a shady Ukrainian company:

“we, the government, had seen increased traffic in Russian language in pro-Moscow outlets that were trying to create some kind of rift between the U.S. and Ukraine or to undermine the U.S. efforts, and that they were using Hunter Biden’s name in those articles to sow that doubt.”

Fortunately, Hunter getting his beak wet didn’t interfere with Hochstein doing his job:

“Hunter Biden’s presence on the board did not affect my day-to-day work or anybody else’s that I came in contact with… it was just something that I learned, and it was a data point.”

And what happened when Hunter invited him out to coffee in Georgetown?

“I shared with him that the Russians were using his name in order to sow disinformation.
…
It had been a tough several months on him, and I told him how worried I was about him and his father and his family.
…
(Hunter) had specifically mentioned that he had joined the board and was working on issues that were present and future, and that these were areas that had occurred in the past that he had no knowledge of.

In my conversation with Hunter Biden, I did not recommend that he leave the board… I don’t believe that was my place to have that discussion, one way or the other.

This is the kind of dildo-riffic hairsplitting nonsense we can count on Democratic administrations to deliver. Good thing someone was alert to the possibilities for Russian disinformation presented by Hunter being on the take.

And we haven’t even gotten to “the Old Man” yet.

Killing Those Pesky Investigations & Lecturing Ukraine About Corruption

We’ve drifted pretty far from dear old Mykold Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, so let’s get back to him and some issues that certainly had nothing to do with his perceived need to throw some chum Hunter’s way enlist the insightful and expert consulting services of Rosemont Seneca Partners, via Interfax Ukraine:

In April 2014, the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) froze (the accounts of Brociti Investments Ltd of former ecology minister of Ukraine Mykola Zlochevsky in the amount of $23 million). The investigation lasted for nine months. In early December of 2013, court hearings were held, and on January 20, 2015, the official decision on the illegality of the arrest of the company’s funds was issued.

Fortunately it was all cleared up and the money was released in January 2015 and “the old man” didn’t even have to do anything.

The guy just kept getting lucky according to the Anti-Corruption Action Center, three different Ukrainian prosecutors general in a row buried the case.

But let’s hear from the old man himself how he handled Ukrainian corruption.

On December 9, 2015, Biden visited the Ukrainian Rada and had things to say, first he warmed up the crowd with some praise for their freedom-loving ways:

flame of hope was reignited by thousands of brave Ukrainians, some of you in this room, storming the Maidan, demanding a Revolution of Dignity. The world was transfixed. This time they were not going to be denied the future that so many of your country have longed for, for so long.

And the world was horrified when peaceful patriots were met by violence. They stayed at the Maidan day and night, facing down the Berkut in riot gear. For the first time since the Middle Ages, the bells of St. Mary [*sic] raised the alarm, calling the citizens of Ukraine to reinforce their brothers and sisters on the Maidan. Tens of thousands heeded the call bringing with them food, clothing, blankets, medical supplies, and their support. As the world watched -- and I was literally on the phone with your former President urging restraint -- as the world watched, the final assault came. Amidst fire and ice, snipers on rooftops, the Heavenly Hundred paid the ultimate price of patriots the world over. Their blood and courage delivering to the Ukrainian people a second chance for freedom. Their sacrifice -- to put it bluntly -- is now your obligation.

Then he sprinkled in a lot of anti-Putin talk, condemned “separatist thugs” in the Donbas, quoted his dad, Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke before getting down to the lecture:

…you also have a battle, a historic battle against corruption. Ukraine cannot afford for the people to lose hope again. The only thing worse than having no hope at all is having hopes rise and see them dashed repeatedly on the shoals of corruption.

And if the people resign themselves to exploitation and corruption for fear of losing whatever little they have left, that would be the death knell for Ukrainian democracy. We’ve taken so many critical steps already. But all of you know there’s more to do to finish this race. Not enough has been done yet.

As the Prime Minister and the President heard me often say, I never tell another man or another nation or another woman what’s in their interest. But I can tell you, you cannot name me a single democracy in the world where the cancer of corruption is prevalent. You cannot name me one. They are thoroughly inconsistent. And it’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform. The judiciary should be overhauled. The energy sector needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles -- not sweetheart deals. It’s not enough to push through laws to increase transparency with regard to official sources of income. Senior elected officials have to remove all conflicts between their business interest and their government responsibilities. Every other democracy in the world -- that system pertains.

