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.

‘Every Taxpayer… Should Be Outraged’: Anger Spreads Over ‘Illegal’ US-Funded Pro-Trump Ad

Outrage mounted Friday over a taxpayer-funded television advertisement glorifying President Donald Trump, with critics describing the 30-second spot as self-aggrandizing propaganda and questioning whether the administration violated federal law restricting the use of public money for partisan communications.

The ad—which aired this week on outlets including Fox News, Newsmax, and CBS—features a dizzying montage of Trump at rallies, White House events, sporting events, and alongside military personnel, captioned, “AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A COMMUNIST COUNTRY.”

The refrain of R&B singer JMSN’s “Love Me” plays over the rapid-fire images. The spot concludes with a voiceover from Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White praising Trump as “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met.”

At the bottom of the screen, an alarming disclosure appears, reading, “Paid for by the US government.”

The White House dismissed criticism of the ad—which aired ahead of November’s midterm elections—by calling the spot a “public service announcement” intended to remind Americans “to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending.”

However, on Friday, US Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Jack Reed (D-RI), along with Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), excoriated the clip.

“This is the sort of government propaganda one might expect in North Korea, not the United States of America, and it is an egregious and utterly illegal misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” the four senior congressional appropriators said in a joint statement.

“The law is not complicated,” the lawmakers added. “You cannot use taxpayer dollars for political advertisements.”

Federal appropriations law—including the funding bill Trump signed earlier this year—prohibits the use of government funds for unauthorized “publicity or propaganda purposes,” while the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has interpreted the prohibition to encompass communications whose obvious purpose is “self-aggrandizement” or “puffery,” as well as “purely partisan” communications.

The consumer advocacy watchdog group Public Citizen on Friday filed a complaint with the GAO alleging the ad “violates laws prohibiting the use of government resources for propaganda, the Hatch Act, and other related laws.”

“Whether or not President Trump was personally involved in the ad, it was conceived, produced, and distributed by Trump’s White House staff,” Public Citizen said.

US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Friday on social media that “every taxpayer, no matter your party, should be outraged by this.”

“Your money is being used to fund campaign ads for Trump,” the senator added. “It’s totally, completely [illegal]. He’s stealing your money for his campaign.”

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Unhinged Leftist Rep. Steve Cohen Files Ridiculous Record-Breaking 26 Articles of Impeachment Against President Trump

The desperate, unhinged Far-Left establishment is throwing another massive temper tantrum.

On Thursday, the retiring Tennessee lawmaker filed 26 articles of impeachment against President Trump, the largest single dump of impeachment charges ever hurled at a sitting American president.

Cohen called Trump “the most impeachable President our country has ever endured” and labeled the Republican House majority “sycophantic” and “derelict.”

“Trump is clearly the most impeachable President our country has ever endured. His continued presence in office is a danger to our democracy,” Cohen said in a statement.

“That the sycophantic Republican majority in Congress is derelict in its duty does not mean that I must abandon my responsibilities.  I took an independent oath to support and defend the Constitution. That commitment compels me to introduce this resolution today. When historians write about this period, and our constituents ask who stood up to President Trump’s lawlessness, this resolution is the answer.”

The House is still in Republican hands. Cohen himself admitted the resolution is going nowhere in this Congress. He is writing a wish list for a future Democrat majority and calling it statesmanship.

The proposed charges cover an enormous range of administrative actions.

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The Socialist Indoctrination Machine: Schools Are Teaching Young People To Embrace Big Government, Hate Capitalism

A recent headline from a well-respected news outlet caught my attention: “Could socialism make America happy again?“

Surely, the article must be satirical, I thought. Who in their right mind would believe that the most oppressive form of government, responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths, horrific living conditions, and the elimination of personal freedoms, would make anyone “happier”?

It wasn’t a joke. Nor are the slew of articles these days proclaiming that “Socialism’s moment is here” and similar findings that show socialism’s popularity is quickly climbing, especially among young people.

America has a socialism problem – or a socialism perception problem. A great swath of our country has bought into the lie that socialism can somehow provide a better quality of life, and it owes largely to progressives’ success transforming our education system into an indoctrination machine.

