Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Dr. Anthony Fauci declines request to appear before a second Senate panel after GOP contempt vote

Dr. Anthony Fauci has declined a request to appear voluntarily before a second Senate panel.

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday declined a request to appear voluntarily before a second Senate panel after majority Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee voted along partisan lines last week to hold the longtime infectious disease expert in contempt.

In a pointed letter to Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, a lawyer for the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said any effort to compel him to appear before a Senate subcommittee, after a contentious July 29 hearing, would be to “impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes.”

During the July hearing on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 100 times, prompting the Aug. 6 contempt vote and setting up a referral to the Justice Department for potential investigation over whether he had properly exercised his constitutional rights.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the committee chairman who pressed for the contempt finding, said the constitutional protection did not apply because Democratic President Joe Biden had issued a preemptive pardon to Fauci, and he did not need to be concerned about potential prosecution.

Paul has long accused Fauci of misleading the public during the pandemic and the July hearing was the latest episode in his highly publicized confrontations with him. Paul has repeatedly called for Fauci to be prosecuted and imprisoned.

Johnson, chairman of the subcommittee on investigations, had sought to open a parallel avenue of congressional investigation about Fauci’s role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.

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Rage Politics: Hakeem Jeffries Will Take A Baseball Bat To The Supreme Court

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has struggled to pander to the mob to secure power in the midterm elections, including brandishing a baseball bat on social media to show his radical bona fides.

With Democratic Socialists chanting “you’re next” when seeing Jeffries, he continues to struggle to stay in front of the mob.

This week, he doubled down on his pledge to throw the Supreme Court to the mob if they make him the next Speaker of the House of Representatives.

After the recent gains by far-left candidates in states like Minnesota and the near victory of Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, Jeffries came out to reaffirm his intent to radically change the highest court. According to the Washington Times, Jeffries declared, “There’s a variety of different options that are on the table, and I think that we can’t foreclose any single one of them.” He added that the “conservative, right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has become basically a subsidiary of the MAGA Republican Party.”

He promised to make far-left Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) the driving force behind changing the Court, including possible 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and expanding the Court to create an instant liberal majority.

Notably, none of these figures were claiming that the Court was fundamentally flawed until it ruled against them, particularly in cases that impacted their political power such as declaring racial gerrymandering to be unconstitutional.

What is interesting is that the liberal justices reject this narrative, reminding citizens that the Court has delivered major losses to the Trump Administration. Indeed, President Trump has routinely attacked conservative justices for ruling against him and his Administration.

In addition, polls show that the majority of the public supports virtually all of the recent major rulings, including the ban on racial gerrymandering.

It is only the Democrats who oppose those rulings and are now demanding a hostile takeover of the Court.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has called for packing the Court because it does not follow her views and those of “widely held public opinion.” I have pushed back on that rationale, given the Court’s function as a countermajoritarian institution. However, these polls even challenge the flawed rationale for court packing.

So Jeffries is promising that the work of James Madison will be undone by the likes of Jamie Raskin and Elizabeth Warren. To have these calls on our 250th anniversary is crushingly ironic.  Other leading Democrats have lined up to pledge to fundamentally change the Court, which has played a key role in making this the oldest and most stable republic in history.

It is simply about power. Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has put packing the Supreme Court front and center, explaining, “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”

I have called it the Nike School of Constitutional Law. Democratic leaders are pledging to “just do it” to appease the mob. Of course, some of these measures would be challenged if done without constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court would then have to rule on the effort to pack or limit its members. The expansion can be done by legislative vote. Although most Americans oppose court packing, Democrats view control of the Court as essential to pushing through a radical agenda to change the political system to their advantage.

Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.

In Federalist 10, Madison discussed the destructive impact of factions in forcing through opportunistic changes to advance their interests:

“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

We are witnessing the same factional politics being pushed by leaders who believe that they can ride a rage wave into power. They have a greater likelihood of causing lasting damage to our system than guaranteeing their own lasting power. History is not on their side. Today’s revolutionaries are often tomorrow’s reactionaries in an age of rage.

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Woke 2.0 Will Be Worse

Readers familiar with Dr. Seuss’s classic, The Cat in the Hat, will remember the twin chaos agents Thing 1 and Thing 2.

“‘These Things are good Things,’” the Cat reassures the children whose mother has inexplicably left them under the supervision of a fish.

“‘They are tame. Oh, so tame! / They have come here to play.’”

The Things briefly feign innocence, then quickly reveal themselves to be marauding imps, knocking over nightstands and ruining the linens.

“I do not like the way that they play!” says the son of the house.

Now here comes Woke 1 and Woke 2.

“Woke 1 was crazy,” said U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, quoting an unnamed city councilman in a viral interview for ABC. The congresswoman sheepishly acknowledged that Americans did not like the way Woke 1 played out, while also implicitly announcing that there will soon be, or already is, a Woke 2. And it will be tame. Oh, so tame!

