No, The Truth Is Not Just Another Story

“The Democrats are self-immolating on the altar of their own tenuous relationship with common decency.”

– Tom Luongo

It must be obvious that the incoming government under Mr. Trump has one primary duty overall: sorting out truth from lies so the nation can reestablish a baseline reality to function upon. America is so punch-drunk from official lying that many intelligent people who ought to know better now proclaim that reality is unknowable, which is just a surrender to nihilism — the rejection of moral principle, a belief that the human project is meaningless.

This awful condition has led to the point where you know for sure that “Joe Biden” cannot possibly discharge his duties as chief executive, and yet nobody cares enough to investigate who is running things behind the front he puts up. That would generally be the job of the news media, which is supposed to function as the public’s auditor. Now, of course, you are persuaded that this was never really their job, that it was a sham, but that is just another lie.

The news was not flawless, but neither was it presented as nothing more than opinion. The news existed to register what happened day-to-day. It was not so much concerned with why things happened, which was much more difficult to establish, and usually reserved for the pages labeled “opinion,” so that you knew it was somebody’s conjecture. I know this because I worked as a newspaper reporter in the 1970s. I actually found out what was going on about this-and-that, wrote it up, and saw it in print hours later. The facts.

Journalism had some simple rules for reporting the facts about anything — and it’s hilarious that anyone thought it required a graduate degree from some credentialing mill like the Columbia U. School of Journalism. The news was often meddled-with by interested parties, government and business, but they did not completely overwhelm the ant-like labors of x-thousands of reporters in the field, and the stream of fact they circulated.

Not all of it was subject to dispute, meddling, or opinion because it was self-evident: Joe Blow got shot. . . a helicopter crashed in Ohio. . . a volcano erupted in Peru. . . .

Only over time, the past thirty years especially, our government grew and grew and one of the things that grew out of it was the nefarious “blob” dedicated to protecting the self-enlarging perquisites and interests of that government. Blobs will absorb things they encounter, and in a predatory way, the US government blob absorbed the US news media. The blob transformed the news into an engine for suppressing the facts or spinning them narratively when they could not be suppressed, in order to maximize the advantage of the government and to protect the operations of the blob itself.

It is also a fact that this blob is aligned mostly with Democratic Party, because that party is most avid for the continuing growth of government, and its members overwhelmingly dominate in the officialdom that dwells inside the DC Beltway.

The numbers speak for themselves on the DC voter rolls.

So, a new government under Mr. Trump is feared cringingly by the news media.

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The World Order Is Dangerously In Flux

“A core reflex in these decades of postmodern insanity was constant rejection of things we thought we knew in favor of New, Improved Beliefs packaged from above.”

– Matt Taibbi, Racket News

I would guess that you’re feeling as if anything might happen now. It’s hard to rule out even the possibility that we could all be vaporized before moving onto the next mundane chore of the day. The world order is dangerously in flux. America’s Woke-Jacobin “Joe Biden” regime was defeated in the 2024 election, but they were apparently just a front for the sinister entity we call the “blob” or the Deep State, which in recent years has consistently and garishly acted against our country’s interests. So, the blob abides, and it probably weaves schemes in the deep background of daily life even as a new government awaits. But if the Woke-Jacobin Biden-istas were tied-in with the so-called “globalist” enterprise centered around the EU bureaucracy, with assistance from the World Economic Forum’s network of zillionaires and bankers. . . well, that coalition looks rather broken now. It’s doing a hurt-dance. It’s on the run, a little bit.

What is not broken for the moment — a tenuous moment — is the new Trump regime’s determination to correct the disorders of Western Civ, starting with the affairs of the USA, according to age-old reality-based norms of behavior and good-faith relations between the people and their government. Trust was broken and must be restored. The President-elect has assembled an extraordinary team of reformers, if they can get to their posts without subversion. And, of course, Mr. Trump himself has to evade further attempts to rub him out, to knock him off the game-board before he can take office, and then he must survive the months beyond his inauguration. So, you are correct to be nervous.

