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.

Texas Man Accused of Plotting Attack on State Capitol Posts $75,000 Bond Just Hours After 3 A.M. SWAT Arrest — FBI Then Takes Him Into Federal Custody

A Texas man accused of planning to shoot up the state Capitol was booked before dawn Wednesday and, according to county jail records, walked out on a $75,000 bond before most of Austin had finished coffee.

Benny Caldera Jr., 40, of Converse, northeast of San Antonio, was taken from his home around 3 a.m. Wednesday by Texas Department of Public Safety SWAT after DPS received a tip Tuesday about a violent attack planned for Thursday, October 1.

He was charged with felony terroristic threat against a public servant and hauled to the Bexar County Jail.

According to the Washington Examiner, jail records showed him released on that $75,000 bond just before 7 a.m., roughly four hours after the raid, and was placed on pretrial supervision.

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Polish Foreign Minister Says Ukraine War Should Keep Going No Matter What

The foreign minister of Poland, Radosław Sikorski, once more expressed the stance of his country in relation to the conflict in Ukraine, stating that it is not a war that needs to be ended.

The negative perception of Russia that can be gleaned from the comments of Sikorski and his country’s institutions, including their foreign policy and mainstream media, is part and parcel of the arguments currently employed by them in order to establish the view of Russia as a failed state. Furthermore, historical grievances which can still be utilized as tools to be employed against Russia in order to bring it to its knees are being consistently emphasized and brought to the forefront of Polish foreign policy.

Poland’s stance in relation to Russia is in lockstep with the remainder of the EU and the structures of NATO, the principal goal of foreign policy being to ensure the continued goals of these two organizations. In other words, as long as these are able to function in a suitable manner in the region from the perspective of their leadership, Poland will continue to support the war.

These comments reveal that Sikorski views Russia through the prism of economic underachievement. He once calculated the position that Russia would occupy had it developed at the same rate as Canada from 1913 onwards and arrived at the conclusion that by then it would have reached the level of the economy of the United States. Alas, we are told that, instead, the economy of Russia has been decreasing and is now even smaller than that of Italy.

The point Sikorski’s comments make is that of Russia’s economic underdevelopment and how it should be used in order to continually put even greater and greater pressure upon it, while, at the same time, also curtailing its existence. Sikorski would continue to advocate further degradation of the economy of Russia in order to force it to negotiate and to insist that any concessions that may be granted to it in terms of geography would in reality amount to nothing more than a reward to aggression on its part.

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The Usefulness of a Massacre

On Sunday morning, without notice, a private plane carried Benjamin Netanyahu out of Israel and into Abu Dhabi. Channel 12 broke the story while he was still on the ground. A day later both governments confirmed the meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, calling it a conversation about bilateral relations. The Israeli account gave the errand away. Netanyahu had gone to ask the Emirati president to deny publicly a report that he had telephoned Netanyahu days before 7 October 2023 to warn that Hamas was preparing a major assault.

A prime minister who wanted the record corrected would send a lawyer or a spokesman. This one flew across the Gulf in secret, a month before an election, to ask a foreign head of state to say a warning never happened. The method is the tell, and it points at everything the errand is meant to protect.

What October 7 opened is visible on the ground before it is visible anywhere else. By the reckoning of an Israeli newspaper, Israel has seized more territory from its neighbors since that day than in any comparable span in decades. The war did not stay in Gaza. It moved outward on every front where a border could be pushed.

In Gaza the army holds more than half the territory after the autumn ceasefire, and the plan for what remains was drawn up in Washington. A proposal built around Donald Trump would place the enclave under American trusteeship for at least a decade and rebuild it as a coastal resort on cleared land. Netanyahu’s cabinet approved the voluntary transfer of Gazans to third countries, and his defense minister ordered the army to prepare for a mass departure. A UN commission gave the campaign its legal name last September, finding that Israel had committed genocide and that its object was permanent control of Gaza and a Jewish majority across the land it holds. Israel rejects the finding. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over the conduct of the war, which his office calls false.

