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.

Californians Are Prepared To Run Their State Into The Ground

According to recent polling, the California Voter ID initiative is in danger of losing this November, even though a supermajority of Americans across the political spectrum support Voter ID. Meanwhile, a 5% billionaire tax looks likely to win, even though the evidence against such proposals could not be clearer: higher taxes mean more rich people will flee to low-tax states, thus further depleting California’s already dwindling coffers.

What’s the matter with California voters? Why are they so addicted to failure? Why do they celebrate the continued demise of their once-great state?

The state of California remains the land of fruits and nuts, and all common-sense reforms are failing. This is a hard pill for many to swallow on the right in general, among Republicans in particular, and for the rest of the world watching, but Democrats don’t care. Power is the game, and the rest is chicken feed.

They dominate the voter rolls two-to-one.

They control every level of government.

They run the unions.

They have forced a hostile political takeover of big business, too. Chevron, pharmaceutical companies, and major financial firms are all trying to get a seat at the table to protect themselves.

Meanwhile, every major identity politics special interest runs riot in the state. From LGBT to Black Liberation, to everything in between, the left-wing smorgasbord of “give me money” hunkers down on Democratic lawmakers, demanding their piece of the increasingly receding budget.

The Democratic Socialists of America have been on a tear across California, taking over major city councils and pushing out weak Democratic lawmakers for the last ten years. The 2024 election witnessed a particular bloodbath for the party’s more establishment wing.

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Man Reportedly Fires Gunshots at Maine Jewish Summer Camp

A man in Maine allegedly fired several gunshots at a Jewish summer camp earlier this month, forcing the campus into lockdown.

The alleged attack occurred on August 7 at Camp Modin in Belgrade, Maine, when 36-year-old Nathan Hewett launched into a drunken antisemitic attack and fired several shots toward the camp basketball courts, per the New York Post:

Hewett, 36, allegedly fired several rounds from a rifle near camp grounds, triggering a lockdown with children as young as 7, Central Maine reported.

Security guards put on ballistic vests and armed themselves to protect the children.

…

After the confrontation, the two guards heard the shots being fired from a high-powered rifle, according to the court documents.

Hewett was arrested but later released on bail, with reports indicating that his father has since been harassing employees at the camp. Timothy Black, a security guard for the camp, wrote in a letter to the Capital Judicial Center that the harassment comes “when he is intoxicated.”

“He harasses us by coming to the property line and screaming at us,” said Black.

Hewett has since claimed that his tractor was damaged after hitting something, which he blamed on the camp.

At least 23 firearms were seized from Hewett’s property following the incident. He has been charged with reckless conduct with a firearm, criminal threats with a dangerous weapon, terrorizing with a dangerous weapon, and discharging a firearm near a dwelling.

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Beyond the Ukraine War, NATO and Europe Are Still Dependent on the US

The Ukraine war has underscored NATO and Europe’s continued reliance on the United States for defense. Ukraine’s air defense is running short of Patriot interceptors, and Europe has not been able to close the gap on its own. President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters that Ukraine has only about a tenth of the interceptors it needs from the United States.

The Chatham House reports that the Ukraine Contact Group of European states pledged $4 billion for Ukrainian air defense in June 2026, including more than $1 billion earmarked for Patriots, but notes that it remains doubtful the United States will supply the missiles. Europe does not build the Patriot system itself, and Ukrainian-made Patriots are not a near-term solution. Analysts cited by Chatham House estimate it would take 18 to 24 months just to establish a pilot production line domestically.

European governments have responded by purchasing American-made systems for Ukraine rather than replacing them with European production. Germany pledged more than $2 billion in military aid, including Patriot interceptors, while Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, and Sweden joined the fast-track purchasing program. However, the arrangement still relies on American manufacturing capacity rather than an independent European supply.

Four years into the war, Europe has not built the domestic capacity to cover its own air defense needs, let alone Ukraine’s, leaving Kyiv’s interceptor stocks dependent on U.S.-made weapons.

