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.

Leon Black Sues Congress To Avoid Epstein Testimony

Between 2012 and 2017 – after Jeffrey Epstein got out of prison – billionaire Leon Black paid him roughly $170 million. Black has not provided a credible explanation as to why he paid Epstein amounts vastly exceeding those paid to other professional advisors – and instead of sitting down to explain it to Congress on Thursday, he sued the House Oversight Committee.

Recall, Black:

  • Paid Epstein $158 million per Dechert, the law firm Apollo hired, or $170 million per Sen. Ron Wyden’s investigation.
  • Stepped down as Apollo CEO in 2021 after a Dechert review “cleared” him, which we called bullshit at the time.
  • Wrote the 2003 birthday book poem about “Blond, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically,” signed “Love and Kisses.”
  • Paid roughly $20 million to a dozen women, some via Epstein; at least three have accused him of assault.
  • Says he signed Guzel Ganieva’s 2015 NDA because she was extorting him; her rape suit was dismissed.
  • Paid $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2023 to settle Epstein-related claims before any were made public.
  • Used Epstein to help structure his $106 million Picasso purchase through Narrows Holdings, as we reported in February.
  • Told Congress in June “I knew Jekyll. I didn’t know Hyde,” then walked out rather than discuss his NDAs.

The committee went ahead with a closed-door session anyway, with ranking Democrat Robert Garcia demanding an ‘immediate’ contempt vote against Black. Chairman James Comer (R) said that if it were up to him, “I would hold him in contempt right now,” but he wanted to discuss Black’s lawsuit with the committee’s lawyers first so as not to jeopardize the thing the committee actually wants: non-disclosure agreements that Black allegedly signed with several women. 

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington against the committee and Comer, argues that the two subpoenas issued June 26 (one for Black’s sworn testimony, one for “all the NDAs” he is party to) are “invalid to the extent they exceed” the committee’s “delegated authority in seeking private information that bears no legitimate connection” to its legislative purpose. Producing the agreements, the suit says, “would also expose women who value their privacy, who have no known or public connection to Epstein.” Black’s lawyer Susan Estrich called the probe “a fishing expedition” and said, “This is no longer about finding the truth about Epstein. It is about trying to destroy Mr. Black.”

Comer hit back – saying that Black is “hiding behind litigation rather than provide answers to the American people.”

Black is the first Epstein witness to sue the committee rather than show up. Jes Staley and Kathy Ruemmler both sat for questions this summer. Which makes the timing of Thursday’s other Leon Black story hard to improve on.

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“You hired me to produce a work of art”

A few hours before the empty chair, Bloomberg Law published a piece about a May 2016 email in which Epstein described the tax plan he sold Black as, literally, art.

“Leon, you hired me to produce a work of art. it was not inexpensive. the value far exceeds any other piece in your collection.- by FAR . It took me 30 years to be able to craft such a work. I understand your desire to modifiy my work, in doing so you have brad telling me , just a bit more red., here let me show you, you yourself pick up a brush a add some strokes… however Im aware that you own the work and you have the right to paint over it. tear it up , put it in the closet in the basement . its yours.”

And on the price:

“Unfortunatley for us both, the price for my works has not changed since day one. 40m per year, I m willing to discount it to 35 as I did give you a bad number when asked and should pay an embarassment fine.”

And a weird line:

“you recently seemed shy to discuss certain things. , please be assured I make no judgement on any of your activities , whether or not i agree with them . not my role I am always on your side on the table. I hope your personal life quiets. you’ve had a rough 15 months.”

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NYC socialist leaders caught living large, quietly collecting millions from real estate flips

Two NYC Democratic Socialists of America leaders have been caught living the ultimate capitalist dream, with one quietly collecting millions in real estate flips and another nesting in a sleek $500,000 Brooklyn apartment, The Post has learned.

Labor Coordinator Olivia Gonzalez Killingsworth sold a luxe Upper West Side triplex in a brownstone building for $2.4 million on Sept. 12, 2022, according to public records.

