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.

Husband behind $14M COVID loan scam bought mansion for another wife he had in the Middle East

An Illinois tax preparer who helped run a “staggering” $14 million COVID scam used the money to build a mansion for a wife and kids he had in the Palestinian territories — infuriating his other wife in Illinois.

Sharhabeel Shreiteh, 46, received around $740,000 in kickbacks as he helped more than 1,000 people get phony Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans in what he admitted to one sidekick was likely the “most stupid fraud in history.”

Shreiteh used his own ill-gotten gains to build a home and a luxury Mercedes car for his wife and their three kids in Palestine — sending his American-based wife of nearly 18 years into a jealous rage, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“You suck!” Hania Atiq Shreiteh, his 52-year-old wife in America, texted him in July 2021 about the money he was sending to his family in his native Palestine.

“I bust my a– for 13 years and don’t have like she gets without working for it!!!” she wrote, according to messages in court filings.

“You gave her kids, a villa, now fancy cars??!! … I’m so sick and tired of being lied to by you.”

Shreiteh and Hania were married in 2008 and have a daughter in suburban Chicago. It was not clear when he married the other woman in Palestine, with whom he has three children and talked to every day, nor if they are still married.

However, Hania’s anger appeared to have subsided by the time the taxpayer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Tuesday.

“Having a second family aligns with his religious beliefs and was approved by his wife,” a court memo seeking a lighter sentence claimed. “He hopes that once the situation in the Middle East stabilizes, his other family can visit him here.”

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The War on Iran Is Dumb. Here’s Why.

War with Iran is being sold as “strategy,” but it looks a lot like habit. A familiar pattern repeats: vague objectives, elastic legal theories, and a confident promise that the costs will be contained. Then the bill arrives anyway, in blood, money, and credibility.

In this round, the costs are already visible in the most predictable place: energy. Fighting that threatens traffic through the Strait of Hormuz does not just “hurt the other side.” It shakes a chokepoint that, in 2024, carried about 20 million barrels per day of oil, roughly 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption. Markets do not care about speeches. They price risk, and they pass it along to households and firms.

Calling this “a small price” is not analysis. It is marketing. Economies, including America’s, still operate inside a global price system for energy and shipping, and officials themselves acknowledge the conflict has pushed energy markets and prices higher.

The China excuse is bad strategy and worse economics

One of the more fashionable rationales for attacking Iran is the “China angle”: Iran trades with China, so breaking Iran breaks China. This is the kind of logic that sounds plausible until you compare it to reality.

Start with the basic arithmetic. U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled about $658.9 billion in 2024, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. That is not a footnote. It is a structural feature of the world economy. When two economies are connected at that scale, “hurting” one is not a neat chess move. It is self-inflicted collateral damage.

The International Monetary Fund has spent years warning about what happens when states turn economic integration into a weapon. In its words, greater trade restrictions “could reduce global economic output by as much as 7 percent” over the long run. That is not a slogan. It is a forecast about costs that do not vanish because a strategist wants them to.

Now add the Iran-specific detail that is supposed to make the “China angle” sound clever. China does buy large volumes of Iranian crude; much of it routed through sanctions-evasion channels. The Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy estimates that China imported about 1.38 million barrels per day of crude from Iran in 2025, around 12% of China’s total crude imports, and that China purchases about 90% of Iran’s oil exports.

But if your plan is to use war to interrupt an adversary’s energy supply, you have chosen the most globally contagious lever imaginable. The same chokepoint logic that supposedly pinches Beijing also squeezes everyone else. When shipping slows, insurance premiums jump, freight rates rise, and oil prices move. That is not a “China problem.” It is a world problem.

There is another flaw, even more basic. Treating China as the villain for “hedging” against U.S. power is rich coming from a government that has used economic sanctions and financial restrictions as routine tools of statecraft for decades. Great powers teach others how to behave. If the lesson is that supply chains are weapons, do not be surprised when other countries build armor, stockpiles, and alternative routes.