The other fronts complete the picture. In the West Bank the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, pushed through the E1 settlement, some 3,401 homes on the corridor that severs the territory, and said its approval buries any Palestinian state. His cabinet colleagues inaugurated two new settlements last week, and Smotrich has demanded the army wage in the West Bank what it waged in Gaza. In Lebanon the military sits on some 234 square miles of the south. In Syria, after the fall of Assad, it crossed the old disengagement line into the UN buffer zone and dug into nine positions, including the peak of Mount Hermon. The war opened on Iran this year runs on the same logic. The Atlantic Council, no enemy of Israel, describes an emergency response to October that has hardened into a permanent doctrine of forward defense. None of this was concealed as intent. Handed a map of the promised land on live television last August, Netanyahu said he felt very attached to the idea of a Greater Israel reaching into Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.

A war that produces this much cannot be allowed to end, and it has not been. When the fighting began, the expectation across Israel was that it would close within months, the coalition would fracture, and Netanyahu would answer for the worst security failure in the country’s history. A New York Times investigation later set out how the opposite came to pass. He stretched the fighting past the point his own commanders judged necessary and added war aims as ceasefire talks matured. In April 2024 a six-week truce that would have freed more than thirty hostages reached the edge of a cabinet vote, and Smotrich ended it with a line, warning Netanyahu that if the deal passed, you no longer have a government. In March 2025 Israel broke a standing ceasefire, which brought the departed Itamar Ben-Gvir back into the coalition. The hostages were the cost, paid in installments.

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Why Observational Studies Lie to You

If you’ve spent five minutes paying attention to medical news, you’ve undoubtedly seen the headlines: “People who take statins have 30% fewer heart attacks!” or “Breast cancer screening makes women live longer!” or “Menopausal Hormone therapy lowers Alzheimer’s risk.”

These all sound wonderful, don’t they? Just swallow a daily pill, or submit to regular screening, and you’ll join the ranks of the immortal. Were only life so simple. 

Yet before you rush off to demand a prescription, let me introduce you to one of the sneakiest, most persistent mirages from the world of medical research, which we call the “Healthy User Bias.”

Readers of Brownstone were recently introduced to this concept related to the Covid vaccines in an article entitled “A Hall of Mirrors of the Healthy Vaccinee Effect,” which demonstrated that those who were vaccinated were not the same as those who weren’t. Very frail people and those close to death were less likely to get vaccinated, which is understandable, and so those who didn’t get the jab died at a higher rate than those that did. Simple, right?

Understanding this single concept may not, overnight, elevate your medical BS detector from “gullible consumer” to “battle-tested skeptic,” but to be fair, it might help. 

The Kale-Eating, 6 AM Jogger Effect, and the Placebo Effect

What is the Healthy User Bias? It’s embarrassingly simple. In observational studies—where researchers merely watch what people do in the real world rather than running an experiment—the people who voluntarily take preventive drugs or pop daily supplements are fundamentally different from those who don’t. No surprise there, right? 

On average, “healthy users” are wealthier, better educated, and more health-obsessed. They are seriously more obedient when it comes to vaccines (including the Covid vaccine). These sorts of people want to do the best they can within their powers, which includes things that involve some friction: they eat organic kale, jog at dawn, wear seatbelts, don’t smoke, and visit their doctors regularly. They love tests of all kinds. 

A 2006 meta-analysis quantified the healthy user effect (which they called the healthy adherer effect) across 21 studies. What they found is mind-blowing in its implications. It found that those who religiously took their prescribed pills (which we call ‘good adherence’), even if it was a placebo, showed a 44% reduction in mortality (which was identical to adherence to proven beneficial therapy). All this shows is that the obedient, healthy people are more likely to do what most physicians want: they take their medication as ordered by their doctors.

When researchers observe people over ten years and notice they have fewer heart attacks and fewer strokes the light goes on. Hey, they might live longer! This is where pharmaceutical cheerleaders jump up and down, declaring: “Look! It was our pill!”

No. Sorry, it most likely wasn’t the pill. It was the person who took the pill. It was the fact that the patient was already doing 27 zillion other things to stay healthy. Maybe they had a gene that said: don’t do stuff to excess that are known to be bad for you (ie: smoking, drinking, committing violent crimes, extreme sports, being grossly overweight, being a couch potato, etc)

The pill was just along for the ride. Observational research routinely mistakes a healthy lifestyle for pharmaceutical magic. 

By now you’re saying, Okay Mr. Alansmartypants, gimme some examples. 

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Trump’s Horrific, Illegal Iran War Has ‘Costs Us Billions While Making Us Less Safe’

A group of experts says that President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran, which has been massively expensive and has made Americans less safe, shows the need for a radical overhaul of US foreign policy.