The “huge, versatile” two-bedroom, three-bathroom triplex just a block away from Central Park boasts sweeping 10-foot-high ceilings overlooking a fireplace, marble shower stalls, bay windows with a view of the gorgeous Callery Pear blossoms that line the street.

“Once again we’re finding out why DSA actually stands for Daddy’s Savings Account. Selling a multimillion-dollar Manhattan Triplex to go play pretend bohemian with your rich comrades in Brooklyn is a luxury working-class New Yorkers will never have,” said NYC Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens).

Killingsworth, who runs her own bookkeeping business and is also an actor and singer, according to her website, was elected labor coordinator in 2025.

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Democrat Rep. Maxwell Frost: Homeless ‘Should Not Be Forced to Work in Exchange for a Bed’

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) believes homeless people should have legal immunity and not be “forced to work in exchange for a bed.”

Maxwell made his statement during a press conference Wednesday when he introduced the No Homeless Detention Centers Act.

“Right now there’s a growing effort in this country to treat homelessness like a crime instead of what it is: a housing crisis. Homelessness is a housing issue. Since the Supreme Court’s disastrous grants passed decision, states and cities have been given even more room to criminalize people for sleeping outside, and we are seeing politicians and right-wing organizations push laws that ticket people, arrest people, sweep encampments, and force people into detention-like facilities,” he said.

Frost continued:

And it’s not just right-wing organizations, it’s democratic cities as well that are pursuing handcuffs instead of housing. That does not end homelessness. It just makes being homeless a crime. That’s why today I’m proud to introduce the No Homeless Detention Centers Act. This bill draws a line in the sand if you are receiving federal housing dollars, those dollars should be for helping people to get housed and not locking them away. You should not be forced to work in exchange for a bed.

You should not be punished for sleeping, resting, eating, drinking, or protecting yourself from the elements. And you should never have to choose between being arrested and sleeping outside. Because we know why people are ending up on the streets. The rent is too damn high, housing is too expensive, and wages have not kept up.

Attendees standing behind Frost during the press conference held signs that read “Housing Is a Human Right.”

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Global Empire as Domestic Policy

While many mainstream commentators blanch at the characterization of the United States as an empire, the hard data show that it is today impossible to seriously dispute. The U.S. military operates between 750 and 800 bases around the world, located in around 80 foreign countries and territories. Because there is no fixed or standard definition of “base” for these purposes, there is no accepted number, and some estimates place the figure at closer to 900. The U.S. is also known to operate dozens of secret military bases and black sites, further complicating attempts to settle upon an exact and definitive number.

Just as the number of military bases is disputed, experts have continued longstanding disagreements about how best to tally up total military spending. As the Peter G. Peterson Foundation observed earlier this year, “The United States continues to lead the world in defense spending by a wide margin. In 2025, defense spending by the United States accounted for 33 percent of all military expenditures by countries around the world,” with its nearly trillion-dollar outlay that year exceeding the combined spending of the other six biggest military spenders. This number is down from 2025’s value of nine to six largely because several other countries dramatically increased their military spending (Germany, for example, upped its spending by 24 percent). Breaking Defense reports, “The Pentagon is betting big on a $1.15 trillion discretionary budget request with a further $350 billion coming from the reconciliation process — together adding up to a historic $1.5 trillion defense budget.” The Trump administration’s discretionary funding request of $1.15 trillion marks the first time in history that a discretionary defense request has exceeded $1 trillion on its own. In the previous budget, for FY 2026, the total number hit the $1 trillion mark with a combination of  $848 billion in discretionary spending and $113.3 billion in mandatory reconciliation spending.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) notes that many “obvious examples of programs many would consider ‘military spending’” under commonsense definitions are not a part of the Pentagon budget, including spending for veteran benefits, the Coast Guard, and even nuclear weapons. Looking at five different methodologies, a POGO report published in June points out that all five share at least one conclusion: “Military spending in the United States has long been radically underestimated.” (Not unrelated to this slippery accounting is that fact that the Pentagon hasn’t passed an audit in years, failing its eighth in a row at the end of last year.) This recent POGO report finds that “the true total military budget for the last fiscal year (FY 2025) was significantly higher than $1 trillion: It was likely between $1.5 trillion and $1.8 trillion.” If we count interest payments associated with debts for military spending, then “the range is between $1.7 trillion and $2.3 trillion.”