Oligarchs and non-oligarchs must play by the same rules. They have to pay their taxes, settle their disputes in court -- not by bullying judges. That’s basic. That’s how nations succeed in the 21st century.

Corruption siphons away resources from the people. It blunts the economic growth, and it affronts the human dignity. We know that. You know that. The Ukrainian people know that. When Russia seeks to use corruption as a tool of coercion, reform isn’t just good governance, it’s self-preservation. It’s in the national security interest of the nation.

Three years later, Joe bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations about the strong anti-corruption measures he took on that very trip:

I’m desperately concerned about the backsliding on the part of Kiev in terms of corruption. They made—I mean, I’ll give you one concrete example. I was—not I, but it just happened to be that was the assignment I got. I got all the good ones. And so I got Ukraine. And I remember going over, convincing our team, our leaders to—convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.

So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him.

(Laughter.)

I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b*tch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

Well, there’s still—so they made some genuine substantial changes institutionally and with people. But one of the three institutions, there’s now some backsliding.

The savvy crowd at the CFR got the joke fortunately and laughs were had aplenty. Definitely nothing corrupt about a sitting US Vice-POTUS threatening to withhold a billion dollars of appropriated money to remove another country’s chief prosecutor.

Even worse than the actual snitches were the digital snitches, though.

‘10 held by H for the big guy’

In 2025 we learned more about Hunter’s business operations during the Obama-Biden term from the unimpeachable New York Times:

Oh snap, the totally disreputable not-to-be-believed NY Post reported most of that same shit 10 years earlier:

One email sent to Biden on May 13, 2017, with the subject line “Expectations,” included details of “remuneration packages” for six people involved in an unspecified business venture.

Biden was identified as “Chair / Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC,” an apparent reference to the former Shanghai-based conglomerate CEFC China Energy Co.

His pay was pegged at “850” and the email also noted that “Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate.”

In addition, the email outlined a “provisional agreement” under which 80 percent of the “equity,” or shares in the new company, would be split equally among four people whose initials correspond to the sender and three recipients, with “H” apparently referring to Biden.

The deal also listed “10 Jim” and “10 held by H for the big guy?”

Neither Jim nor the “big guy” was identified further.

Damn that Russian disinformation! Sometimes the really insidious thing about it is that it’s true.

One of Hunter’s business partners, Tony Bobulinski testified to the Senate Oversight Committee, “The H in that message is Hunter Biden, and the big guy — 100 percent — is Joe Biden.”

Don’t worry about that corroboration from two other partners who talked to CBS, because the New Republic said Bobulinski was shady and Politifact reassured us that “no credible outlets have confirmed the allegations.”

I know what you’re thinking, ‘Nat this is great and all, but crack open the fucking laptop already.’

Soon, soon, one more thing first.

Gaslighting, Inc.

That whole thing being the way social media monopolies and the MSM colluded to deny the NY Post’s reporting about Hunter’s laptop in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

Like any truly brilliant disinformation operation, it started at the top with Biden campaign advisor (and future Gaza genocide overseer Secretary of State) Anthony Blinken making a call to former deputy CIA director Michael Morrell.

Resulting in this classic from Politico “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say” which featured the 51 former intelligence officials Morrell has rounded up signing a letter saying the laptop story has “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Brilliant, my hat is off. And it worked for a long time, until it fell apart in the end, as all lies must.

• New York Times, 14 Oct 2020: Glueck, Schmidt and Isaac: a report the social media companies “deemed so dubious that they limited access,” “based on material provided by Republican allies of President Trump”. Later: NYT, 16 Mar 2022: emails from the laptop cache “authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation”.

• Washington Post (opinion), 16 Oct 2020: David Ignatius, “The truth behind the Hunter Biden non-scandal”. Later: WaPo, 30 Mar 2022: two forensic experts verify about 22,000 of the emails.