The nuclear lesson: if you want fewer bombs, stop rewarding them

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Caught in Broad Daylight: Ballot Initiative Signature-Gatherers in California Paying For Signatures – Backed by Billionaire PAC

On Monday, street videographer JJ Smith captured on camera what appears to be election crimes in San Francisco, California.  In broad daylight.

The video shows a line of people at the corner of 6th Street and Mission Street in the SoMa neighborhood, soliciting signatures on Monday afternoon.

The clip begins with Smith walking up on the line with a sign that reads, “Can you read & Write?  Sign Petition for $5.”

Smith asks a man in the line, “What’s the line for?”  He responds that they’re “giving five bucks to sign a petition.”

When Smith asks the two women seated at the table, “I get $5 too?”  She replies, “Yeah.”

“What is it?” he asks.

The woman responds, “Just sign it.”

The woman can then be seen highlighting a paper for another woman in the line but off camera.

“First name is going to be Carol, last name Sanderson.  This is the address right here.  This is the city, Avila Beach, and this is the zip code,” she tells the woman.  As the woman takes the paper and pen to sign it, the worker says, “So remember, first name is ‘Carol’”.

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The App Store Accountability Act Is A Privacy Nightmare Disguised As Child Protection

Washington has discovered a familiar political trick: wrap a flawed policy in the language of protecting children and hope nobody reads the fine print. The latest example is the App Store Accountability Act, a bill championed by lawmakers who appear eager to regulate the internet without understanding how it actually works.

Supporters insist the legislation will protect kids online. In reality, it risks undermining privacy, violating constitutional protections, and creating a cybersecurity disaster in the process.

And remarkably, Congress is pushing forward with this even though federal courts have already signaled that this exact regulatory model is unconstitutional.

The App Store Accountability Act would require app stores to verify the ages of every user and share age information with app developers. On paper, that sounds straightforward. In practice, it would force companies to collect massive amounts of sensitive personal data simply to download everyday apps.

Want to download a weather app? Verify your age.

Want to install a calculator? Verify your age.

Want to read the news? Verify your age.

The practical result is obvious: app stores would be compelled to gather highly sensitive identity data on tens of millions of Americans and then distribute that information to countless third-party developers.

This could be one of the largest digital identity honeypots ever conceived.

Security experts have been warning about this for months. In fact, 419 cybersecurity and privacy academics from 30 countries recently signed an open letter warning that large-scale age verification systems are “dangerous and socially unacceptable” because they create enormous new attack surfaces for hackers and data thieves.

The logic is simple. If every app download requires age verification, that means sensitive identity data must be stored, transmitted, and accessed across thousands of services. Instead of limiting the spread of personal information, the bill effectively multiplies it.

For cybercriminals, it would be a dream target.

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Far-Left CNN Hack Abby Phillip Panics After Going Viral for Spewing This MASSIVE Lie Regarding the NYC Islamist Terror Attack

CNN’s leftist host Abby Phillip sparked national outrage last night after uttering a huge lie about last weekend’s terror attack in New York City before trying to backtrack in a panic.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, two male Islamist terrorists linked to ISIS threw a homemade bomb in an attempt to kill protesters at an anti-Islam rally outside Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s official residence on Saturday. The bomb was laced with metal and powerful explosives, according to the New York Times.

Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident.

One of the men screamed “Allahu Akbar!” while getting arrested.

Following the attack, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) responded with an extremely provocative comment that infuriated the left: Muslims do not belong in the United States.

“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” Ogles wrote on X. “Pluralism is a lie.”

This remark came less than one month after Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) set the Internet on fire with his comments toward a Muslim leftist who called for banning dogs as indoor pets.

“If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” Fine wrote.

Phillip seemingly saw an opportunity to smear Fine and Ogles while insinuating they were partly to blame for the terror attack. And she did so by outright lying about Muslim NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani being the target.

“Two Republicans say Muslims don’t belong here after an attempted terror attack on New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani. And the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says nothing to really condemn these comments,” Phillip fibbed.