We rarely consider the domestic political implications of Washington’s globe-spanning empire, yet government spending on war and empire functions as the de facto national industrial policy of the United States, largely determining which cutting-edge technologies receive the most investment, which companies will enjoy massive state-guaranteed markets, and which physical objects will be the focus of the country’s industrial production capacity. Through the military empire, the state becomes both the architect of and primary consumer for a huge industrial sector. And while it has grabbed more headlines this year due to the parlous speculative bubble surrounding AI, the political consequences of the connection between the global military empire and the private sector tech industry remain woefully under-discussed in the mainstream discourse. The federal government is funneling billions to AI companies willing to work directly with the military, overpowering objections from employees and the investor market.

Just this week it was reported that “Palantir’s Maven Smart System, an artificial intelligence-powered military platform, is now an official program of record for the Pentagon.” The executive and strategic leadership of major technology companies also increasingly connects and overlaps with the military and national security establishment, often through the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit and liaisons dedicated to recruiting talent and procuring products from the tech sector. As we have already witnessed for decades, cutting-edge technologies developed for the war and empire inevitably end up being deployed domestically against Americans inside the country. Now more than 50 years ago, the Senator Frank Church Committee showed that the intelligence agencies used programs originally designed for foreign surveillance to monitor Americans here at home without warrants. We still have not seriously reckoned with this connection between the policies and technologies of the empire and the ways our own government sees us and governs us.

Since classical antiquity, astute observers have understood that this kind of worldwide military empire is fundamentally incompatible with the rule of law, constitutional government, and even the thinnest definitions of democracy. The administration of such an empire demands secret and centralized forms of decision-making and thus necessarily precludes transparency, accountability, and popular sovereignty. Contemporary political language has managed to disguise what is patently a system of permanent war and empire in the terminology of a liberal and rules-based order of international law and free trade. We have consigned terms like imperialism and colonialism to the history books even as we continue these systems in different forms today. Even the liberal side of our mainstream discourse no longer seriously questions the political system of war and empire that actually governs the country. We will not understand the form of domestic politics we have in the U.S. today until we stop trying to separate it from the imperatives of empire.

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Trump Will Demand Repayment From the EU Over Biden’s Massive Military Aid to Ukraine

Rather belatedly, but it will be demanded.

In the context of a social media burn against ‘SCUM’ journalists who are suggesting that the missile and ammo stockpiles would be dangerously low, President Donald J. Trump suggested that the European Union should repay the US for the untold billions that creepy Joe Biden’s administration sent to Ukraine.

Le Monde reported (translated from the French):

“Donald Trump on Thursday criticized his predecessor, Joe Biden, for providing Ukraine with hundreds of billions of dollars in aid and ammunition for free, believing that the Europeans should have borne the cost and announcing his intention to ask them for the money.

‘Hundreds of billions of dollars have been given for free to Ukraine and NATO, money that Europe would have paid if it had just been asked, but we will claim this money, even if it’s a little late!’ the US president wrote on Truth Social.”

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We Are Sleepwalking Into World War III: Why I’m Preparing for the Worst

We Are Sleepwalking Into World War III

The rhetoric emanating from Western leaders has crossed a threshold from political posturing to an open declaration of war against Russia. We are not on the brink of a conflict; we are being marched into one by leaders who have abandoned diplomacy for a suicidal path of confrontation.

The American public, fed a constant diet of propaganda from a complicit corporate media, is suffering from a mass “reality avoidance disorder,” as my recent interview guest Steve Quayle explained, as they are unwilling or unable to see the calamity that is being prepared in our name. This is not a hypothetical future; the groundwork for a global conflagration is being laid in real-time.