Paradoxically, Mr. Trump has to initially manage the US government as if it deserves a sense of reassuring continuity, which, in many respects it does not deserve. So many institutions and relationships between them have been perverted and damaged. How do we pretend that the upper layers of management in any federal agency — the strata who really run things below the top “political” appointees — can continue in-place as if all that perversion never happened? The Department of Justice and the FBI are filled with lawyers and agents who abused their power egregiously and went to war against the American people. The agency’s work will just have to stop for a while. The nation can probably endure if investigations and prosecutions are suspended for sixty days while the personnel issues get sorted out — who goes and who stays.

But what about the Defense Department and the CIA? The country must be able to defend itself. These departments are the lairs of the more dangerously entrenched blob actors. Both DOD and the CIA have come to be organized as racketeering operations. Both are involved in domestic money-laundering activities at the giant scale, and in rackets abroad — such as the many grifts around Ukraine, in which giant financial entities like BlackRock are partnered-in. (You know, for instance, don’t you, that BlackRock was poised to acquire control of Ukraine’s natural resource base, until Mr. Putin’s resolve ended that fantasy.) And the CIA is suspected of being deeply involved in the Mexican crime cartel operations, both around drugs and human trafficking. The imputations are sickening. The DOD and the CIA will fight desperately to preserve their perqs and projects, and to stay out of jail. But until now they have not really been challenged.

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Corporate America Goes From Disowning Trump to Lavishing Him With Cash: Here’s What They Want

Donald Trump’s inauguration fund is set to top the $107 million it raised in 2017 – which was nearly double the $61 million raised by Joe Biden in 2021. Corporate America is lavishing the president-elect with cash, hoping he’ll support their interests, and let bygones be bygones regarding statements and actions against him over the past four years.

Major companies that walked lockstep with the establishment in denouncing Donald Trump after the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 chaos at the Capitol have pulled a major about-face amid his comeback, giving generously to his inauguration fund and hoping he’ll forget their statements about the “threat to democracy” he and his supporters purportedly posed just four years ago.

Who are the biggest corporate flip-floppers, and what do they want from Trump? Here’s a breakdown:

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: Big Pharma trade group donating $1 million (which means access to exclusive VIP events, including black tie ball and personal “candlelight dinner” with the Trumps). In 2021, PhRMA CEO Steve Ubl said the events of January 6 “violate the values of our nation” and canceled donations to Republicans rejecting the 2020 vote’s outcome.

Ford and Toyota: Ford briefly froze political donations after January 6, and promised to vet politicians supporting Trump. Now they’re giving him $1 million. Toyota, also pledging $1 million, similarly halted donations to those refusing to certify Biden’s 2020 victory.

Stanley Black & Decker: Giving Trump $1 million this time around, up from a paltry $25,000 in 2017.

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Trump’s China dilemma

Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela: President-elect Donald Trump will face no shortage of foreign-policy challenges when he assumes office in January. None, however, comes close to China in scope, scale, or complexity. No other country has the capacity to resist his predictable antagonism with the same degree of strength and tenacity, and none arouses more hostility and outrage among MAGA Republicans. In short, China is guaranteed to put President Trump in a difficult bind the second time around: he can either choose to cut deals with Beijing and risk being branded an appeaser by the China hawks in his party, or he can punish and further encircle Beijing, risking a potentially violent clash and possibly even nuclear escalation. How he chooses to resolve this quandary will surely prove the most important foreign test of his second term in office.

Make no mistake: China truly is considered The Big One by those in Trump’s entourage responsible for devising foreign policy. While they imagine many international challenges to their “America First” strategy, only China, they believe, poses a true threat to the continued global dominance of this country.

“I feel strongly that the Chinese Communist Party has entered into a Cold War with the United States and is explicit in its aim to replace the liberal, Western-led world order that has been in place since World War II,” Representative Michael Waltz, Trump’s choice as national security adviser, declared at a 2023 event hosted by the Atlantic Council. “We’re in a global arms race with an adversary that, unlike any in American history, has the economic and the military capability to truly supplant and replace us.”