• NPR, 17 Oct 2020: “Questionable N.Y. Post Scoop Driven By Ex-Hannity Producer And Rudy Giuliani”. Later: NPR CEO Katherine Maher to Congress, Mar 2025: “mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner”.

• New York Times, 18 Oct 2020: Katie Robertson, “New York Post Published Hunter Biden Report Amid Newsroom Doubts”. Later: NYT, 16 Mar 2022: emails from the laptop cache “authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation”.

• Politico, 19 Oct 2020: Natasha Bertrand, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say”. Later: Politico, Sep 2021: Ben Schreckinger’s reporting confirms some of the emails.

• CBS, 60 Minutes, taped 20 Oct, aired 25 Oct 2020: Lesley Stahl to Trump: the laptop story “can’t be verified” (exchange cut from the broadcast). Later: CBS, 21 Nov 2022: forensic analysis of the laptop data “showed no tampering”.

• NPR, 22 Oct 2020: Managing editor Terence Samuel: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories” (as quoted by the Daily Caller). Later: NPR CEO Katherine Maher to Congress, Mar 2025: “mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner”.

• Washington Post (Outlook), 24 Oct 2020: Thomas Rid, “The Hunter Biden laptop could be fake. Or it could be real. We may never know.” Later: WaPo, 30 Mar 2022: two forensic experts verify about 22,000 of the emails.

• CNN, clip posted 24 Oct 2020: Christiane Amanpour to the RNC’s Liz Harrington: “there has never been any issues in terms of corruption”… “No, we’re not going to do your work for you.”

• New York Times, 13 Sep 2021: Shane Goldmacher: “an unsubstantiated New York Post article”; the word was removed the same day without a correction notice. Later: NYT, 16 Mar 2022: emails from the laptop cache “authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation”.

The real punchline came when Facebook and Twitter piled on. I don’t know why shitlibs find censorship so comforting- oh wait, because they’re full of shit, right. Nevermind.

• Facebook, 14 Oct 2020: spokesman Andy Stone says the story is “eligible to be fact-checked by Facebook’s third-party fact-checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”

• Twitter, 14 Oct 2020: blocks links to the story in tweets and direct messages, citing its hacked-materials policy (NPR).

• Twitter, 14–30 Oct 2020: locks the New York Post’s own account for two weeks, and unlocks it on 30 Oct after changing its policy.

• Jack Dorsey, 14 Oct 2020: “Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”

• Twitter, 15 Oct 2020: changes its hacked-materials policy (Washington Post).

• Twitter, 16 Oct 2020: stops blocking the Post article (New York Times).

• Mark Zuckerberg, Aug 2022: tells Joe Rogan that an FBI warning about Russian propaganda led Facebook to limit the story (BBC).

• Twitter Files, 2 Dec 2022: Matt Taibbi publishes Twitter’s internal messages on the decision to block the story (thread).

• House Oversight, 8 Feb 2023: former Twitter executives testify about the block and reject claims of government collusion (NPR).

• Mark Zuckerberg to Jim Jordan, 26 Aug 2024: “the FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma”; Facebook “temporarily demoted” the Post story; “It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

The real fun came in 2022 when The NY Post (who I normally loathe) got to run about a dozen victory laps as so many “credible outlets” had to eat crow:

• Politico, POLITICO Playbook: Double trouble for Biden, 21 Sep 2021

• New York Post, The Hunter Biden laptop is confirmed?! Color us shocked!, 21 Sep 2021

• New York Times, Hunter Biden Paid Tax Bill, but Federal Investigation Continues, 16 Mar 2022

• New York Post, Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop confirmed in New York Times report, 17 Mar 2022

• New York Post, Now that Joe Biden’s president, the Times finally admits: Hunter’s laptop is real, 17 Mar 2022

• Washington Post, Here’s how The Post analyzed Hunter Biden’s laptop, 30 Mar 2022

• New York Post, Washington Post joins New York Times in finally admitting emails from Hunter Biden laptop are real, 30 Mar 2022

• NBC News, Analysis of Hunter Biden’s hard drive shows he and his firm took in about $11 million from 2013 to 2018, 19 May 2022

• CBS News, Copy of what’s believed to be Hunter Biden’s laptop data turned over by repair shop to FBI showed no tampering, analysis says, 21 Nov 2022

