Tag: politics

Stop the Presses! Congress Denies Netanyahu Something He Asked For!

“I want to stop American aid,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on June 30. “It’s like welfare; I don’t want it.”

Usually, Netanyahu gets anything he demands from Uncle Sugar. But on July 15, the US House of Representatives voted, 314-104 against even partially granting his wish.

Every Republican except Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and more than half of Democrats, voted down an amendment that would have removed $3.3 billion in “Foreign Military Financing” aid from the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act.

What’s up with that?

Was Netanyahu perhaps a wee bit disingenuous in his public request, passing word through back channels that he didn’t really mean it?

Is US Congress more “pro-Israeli” than Netanyahu himself, or perhaps just so addicted to spending that they can’t bear to cut anything at all, even if the recipient doesn’t want it?

Some combination of the above?

This may be the first time I’ve ever found myself in agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu on anything.

Well, partial agreement, anyway.

US aid to Israel isn’t “like welfare.”

It IS welfare.

What does the US regime in return for its billions of dollars per year? Two things:

  1. A way of re-routing tax money to crony “defense contractors” with Israel as the cut-out to obscure the  domestic end of the corporate welfare pipeline; and
  2. Dragged into a Middle Eastern garrison ethno-state’s every conflict with other regional powers — powers which substantially differ from Israel mainly in ethnicity, prevailing religion, and actually having some oil to make the entanglement worthwhile.

Don’t give me the “liberal democracy” stuff. The Israeli regime censors the press, bans political parties it doesn’t like, confines millions of Arabs to apartheid-style “homelands” as rightsless, non-voting serfs under Israeli rule, and just passed a law declaring that theological studies in one, and only one, religion are “fundamental” to its existence and thus deserving of exemption from the compulsory military hitch mere “secular” Jews serve. Politically, the main difference between Israel and Iran is that in Iran, Jews are guaranteed at least one seat in parliament.

Some “pro-Israel” — and “pro-US-aid-to-Israel” — people I talk with love to inform me that Israel has a longer average lifespan, a lower infant mortality rate, and a lower homicide rate (excluding the  Palestinians ruled by, and murdered by, Israeli troops) than the US.

That doesn’t strike me as the “gotcha” they seem to think. Could those billions in aid possibly have anything to do with the statistical differences? Every dollar in US aid is a dollar more the Israeli regime gets to spend on healthcare and police salaries instead of on weapons to power its expansionist foreign policy.

This time, Congress should have given Netanyahu what he said he wanted.

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Fresh fears for NYC as hyperwoke actress Cynthia Nixon is appointed to panel that screens JUDGES after Sex and the City star suggested shoplifting should be legalized

Woke actress Cynthia Nixon was appointed to serve on a panel that screens judges for the state of New York after she previously suggested that shoplifting should be legalized.

Nixon, 60, best known for her role as Miranda on the show Sex and the City, was appointed to sit on the Commission on Judicial Nomination by New York Chief Judge Rowan Wilson.

The former actress will serve on the board which screens candidates for vacancies on the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court.

Nixon’s term for the unpaid position runs through April 30, 2030, and is the latest move after a turbulent political career.

The former actress and failed New York gubernatorial candidate tweeted in 2021 that ‘desperate people shouldn’t be prosecuted’ for stealing items at CVS.

She had noticed her local CVS in SoHo had ‘started’ locking up ‘basic items like clothing detergent.’

‘As so many families can’t make ends meet right now, I can’t imagine thinking that the way to solve the problem of people stealing basic necessities out of desperation is to prosecute them,’ Nixon tweeted.

She will now work hand in hand with the commission to suggest candidates to forward to the Governor.

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As Reading Skills and IQ Decline, the Leaders of the Future Will Be Readers

Americans are reading less than at any point in decades, and reading proficiency continues to decline. As the gap between readers and nonreaders widens, those who continue to read may gain an increasingly significant educational, economic, and leadership advantage.