There is, in fact, a new version of wokeness in the making. But just as Thing 2 was fundamentally identical to Thing 1, Woke 2 will not be any different in essence from Woke 1. They are both here to upend the furniture.

Wokeness in all its forms is grievance politics.

Its central idea is that an injustice lies at the heart of America and must be corrected to atone for the historical misery inflicted on groups of innocents.

What is changing in Woke 2 is the account of who those innocents are, and how they have been wronged. Woke 1 was founded on the notion that black women are the most oppressed, and therefore most righteous, of all people. “I’m thinking,” said Kamala Harris in her vice presidential victory speech, “about the generations of women—black women.” She mentioned many other kinds of women, of course, but the list began and ended with “the black women—who are too often overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of this country.”

This approach had rhetorical power, up to a point. It traded on the successes of second-wave feminism and the reality of black slavery in America’s past. But it ran into some problems. Third-wave feminism, as worked out by theorists like Judith Butler, made it basically impossible not to affix the prefix “trans-” wherever the word “woman” appeared. So the flag of Woke 1 became the complicated and confusing progress pride flag—a gay rainbow with black and trans colors intruding from the left.

To make matters worse, the legacy of slavery did not actually touch all the racial minorities that Democrats wanted to bring into their fold. Most Nigerians, for example, had not experienced segregation in the United States. Nor had the millions of unvetted South and Central Americans streaming across the border. They were certainly “people of color.” But so were Chinese, Japanese, and Indian Americans, whose typically enviable life outcomes fit awkwardly into the narrative that the country was built on a ruthless caste system.

The contradictions heightened as Woke 1 faced a series of embarrassments such as Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the 2023 Supreme Court case in which Asian students complained that admissions officers were discriminating against them in favor of black applicants. Then there were the notorious Trump ’24 ads that pinned Harris to her previous support of taxpayer-funded gender surgeries for federal prison inmates. Placing black women at the center of the moral universe created an unexpected and electorally unworkable set of obligations to illegal immigrants and queer felons.

Clearly, the coalition needed shuffling. And so rearranging the order of priorities in the grievance hierarchy is what the reinvention of woke has actually been about. In place of the black trans woman who defined Woke 1, Woke 2 has chosen as its ideal victim the dispossessed Palestinian liberationist, fighting with Hamas against Israel. This has a number of interesting strategic advantages.

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Valuable Stolen Picasso Found Hanging on Milwaukee Apartment Wall After Tenant Was Evicted

A stolen Pablo Picasso print worth $50,000 has been claimed by its rightful owner after it was discovered by a landlord in Wisconsin while cleaning out a vacant apartment.

Gallery owner Bill DeLind thought the print by the iconic Spanish artist was gone for good after it was stolen in 2018 from his Milwaukee showroom.

Then, last week, he got a call from police. They wanted him to took at the reduction-style image that a Milwaukee landlord had discovered while turning around one of his apartments.

DeLind knew immediately what he was looking at. It was his stolen “Torero” print, one of 30 known to exist signed by Picasso, the New York Post and other outlets reported.

“I was overwhelmed,” DeLind said Friday. “I was at a loss for words. It was an overwhelming moment for me.”

“It was indeed mine,” he added. “It came back full circle.”

The landlord, Tim Dertz, told WISN-TV that he found the print while cleaning out an apartment of a tenant he had to evict.

“It was kind of in a weird spot hanging on a wall,” Tim Dertz told the station, per the Post’s report. “It looked like it had been there for a long, long time because it had tons of dust across the top of it.”

The landlord said he showed it to an antique dealer friend who recognized it as an authentic Picasso.

Dertz handed it over to police, who then contacted DeLind.

The Milwaukee Police Department told the Post Friday that the statute of limitations for theft and property crimes is generally six years. Still, the case remains under investigation, the department said.

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House Committees Detail Harvard Ties With Chinese Entities In New Report

A report released by House committees on Aug. 13 alleged that Harvard University prioritized financial ties over American national security and received more than $600 million from China, the most of any U.S. university.

The report, released by the House Select Committee on China and the House Education and Workforce Committee, alleged that Harvard created a nonprofit called Harvard Global to circumvent federal requirements for disclosing foreign donations to higher education.

According to the report, Harvard Global initially stated on its website that it could serve as a “proposal applicant and awardee” for awards the university was unable to accept for legal or financial reasons. The nonprofit later removed the language after the committees sent Harvard a draft of the report.

“Harvard created an entity in a blatant attempt to get around federal foreign funding disclosure laws. That’s unacceptable, especially given Harvard’s history of failing to comply with these requirements,” Education and Workforce Committee chairman Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) said in a statement.