As Waltz and others around Trump see it, China poses a multi-dimensional threat to this country’s global supremacy. In the military domain, by building up its air force and navy, installing military bases on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, and challenging Taiwan through increasingly aggressive air and naval maneuvers, it is challenging continued American dominance of the Western Pacific. Diplomatically, it’s now bolstering or repairing ties with key U.S. allies, including India, Indonesia, Japan, and the members of NATO. Meanwhile, it’s already close to replicating this country’s most advanced technologies, especially its ability to produce advanced microchips. And despite Washington’s efforts to diminish a U.S. reliance on vital Chinese goods, including critical minerals and pharmaceuticals, it remains a primary supplier of just such products to this country.

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Canada, the Panama Canal, and Now Greenland. What’s Behind Trump’s Expansionist Rhetoric?

First, President-elect Donald Trump tweaked Canada’s far-left Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about becoming governor of the 51st state of the United States of America. Then he said that the Panama Canal should once again come under American control. Make that the 52nd state. And now, are you ready for a 53rd state? On Sunday, Trump renewed a call he made during his first term: that the United States should buy Greenland from Denmark. Could the man possibly be serious? 

Maybe not. The left’s propaganda arm, also known as the mainstream media, loves to portray Trump and his supporters as angry, bitter, ignorant people lashing out against the people who know better what’s good for them. Trump has never gotten credit for his sense of humor, despite the fact that he is easily the funniest man to occupy the White House since Ronald Reagan, and may even surpass the Gipper. 

Much of Trump’s humor goes entirely unnoticed. Few have taken any note of the fact that his new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, recalls the Doge Internet meme that Elon Musk briefly made Twitter’s logo in 2023. And Trump’s teasing of “Governor” Trudeau went so far over the head of MSNBC that the far-left garbage machine actually put out an article ascribing the gibe to Trump’s “confusion.”

On the other hand, there was nothing funny about Trump’s statement that the U.S. should resume control of the Panama Canal. “Has anyone ever heard of the Panama Canal?” Trump asked the crowd at AmericaFest. “Because we’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else.” 

Trump went on to explain that the Panama Canal “was given to Panama and to the people of Panama,” “but it has provisions, you gotta treat us fairly and they haven’t treated us fairly. If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly, and without question.”

Trump wasn’t being funny about Greenland, either. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,” he wrote Sunday, “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.” This got the same reception that it got during Trump’s first term. Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede said haughtily on Monday that “Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland. We are not for sale and we will not be for sale.” He doesn’t seem to have mentioned that Greenland is not an independent state but is Danish territory.

Even in floating the idea, however, along with his statements about the Panama Canal, Trump has become the most forthrightly expansionist president since William McKinley. Is this all about personal vainglory, as the left contends, or is there more substance to it? The answer is clear: Trump is once again being true to his America-First convictions.

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Righty Tighty: A Simple Way Donald Trump Can End The Ukraine & Israel Wars

Upon his inauguration as president, Donald Trump will become the leader of a United States executive branch mired in two major wars via its continuing pumping of money, weapons, and intelligence into support of the Ukraine and Israel governments. Trump has declared his opposition to the continuation of these wars. But, how can he end them?

The means by which Trump can end the wars is simpler than many Americans think. This means just does not come to mind for many Americans because it is far removed from the course US presidents have tended to pursue over the last few decades.

Righty tighty. That’s it. Taking the US out of these wars is as simple as turning off a standard outdoor water faucet. President Joe Biden has turned the handle all the way lefty loosey. Trump should just turn it back all the way. Shut off the money flow. Shut off the weapons flow. Shut off the intelligence flow.

And there is no good reason for Trump to take his time about it. He should turn off the flow of aid in all forms promptly in his presidency.