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First Iran, Then Cuba: Trump Has Dropped the Peace-President Mask

Donald Trump did not merely let slip a reckless aside when he said he wanted to “finish this one first” – meaning Iran – before turning to Cuba. He revealed a governing mindset. Countries become items in a queue. War becomes a scheduling matter. One theater before the next, one pressure campaign before the next, one performance of toughness before the cameras move on. That is not strategic restraint. It is imperial casualness masquerading as command. Reuters reported on March 5 that Trump said he wanted to finish the war in Iran first and that it would then be only “a question of time” before attention shifted to Cuba; two days later, Reuters reported him saying Cuba was already negotiating with him and Marco Rubio.

What makes the remark more damning is the promise it betrays. Trump sold himself to voters as the man who would stop wars, not start them. In his inauguration address, he said his “proudest legacy” would be that of a “peacemaker and unifier,” and that America’s success should be measured not only by the battles it wins but by the wars it ends and the wars it never gets into. Even in late February, the White House was still branding him the “President of Peace.” Yet the administration is now openly talking about winning the war with Iran, rejecting negotiations, and even asserting a right to shape Iran’s political future.

You do not have to praise the Iranian state to recognize the danger in that. The issue is not whether one approves of Tehran. The issue is whether an American president who campaigned against endless war is now normalizing the oldest and most discredited habits of Washington foreign policy: regime-change rhetoric, contempt for diplomacy, and the fantasy that bombing can substitute for strategy. When Trump says he is not interested in negotiating and muses that there may be nobody left to say “we surrender,” he is not sounding like a dealmaker. He is sounding like every hawk who has ever confused devastation with victory.

The Cuba remark matters for another reason as well. It suggests that Iran is not being treated as a singular emergency but as one stop in a broader politics of coercion. That is how permanent interventionism works. Every crisis is packaged as exceptional, urgent, and morally self-evident – until the language starts to slide. First this country, then that one. First “finish” Iran, then move on. First present force as a necessity, then sell the next confrontation as inevitable. Trump’s words make that rhythm impossible to miss. The vocabulary may shift from threat to negotiation to triumphalism, but the premise remains the same: Washington decides, others adjust.

Congress, meanwhile, is doing what Congress so often does when presidents discover a taste for undeclared war: almost nothing. On March 4, a Senate majority voted to block a bipartisan war-powers resolution that would have required congressional authorization for hostilities against Iran. That abdication is not a procedural footnote. It is one of the great mechanisms by which American wars become easier to start, harder to stop, and almost impossible to own. Presidents escalate. Legislators grumble. Then the war machine keeps moving.

And it is moving fast. Reuters reported this weekend that the administration used emergency authority to bypass Congress and expedite the sale of more than 20,000 bombs to Israel, just as the joint U.S.-Israeli air war against Iran entered its second week. This is what “peace through strength” usually means in practice: fewer restraints, more munitions, and a shorter distance between rhetoric and rubble. The slogan is designed to comfort Americans into believing that force is a form of stability. More often, it is simply the marketing language of escalation.

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Drone Wave Hits Iran Streets, Hundreds Kill Regime Members Individually In Dystopian New Form Of Warfare

Reports from Iran say Israeli drones are now hunting Basij and Revolutionary Guard Corps checkpoints in the streets across Iran, in what appears to be a wave involving hundreds of drones.

The apparent goal is to clear the streets of the regime’s repression forces and allow opponents of the regime to come out, reports Israeli Live News.

Reports from Iran say drones and UAVs are exploding on motorcycles and vehicles, with dozens of Basij forces reportedly killed at checkpoints, bases, police stations and regime gathering points.

This is being described as Iran’s version of the pager attacks.

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CHA-CHING! Financial Filings Reveal MASSIVE Grift at the Obama Foundation

Newly released financial filings reveal that there are a lot of people making an absolute fortune off the Obama Foundation. Anyone who remembers the massive grift at the Clinton Foundation might feel like they’re taking a walk down memory lane.

Valerie Jarrett, a former Obama White House player who was central to his presidency, was making a cool $740,000 per year running the foundation. That’s more than the President of the United States makes in a year.

Other figures were also pulling in huge six-figure salaries and the number of employees has ballooned to more than 300 people.

