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.

Soldier blocks Palestinian harvest, says ‘Jews have prior right over Arabs to everything’

A soldier was filmed blocking a Palestinian olive harvest near Ramallah on Friday because, he said, “this is a Jewish state” and “Jews have a prior right over Arabs to everything in this country.”

The soldier documented in the central West Bank’s Birzeit area also said settlers were allowed to be there because those were his orders.

The IDF did not immediately comment on the incident.

Near the village of Yabrud, about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) east of Birzeit, separate footage on Friday showed settlers trapping a Palestinian vehicle and assaulting its occupants, reportedly a father and son, who fled.

Police said they arrested a 15-year-old settler on suspicion of involvement and seized one of the cars that the perpetrators used in the attack, which police described as a “nationalist” assault and car theft.

Rabbis for Human Rights, which published the footage from the Birzeit-area olive grove, said the Birzeit incident occurred as Israeli activists with the group were helping with the harvest on private Palestinian land in the West Bank’s Area C, which Israelis can legally enter without notifying Israel’s Civil Administration.

Nonetheless, soldiers shut down the harvest and removed the Palestinians and activists from the area, according to Rabbis for Human Rights.

The footage published by the group from the scene showed a masked soldier in full gear confronting Israeli activists, who asked why Jewish settlers could be in the area but Palestinians couldn’t.

“I don’t know if you remember, but this is a Jewish state. So Jews have a prior right over Arabs to everything in this country, whether you like it or not,” the soldier said.

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NASA Investigating Large Hole on Moon That May Open Into Enormous Cave

Beneath its pock-marked, craggy exterior, the Moon is thought to harbor a network of caves and tunnels from its volcanic past. Now, NASA has selected a mission to go investigate a promising window into our space rock’s subterranean secrets.

Gaping up at outer space, as if mugging for the orbital satellite cameras, is the Marius Hill Pit, a hole on the lunar surface that’s thought to be up to 150 feet deep and up to 300 feet across. Scientists believe it’s an example of a skylight — the collapsed roof of an underground lava tube, which forms a circular aperture in the ground.

If the feature is indeed a skylight, it could give scientists a peek at the Moon’s volcanic history. But scientists are also intrigued by the possibility of using these underground cavities as shelters for astronauts, or even the location of lunar bases.

Until now, the hole has only been investigated from orbit. The Geophysical Instruments for Marius Lunar pit Investigation (GIMLI) aims to do so from the ground. 

To determine if the hole opens up into a larger cave, the scientists at the Planetary Science Institute will equip a lunar rover with specialized instruments, including ground penetrating radar, seismic probes, and a sensor that measures the strength of the gravitational field called a gravimeter, to investigate it from the Moon’s surface. The rover will also use cameras to image the exposed portions of the pit.

“Confirming a substantial lava tube would give us an insight into how volcanism operated on the Moon,” said Gareth Morgan, a Planetary Science Institute senior scientist and deputy principal investigator on the GIMLI program, in a statement.

Most of the instruments will be constructed by Honeybee Robotics. The project is being funded through NASA’s Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon program, and the spacecraft will come through a private company in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payloads Services initiative.

The area near the MHP has a rich history of volcanic activity, according to a PSI release, with exposed layers of regolith and lava flows. Studying these layers could reveal how lava once flowed across the Moon. 

But the Moon’s underground structures have gained appeal with scientists because of how they could serve as an ideal sanctuary for astronauts. With barely any atmosphere to speak of, the lunar surface is constantly bombarded with radiation. Seeking shelter underground would provide a natural shield against those nasty solar and cosmic rays, and offer an environment with more manageable temperatures — essential elements if we’re ever to establish a long term presence up there.

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New York made $7.6 million in improper Medicaid payments to incarcerated people, audit reveals

A federal audit found that New York made about $7.6 million in Medicaid managed care payments on behalf of people who were incarcerated in state prisons.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General uncovered the payments and revealed that the money went to 1,375 Medicaid enrollees who were incarcerated between January 2021 and December 2024.