• New York Post, CBS ‘confirms’ Hunter Biden laptop is real 769 days after Post broke story, 21 Nov 2022

• ABC News, 4 big takeaways from 1st day of testimony in Hunter Biden’s gun trial, 4 Jun 2024

• CNN, Hunter Biden gun trial jury hears he texted about smoking crack after purchasing the firearm, 4 Jun 2024

• New York Post, NPR head Katherine Maher finally admits outlet failed to cover Hunter Biden laptop ‘more aggressively or sooner’, 26 Mar 2025

And as much as I’d love to post dozens of sexy pics of Hunter snorting coke off of hooker’s asses or whatever, I’ve got to wrap this up so we’ll end with the most damning thing on the laptop.

‘Unlike Pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary’

So here’s the big allegation from the notorious NY Post article that started all the trouble:

Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.

The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.

An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.

The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.

Two years later the NY Post was still mining the laptop for nuggets like this one:

Hunter Biden’s access to lucrative financial opportunities also came with expectations — including kicking back as much as 50% of his earnings to his dad, text messages on his old laptop show.

“I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years,” Hunter Biden groused to daughter Naomi in January 2019. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary.” Pop is Joe Biden.

The laptop — infamously abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 — does not contain any direct evidence of such money transfers, but does show that Hunter was routinely on the hook for his father’s household expenses while Joe Biden was vice president.

And the NY Times was johnny-on-the-spot with this disinformation-dispelling classic “Hunter Biden Text Cited in Impeachment Inquiry Is Not What G.O.P. Suggests.”

Alright, next time I’ll wrap this monster up and cover the critical 2020-2024 era when the Ukraine Civil War turned into outright genocide, killing hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions.

More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly, according to six U.S. officials familiar with the Defense Department’s internal casualty accounting data.

Five of the officials said there have been at least 22 military fatalities — four more than what appears in the Pentagon’s public database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS.
A sixth official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the figures, said 23 service members have died since Feb. 28, when the Trump administration, in concert with Israel, initiated the Iran war. Not all of the undisclosed deaths are directly tied to the conflict but have involved U.S. personnel who were in the Middle East amid ongoing hostilities, this person said.

They needed six anonymous sources for this?

It’s been obvious for months that Hegseth and company were lying every time they opened their mouths, but I guess better late than never.

Greasy Pete was fast on his reply:

Somehow Pete’s reassurances didn’t put out a prairie brushfire rebellion brewing on the campaign trail.

GOP Senators Break With Trump on Iran War

In a swerve no one could have seen coming, four GOP Senators and nominees for same have suddenly started opposing the Iran War in stronger terms than anyone on the Dem side of the aisle. Politico had the deets:

Sen. Jon Husted became the latest battleground Republican this week to call for a quick end to the Iran war, as panic grows over how high gas prices and President Donald Trump’s agenda could imperil the party’s chances in November.

“The war needs to come to an end as quickly as possible so that we can lower gas prices,” the Ohio senator told POLITICO, in his furthest comments yet on the matter.

Coming after Iowa Senate nominee Ashley Hinson, who broke from Trump over the war on Monday, and Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers, who followed suit hours later, Husted’s comments are another example of the pressure he and other Republicans are under to address prices at the pump. Several candidates are creating some distance from Trump, as voters continue to blame the president for the current economy and the Iran conflict for high costs of living.

Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers came out with this “blistering” ad:

Read the rest at NakedCapitalism.

I’ve been writing about the shared commitment to unreality on the part of Americans and our leaders since 2025 and the increasing difficulty of maintaining our shared delusions, and it doesn’t look like I can stop now.

Part of the madness is the delusion that if the Democrats were just back “in charge,” then everything would be fine; I addressed that yesterday, calling out Barack Obama in particular and applying the test that Jesus of Nazareth prescribed for evaluating prophets.

Surprise, no Surprise: Obama fails.

But today let’s look at Mad King Donald and those following him into the land of fey and faerie.

Trump in ‘Deciding Mode’ on Iran

On the same day that his Truth Social feed featured the following bit of imperialist derangement:

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

And one particular info-juxtaposition stuck with me, stuck in my craw like my dry COVID cough.