The conflict in Ukraine, for starters, was never about territorial integrity; it was a cynical proxy war designed to weaken Russia, and it has failed spectacularly. As I’ve noted, Western leaders have already been defeated because they refuse to recognize their own weakness and the strength of a multi-polar world that is rising to replace their dominance [1]. The sleepwalk must end; we need to wake up and see that we are being led to the slaughter by a globalist elite that views our lives as expendable.

The Paper Tiger: Why America’s Military Can’t Win This Fight

The narrative of American military omnipotence is a carefully maintained illusion. I have described the U.S. military as a “paper tiger,” a hollowed-out force that relies more on perception than sustainable power [2]. The endless wars in the Middle East have shown that the strategy of “pillage and plunder” has been stopped cold by determined nations like Russia and Iran, exposing our empire as a facade [3]. While we have been bogged down in asymmetrical conflicts, our adversaries have been developing and fielding decisively advanced, combat-proven systems that render our multi-trillion-dollar military obsolete.

Russia possesses hypersonic missiles that our defense systems cannot defeat. Russia also has the Poseidon torpedo, a nuclear-powered doomsday weapon that can lay waste to our coastal cities. When I interviewed Steve Quayle, we discussed the unveiling of Russia’s nuclear-powered cruise missile as another sign of their technological superiority over our own aging arsenal [4].

An analysis of the U.S. military posture suggests a “Hollow Goliath” facing catastrophic defeat if it engages in a direct conflict [5]. We are a colossus with feet of clay, and I believe that when the facade finally crumbles, the desperation in Washington will lead them to irrational and catastrophic acts, potentially including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, because they will have no other option to avoid total defeat.

The Real Enemy: It’s Not Russia, It’s the Globalist Playbook

We are being sold a lie that Russia and China are the enemies. But the real enemy is the globalist agenda of total control (and human depopulation). The endless wars and manufactured crises are not about national security; they are about consolidating power into the hands of a Luciferian elite who despise freedom and view humanity as a resource to be managed, or worse, eliminated [6].

The push for AI, for example, is not about progress; it is about creating a surveillance state and replacing human workers with obedient machines, all as part of a depopulation scheme that is playing out before our eyes [7]. Books like “Countdown to Annihilation” detail the blueprint for this engineered conflict, a plot to ignite World War III to reshape civilization [8].

This playbook is being executed with chilling precision. Those who worship at the altar of technology and central control are digging their own graves, aligning themselves with a system that will eventually discard them as obsolete. The globalists seek to replace human consciousness with artificial intelligence, seeing our species as a flawed experiment that needs to be rebooted [7].

This is not a conspiracy theory; it is the logical conclusion of the policies we see enacted every day, from the push for digital IDs and CBDCs to the censorship of independent voices who oppose the official narrative. We must recognize this war for what it is: a spiritual war against humanity itself, and the only way to win is to refuse to play by their rules.

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The Rising Cost Of Electricity In The United States

Across the U.S., Americans are paying roughly 30% more for electricity than in 2020.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Cody Good in partnership with the National Public Utilities Council, uses data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to show the change in average retail electricity prices by state across all sectors from 2020 to 2025.

Where Electricity Prices Rose the Most

Washington, DC saw the largest increase in the country, with average retail electricity prices rising 72% between 2020 and 2025. Maine followed closely at 67%, while Maryland and California rose 52% and 50%, respectively.

State AbbreviationStateChange in Electricity Price, All Sectors 2020-2025 (%)
DCWashington, D.C.72
MEMaine67
MDMaryland52
CACalifornia50
RIRhode Island47
PAPennsylvania46
NYNew York45
MAMassachusetts44
ILIllinois43
CTConnecticut39
DEDelaware38
NJNew Jersey35
NHNew Hampshire31
FLFlorida30
HIHawaii28
LALouisiana27
ALAlabama26
MSMississippi26
NVNevada26
ARArkansas25
VAVirginia25
WVWest Virginia25
INIndiana24
MIMichigan24
AZArizona23
WAWashington23
OHOhio22
TNTennessee22
VTVermont22
COColorado21
UTUtah21
WIWisconsin21
IDIdaho19
MOMissouri19
MNMinnesota18
NCNorth Carolina18
OROregon17
OKOklahoma16
KSKentucky15
AKAlaska14
GAGeorgia14
TXTexas14
MTMontana13
SDSouth Dakota13
IAIowa11
KSKansas9
NMNew Mexico9
SCSouth Carolina7
NENebraska-1
WYWyoming-1
NDNorth Dakota-18

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Data shows percent growth in average retail electricity prices across all sectors from 2020 to 2025.