Obama has become an industry unto himself and everyone in his orbit is cashing in, big time.

FOX News reports:

Valerie Jarrett earned $740K as Obama insiders filled top roles during $850M presidential center build

As construction nears completion on the long-delayed $850 million Obama Presidential Center, federal tax filings show the Obama Foundation paid CEO Valerie Jarrett $740,000 in 2024 while several former Obama White House officials collected six-figure salaries as foundation executives.

The Obama Foundation — which will operate the 19.3-acre center on publicly owned Chicago parkland — paid its CEO more than any other major presidential foundation. Salaries and benefits soared from $18.5 million in 2018 to $43.7 million in 2024, as staffing expanded to 337 employees and annual revenue reached nearly $210 million.

Jarrett, one of the Obamas’ closest advisors, took over as CEO in 2021 and is among six of the foundation’s 10 highest-paid executives who previously held senior roles in the Obama administration or campaign, according to a review of the foundation’s tax filings from 2018 to 2024.

“Illinois Democrats are truly living their best lives — making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to help design the ugliest building in Chicago,” Illinois GOP Chairman Kathy Salvi told Fox News. “Their jaw-dropping salaries prove that Illinois’ culture of corruption is alive and well as Barack Obama’s top allies rake in the cash.”

Despite all of this heavy spending, the new Obama Center is looking for volunteers.

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TDF sounds alarm over imminent passage of Bill C-9

Proposed “Combatting Hate Act” expands the legal definition of hatred and removes key free expression safeguards in the Criminal Code.

The House of Commons has closed debate on Bill C-9, the “Combatting Hate Act.” The Bill expands and codifies the definition of “hatred,” departing from the Supreme Court’s strict requirement of “vilification and detestation.” It removes the longstanding good faith religious speech protections for sincerely held religious opinions and expressions based on religious texts in the Criminal Code and eliminates the requirement for Attorney General consent before charging individuals with certain hate crime offences. The Bill also creates a new offence that applies when an underlying offence—even a non-criminal one—is motivated by hatred, potentially doubling the penalties for the underlying act.

The Bill has faced opposition from civil liberties groups and religious organizations. TDF was invited to testify before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and filed a brief outlining its serious misgivings. 

“Ironically, the government has moved to end debate on issues of public concern for a bill that would end debate on issues of public concern. The Bill empowers prosecutors to bring charges based on the merest suggestion that the impugned conduct is motivated by an ill-defined concept of “hatred,” massively increasing potential jail time and legal jeopardy for defendants. In our experience, these types of offences tend to be laid against marginalized and working-class people rather than powerful elites and political insiders. However, all Canadians can expect greater digital censorship and increased online police surveillance if the Bill becomes law. We only have to look at the UK example, where police make approximately 12,000 annual arrests for online “hate incidents” under similar legislation.” 

The Bill now moves to a vote at the justice committee. After that, it will proceed to the report stage and third reading before advancing to the Senate.

TDF will continue to oppose the Bill and all attempts by the government to censor Canadians.

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Hegseth vows US will ‘go as far as we need’ to topple Iranian regime as conflict escalates — including possible ‘boots on ground’

War Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed he and President Trump will do whatever it takes to topple the Iranian regime — and didn’t rule out sending US ground troops into Tehran as Operation Epic Fury rages on.

“We’re willing to go as far as we need in order to be successful,” Hegseth told CBS News’ Major Garrett during a “60 Minutes” sit-down interview that aired Sunday night.

“We reserve the right. We would be completely unwise if we did not reserve the right to take any particular option, whether it included boots on the ground or not boots on the ground.”

Trump told The Post last week that US forces could be sent into Iran if that is deemed necessary.

Hegseth told Garrett that if a decision is made to deploy American troops — whether overtly or covertly — to the Middle East, it wouldn’t be shared publicly with the press.

“People ask, ‘Boots on the ground, no boots on the ground, four weeks, two weeks, six weeks? Go in, go in,’” he added.

“President Trump knows — I know — you don’t tell the enemy, you don’t tell the press, you don’t tell anybody what your limits would be on an operation.”

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