First there were a series of posts from sources on X I consider credible West Asia war news and analysis accounts warning that POTUS Trump and Bibi Netanyahu were telegraphing some kind of massive attack in response to the beating Yemen has been putting on the fragile House of Saud this week.

My first thought was, what are we gonna fucking do, turn this:

Into this?

Meanwhile over on Facebook, a very sweet and sincere Democratic friend was posting some tired old bullshit about Barack Obama speaking in complete sentences and all and all the replies hit the same stale note: man, those were the days.

I had to get all Biblical and shit and cite Matthew 7:16-20 “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Listen up, y’all, the ruin of Gaza and the righteous wrath of Ansar Allah are the fruits of our bipartisan firm of False Prophets Obama, Trump, Biden and Trump and if we Americans continue to let our senescent shitbag POTUS keep throwing mad ordnance around like it’s the day before The Day After, we’re all gonna get what we’re asking for good and hard.

Karma, that is.

About the Oh So Eloquent Barack Hussein Obama

If only he'd spent that eloquence on something other than glossing over the continuation of the worst surveillance and military policies of the Bush/Cheney administration, the biggest destruction of Black wealth in American history, the insurance industry protection racket Rahm Emanuel called the Affordable Care Act, a fascist coup in Ukraine, genocidal attacks on Yemen, Libya and Syria, and making damn sure not one bankster did a single day for the biggest fraud in human history up to that point.

But yeah. Those were the days. Back when the POTUS spoke in complete sentences and bullshitted us right past the massive war crimes he was committing and/or enabling like the Saudi/UAE genocidal assault on Yemen.

In March 2015, the Saudis started bombing Yemen and the Obama administration made sure they had all the Made in America weapons and technical support to do it. And what support it was. In fact, the 2015-2025 attacks on Yemen have been so lavishly funded, and so spectacularly unsuccessful at achieving their stated goals, that it really makes me go, “Oh we’re gonna strike Yemen again? With what exactly, that we haven’t already done given that we’ve dumped about $250 billion on one of the poorest countries on Earth for eleven years and all we seem to have accomplished is really pissing them off?”

Let’s Do Some Accounting

The Pentagon flew aerial refueling for Saudi and Emirati warplanes from March 2015 through November 2018, at a cost of about $300 million — and then couldn’t be bothered to collect. It turned out the Pentagon had undercharged the coalition by some $331 million. As of late 2023 Riyadh still owed $15.1 million of it and told The Intercept they were “not aware of the outstanding debt.”

Eleven and a half years later the tab just keeps getting bigger and Ansar Allah just gets stronger and more defiant.

$’s Spent attacking Yemen, March 2015 – September 2026

• Saudi Arabia — $100–330bn — Air campaign, air defense, propping up its Yemeni clients

• UAE — $25–90bn — Its own war plus a decade of paid militias

• United States — $9–15bn — Refueling, intel, carriers, four bombing campaigns

• Israel — $0.3–1.5bn — Strikes on ports and airports, plus the interceptors

• United Kingdom — ~$0.1bn — Typhoons out of Cyprus, Navy missiles

Grand total, low to high: $135–440bn

Every president since has kept it going

Trump vetoed the War Powers resolution in April 2019 — the first time both chambers of Congress had ever passed one — to keep it going. Biden stood up at the State Department in February 2021 and said “this war has to end,” then spent his term running Operation Prosperity Guardian and Operation Poseidon Archer and parking carrier strike groups in the Red Sea at $9 million a day.

Then Trump 2.0 and his dumbass Secretary of Defense War Greasy Pete Hegseth. Operation Rough Rider, March to May 2025: more than $1 billion in under eight weeks. Roughly 2,000 bombs and missiles worth $775 million. Seven Reaper drones shot down, $200 million gone. Three F/A-18s that fell off the deck of a carrier, $210 million. Brown University’s Costs of War project found us firing $2 million missiles at drones that cost the Houthis $2,000.

And it’s still going. On September 10 the Saudis flew 64 airstrikes in a single day to no discernible effect on the battlefield in a dramatic contrast to Ansar Allah’s missile and drone strikes on Saudi cities in response which have clearly lit the Saudi’s shit up.