It’s no secret that higher education has long been a bastion of liberalism. In one recent poll, half of college professors at four-year schools self-identified as liberal, compared to only a quarter who identified as conservative. Conservative faculty were considerably more likely to hide their political affiliations for fear of being fired or retaliated against.

Likewise, a survey in 2020 found that nearly 40 percent of conservative college students did not feel comfortable expressing their political views because they worried their peers might file a complaint against them.

One might think that our country’s institutions of learnings would actively seek to educate young people about the dangers of socialism. There are, after all, numerous examples from recent history. Instead, they preach the evils of free-market competition, which has made the United States a global beacon of hope and freedom for over 250 years.

An annual study this year found that nearly 40 percent of students said that their college classes and activities negatively affected their views of capitalism, compared to less than 10 percent who said their experience improved it. That shouldn’t be a surprise. The same report two years earlier found that faculty were “more often positive toward socialism and negative toward capitalism.”

Today, 46 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 have a favorable opinion of socialism – more than twice as many compared to those who had a negative opinion of it.

Sadly, the left’s indoctrination program now starts well before college. Students are steeped in the immorality of capitalism and the romanticization of socialism beginning as early as primary grades.

In 2016, a now-often-cited survey found that one-third of millennial and Gen Z students believed more people were killed under former President George W. Bush than by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Almost one in five students did not know who Stalin was.

U.S. civics education hardly seems to be trending in a better direction. A poll by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in 2019 found more than seven in 10 Gen Z students and over six in 10 Millennials said they did not learn about communist regimes throughout their K-12 careers.

In 2022, our country’s National Assessment of Educational Progress scores in U.S. History, which measure students’ knowledge of the subject “in the context of democracy, culture, technological and economic changes,” fell five points from 2018, and 14 points below 2014 averages.

In 1997, following the publication of “The Black Book of Communism” – which estimated that nearly 100 million people died under communist and socialist regimes in the 20th century alone – the late historian and political commentator Tony Judt, himself a staunch liberal, wrote in The New York Times:

“No one will any longer be able to claim ignorance or uncertainty about the criminal nature of communism, and those who had begun to forget will be forced to remember anew.“

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Federal appeals court orders Trump admin to release Los Angeles homeless funds

federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the Department of Housing and Urban Development to release federal funding that has already been allocated to homeless service organizations in Los Angeles but was not distributed. 

The court order was in response to the Trump administration’s attempt to oversee how homeless service organizations in Los Angeles can seek millions of dollars in federal funding, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angles Homeless Services Authority was seeking up to $239 million on behalf of dozens of organizations, but HUD suspended LAHSA in June, citing a record of mismanagement, and directed the groups to apply directly through the federal government.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday largely upheld a district court ruling in a 2-1 split, which restored LAHSA as the applicant for the organizations.

The court determined that HUD “chose to suspend LAHSA at a time when it would leave the Los Angeles region particularly vulnerable” with ill effects on “vulnerable populations, critical programs and ongoing services.” 

“It is likely that its plan is unworkable and, at this late stage, extremely difficult if not virtually impossible to implement,” the decision added.

The new deadline for LAHSA to apply for HUD funding is Oct. 14. The original deadline was the end of August.

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California Has Highest Personal Income Tax Rate, 8 States Have None…

Where you live can make a major difference in the state income tax rate applied to your earnings, with systems ranging from no individual income tax to top marginal rates above 10%.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, compares U.S. states based on their top marginal individual income tax rate in 2026 using Tax Foundation data. Both local and federal income tax rates are excluded.

Which States Have No Individual Income Tax?

Eight states levy no individual income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.

New Hampshire is a relatively recent addition to the list, having repealed its tax on interest and dividends in 2025.

The table below lists all U.S. states and Washington, D.C., alongside their top marginal income tax rate and tax system.

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U.S. Beekeepers Sue USDA, Alleging Imported “Organic” Honey Misleads Consumers and Violates Federal Law

Four major U.S. commercial beekeeping operations have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), alleging the agency allows imported honey to carry the USDA organic seal through certification pathways unavailable to American producers [1].

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington by operations based in Washington, South Dakota, and Texas, according to the plaintiffs [1].