The long-term decline in reading habits among Americans is well documented. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) data tracked through the American Time Use Survey show the share of adults who read a book for pleasure in the past 12 months falling from 61% in 1992 to 49% in 2022. The same peer-reviewed analysis found that the share of Americans reading for pleasure on an average day fell from 28% in the early 2000s to 16% in 2023.

Among children, the decline is even sharper. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) long-term trend data show that the share of 13-year-olds who read for fun almost every day fell from 35% in 1984 to just 14% in both 2023 and 2025, the lowest level since the question was first asked. Nine-year-olds show a similar pattern, with the share falling from 53% in 1984 to 37% in 2025.

Reading proficiency is also declining across all grade levels. Roughly 40% of fourth graders and one-third of eighth graders now score below the NAEP Basic level, the largest shares since 2002 and the highest in NAEP history, respectively. Twelfth graders posted their lowest average reading score in more than three decades in 2024: 283 on NAEP’s 500-point scale.

That was three points below the 2019 average and 10 points below the first assessment in 1992. Only 35% were considered prepared for entry-level college reading coursework, down from 37% in 2019. The decline extends into adulthood. Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data show that U.S. adults’ literacy scores fell by 12 points from 2017 to 2023. Today, 28% of adults, or 58.9 million people, score at Level 1 proficiency or below, up from 19% in 2017.

The decline is not uniform. NAEP’s own percentile breakdowns show scores for top-performing students holding roughly steady while scores for the lowest performers fall sharply, widening the gap to its largest margin on record at both the 12th grade and 13-year-old level. NCES’s commissioner has described this as “a dwindling middle” in U.S. skills.

A small subset of heavy readers accounts for a disproportionate share of all reading. A December 2025 YouGov survey found that 19% of Americans account for the majority of books read nationally. Separate data show that only about 14% of adults read 20 or more books per year.

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DSA’s New Plan: Abolish Senate, Amnesty for Illegals — Deliver Madison’s “Tyranny”

Are the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) trying to visit tyranny on the United States? Evaluating their new platform, you’d have to say yes if heeding a warning from James Madison, “father of the Constitution.” He famously said in The Federalist, No. 47:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

This, too, is essentially what the DSA’s new platform would establish. As Fox News reported Friday:

According to a source familiar with the DSA’s planning, the organization plans to roll out an update next week to its long-term vision for a U.S. policy platform. The update includes eliminating the U.S. Senate and replacing the president and the Supreme Court with an executive branch and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

So to be clear, the DSA’s platform would undermine the Constitution’s prescribed balance of powers. It would enable a one-chamber Congress (no Senate) to appoint a president and judges who are rubber stamps for its agenda.

Under our current system, the president is, of course, chosen by the people. He then can nominate judges, who subsequently must be confirmed by citizen-elected senators before taking the bench. Moreover, Congress is already the most powerful branch, as the House can impeach the president and judges. The Senate can then vote to convict, giving the legislature capacity to remove such officials from office. The other two branches have no such power over Congress.

But the DSA would expand this power precipitously. Its plan would, in a de facto sense, place “all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary” in Congress’ hands. And it’s irrelevant that those “hands” are “elective” (as Congress is), as Madison stressed.

Many would point out that this moves us closer to a parliamentary system, as exists in Britain and Canada. Others would take an even darker view. As a top Yahoo!news commenter writes, responding to the Fox article:

Once you get this enacted, and the socialists are in power, they will NEVER relinquish it. Ever.

A single chamber “congress” will be, by definition, a one party body that will rubber stamp policies of the party.

The model for this is the Soviet Union.

The respondent is alluding to the USSR’s Politburo (Political Bureau), the fallen communist empire’s top decision-making body.

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Former Marine and Florida Congressional Candidate Declares Trump Is the “Anti-Christ” and “False Messiah,” Says He Must Be “KILLED” in Unhinged Video Rant — Marine Corps Responds

A former U.S. Marine who is now running as a write-in candidate for Congress in Florida is facing widespread condemnation after posting a lengthy video in which he declared that President Donald Trump “must be killed” while describing the commander-in-chief as the “anti-Christ.”