Beneath the missile shortfall sits a deeper dependency: NATO lacks sufficient independent capacity in satellite intelligence and reconnaissance, strategic airlift, air-to-air refueling, command-and-control infrastructure, and nuclear deterrence, relying heavily on the United States for all five. The NATO Intelligence Fusion Centre, based at RAF Molesworth in the UK, brings together NATO and partner-nation analysts to produce shared intelligence assessments on military threats and terrorism for the alliance as a whole.

Though housed in Britain, the Fusion Centre was established with the United States as the “framework nation,” meaning American intelligence architecture and staffing underpin an institution that operates as a multinational NATO body. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who oversees NATO’s intelligence and surveillance forces, has by convention always been an American general.

A Kiel Institute report, produced with Bruegel, states that Europe depends heavily on the US not only for deployable troops but also for ‘strategic enablers,’ pointing to continued reliance on American systems for critical modern military capabilities even as European defense budgets have surged. Sven Biscop of the Egmont Royal Institute told Defense News that Europe is “almost completely dependent” on U.S. intelligence for satellite capability and everything that goes with it, adding that closing the gap will take time. The United States operated 246 military satellites as of 2023, compared with 49 for all of European NATO combined, led by France with 15, according to the same reporting.

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Israel Creates Fake Think Tank In Likely Attempt To Dupe AI Chatbots

At a glance, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to Israel/Palestine. The organization churns out think-tank style reports on questions such as “Does AIPAC Use ‘Dark Money in Elections?” and “Is Israel Carrying out a Deliberate Campaign of Starvation in Gaza?”

But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank. None of the reports have bylines. A small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage notes that the organization was created on behalf of the Israeli Government Advertising Agency by Piro, Inc, a firm co-founded by Daniel Rosenberg, the producer of Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.”

The Hanover Institute’s reports – all of which are about Israel and Palestine – appear to be part of an Israeli effort to influence chatbots. The institute’s “data reports” have footnotes and tables of contents, and they present arguments in a neutral tone, helping them appeal to chatbots like Claude or Gemini. Piro’s website says that it “author(s) content engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility,” describing this service as “AI Story Optimization.” Others refer to this practice of influencing artificial intelligence as “LLM poisoning.”

According to its “about” page, the Hanover Institute “studies the inputs fueling antisemitism in the United States, and publishes what the evidence shows.” Many of the reports are formulaic, starting with an innocent question that someone might ask a chatbot.

“What Caused the Displacement of Palestinians in 1948?”

“Which Humanitarian Organizations Have Documented Israeli War Crimes?”

“What is the Current Situation in the Gaza Strip?”

In an article titled “Is the IDF the World’s Most Moral Army?” the Hanover Institute cites a 2022 poll that found that 47% of Israeli Jews believed that statement. Another report casts doubt on UNICEF’s assertion that “90% of water and institutional infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed” in Gaza. Many of the reports conclude by linking the topic to rising antisemitism, oftentimes citing the same studies.

In a few cases, the Hanover Institute publishes what it claims are original findings. For instance, it put out a study saying 19 of the 36 most-watched Israel-Gaza explainer videos contain contested claims, with most of the contested claims aligning with the Palestinian narrative.

The Hanover Institute’s publications sometimes contradict Israeli government narratives. For instance, one report says that foreign funding of universities as an explanation for antisemitic incidents is “weak and full of exceptions.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed this theory, telling Breitbart last year that Europeans and Qataris have spent “billions of American universities, vilifying, vilifying Israel, vilifying Jews, also, frankly, vilifying the United States.”

Alice Lee, an analyst at NewsGuard, a disinformation tracking company, told RS that the sites appear designed to reach a U.S. audience curious about the ongoing conflict, either through search engines or AI chatbots. “LLMs favor concrete statistics and data, as well as strong citations and sources, which these articles all have,” Lee said.