The committees identified 140 publications co-authored by Harvard-affiliated researchers and researchers affiliated with Chinese universities, including a “Seven Sons” university, the report stated.

The “Seven Sons of National Defense” is a group of elite Chinese universities directly subordinate to the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which regulates China’s defense sector.

The House committees alleged that Harvard-affiliated researchers have worked with “Chinese universities that, as a matter of policy, conduct extensive weapons research and development and hold top-secret security clearances with the PLA [People’s Liberation Army].”

The report cited a 2023 research paper on magnetic materials co-authored by a Harvard-affiliated researcher and a researcher at China’s National University of Defense Technology – which the U.S. government has placed on its entity list as a threat to American national security.

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Judge Blocks DHS From Obtaining 17 Million Commercial Driver’s License Records

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Department of Homeland Security from obtaining 17 million Commercial Driver’s License records.

US District Judge Anthony Trenga, a George W. Bush appointee, entered an administrative stay and prevented the Trump Administration from obtaining the records it subpoenaed.

Judge Trenga also ordered the DHS to immediately return any subpoenaed documents and not inspect the records.

The judge said he needs more time to consider the motion to quash the subpoenas.

On Friday, 21 Democrat state attorneys general and DC filed lawsuits challenging the records request.

The blue state attorneys general sued the Department of Transportation (DOT), the DHS and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Last month, President Trump unveiled his “Freedom Haulers” initiative to license veteran truck drivers and crack down on illegal alien truck drivers.

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UK Left Blames Death of Ex-Cambridge Professor Arday on ‘Racism’, Media Scrutiny of Plagiarism Claims

British leftists have attempted to blame racism and media scrutiny for the untimely death of former Cambridge professor Jason Arday, who sensationally resigned last week amid plagiarism allegations and accusations of fabricating his backstory.

On Friday afternoon, Cambridge’s youngest-ever Black professor, Jason Arday, was found dead at a London address at the age of 41, just days after resigning from his post as professor of sociology of education amid swirling controversy and claims that he had engaged in plagiarism.

According to a Substack article last month from University of Ghent philosopher Nathan Cofnas, who was fired from Cambridge’s Emmanuel College in 2024 after expressing race-realist views on IQ differences, Arday’s thesis had been flagged by plagiarism-detection software.

It then emerged that Cambridge had been alerted to potential plagiarism in his thesis and in other papers by Plymouth Marjon University Emeritus Professor Dave Harris in 2023, yet the university only launched an investigation into the matter earlier this month.

London’s Daily Telegraph reported that it had “identified more than 100 passages that are identical or nearly identical to a 2009 PhD thesis by Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, a Brunel University student.”

On top of allegations of plagiarism, questions were also raised over Arday’s supposedly remarkable early life, as he claimed to have risen to the top of academia despite allegedly being unable to talk until the age of 11 and being unable to read or write until he was 18 as a supposed result of autism. Arday also previously boasted of having run 30 marathons in 35 days, partly while suffering from a leg fracture.

Amid the controversy, the previous media darling resigned on August 5th, claiming that the “relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love.”

Less than ten days later, he was found dead. A spokesman for London’s Metropolitan Police said on Friday that his “death is being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious.” The left-wing Guardian newspaper reported that the force is “understood not to believe anyone else was involved in the death.”

Despite limited information about the circumstances of his death, prominent left-wing figures were quick to blame the media scrutiny and “racism” for Arday’s death. For example, far-left Labour MP Nadia Whittome said that Arday was “hounded by the British press in a way that went far beyond scrutiny, was disproportionate, and simply would not have happened to a white, middle class person in the same position.”

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CAUGHT: Comey’s Wife Texted Him Meaning of “86” Minutes Before His “86 47” Beach Stunt

Investigative reporter Paul Sperry posted a damning update to the Jim Comey “86 47” beach story on Friday.

According to Paul, there is evidence that Jim Comey’s wife Patricia sent him a Google screenshot of a non-violent definition of the term “86” two minutes before Comey posted his infamous rock picture of “86-47” on Instagram.

Paul Sperry: BREAKING: An FBI affidavit for a search warrant in the James Comey presidential threat case reveals his wife Patrice Comey sent him a Google screenshot of a nonviolent definition of the term “86” two (2) minutes before Comey posted the alleged threat against President Trump, indicating some forethought his posting could be construed as a threat.”

86 is a common street term for murder. Comey and his wife thought they were being cute.

Comey was also one of the leaders along with Barack Obama and John Brennan who decided to run a coup against the US President during Trump’s first term in office.

James Comey posted his threatening ‘8647’ Instagram post last May.

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey said.