The lawsuit claims the practice misleads consumers, undermines domestic beekeepers, and violates federal organic law by creating a double standard for organic honey certification [1]. The beekeepers are seeking a court order to halt the alleged false labeling rather than monetary damages, according to the complaint [1].

Allegations of Certification Double Standard

The suit alleges that USDA organic standards require bees to forage within a 1.8-mile radius of certified organic land, a rule that makes large-scale organic honey production nearly impossible for most U.S. beekeepers [1]. Consequently, only four certified organic honey operations exist in the United States, all located in Hawaii, according to the plaintiffs [1].

This regulatory burden stands in contrast to the situation abroad, where foreign producers, particularly in Brazil, operate under less stringent rules that allow them to bypass USDA standards, the lawsuit alleges [1].

Experts note that the vast majority of apiary locations within the United States are not able to comply with organic regulations as currently written, and most locations that do conform tend to be in areas where bee forage is extremely limited [2]. As a result, little certified organic honey is currently being produced within the continental U.S., according to those familiar with the industry [2].

Imported Honey Dominates Market

Approximately 80% of honey sold in the U.S. is imported, according to OrganicEye, a nonprofit organization that monitors the organic industry [1]. U.S. beekeepers sold 116 million pounds of honey in 2025, down 14% from the prior year, while organic imports exceeded 78 million pounds during the same period, according to the lawsuit [1].

The complaint further states that roughly 60 million pounds of domestic honey remained unsold, with some producers holding up to three years’ worth of inventory [1].

This market imbalance has created significant financial strain for domestic producers, who report difficulty competing with cheaper imported products [1]. The situation mirrors broader trends in the food industry, where imported products can be labeled in ways that obscure their origin and undermine domestic producers [3].

Loopholes in Certification Process

The lawsuit highlights specific loopholes in the certification process that allegedly allow foreign honey to bear the USDA organic seal. One such pathway is group certification, which permits large agricultural organizations to certify multiple producers without individual site visits [1].

This option is used abroad but is not available to U.S. beekeepers, according to the complaint [1].

Additionally, the U.S.-Canada Organic Equivalency Arrangement permits Canadian-certified honey to bear the USDA seal, despite differing standards on pesticide exposure and forage requirements between the two countries [1].

These pathways create a hidden certification route that lets foreign producers label honey as USDA organic without meeting the same standards applied to domestic producers, the lawsuit alleges [1]. The concern over inconsistent certification standards is not new; observers of the organic industry have previously documented cases where the USDA organic label was applied to products that did not meet expected standards [4].

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Why Even A Temporary Diesel Export Ban Is A Bad Idea

Energy analysts spent much of the past week laying out all the reasons why a presidential ban on exports of diesel fuel is a no good, terrible, very bad idea. As the Institute for Energy Research detailed on Thursday, such a ban would not only fail to lower diesel pump prices for any appreciable amount of time, it would also inevitably result in higher gasoline prices and supply shortages as refiners are forced to cut back runs because they have no outlet for the diesel volumes currently being exported to the global market. 

Late in the week, we saw the emergence of an alternative proposal from politicians and industry critics: A temporary ban of “only” 90 days. This, they claim, would have the benefit of helping Republican candidates in their mid-term election campaigns while also allowing refiners to see a clear light at the end of the tunnel.

As a siren song it all sounds lovely. But in the real world, it’s also nonsense.

Whether we like it or not, capital does not care if some farmers in Iowa, Nebraska and Texas might go under because diesel prices are too high. Capital does care about two hard factors: The anticipated rate of return on its investment, and the consistent application of U.S. laws and regulations. 

A 90-day pause might as well be a permanent ban where capital deployment is concerned. It would send the signal to investors that the government, even in a Republican presidency, might step in at any time to do major damage to your rates of return. 

Former President Joe Biden’s killing of the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office in 2021 did enormous harm to that second key factor. Biden and his autopen cancelled that long-term multi-billion-dollar project which was already under construction without siting a single violation of U.S. law or regulation. The developer — Trans-Canada, now TC Energy — had moved forward with its federal permits fully secured with the faith that no future administration would intervene to cancel the billions of dollars it had already invested by January 20, 2021. 