The new report specified that the money was paid to managed care organizations, not directly to incarcerated people. The federal share was $6.1 million.

The Inspector General is recommending New York return that money to the federal government.

The audit found that New York did not always remove people from Medicaid managed care after they entered prison.

“We determined that the State agency did not always disenroll individuals from Medicaid managed care after receiving notification that an enrollee was incarcerated,” read the report.

In one example, an individual remained enrolled in managed care for 23 months while incarcerated and monthly payments were made on the person’s behalf.

Auditors said New York has systems designed to identify Medicaid recipients who entered prison, but those systems did not consistently match incarceration and Medicaid records.

The state told investigators that system limitations and overrides during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to some of the payments.

Auditors also revealed that discrepancies in personal information, such as names and dates of birth, could prevent the state from matching records and making an incarcerated person ineligible for payments in the system. 

The Inspector General noted that its review focused on managed care payments and did not determine whether the individuals received inpatient medical treatment.

New York officials told auditors that the state’s Office of Medicaid Inspector General was reviewing the payments and would eventually recover any outstanding overpayments. 

The audit concluded that New York needed to improve its process for identifying incarcerated Medicaid recipients and halting managed care payments that should no longer continue.

The state told investigators that it planned to improve its process for cross-referencing New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) and Medicaid records.

“The State agency clarified that it would continue its systematic data-matching process to match DOCCS records with Medicaid enrollment data, but it is exploring development of an enhanced report to identify mismatches using lower-probability matching criteria and identifying individuals with minor demographic discrepancies through manual review,” read the report.

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China used military-linked kindergarten to cultivate ties with Mitch McConnell’s wife and in-laws

A child soldier lies dead in a marsh from starvation.

The Red Army pauses to mourn the little martyr for a moment before the Long March moves on — and the kindergarten play ends.

It is graduation day in Shanghai and Elaine Chao is in attendance.

The date is June 14, 2026 and in several hours Chao’s husband, Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, will be rushed to a hospital on the other side of the globe.

Chao has been returning to this Shanghai kindergarten for decades, where she has repeatedly met with officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and an influence and intelligence arm called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), according to Daily Caller News Foundation translations of dozens of Chinese government and state-media reports.

Beijing uses the UFWD to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Named in honor of Chao’s grandfather, the kindergarten is being used by a United Front arm as a stage to cultivate ties with Chao, documents show.

Chao — whose Chinese name is Zhao Xiaolan — has received at least four Chinese government positions since 2008, including a Wuhan municipal advisory post as well as roles within the China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA) and the All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC) — both of which are UFWD arms, the DCNF recently reported. Chao’s three UFWD arm positions partially overlapped with her tenure as President George W. Bush’s Department of Labor secretary and/or her service as Department of Transportation secretary during President Donald Trump’s first term.

Chao’s spokesperson, Patrick O’Connor, denied she “held a position with a foreign government” and told the DCNF “[w]e are not aware she has met with representatives of UFWD entities” after being sent photos showing Chao meeting with CCP and UFWD officials.

“Such a suggestion disregards her nearly five decades of faithful service to the United States and is both unfounded and deeply insulting, hurtful and racist,” O’Connor added.

“Education has always been a primary focus for the family and its philanthropy. The secretary regularly visits schools in the U.S. and abroad,” O’Connor said in response to questions about why Chao had participated in events at the Shanghai kindergarten that variously featured Chinese military propaganda, CCP and UFWD officials. “This kindergarten is named after Dr. Chao’s father, and he has supported it for nearly four decades. The secretary was there to honor her father’s connection to the school, which is recognized as one of the best kindergartens in the region.”

Chao’s relationship with CCP and UFWD-affiliated organizations underscores how China intends to use political influence operations and information warfare to defeat the U.S. “without ever firing a shot,” Brandon Weichert, a geopolitical analyst and author of The Weichert Brief, told the DCNF.

“After more than 40 years of such operations, which have even influenced educational institutions in the U.S., it is clear that the United States has been completely outmaneuvered and overrun by the Chinese narrative,” Weichert said. “That even people like the wife of former Republican Party Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a former cabinet member herself, has become the face of a quiet campaign to influence the hearts and minds shows you how prolific — and profligate — the Chinese campaign has been.”