Scholars at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts on Wednesday are holding a webinar to present ideas for reducing the US military footprint and using the savings to invest in programs that will directly benefit working-class Americans.

In a video posted on social media ahead of the webinar, PERI experts advocated for making major changes to US foreign policy, which they argued has left the country overstretched.

“The Iran War costs us billions while making us less safe,” says a message accompanying the video on PERI’s social media account. “By reining in military spending and taxing the wealthy to pay their fair share, we can fund critical services like universal preschool, infrastructure investments, and Medicare for All.”

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Health Canada won’t answer contaminated COVID-19 vaccine questions

This month Ottawa tabled a stack of Order Paper Questions on COVID vaccines: Pfizer payments, residual DNA contamination known as Plasmidgate, approvals, VAERS death reports, and the science (or lack thereof) behind lockdowns.

As then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sold vaccination as a civic duty and implemented sweeping vaccine mandates, families who were never given proper informed consent recently brought their injuries to Ottawa.

“It really affects the whole family when one person’s injured,” said Carrie Sakamoto, a severely vaccine injured Canadian. She told me at the Allison Inquiry at the beginning of September that “it just devastates everybody.”

Veterans, former elite athletes and parents of children who died testified, and Health Canada stayed silent throughout. Then, a week later, the Public Health Agency of Canada posted a portal update and a backlog number. There was no apology.

As OPQ responses begin rolling in, one is from the MP who spearheaded the inquiry, Dean Allison himself. He asked Health Canada what science proves SV40 promoter fragments in Pfizer’s vaccine are inactive, and when officials first noticed the 2021-22 spike in U.S. VAERS death reports.

The department responded not with a study, but the blanket reassurance that the fragment is inactive, has no functional role and sits below limits. For context: SV40 sequences are used in molecular biology to drive gene expression. They can interact with host DNA, but it all begs the question that if the material is inert and irrelevant, why is it there?

Internal Health Canada emails from July 2023 show officials still asking Pfizer for characterization details while authorizing additional boosters – shots that were still contaminated.

Pfizer had not disclosed the sequence to Health Canada, the FDA or the EMA at the time of submissions, and it was only after genomics expert Kevin McKernan and I made the finding public in April, agencies compared notes.

“At Health Canada, we do not view this as an urgent risk topic,” one email said, as fall booster campaigns loomed. If regulators had already concluded the fragment was harmless and below limit, why were they still seeking basic measurement information from Pifzer?

The same pattern appears in questions on residual DNA bound to lipid nanoparticles, the tiny fat bubbles that carry the modified RNA of the vaccine into cells.

Officials once again offered broad safety assurances while leaving levels, fragment size, batch variability and manufacturing controls unanswered. On deaths, they said vital statistics showed no increase linked to mRNA vaccines, cited VAERS when convenient, then treated the same database as a scare tactic.

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Protection Orders, Gun Training, And 3D Printing Laws Among Gun Bills Signed By California Governor

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of 10 gun bills into law that he says will enhance what he considers to be the state’s already exemplary record of firearms safety.

Newsom’s office announced the signing in a press release on Monday. According to the release, the laws are meant to reduce violent crime involving guns and reduce the number of illegal guns on the street, among other things.

They include a training requirement for the purchase of a gun, expanding criteria for the state’s extreme risk protection orders, voluntary firearms storage by law enforcement to prevent violent crime and suicide, and a requirement for firearms blocking technology on 3D printers in the state by July 1, 2029.

“California has been a leader in gun safety. Today’s laws continue that work – using data, prevention, and proven tools to help keep firearms out of dangerous situations and support communities affected by violence,” Newsom stated in the press release.

Senate Bill 948 will make a training requirement necessary for acquiring a state firearms safety certificate for the purchase of a gun. Existing law requires the certificate for the purchase, transfer, or importation of guns within the state within 60 days of the transaction.

The new law adds a requirement for a four-hour training course that must cover firearm handling and safety as well as a live-fire component. The law becomes effective Jan. 1, 2029.

The press release also touted the state’s Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVRO), crediting them with preventing 58 mass shootings and reducing violent crime overall.

Assembly Bill 175 expands this by allowing courts to issue extreme risk protection orders even if the subject of the order has not been notified. It also prohibits courts from requiring petitioners to show that exceptional circumstances exist that make the order necessary.