The only reason we can put a number on any of it is that one economist at Brown — Linda Bilmes, of the Costs of War project — sat down and counted the carrier days, the C-17 flights and the Tomahawks themselves. The Pentagon has never published a Yemen figure, and Congress has never made it. The Saudi and Emirati numbers are guesses built on daily burn rates, because those are monarchies and they don’t have to tell anybody anything.

Now They Want To Do It Some More Again

The Houthis put ballistic missiles over Riyadh, the Saudis intercepted them, and Trump spent the night at Camp David reviewing Yemen strike options before heading back to the White House early. CNN had already reported the pressure building on him to intervene, and that Riyadh itself is out of options. Embassies across the region are issuing warnings.

Strikes? What are we gonna do? Vandalize the world historic Old City of Sanaa?

We’ve spent billions bombing Yemen for the last eleven years and the Brits have spent a century trying to destroy and subjugate the place.

It’s not gonna work and it’s just gonna make the outcome more disgraceful.

What are we going to do to Yemen that we haven’t done already in an eleven year, ~$250B orgy of genocidal destruction waged on a country that never presented a threat to the US or UK and only threatens their neighbors now because they’re tired of being attacked by them?

The only card we haven’t played is sending the 101st Airborne in to get slaughtered in house-to-house fighting in the Old City of Sanaa.

Call it “Fleet of Black Hawks Down.”

And that’s before the oil math. Iran has Hormuz effectively closed, which left the Saudis pushing some 5 million barrels a day across the East–West pipeline to Yanbu instead — until drones out of Iraq hit its pumping stations on September 10 and 11 and Riyadh shut the line. Brent went over $110. What’s left is Project Freedom, the Navy walking tankers down a southern route past Iranian waters.

Brett Erickson, September 19:

“The reality is clear: Too much is going wrong at once. The United States doesn’t have any good options to change the outcome of this war.

The only solution is to cut a deal with Iran and bring an end to this disastrous failure from the Trump Administration.”

Or we could fire off nukes and really go out like world historic chumps whose name will never be mentioned without the survivors’ grandchildren’s grandchildren spitting before they say the hated word “Americans.”

And then there are our European allies lackeys, who are getting wrecked as a consequence of the Saudi decision to bomb the Sanaa airport following the Ayatollah’s funeral and break the truce that had held since 2022:

One in nine French filling stations is out of petrol or diesel, diesel is past €2.39 a litre at a record, and Macron has called an emergency meeting with the presidential candidates. In Grand Est it’s 16% of stations. European diesel cleared $200 a barrel on the benchmark. French officials say the shortage is logistical, not a crude shortfall.

The EU and its governments of US lackeys deserve this, but the European people don’t. Wake up and throw off your Ursulavonderchains.

This is the part that matters

Obama’s Hopey McChangey BS led directly to Trump.

“By their fruits ye shall know them.”

By the big JC’s own definition, Barry Obama meets the definition of a false prophet.

“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”

Matthew 7:16–20

The reason this matters — provided that civilization survives the weekend and coming months — is that if Americans don’t abandon this blue vs. red BS and wake up to the fact that both parties are hopelessly corrupt and in thrall to the most sinister forces of militarism and graft imaginable, we are going to get six years of clown show after big Dem wins in 2026 and then another, scarier fascist queued up and ready to go in 2032.

God help us if “we” “nominate” Klonopin Kamala again in 2028, because we might get an “anti-war” Tucker Carlson right away instead. And POTUS Tucker, I fear, would be as good as his word. He’d pull us out of Europe and West Asia and then get down to business rounding up immigrants and minorities here at home and rampaging across Latin America.

Brett Erickson, September 19:

“All of the alerts issued by the Middle East embassies in recent hours could VERY well be in relation to potential U.S. strikes on YEMEN, not Iran.

The wars between Saudi/Yemen and U.S./Iran could be merging into one…”

Let us pray for deliverance. This shit is insane and scary. The mad, dying empire might kill the planet in its death throes.

America, all the murder we’ve been exporting for 80 years is coming home to roost.

It’s on us for not stopping this shit sooner. Karma’s a bitch.