“We are on the slow, but steady path of being absorbed in China’s new empire without so much as any understanding that this is underway,” Weichert warned.

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Influencers Got Payouts to Post Pro-Talarico Content

A new report from the New York Times has revealed that a group called Frontier Media was distributing payouts to creators who would post pro-James Talarico content on social media.

The Times claims to have found “dozens” of TikTok accounts that received payments of $4 per 1,000 views to upload positive videos of the Democrat Senate candidate. According to the Times, the Talarico campaign denies any involvement in the scheme to boost his favorability. Despite the denials, the origin of the funds is completely unknown as Frontier Media has no FEC filings.

The newest scheme to help aid Talarico through the election comes nearly a month after an employee for a pro-Talarico PAC had been caught on video explaining that the group was “paying people for their votes” through a “paid relational program.”

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European Leaders Determined to Create WWIII

Europe will NEVER avoid war until it starts impeaching Kaja Kallas who was not directly elected by the public to the EU position she uses to oppose any peace deal. However, this is standard procedure for this role for the EU was established to actually prevent the people from having any say in the future of Europe. She claims only more sanctions will end the war when there is no evidence that sanctions have ever worked on anyone even once. She wants world war for her personal vendetta like Victoria Nuland et el.

Kaja Kallas was nominated by the European Council to become the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. This nomination was made in June 2024 by the leaders of the EU member states. Following this nomination, her appointment was formalized through a European Council Decision on July 24, 2024. She was NOT elected to this position yet call Putin a Dictator and not Zelensky or herself!!!!! The High Representative is not a directly elected position; instead, the role is appointed by the European Council (with the agreement of the Commission President), which is the standard constitutional process for this office.

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Government spending $300k per year on unused limos for former PMs

Taxpayers spent $298,359 keeping the chauffeured cars on standby last year. They were used for just $10,921 worth of trips.

The government has been spending around $300,000 per year to provide Crown limousines to former prime ministers and their spouses – even though the service goes mostly unused. 

Former prime ministers and governors-general are entitled to lifetime 24/7 access to chauffeur-driven cars from the Crown fleet for any travel “related to his or her role as a former prime minister”. The perk is managed by the government’s VIP Transport Service, part of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).

The government spent a total of $340,646 providing this service in 2025, according to the DIA annual report. That’s despite the 15 eligible former prime ministers, governors-general and their spouses barely using the service. The entire cohort claimed just $10,921 towards land transport, which includes the use of chauffeur-driven cars charged out at an hourly rate.

Jenny Shipley was the largest individual claimant in 2025 with $3,877, followed by Helen Clark with $2,567. By contrast, many former prime ministers do not use the service at all. John Key has claimed just $56 in the last two years, while Jacinda Ardern has not claimed anything since she has been out of the country during that time.

The difference between the relatively small amount of actual use and the high total cost of the service is categorised entirely as an “availability fee”. In 2025 this fee was $298,359, up from $265,919 in 2024. DIA documents state that the availability fee is “designed to ensure that a fit-for-purpose on-call service is available to entitled customers”.

Briget Ridden, DIA’s general manager of ministerial services, said the annual fee “covers all other costs associated with providing the service. This includes fixed costs such as depreciation, capital charges, allocated overheads, and vehicle costs. It also covers other costs incurred to make the 24/7 chauffeur drive service available to users such as administration, transport coordination, an online booking portal, staffing, property and overheads.”

Technically, DIA considers the service to be “user-funded” because there is no direct Crown appropriation to run the vehicle fleet. However, former prime ministers don’t pay anything out of their own pocket. The cost of using the service and the cost of running the service are both ultimately paid by the taxpayer.

On top of access to chauffeur-driven cars, former prime ministers are also entitled to free transport on any plane, train, ferry, bus or taxi for travel “related to his or her role as a former prime minister”. They also have the option of using other luxury taxis and driver services that have similarly high charge-out rates but don’t require the taxpayer to fund the back-end services. 