Thousands of GVROs have been issued since the first laws were implemented in 2016, the press release states.

“Between 2021 and 2024, the number of longer-term GVROs issued each year in California more than doubled. In 2024 alone, California courts issued GVROs against 1,727 individuals found to pose a significant danger of firearm violence toward themselves or others,” the release states.

Newsom also signed a law meant to prevent suicides by providing temporary gun storage for those who are in crisis.

Assembly Bill 1974 allows law enforcement agencies to establish programs to take temporary possession of firearms from those who request such. The law requires the agency to provide clear instructions on voluntarily transferring custody of a firearm and instructions on requesting its return.

It also requires the agency to ensure the person is not prohibited from owning a firearm. The agency must also ensure the firearm has not been reported lost or stolen, used in a crime, or part of an active investigation. Guns that are not picked up by their owners will be destroyed.

The law also exempts the agencies and gun owners from certain requirements for concealed carry and transfer of firearms.

Assembly Bill 2047 is meant to hamper the production of homemade guns that do not have serial numbers or other identifying marks. The law sets a deadline of July 1, 2029, for any 3D printer sold in the state to have firearms blocking technology.

This technology would prevent the user from 3D printing so-called “ghost guns.” These guns are most often frames of synthetic materials produced on a 3D printer with metal parts purchased separately. The fact that the homemade guns have no serial numbers makes it difficult to trace them back to their source.

The press release states that the number of unserialized guns has been on the decline in recent years.

“Seventeen percent fewer ghost guns [were] recovered as crime guns in 2025, bringing the decline since 2021 to 37 percent,” the release reads.

Gun rights advocates decried the package of gun laws, saying they are about gun control more than gun safety.

Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), was especially critical of the training requirement, which he considers an obstacle to legal gun ownership.

“It comes after California has already passed an 11 percent excise tax on guns and ammo, and carry permits cost anywhere between $500 and $2,500 in the state, depending on the county. SAF is currently litigating against both of those abuses and will consider a lawsuit against SB 948 as its effective date in 2029 approaches,” Kraut stated in an email to The Epoch Times.

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DOJ Files Charges Against Minnesota Judges Who Launched ‘Unethical Partisan Press Tour’ to Attack Trump’s Immigration Agenda

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has formally filed a misconduct complaint against the Minnesota federal judges who admitted to the New York Times that they are using their power as judges to obstruct the Trump administration’s agenda.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told followers on X that the DOJ is targeting the judges for engaging in an “unethical partisan press tour on immigration cases.”

“Judges who covet publicity undermine public confidence in the rule of law,” McCotter added.

Attorney General Todd Blanche blasted the clearly biased judges, saying that the U.S. government has a right, “just like every litigant in court, to have a judge that will be fair and impartial,” Blanche said. “We have no choice but to act.”

The complaint comes after the New York Times published a story early in September featuring Judge Patrick Schiltz and five of the seven judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit who spoke to the paper to reveal their experiences over the president’s crack down on illegal immigration.

The judicial misconduct complaint names Judge Schiltz, who was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton-appointed Judge John Tunheim, both of whom have openly criticized Trump’s immigration policies.

Tunheim, for instance, told the Times that ICE was not arresting the right migrants, and said, “They weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street.”

The DOJ, though, says the judges’ public conduct “is particularly egregious” and that they “flagrantly violated the Code of Judicial Conduct with their improper and unethical comments.”

The complaint added that Schiltz’s comments were “overly political and concern matters that are pending” before the court, and that Tunheim’s comment was “less verbose” but “equally unethical.”

“If anything is a ‘grave threat to the rule of law,’ it is judges who repeatedly and brazenly exceed their authority then launch a partisan press campaign that includes criticizing the government for filing an emergency appeal when a judge refused to rule on a search warrant application,” McCotter said.

The DOJ is requesting that the court order both judges to recuse themselves from cases involving DHS and its departments, including ICE. The complaint also wants an investigation into “improper conduct” of the Minnesota judges who “‘covet publicity” rather than adhering to the rule of law by adjudicating cases or controversies.

Schiltz has already issued a statement proclaiming his innocence. “As legal-ethics experts have confirmed, I was acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to the New York Times,” he said, and citing the Judicial Conference guidelines for what judges can say in public, he added, “that is exactly what I did.”

The 8th Circuit Court also averred that the judges who spoke to the Times acted “well within” the ethics rules.