A Trump intervention into diesel markets would do similar harm. Perhaps even more given that it would send the signal to investors that they now cannot have faith in the consistent application of the law even in a Republican administration. 

The current crisis shines a spotlight on the folly inherent in half a century of federal regulations that have made it near-impossible to build new refineries in the United States. America needs additional refining capacity and fast to be able to restore the country’s level of energy security to pre-Iran Conflict levels. 

But here’s the thing: These are multi-billion-dollar projects which take years, often decades to execute. Convincing investors to consider pouring billions of capital dollars into such projects requires their confidence that U.S. law will be applied fairly and consistently across multiple presidents of both political parties. Biden’s Keystone XL cancellation made doing that much harder. 

Sure, there is a new greenfield refinery under construction at the Port of Brownsville, Texas today— but that project benefits from a big injection of capital by India’s Reliance Industries. A big question remains whether American investors will have the confidence to step up and invest in the series of new refining operations needed to keep more of America’s domestic production at home. 

Any ban on exports for any length of time implemented for transparently political reasons would almost certainly answer that question in the negative. America cannot afford for that to happen.

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How Many Ministries Of Truth Does One Country Need

How many Ministries of Truth does one country need? With Andy Burnham announcing yet another, Prof Michael Rainsborough points out that Britain’s “narratives of decline” arise because the country is, in fact, declining…

In previous essays I have sought to describe the political condition into which Britain and other Western democracies have been drifting by offering various analogies.

At first, I tried being serious. My initial forays drew comparisons with the post-totalitarian societies of late communist Eastern Europe, where the widening distance between official propaganda and observable reality produced an ever-greater institutional effort to enforce the official world view. Later essays pursued the analogy more directly, asking whether Britain was becoming increasingly Sovietised, with some of the same characteristics of a political order in severe decline becoming recognisable. With the supply of serious comparisons running low, and the ironies apparently passing unnoticed, there seemed little left to do except laugh.

Once the absurdities become difficult to describe with a straight face, parody is the logical next step. The difficulty now has been making the exaggeration last until publication. Institutions and bureaucratic inventions for comic effect have acquired real-world counterparts before the joke has had time to land.

WISDOM escapes into the wild

A few weeks back my satirical turn took the form of ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Consensus‘, a John le Carré spoof in which the machinery of the contemporary British state deployed its formidable powers of information gathering to confirm what it already believed. At the centre of the story was WISDOM, the Whole-of-Institution Strategic Data and Outcomes Management system. Created to defend Britain against foreign disinformation, it soon graduated to monitoring “harmful narratives”, “problematic nostalgia”, declining trust and negative sentiment about immigration. A genuine photograph of migrants arriving on a beach was flagged for “decontextualised visual framing”. Requests for original sources and factual corrections became possible indicators of hostile interference.

Having begun by investigating Russia, China and Iran, WISDOM eventually discovered that the most troublesome source of misinformation about Britain was British people’s stubborn attachment to feeling British. WISDOM’s final diagnosis of the country’s deteriorating social cohesion was commendably concise: “The problem isn’t the problem, the problem is the people noticing the problem.“

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham stood before the United Nations and announced the creation of a National Centre for Information Defence. Barely had WISDOM escaped onto the page before reality began catching up with the satire.

According to Burnham, NCID will detect, attribute and disrupt hostile-state information attacks. He cited Russian bots masquerading as British citizens, fake websites, fabricated reports, forged newspaper branding and covert interference. Most insidious of all, naturally, was the amplification of “far Right narratives“. Russia, Burnham said, was creating a narrative of British decline. Britain, he claimed, had surrendered too much ground to those promoting such an account.

Burnham insisted that the “negative” and “corrosive” narrative about life in Britain “bears no resemblance to reality“. A few moments later in the very same speech, Burnham described people struggling with the “cost of living”, lives that were “not improving”, young people outside employment, education or training, widening inequality and a society vulnerable to division. Making life more affordable, he then announced, would lie at the heart of a new “10-year plan” for Britain.

The narrative of decline therefore bears no resemblance to reality, although reality apparently requires a 10-year plan.

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The Senate Can and Should Take an Important Step Toward Ending Israeli Impunity

Last week, I was pleased to once again participate in a meeting with one of my US Senators, Democrat Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a consistent leader for peace, justice, and human rights in Congress, and especially for ending US support for Israel’s genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing against the people of Palestine.