Outside of the chauffeur-driven cars, airfares are the most significant travel perks claimed by former prime ministers, at a combined cost of $32,147 in 2025. Again, Jenny Shipley was the largest claimant with $9,296. 

Other benefits available to former prime ministers include lifelong use of a government-owned car with all fuel and maintenance costs covered, and an annual annuity of up to $64,000 per year ($12,800 for each year they served as prime minister). 

In December 2025, the government announced a $5.7m purchase of 10 BMW i7 xDrive60 luxury sedans, which retail for about $300,000 each, as well as 19 smaller, more economical vehicles.

Crown fleet vehicles are also available to all current ministers, the leader of the opposition, senior judges and diplomatic guests. These other users are funded through different departments and agencies.

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“Full-On Truman Show”: Former State Dept. Official Exposes USAID’s Censorship Machine In Brazil

Former State Department official Mike Benz laid out USAID’s sweeping involvement in Brazil’s political and institutional landscape, detailing a network of American funding that reached media organizations, universities, activist groups and organizations involved with the country’s election system.

Benz, who serves as executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, broke down the extent of USAID’s footprint during an appearance on “The Benny Show” with host Benny Johnson.

“What’s happening in Brazil was a full-on Truman show. You had the media funded by USAID. You had the universities funded by USAID. You had the staffers of the Supreme Court and the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), the election court, USAID. You had all the constitutional law advocates funded by USAID. You had the LGBT activists funded by USAID,” Benz explained.

“It’s full spectrum. If you were to walk down a city block in Sao Paulo or, I don’t know, Brasilia, you would have a 360 vision of institutions funded and puppeteered by USAID without ever knowing it,” the former State Department official added. “In fact, USAID, knowing what they were doing, and I need to be careful about what I can and can’t say here, let’s just say, would anyone be surprised, for example, if USAID was going around and telling its grantees in Brazil to remove the USAID logo so that it doesn’t get out that grantee’s connection to USAID?”

Benz said USAID’s influence could continue even after its funding disappeared because institutional and legal changes remained in place.

“They knew what they were doing. They knew how sensitive it was. Would you be surprised, for example, if USAID, which basically set up the censorship state in Brazil, and this is actually something, let me quickly pivot to say, it is true that this is the first Brazilian election since the 2020 municipal elections in Brazil that does not have USAID money slushing around Lula and his allies, but is still an election that is in many ways under the thumb of the ghost of USAID,” he said. “There is something I call kind of the clockmaker’s dilemma, which is USAID, even when you remove it, the institutional and legal changes that a country goes through can live on even if you cut USAID funding down to zero.”

Benz then zeroed in on two of Brazil’s most powerful institutions, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and Superior Electoral Court (TSE): “For example, in Brazil, you have this apparatus through the STF and TSE, the Supreme Court and the basically election court that determines all things around elections, and basically after Bolsonaro won in 2018, the TSE court with Alexandre de Moraes, the famous Voldemort judge, they declared disinformation a threat to free and fair elections, not just disinformation during an election season, but disinformation any time, misinformation, disinformation any time about anything because it could pollute people’s, I don’t know, sense of what’s true or false in the information ecosystem, and so it could have an impact on an election three years away if this false information is allowed to circulate online.”

Benz also went into detail about USAID’s connections to Brazil’s election and judicial establishment.

“That was set up by USAID, USAID flooded the zone, USAID had contact at every level with the TSE court, with the Alexandre de Moraes court,” he said. “I testified to the Brazilian Senate Relations Committee and put pictures from USAID’s website of Alexandre de Moraes being trained by CEPS (Competitive Economy Program), the USAID grantee, by NED (National Endowment for Democracy), the USAID grantee has gotten $3 billion from USAID and was created by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Benz’s remarks come just days after Brazil’s conservatives delivered a powerful showing at the ballot box. Flávio Bolsonaro finished first in the opening round of the presidential election, taking 47.03% of the vote to left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 45.16%, setting up an October 25 runoff.

Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party emerged as the largest party in both houses of Congress, winning 121 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and expanding its Senate delegation from 15 to 28 seats.

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South Carolina Democrat State Lawmaker Arrested For Pointing Gun at Family Member of Opponent at Polling Location on Primary Day

A South Carolina Democrat state lawmaker was arrested on Friday for presenting and pointing a handgun at a Democrat polling location on primary day.

On June 9, State Rep. Michael Rivers (D-St. Helena Island) retrieved a handgun from the glove compartment in his vehicle and pointed it at a relative of his opponent.

Michael Rivers engaged in a “brief verbal altercation” over the political campaign for his seat. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for the felony pointing charge.

Rivers lost his primary to Shannon DeLocach.

An attorney for Rivers said his client is innocent.

“Representative Rivers is asserting his innocence to this accusation levied against him by a political opponent. Michael has served admirably in the State Legislature and he is a retired member United States military. He has been an upstanding citizen for nearly seven decades. We ask for the public to withhold judgment until the facts come to light and this matter is resolved in a Court of law,” the attorney, Seth Rose, said in a statement to WIS.

Rivers was released on a $15,000 bond.

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The Obama Death Star Is Out Of Hope

I’ve always thought Barack Obama was a race-hustling, egomaniacal, anti-American Communist and Islamist, and his actions and history have vindicated that belief. The media lauded him as the greatest orator in history, yet by the standards I taught my speech and debate students, he was mediocre at best. No Obama speech is remotely in the same league as those of Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln. He just didn’t have it in him, largely because he was entirely self-centered.

Obama was expert at self-promotion and self-aggrandizement, so much so that he was given a Nobel Peace Prize almost immediately after being elected for being Barack Obama. At least one member of the Nobel Committee that awarded that prize later admitted it was a stupid thing to do. As President of the Harvard Law Review, he did almost nothing, and only a single, 1990, unsigned article on abortion has been attributed to him. He obviously liked the title and prestige, but not the work. He could never explain to even his friends what he did as a “community organizer” in Chicago.

With that non-management background, it’s hardly surprising things have already taken a nosedive at his presidential library that isn’t. The Daily Mail reports:

Barack Obama is facing a fresh humiliation at his ‘eyesore’ presidential center with workers slamming the project’s bosses and moving to unionize just months after it opened.

In a letter to colleagues this week, staff at the Chicago library said they were organizing a union due to the institute’s ‘increasing workloads’ and benefit rollbacks.

Workers have grown frustrated with leadership at Obama’s foundation after their concerns were met with ‘vague responses,’ according to the letter, first shared by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Issues with workloads and benefits have led to a ‘high turnover rate’ among employees, with many more ‘continuing to leave (and) taking with them their institutional knowledge and expertise,’ the letter claimed.

Workers say they were recently told that their healthcare costs would increase, promotions were suspended, and paid time off was reduced, despite also learning they would get no pay increases this winter.

Luke Gilday, an Obama Foundation employee and member of the union organizing committee, told the Sun-Times that workers decided to unionize because they ‘don’t even have a seat at the table.’

‘What we’re hoping for, and really the reason why we’re forming our union, is just because we believe we should have a say in the decisions that are being made that impact all of our lives,’ Gilday said.

Should anyone be surprised that the man who lied about Obamacare and so much else is stiffing the employees he’s depending upon to man his bizarre legacy? In building it, he operated like a standard Democrat:

The Obama center cost upwards of $850 million, far beyond its initial budget of $300 million. But just days before its grand opening in June, contractors alleged that they had not been paid for work on the building.

Several subcontractors claimed they were owed millions in past-due invoices, and African American Contractors Association president Omar Shareef said several workers told him they ‘wished they had never done (the project).’

Here’s irony:

In the organizing committee’s open letter, the group quoted directly from a letter Obama circulated during the 2016 presidential election, which called on workers to join unions across the nation.

‘If I were looking for a good job that lets me build some security for my family, I’d join a union. If I saw a problem in my workplace, I’d organize my coworkers to do something about it,’ the quote read.

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