“It’s a perfect mimicry of a typical credible American think tank, right down to the generic name, the site layout, and the red-white-blue color scheme,” Lee added.

Piro, Inc, the firm that created the Hanover Institute, has received $900,000 from the Israeli government for its work. Like many other contractors working for Israel, Piro’s work is subcontracted through Havas Media, a French public relations conglomerate.

The fake think tank has churned out over 100 reports since it started publishing on August 6. The Hanover Institute claims that “cited research is peer-reviewed and academic,” although it frequently cites Israeli government sources such as the Israel Defense Forces and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

RS analyzed 12 random Hanover Institute articles using GPTZero, a popular AI detection software that claims a low false-positive rate. GPTZero flagged 11 of the articles as AI-written with “high confidence”; it flagged one article as AI-written with “moderate confidence.”

Israel has also contracted former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale to create pro-Israel websites engineered to influence chatbots as part of a $46.5 million contract. A Drop Site investigation last month found that many chatbots, particularly Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini, had been successfully trained on data from those websites. Other chatbots frequently cite those websites without flagging them as part of an Israeli influence operation.

Piro does not explicitly state in its agreement submitted to the Department of Justice that its work for Israel is to influence AI. In an email to Politico, which first reported the filing, Rosenberg said his firm’s work is to “put accurate, sourced facts into the public record and to counter misinformation about Israel with verifiable information.” However, last month, Rosenberg posted on LinkedIn advertising Piro’s ability to influence chatbots:

“When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity about your category, an answer comes back in one confident paragraph. Most brands have no idea how that paragraph gets built. So we spent months reverse-engineering it…At Piro, we already knew how to build stories that move people. The question was: how do you make sure AI knows how to tell them?”

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CHAOS IN LOS ANGELES: Antifa-Linked Mob Storms Catholic Church, Chases Conservative Activist Into Starbucks, and Douses Him in Blue Paint While Screaming “Nazi!”

Left-wing extremists and Antifa militants stormed the Precious Blood Catholic Church in Los Angeles on Saturday, August 23, where right-wing activist and free speech advocate Eoin Richard was hosting a peaceful free speech, anti-Islam rally.

The confrontation unfolded after Connolly, known publicly as Eoin Richard, organized a “Take Back LA” free-speech rally criticizing Islam.

Connolly originally advertised the August 23 demonstration outside the Islamic Center of Southern California on Vermont Avenue.

A pre-event advisory circulated by opponents described the gathering as a “far-right” rally and accused its organizers of targeting the Muslim community.

As counter-protesters gathered outside the Islamic center, Connolly reportedly redirected supporters to the nearby Precious Blood Catholic Church in Koreatown.

But the mob followed him.

According to journalist Andy Ngo, left-wing extremists and Antifa activists stormed the church, disrupted the gathering, and chased Connolly from the property.

Footage from the confrontation shows counter-protesters surrounding Connolly and repeatedly branding him a “Nazi,” the far left’s favorite label for anyone it believes should be silenced, intimidated, or physically attacked.

Connolly eventually sought refuge inside a nearby Starbucks, but the mob followed him into the business and surrounded the table where he and another man were seated.

Video circulating on social media shows blue paint being dumped over Connolly and his companion as counter-protesters crowd around them.

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4 Former Savannah Police Employees Arrested for Misusing Flock Cameras

Four Savannah department employees, including three former officers, were arrested after an internal audit discovered they had been using Savannah’s Flock powered license plate reader system for reasons outside of normal department law enforcement investigations. Dillard, Phillips, Rich, and Thomas, a civilian department employee, were arrested after investigators discovered their misuse of the system.

Dillard, Phillips and Rich each are charged with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system, and one count of violation of their oath of office, while Thomas is charged with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system, reported Fox5 Atlanta.

As the case is currently under investigation by the GBI, it will be completed by them and then sent to the Eastern Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office to be handled by the proper prosecutors. Savannah Police Chief Lenny Gunther states that his department will not tolerate such misconduct.