The disturbing remarks prompted an unusually swift public response from the U.S. Marine Corps, which made clear that William Upham’s rhetoric does not reflect the values of the Corps or the oath he once took.

William Upham posted a deeply disturbing six-minute video to his X account. As of the time of writing, the video remained available on his account.

Wearing his military uniform, the medically discharged former Marine First Lieutenant leveled the ultimate threat against the leader of the America First movement, declaring that President Trump “must be killed”.

He claimed he reached a “turning point” in his campaign after realizing “our country is broken” and that “we are led by a president who’s the enemy of God.”

Upham tied his hatred to President Trump’s recent criticism of Pope Leo XIV and an AI-generated image Trump posted depicting himself in a Jesus-like pose. “He is nothing like Jesus Christ,” Upham said.

The former Marine tried to cloak his call for assassination in religious language, claiming “we are at war with evil” and that “this is a war between God and the Antichrist.”

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Jack Smith team read messages between Trump officials, dozens of lawmakers of both parties: ‘Ran roughshod over the Constitution’

More than 40 members of Congress had their text messages viewed by former special counsel Jack Smith’s team amid a probe into President Trump, a move that Republicans say “ran roughshod over the Constitution.”

The Department of Justice released records to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday revealing that the special counsel’s office had accessed communications between Trump White House personnel and 44 lawmakers from both parties.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ); Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the current ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee; current Los Angeles mayor and former Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.); and former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), now the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, were just some of the new names whose messages were seen.

Grassley himself, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), House Majority Leader Steve Scalies (R-La.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) were also targeted.

Asked during a December 2025 congressional deposition whether his team looked at “the content of text messages” during his twin probes into the 45th and 47th president, Smith answered, “No.”

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Liberal Journal ‘The Atlantic’ Claims the Era of the Democrat ‘Manly Man’ is Back

Democrats have a serious problem with men. We saw it during the 2024 election, as men abandoned the Democrat Party in droves and voted for Trump and Vance.

The reasons for this are pretty obvious. The left has been demonizing men for years, calling masculinity ‘toxic.’ At a certain point, men began getting the message that they are not welcome in the Democrat Party and they left.

The liberal media knows this and is going to try to help the Democrats if they can. That’s what this Atlantic article is all about.

From the piece:

Brian Poindexter had just finished wolfing down a Reuben sandwich in a deli outside Cleveland when he delivered a message that, coming from a Democratic House candidate in the year 2026, sounded almost provocative. “There’s nothing wrong with being masculine,” Poindexter told me. It’s okay, he said, to be “a manly man.”

Poindexter’s own manliness credentials are fully in order. The 46-year-old started working in a machine shop as a teenager and spent years hauling furniture across the country before finding stability as a union ironworker. He drives a Ram Big Horn pickup truck and built, with his buddy turned campaign manager, a shed in his backyard. Now Poindexter is running for Congress, trying to flip a Republican-held seat in Ohio with a pitch aimed at a constituency that has abandoned the Democratic Party over the past two decades: men…

Critiques such as Poindexter’s have gelled into a consensus over the past two years, repeated ad nauseam by starchy senators and governors with an eye toward running for president in 2028. Closing the gender gap now seems to be an official electoral strategy for Democrats. A couple of months ago, I got a call from a party operative who pitched a story on the Democrats’ effort to “win back the manosphere.” The operative ran through a list of a half dozen candidates in key House districts who “are engaging culturally in male spaces”—a bit of gobbledygook that I took to mean “manly men,” or perhaps “guy’s guys,” but that also reflects the sort of anthropological distance that points to the depth of the party’s problem. After all, an ironworker probably wouldn’t describe himself as “engaging culturally in male spaces.”

Does everyone remember the famous ad featuring Men for Kamala? How did that go over?