The subject of the meeting was his bill, with a vote expected early next week, Senate Resolution 852, to hold Israel accountable for its horrific actions against US citizens killed or detained by Israel. The goal of the resolution is very simple: within 30 days of passage, to require a State Department report on Israel’s alleged killings of nine US citizens, and more broadly, on the commission of “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights by Israel.” The resolution cites US law, section 502(B)(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.

The resolution reads, in part “…since January 2022, at least nine United States citizens have been killed by violent Israeli settlers or Israeli security forces in the West Bank, including Omar Assad, Shireen Abu Akleh, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, Mohammad Khdour, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, Amer Rabee, Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, Khamis Ayyad, and Nasrallah Abu Siyam” and “…the killings of these Americans in the West Bank have been met by a lack of accountability from the Netanyahu government and an inability to secure justice by the United States Government.”

Asking the Department of State to produce such a report sounds like the absolute minimum we, as taxpayers, deserve from our government, and certainly the families of those killed by Israel, likely with US-provided weapons, deserve that and much more. The resolution is supported by 84% of voters, on a bipartisan basis, in a just-released poll, and has 24 Senate co-sponsors. And as the resolution states, and many supporters note, protecting US citizens abroad is constantly touted as the top priority for US foreign policy, even by the current rogue Trump regime that regularly flouts domestic and international law, with the most egregious example being the illegal US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran.

Peace advocates regularly support much stronger legislation, and will do so repeatedly, until peace, justice, and human rights are the real foundations of US foreign policy, and not just paid cynical lip service. Soon there will likely be a Joint Resolution of Disapproval (JRD) in Congress to stop the proposed shipment of 40,000 one-ton bombs to Israel. The Biden administration, as bad as it was in its support for Israel during the razing of Gaza, had put this sale on hold, but President Donald Trump is now moving it forward. But the relatively modest Van Hollen resolution would be an important step toward ending Israel’s impunity, and if we can’t get justice for American citizens killed by Israel, then Congress is completely derelict in doing its job.

Peace Action and our colleagues have already generated over 57,000 letters to the Senate in favor of Sen. Van Hollen’s resolution, and many groups are pushing to get that figure close to 100,000, if not more.

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The Easy Money Fairy Tale Is About To End…Violently

For the better part of the last couple years, I have wondered whether financial markets are permanently broken. Not simply overvalued or temporarily irrational, but actually broken at the mechanical level and permanently distorted. I’ve written about it.

The basic process that is supposed to make capitalism work goes like this. Capital flows toward good ole’ fashioned productive uses (like the George Foreman Grill™) and away from flashy hot-shit stupid ones (like the Apple Vision Pro). Good businesses eventually outperform bad ones. Fraud eventually gets exposed. Making money is the point of a business. Price is a rationing mechanism and is determined by free markets. This system appears to have been dead for the last 10 years, at least.

Nowadays, we function under a derivative of capitalism (hereinafter referred to as “crony capitalism snorting bath salts, operating under policies so disorganized they’d make a Jackson Pollock painting look like the blueprints for a nuclear reactor”) where trillions of dollars can be created overnight, governments and central banks focus obsessively on a handful of key numbers, and preserving the nominal value of stocks and other financial assets has become the priority.

Everything else in the economy is then forced to adjust accordingly, and if you don’t like it, or it causes the price of your Whopper Jr.™ to go to $57, f*ck you…that’s just how money works nowadays.

We’ve spent most of the last 20 years systematically removing consequences from the financial system. Rates went to zero and stayed there for years. The Fed expanded its balance sheet by trillions. Every major crisis was met with an intervention, liquidity facility, bailout or assurance that policymakers stood ready to keep the machine running. Capital was forced to become extraordinarily cheap, and investors eventually became conditioned to believe it would remain that way. We laughed off our country’s credit downgrades. Economists and analysts turned into total pussies and cowards, crumbling into bits every time the market sold off 5%. Financial projections have turned into Hunter Thompson-esque 3AM drug induced astral projections.

And we turned into the real life version of Idiocracy for markets.

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