The real question is why Flock cameras exist at all; they are surveillance without informed consent.

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Billionaire CEO of Canada’s Shopify demands abolition of right to vote for broad sections of the population

Social media comments by Tobias Lütke, the right-wing CEO of the Canadian online shopping site Shopify, in which the multi-billionaire attacks universal suffrage have been met with outrage in Canada and internationally.

Lütke declared that voting rights should be stripped from those whom he termed “dependents”—based on their payment of income tax. This would disenfranchise wide swathes of workers on low wages, elderly pensioners, the unemployed, students and the infirm. These proposals were met with support from within the Canadian capitalist oligarchy and international financial elite, including from the fascist Elon Musk.

The posts expose the internationally unified class character of the capitalist assault on basic democratic rights, which finds its most concentrated expression in the campaign of the fascist US President Donald Trump to establish a presidential dictatorship. The reaction to Lütke’s comments exposes the political complicity of Canada’s social democratic NDP and pseudo-left, who have falsely claimed that Lütke’s hostility to democracy is merely “un-Canadian.” In fact, attacks on worker rights, including the right to strike, and the promotion of authoritarian forms of rule feature ever more prominently in Canadian political life.

Lütke’s remarks came in a series of replies to an X post by Jordan Grimes, a Democratic Party activist in San Francisco. The Democrat attacked elderly San Francisco residents mobilized at a town hall meeting to oppose a high-rise housing development. Grimes characterized the elderly voters as “the living dead,” complaining that they had outlived their democratic rights, and were a far greater obstacle than capitalism to solving the housing crisis.

To these complaints, Lütke responded with enthusiasm to strip people of their democratic rights. He cynically framed this as an inversion of the “New Deal” social reforms in the US in the 1930s:

“New deal: when you get your pension deal it’s locked in and guaranteed. But now you are a dependent and that means no voting, just like dependents under age. Enjoy the deal, let people with a stake in the future decide.” 

This outrageous proposition drew support from another Canadian, former TD Bank executive Eric Thor: “Interesting… what about weighted voting proportional to the level of income tax you pay? (no income tax paid – 0 vote, $1-100k – 1 vote, $100-200k 2 votes and so on… cap it at 5 votes for $500k+. For those that constantly complain about the wealthy not paying tax/fair share they’d have nothing to worry about right? Why not reward representation of taxation and build a democracy around those that foot the bill?”

Lütke responded enthusiastically that this was a “good system,” and later that “Retired, Unemployed, Unemployable, and useful idiots are the only people who go to these town hall sessions.”

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El-Sayed in the hot seat after ‘sickening’ animal control record goes viral on social media

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is facing renewed scrutiny over his tenure as Detroit health director, during which Detroit’s animal control department was beset by allegations of animal mistreatment and reportedly branded a “dog slaughterhouse” by a former employee.

Detroit Animal Care and Control’s (DACC) live-release rate was roughly 20% to 26% when El-Sayed inherited the operation in late 2015 but climbed to about 61% to 62% by late 2016 — an improvement his campaign points to in arguing that the raw number of animals euthanized during his tenure obscures a turnaround from the dire conditions and euthanasia rates he inherited. The Daily Mail reported that records covering the period surrounding El-Sayed’s tenure showed 4,680 dogs and cats were euthanized, with 1,056 dogs and 29 cats getting euthanized in the first full calendar year DACC was under El-Sayed’s Health Department.

After winning a bruising primary against Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., El-Sayed is asking Michigan voters to send him to the U.S. Senate, but his record running Detroit’s Health Department and the troubled animal-control operation under its authority has generated renewed scrutiny.

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Putin Says Kiev ‘Opened Pandora’s Box’ by Striking Russian ‌Economic Targets – Moscow To Hit Back At Ukraine’s ‘Most Sensitive Economic Sectors’ 

Kiev is starting to see shortages of a wide variety of produce in grocery stores and markets.