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ENDLESS SOCIALIST SCANDALS: Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez’s Brother David Convicted of Nepotism and Administrative Misconduct, Banned From Public Service for 9 years

Another charge of influence peddling was dismissed, so no prison term was imposed.

While Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez goes around the world posing as a statesman in NATO and EU forums, back home, his party, his inner circle, and even his family are endlessly plagued with corruption scandals and investigations.

Less than a month ago, reports arose about Sánchez’s wife’s grift prosecution: Spanish PM Sánchez’s Wife, Begoña Gomez, Can’t Leave the Country While Standing Trial for Corruption

And today (14), David ‌Sánchez, Pedro’s brother, was convicted of nepotism and administrative misconduct and banned from holding public office for nine years.

Reuters reported:

“The ruling deals a fresh political blow to the Socialist premier, whose government and ​inner circle have faced corruption investigations and scandals over the past two years. Last ⁠month, a former close aide to Sánchez was sentenced to 24 years in prison in a ​separate corruption case.

David Sánchez was accused of benefiting from an appointment tailored to him because of ​his family connection to the prime minister, who when the job was awarded had just been elected leader of the Socialists when they were still in opposition. The prime minister has dismissed the case as part of a politically ​motivated campaign driven by the far right.”

The Badajoz court found that the position was created without administrative need, serving only the PM’s brother’s personal interests.

“The defendants ‌engaged ⁠in a grossly arbitrary exercise of power with the sole aim of favoring specific individuals,” the ruling said, adding that one of the posts was later modified to accommodate David Sánchez’s interest in opera.

The court dismissed the charge of influence peddling, which could have carried a prison sentence. Right-wing pressure ​groups had sought prison ​time for Sánchez, while ⁠prosecutors requested the case be dismissed.”

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De-Banked: It’s Only A Matter Of Time Before It Happens To You

“We are writing to inform you that we cannot continue serving you.

As a result of this decision, your account will be closed within 14 days from the date of this letter.

Any remaining account balances will be sent by check to the address we have on file.”

Sooner or later, expect your bank to send you a letter like this.

They won’t even tell you why they are closing your account, and you will probably have trouble opening accounts at other banks.

De-banking is a disturbing and growing trend.

In short, the ruling elite – parasites, more accurately – have weaponized the banking system to enforce conformity to their preferred narrative.

If you don’t lap up their lies about Covid, climate, elections, wars, rising crime, or whatever the media is hyping as the “current thing,” expect the financial hammer to come down on you without warning.

You could lose your ability to take payment from your customers and pay your bills at the drop of a hat.

We’ve seen banks close the accounts of prominent doctors critical of the Covid mass hysteria and politicians opposed to schemes to centralize power on a global level (globalism).

However, for every example of a bank closing a high-profile person’s account, hundreds – or thousands – of other ordinary people likely receive the same despicable treatment but are never heard from.

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Leftist Democrat Pushing Radical Feminist “Equal Rights Amendment” Left Stumped When GOP Rep. Brandon Gill Asks Her An Important Question

One of the Republican Party’s rising stars humiliated a radical leftist Democrat pushing for the infamous “Equal Rights Amendment” with a very important question during a congressional hearing.

On Tuesday, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) chaired a House Oversight Committee on combating the use of DEI in American institutions. While the Trump Administration has made remarkable progress in its war against this racist cancer, it remains prevalent across several colleges and big businesses around the country.

When it was her turn to speak, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) decided to go on a wild tirade against the Trump Administration, accusing them of rigging the Supreme Court and enacting “precise harm” on working families.

Pressley also called the GOP agenda “anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, anti-worker, anti-veteran, anti-rural, anti-disabled, and anti-woman.”

After concluding her rant against the Trump Administration, Pressley announced she was reintroducing the pro-feminist “Equal Rights Amendment” to combat what she called “systemic gender discrimination.”

“The Constitution is silent on this topic (of equal rights), so that is why I have introduced legislation to add the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment, enshrining it as the law of this land,” she said. “Every Democrat in the House has signed on; I’m just waiting on my Republican colleagues to join us.”

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