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Somali Piracy Surges Amid Hormuz Blockade

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced hundreds of commercial ships onto longer routes around Africa, and Somali pirates are moving quickly to exploit the sudden increase in traffic off the continent’s eastern coast. Oil tankers MT Honour 25, MT Eureka and MT Asana were hijacked in the Gulf of Aden and off Puntland between April and July 2026, the largest attacks by Somali pirates in years. The Iran war has now delivered these groups more targets, spread across thousands of miles of ocean, while diverting naval resources to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Somali piracy peaked in 2011 before an international crackdown reduced attacks to a fraction of their former levels. The first major revival came in late 2023, when Houthi attacks in the Red Sea forced hundreds of vessels away from the Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope. And with U.S. forces all diverted to the war against Iran in the Persian Gulf, it’s largely a free-for-all for Somali pirates.  Unlike the disorganized bands of the early 2000s, today’s Somali pirates are ranging much farther from shore, and their operations have become much more sophisticated. And perhaps even more concerning, according to reports from a UN panel of experts, there is now direct coordination between Yemeni militants and Somali networks.

In exchange for creating maritime chaos to keep Western navies distracted, the Houthis have supplied Somali pirate cells with advanced weaponry, military training and precision GPS tracking devices to pinpoint commercial hulls. Al-Shabaab–one of the most lethal terrorist groups in Africa–provides onshore logistical backing along parts of the Somali coast where pirate gangs launch operations or hold hijacked vessels. Intelligence reports indicate the group receives a generous cut of up to 30% from successful maritime ransom payouts.

According to a joint study by Interpol, the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Horn of Africa piracy generated over $400 million in ransom payments from 179 hijacked ships between 2005 and 2012, averaging roughly $2.23 million per ship. The money follows a structured economy, with pirate crews receiving a standard 10% to 15% fee, local financiers claim 30% to 50% for funding food, fuel and weapons, while the rest is laundered into legitimate businesses, according to the study. And it’s only becoming more lucrative with time. 

A June 30, 2026, analysis by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) reports that ransom demands have been made for all three commercial vessels hijacked in the current wave.

The demand for Eureka was reportedly $10 million.

Separately, the pirates holding Honour 25 have demanded $3 million for the tanker, cargo and crew. 

GI-TOC says pirates received $1.2 million-$1.5 million for the release of the Chinese fishing vessel Liao Dong Yu 578 in March this year. The same vessel had reportedly generated another $2 million ransom in 2024. GI-TOC says counter-piracy officials believe the latest payment helped catalyze the current wave of attacks.

The Gulf of Guinea is yet another piracy hotspot in Africa thanks to the region’s riches in oil and gas as well as a well-trained militia due the Delta’s secessionist movement. While local law enforcement and naval forces have managed to curb attacks in shallower waters, pirates are highly adaptable to new environments. Now, they are using heavily armed mother ships to strike targets well outside state jurisdictions and exclusive economic zones. The region’s pirate networks now operate with military-grade weapons, an intricate shipping intelligence network and complicated financial backing.

War-risk insurance premiums for commercial shipping transiting the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf spiked by over 1,000%–surging from pre-conflict levels of roughly 0.15%–0.25% of a vessel’s value up to 7.5% and 10% per voyage shortly after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in March.

With African maritime zones highly vulnerable due to a lack of equipment and manpower, and with American forces diverted to the Persian Gulf indefinitely, piracy sees its biggest opportunity yet. It means an African diversion isn’t necessarily going to avoid risk premiums.

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Minnesota Secretary of State THREATENS James O’Keefe, Cam Higby For Going Undercover in Muslim Garb and Easily Exposing State’s Insane ‘Voter Vouching’ System

Minnesota’s Democrat Secretary of State threatened James O’Keefe and Cam Higby after they went undercover in Muslim garb to expose the state’s insane ‘voter vouching’ system.

“Under Minnesota’s Statutes § 201.061, a registered voter can sign an affidavit affirming that they know another individual resides in the same precinct, allowing that person to register at the polls without presenting standard proof of residence. One registered voter can vouch for up to eight people,” O’Keefe said.

“We wanted to find out what this actually looks like inside a polling place and how far election workers would let us take it,” he said.

O’Keefe was dressed in a ‘thobe’ and Cam Higby wore a black burka as they entered polling stations across Minneapolis.

James O’Keefe used a hilariously awful Middle Eastern accent when he tried to vouch for other voters.

“I have a question about the vouching program, yeah? Vouching? I can vouch for them but they are not registered,” O’Keefe asked the poll workers.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” the poll workers said.

“Ahhh good. Can I bring five more” O’Keefe asked the poll workers.

“Up to eight people,” she said.

“Up to eight? Okay, that’s a good thing,” O’Keefe said.

“If you’re all in the same precinct and you are already registered, you can vouch for them as ID. Eight people,” a poll worker told James O’Keefe.

“You’re the ID,” the election worker told O’Keefe.

“I am the ID!” O’Keefe said.

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