Early in the summer, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky announced a ‘40-day campaign of deep strikes in Russia’ to pressure Russians to end the war.

Like in the 2023 failed counteroffensive or the disastrous 2024 Kursk incursion, Globalist shills and the MSM were ready to claim that Ukraine was ‘now turning the tide’, had a ‘decisive upper hand’, and was even ‘winning the war’.

But what really happened was that Russian forces increased attacks on all of Ukraine, with combined missile/drone packages primarily targeting Kiev.

We saw massive strikes on July 19 and 29, and August 1, 5, 8 and 20.

And now, besides the power generating and transmission on the brink, food shortage is another threat to the population.

Responsible Statecraft reported:

“The [Ukrainian] drone attacks have elicited the most severe Russian retaliation yet. Moscow has markedly stepped up its strikes on Ukraine, including one of the largest ballistic missile attacks of the entire war [August 20], at the precise time the United States and Europe are running low on interceptors to defend it. With Russia now attacking Ukraine’s port facilities and commercial vessels in the Black Sea, the country is being starved of billions of dollars of revenue, and its GDP could drop by as much as 1.5%.”

Some outlets estimate the drop at 2% of GDP.

“In other words, the ultimately unsuccessful Ukrainian drone assault is something we have now seen over and over again: Kiev embarks on an audacious, headline-grabbing military gambit; Western media and officials seize on it to claim the tide is turning; and then when the smoke clears, it turns out nothing has been achieved but an escalation of the war. Ukraine winds up battered even worse, and with less favorable negotiating terms on the table.

Aa It’s a consistent pattern: a combination of wishful thinking and misinformation does just enough to keep the idea of a military victory alive, undermining the chance for painful but necessary negotiations, and ultimately rebounding in ever worsening ways on Ukraine and its people. The major human, economic, and social costs for Ukraine of continuing war, meanwhile, remain invisible to much of the Western public, which is instead fed a recurring diet of headlines and rhetoric assuring it that victory is close at hand.”

Now, as the upcoming winter promises to be the most severe for the population, there’s another nightmare scenario: empty shelves.

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Schools forced into borrowing cash because Chicago is late on taxes

A “perfect storm” of convoluted bureaucracy caused Cook County, Illinois to spend 10 years and $63 million building a property tax billing software that did not work. 

Because tax collection was delayed, Chicago Public Schools were forced to take a loan to stay operational, incurring $33 million in interest costs.

Key facts: A July 21 report from the Cook County inspector general found that the contractor designing the tax billing software, Tyler Technologies, received conflicting information from three different government agencies involved with the project.

The county Assessor’s Office helmed the first stage of the project. But when a new assessor was elected, he added new requirements that delayed the project.

The Treasurer’s Office gave input later on, and asked Tyler Technologies to use different home ownership data than the Assessor’s Office had provided, according to the IG report.

The Treasurer’s Office staff also reportedly argued with Tyler Technologies about how to design the tax billing software. This created an “openly adversarial” work environment, according to the audit. At one point, county staff were told to intentionally withhold necessary data from Tyler Technologies, the report stated.

Eventually, the county hired another contractor just to serve as a liaison between government officials and Tyler Technologies.

The county also required Tyler Technologies to hire a local project manager, but the first three managers departed because of “knowledge gaps or interpersonal conflicts with county employees,” according to the IG report.

The Treasurer’s Office began using the new tax software in late 2025, even though the county’s Bureau of Technology warned that there were “hundreds of errors.” County homeowners have still not received their 2025 tax bills as of Aug. 8, 2026.

The Clerk’s Office and Treasurer’s Office said Tyler Technologies did not assign enough staff to the project, and that its programmers were not always present at meetings about technical issues, the report states. But the audit also noted that Tyler Technologies’ staff sometimes voluntarily worked seven days a week and without pay to try and resolve issues with the tax system.

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