Doing so would comport with Trump’s stated objectives regarding the Ukraine War and the Israel War during his campaign and since. Trump has repeated his promise to end the Ukraine War in a day. He has also commented on multiple occasions that he wants the Israel War over before he is even sworn in as president.

Without US support, Ukraine and Israel lack the means to continue their wars. Deprived of the means to continue fighting in anywhere near the strength they have, both governments will immediately find themselves in a new situation where their best option is to seek peace.

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Trump transition team plans immediate WHO withdrawal, expert says

Members of Donald Trump’s presidential transition team are laying the groundwork for the United States to withdraw from the World Health Organization on the first day of his second term, according to a health law expert familiar with the discussions.

“I have it on good authority that he plans to withdraw, probably on Day One or very early in his administration,” said Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health at Georgetown University in Washington and director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law.

The Financial Times was first to report on the plans, citing two experts. The second expert, former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha, was not immediately available for comment.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

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Judge Delays Trial For Would-Be Trump Assassin Ryan Routh

Judge Aileen Cannon delayed the trial for would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh to September 8, 2025.

Routh’s attorneys asked the judge to delay the trial to December 2025 citing the ‘large volume of evidence,’ however, Cannon scheduled the trial to begin in September.

Reuters reported:

A U.S. judge on Monday delayed a trial for the suspect in the second assassination attempt of President-elect Donald Trump until September 2025, according to a court order.

Lawyers for the suspect, Ryan Routh, sought a delay of the scheduled Feb. 10 trial date, citing the large volume of evidence in the case.

Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon agreed to a delay, but called the defense request for a postponement until December 2025 “excessive.” Cannon scheduled the case to go before a jury beginning Sept. 8, 2025.

In September federal prosecutors charged Ryan Routh with attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate after he pushed the muzzle of his rifle through the fence line at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course.

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Trump Threatens To Demand Panama Canal Be Returned To US

President-elect Donald Trump put out a strong statement last night on the Panama Canal and the control of this vital asset by foreign entities hostile to the United States.

As someone who has conducted business in Panama for years, trading with financial institutions in Panama City, I can testify the Panamanian people would be happy with this strategic waterway being returned to US control.

The country even uses the USD as its currency.

We have reported on China’s Panama Canal nefarious activity for some time via our military channel – ArmedForces.press.

The water levels have been manipulated to decrease traffic, and as the President says, the fees are ridiculous to impact American interests in a negative manner.

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Trump Reportedly Plans To Continue Aid To Ukraine But Will Raise NATO Spending To 5%

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to continue sending military aid to Ukraine, despite Trump earlier on the campaign trail mocking Zelensky for being the “greatest salesman on earth” for his getting tens of billions of US taxpayers’ money with ease.

A new Financial Times report has cited European officials who say Trump’s team told them he plans to continue military aid to Kiev after his inauguration. He’s reportedly trying to calm fears of an immediate US withdrawal of support, and this is connected to an expected Trump policy for NATO member states to increase defense spending to 5% of their GDP.

“Donald Trump’s team has told European officials that the incoming US president will demand Nato member states increase defense spending to 5% of GDP, but plans to continue supplying military aid to Ukraine,” FT writes.

NATO’s existing target of 2% of GPD for defense spending certainly has not been met by all members… not even close. The 2% is being met by only 23 of the alliance’s 32 members, and so a significantly higher bar set of more than double that is certainly going to rile Europe.

European NATO leaders have long been trying to figure out how to ‘Trump proof’ future defense aid for Ukraine, as has the Biden administration.

But there’s at least one severe critic – Hungary’s Viktor Orban. He estimated in a radio interview on Friday that the US and the EU have pumped over $300 billion in financial aid and military assistance into Kiev’s coffers since the war’s start.

“During the negotiation with the Americans, I received the figure that Europe and America together have spent €310 billion so far. Those are huge numbers!” the Hungarian prime minister declared.

He went to describe that such a massive amount “could have done wonders” for European people themselves, instead of sinking the funds into an unwinnable war, while avoiding the necessity of negotiations with Moscow.

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