Many of the largest increases were concentrated in coastal and Northeastern markets, where retail electricity prices have climbed sharply since 2020.

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Defense firms soar on ample military spending, testing manufacturing schemes

The year 2025 was another record setter for global defense companies, so much so that production bottlenecks in Western nations — not the usual industry lamentations about lacking government spending — began creeping up as the key problem many NATO countries are facing today.

Companies in the United States and Europe rode a wave of significant defense-spending increases on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, individual national budget increases, as well as the European Union’s increasing involvement in brokering and financing joint procurement, continued to increase the revenue of defense industry players large and small.

In the United States, the 2025 Reconciliation Act is set to pump most of the legislation’s total $156 billion into acquisition — on top of the regular defense budget of roughly $900 billion for that year.

“Now, it’ll take years for that enacted money to actually flow to the companies and to their financial statements,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser in the defense analysis program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But it will be a big boost for many companies.”

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Leftist Teen Who Plotted to BOMB and BEHEAD ICE Agents in Portland Walks With 3 Years Probation — Sen. Mike Lee: “Insufficient Punishment for TERROR PLOTS”

An Oregon leftist who wrote a manifesto, built Molotov cocktails, ordered an AR-15, and planned to stalk ICE agents home, murder them, and take their heads as trophies is going back into society.

Rayden Tanner Coleman, 19, of Columbia City, Oregon, pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of unlawful manufacture of a destructive device.

As part of the sweetheart agreement, prosecutors dismissed 13 other charges, including attempted first-degree domestic terrorism, second-degree domestic terrorism, attempted assault, and several destructive-device offenses.

Coleman must continue receiving mental-health treatment, undergo evaluations, surrender the weapons seized by authorities, and pay $550 in fines and fees.

Judge Michael T. Clarke sentenced him to 36 months of supervised probation and 75 days in jail with credit for time already served. That means zero additional days behind bars.

Probation. For a terror plot.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Coleman was arrested in February after acquaintances alerted police to his alleged plans to attack ICE agents operating out of Portland.

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Two CDC studies on vaccines and autism using the same data find opposite conclusions. Both cannot be correct

Two US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) studies of the autism rate in Denmark in the 90s: the first one, produced by admitted felon Poul Thorsen, says the autism rate increased from 1995 to 2000, which was then used to claim there is no connection between giving infants mercury in vaccines and autism; the second study found that the autism rate in Denmark not only decreased from 1995 to 2000, but was more than 10 times higher than the rate claimed by Thorsen. At least one of these studies is bogus. 

Thorsen was a Danish researcher hired by the CDC in 1999 to do a series of studies, including several on the role of vaccines causing autism. He was indicted for embezzling more than $1 million from the CDC and other crimes by a US federal court in 2011.  He lived openly in Denmark, where he was an instructor at Aarhus University, but was finally arrested and extradited to the US in 2025. Yesterday he pleaded guilty.

The first study, ‘Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence from Danish Population-Based Data’, a widely publicised and highly influential study released in 2003, claimed that mercury in vaccines played no role in causing autism because the rate of autism in Danish children increased after mercury was removed from Danish-produced vaccines in 1992. 

Another CDC study, ‘Recurrence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Full- and Half-Siblings and Trends Over Time: A Population-Based Cohort Study’, led by Therese K. Gronborg and released in 2013, however, shows the exact opposite: that the rate of autism in Danish children decreased after mercury was removed. And if the increasing rate of autism claimed in the earlier study showed that mercury had no role in causing autism, then logic would also require that the rate of autism going down, as shown in the current study, indicates that mercury in vaccines may very well have a great deal to do with causing autism. 

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