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Battleground Democrats Are Snubbing Two 2028 Presidential Contenders

Democratic candidates in several of this fall’s most competitive House and Senate races are keeping Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former Vice President Kamala Harris off their campaign trails – even though both women rank among the party’s leading prospects for the 2028 presidential nomination.

The Democratic bench for 2028 includes Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Ocasio-Cortez, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. Two of those six are women of color, from the demographic the party has spent a decade calling its moral center and its electoral future. Both now sit on the do-not-call list in the districts that will decide control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections.

According to an Axios report, Democrats in several key battlegrounds are keeping Ocasio-Cortez at arm’s length. Party officials say candidates in other close races have told her team outright to stay away. That is an electability problem for a politician whose whole pitch to primary voters is that bold progressivism, including Medicare for All, wins more votes than cautious centrism does.

Candidates in tight races reject that theory today even though they embraced it only months ago in their primaries. Sam Forstag, a progressive House candidate in Montana, rallied with Ocasio-Cortez in May on his way to the Democratic nomination. He has since scrubbed her endorsement from his campaign website.

“The polling is atrocious for her,” a senior Democratic strategist working in a key swing district told Axios. “She’s a lightning rod.”

Her own team offered no evidence to the contrary. When Axios asked whether she had campaigned in person for any of the party’s top House or Senate candidates this cycle, her office could not point to a single one.

Her travel log shows where she is welcome, and it’s clearly not in races that matter. Ocasio-Cortez made stops in Buffalo and Ithaca this week but skipped New York’s competitive 17th District in the lower Hudson Valley. She also stumped for Florida Senate nominee Angie Nixon, a fellow member of the Democratic Socialists of America, in a state that has drifted so far red that no serious Democrat expects Nixon to flip the seat. Buttigieg, Kelly and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, by contrast, have all drawn invitations from Democrats in competitive districts and states over the past month.

Kamala Harris is also getting snubbed despite polling the best of any 2028 contender. Last month, The Hill reported that Democrats in the most competitive midterm contests were shutting her out in public. Iowa supplied the most brutal data point. At the Iowa State Fair in August, a reporter asked gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand whether he wanted Harris to campaign for him.

“No thanks,” Sand said. “Let’s move on. We need some new leadership.”

Josh Turek, the party’s Senate nominee in Iowa, got the same question and answered with a smiling “No.” In Alaska, Senate candidate Mary Peltola distanced herself from Harris after Harris’s political operation sent out a fundraising appeal on Peltola’s behalf without telling her first.

This pattern runs counter to every assumption baked into those primary polls. Harris is a former vice president, the first woman to hold the office, the party’s 2024 nominee and one of its most recognizable faces.

For a party that spent a decade insisting diversity was its destiny, this dynamic carries a certain irony. Democrats built their brand on elevating women of color, and the two women of color on their 2028 bench are getting the cold shoulder.

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Trump Maps Out $200 Billion in Korean Investment, but the Biggest Deals Aren’t Done Yet

President Donald Trump put some yuge numbers on the table Wednesday: up to $200 billion in South Korean investment for American energy projects, including Alaska LNG, eight nuclear power plants, and a massive natural gas power project in Texas.

The announcement finally gives shape to part of the $350 billion investment package South Korea agreed to as part of last year’s trade deal with Washington. Of that total, $150 billion was set aside for shipbuilding and another $200 billion for strategic investments selected in cooperation with the United States.

From Reuters:

“Thanks to the agreements my administration has secured with the Republic of Korea, they will invest up to $200 billion,” Trump said.

He said that the investment would include the construction of eight large-scale nuclear power plants, a liquefied natural gas pipeline in Alaska and a 6-gigawatt power generation facility in Texas.

The announcement is part of a series of economic and investment deals Trump is highlighting ⁠ahead of November’s midterm elections, as he seeks to reinforce his economic record amid voter concerns over the Iran war and high gasoline prices. The Alaska LNG project also comes as Republicans seek to retain incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan who faces Democrat Mary Peltola. Sullivan was in the Oval Office for the Wednesday announcement.

The Alaska LNG project includes an 807-mile (1,299-km) pipeline carrying natural gas from the North Slope to a liquefaction facility on Alaska’s southern coast, allowing the fuel to be shipped to Asian markets. The project is designed to transport about 3.9 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day and produce up to 20 million metric tons of LNG annually, according to the White House.

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