STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

h/t Malone News

h/t Western Rifle Shooters Association

Sooner or later, reality will be distinct from virtual reality, and most people aren’t going to like what they see. From Leo Hohmann at leohohmann.substack.com:

It’s time to unplug from the matrix. The alternative in a digitized world is to let it consume your humanity. And once it’s lost there’s no guarantee you can get it back.

I was hoping that 2025 would be the year Americans woke up and realized they’re being played — unnecessarily divided and played, one group off against another.

I was hoping that they would break out of the Fox News/CNN/MSNBC matrix. I hoped they would see the world as it really is, not as the warmongering neocons and neolibs in Washington want us to see it — with a foreign boogieman lurking around every corner.

Many did whisk the sleep from their eyes enough to see that the biggest enemy is our own government and its corporate “partners” in Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Agriculture. But not nearly enough. Too many remain in a media-induced trance focused on the wrong things, on issues that have already been decided at the public-policy level, or on problems that spark lip service and public outrage from politicians who have no intention of fixing them.

Take the issue of Somali daycare fraud as just one example that’s been in the news a lot the last two weeks. You might see a few dozen Somali migrants charged, maybe even go to jail for a short time, but those with power who enabled the Somalian fraudsters to pilfer the taxpayers over many years will never be brought to justice. Same with election fraud. Same with the Epstein affair.

Continue reading

You might want to add to your stock of precious metals. From Gary D. Barnett at garydbarnett.substack.com:

“Every dollar they saved was worth less with every financial crisis, while the government just printed more money to preserve the stock markets, the financial status of the elites, and the banks who served them.”

~ Kenneth Eade, An Evil Trade

Well, it is a new year, and much more manipulation is happening in the paper silver contracts, as regulators under the idiotic banner of “market stability” have raised margin requirements and position limits twice in a few days. This is of course, all done to protect the institutional short sellers, mainly the banks, as they face great losses when silver or other commodities rise against their shorts. Also, this is a way to hold down the price of precious metals, especially silver, in order to cover up the inevitable collapse of the dollar. Given that most banks are on the verge of bankruptcy, and that the dollar is going down the drain, these criminal interferences in the markets simply attempt to push down the road the inevitable financial and monetary failure.

While I do not want to get very technical in this space, it is important to understand some basic things about what is currently happening. In the past few days, metal margin requirements have been raised aggressively in order to bail out the banks; which not only profits them greatly, making them billions of dollars, but allows them to cover the derivative (paper)bets that would bankrupt them. While valuable metal margin requirements were being increased some, silver margins went up 30%. Obviously, this was aimed at silver first. But there is more, as the Federal Reserve yesterday, December 31st, had to inject $74.6 billion into the banking system in one day, made up of $31.5 billion in treasuries, and $43.1 billion in mortgage backed securities. This was the fourth business day consecutively that the Fed had injected liquidity into the banking system; totaling over $120 billion in the four day period. All of this coincides with the increased margin requirements, so is this a signal of panic? Of course it is.

Continue reading

The three superpowers are all trying to line up resources by fair means or foul. From Matt Braken at steelcutter.substack.com:

I am a visual thinker, and I love maps and charts, so I just put this one together. In my opinion, we are moving from peacetime economic trade war conditions to a quazi-kinetic war for the control of the critical natural resources that are needed by the major powers in our emerging multipolar world.

So, just what in the Sam Hill is a quazi-war?

Well, it turns out that we already fought one. Read about it at the link.

Today, the unipolar period which followed the end of the cold war is coming to an end. It’s being replaced by a tri-polar world if you count the three greatest military powers: the USA, Russia and China. Or, it’s a bipolar world if you consider it to be a contest between the USA and its allies, and the emerging BRICS bloc.

In my humble opinion, (news flash), the US naval fleet currently assembled in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific is not actually about stopping drug boats. It’s about securing the largest oil reserve in the world for U.S. refineries. It’s also a message to Russia and China that the USA is exerting a new economic Monroe Doctrine, with the Americas in our zone of control.

Continue reading

It takes a special kind of talent to accurately sum up a year’s worth of warfare and its attendant politics in 12 words. From Lucas Leiroz at strategic-culture.su:

Before the full liberation of the New Regions, talking about “peace” or a “ceasefire” is a waste of time.

The year 2025 consolidated an interesting dynamic in the conflict between Russia and NATO in Ukraine: while the battlefield advances in a methodical and largely unreported manner, international diplomacy produces a growing volume of statements, speculation, and headlines that rarely turn into concrete results. The contrast between silent military progress and loud diplomatic “advances” became the defining feature of 2025.

With Donald Trump’s return to the presidency of the United States, Washington began to signal renewed interest in some form of political agreement between Russia and Ukraine. Talk of a “ceasefire,” “preliminary negotiations,” and an “opportunity for peace” dominated Western media throughout the year. These narratives, however, ignore an unavoidable structural reality: there will be no agreement as long as Ukrainian forces remain in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – regions that are part of the constitutional map of the Russian Federation in the same way as Moscow or Saint Petersburg.

This factor turns any peace proposal promoted by Washington or European capitals into a purely rhetorical exercise. For Moscow, concluding negotiations under the presence of foreign military forces on its constitutional territory is not only politically unviable but legally impossible. Western media, however, persist in treating the issue as if it were a conventional territorial dispute, disregarding the centrality of Russia’s constitutional framework in the conduct of the Special Military Operation (SMO).

Meanwhile, on the ground, 2025 marked consistent advances by Russian forces. The recent liberation of Seversk, as well as earlier successful operations in the Krasnoarmeysk area and other key cities, illustrates a deliberate strategy of gradual advance, prioritizing the attrition of enemy capabilities over large-scale, huge offensives. These developments rarely receive attention in major Western outlets, which tend to report only Russian tactical withdrawals (when possible) or isolated episodes that fit the dominant narrative.

Continue reading

Did those who voted for Trump vote for the U.S. to get out of Ukraine (his campaign promise) or for the U.S. to increase its military involvement there? Keep in mind that Ukraine is fighting Russia, the world’s number one or number two military power. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Hopefully, the scruffy little dictator of Ukraine is lying – or being misquoted. Nonetheless, it is alarming – if you’re among the sane – to read that, supposedly, “US BOOTS ON THE GROUND in Ukraine (is) being discussed.”

The good news is “troop deployment is UP TO THE UNITED STATES.”

This being “good news” in the same way that being told you have cancer – but it hasn’t spread yet – is “good news.”

If you voted for Trump, did you vote to send American troops to  . . .  Keeeeeeeeeeeeev? That would be bad enough, given that sending American troops (and American tax dollars) to these shithole countries where no American interest are involved – as opposed to the interests of the people who control the government that rules America – is always a bad idea for Americans, who get nothing in return except slain and crippled Americans and higher taxes as well as the well-earned contempt of the people who live in the countries curb-stomped by American troops.

It is much worse, of course, as regards Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeev – because that means Russia, which is not a shithole country. It is a country that has (according to most estimates) about 5,000 nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them anywhere. London, for instance.

Continue reading

People with an average IQ of 67 don’t steal billions of dollars without help. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

I’ve been writing about the inherent fraud behind third-world immigration for many years now, including the rarely addressed issue of remittances flowing from migrants in the US back to their countries of origin. Third worlders tend to act like a nest of vampires, bleeding the US and giving indirect sustenance to their failing home economies. This process is heavily enabled by foreign governments that rely on this river of dollars to stay afloat.  This is why political leaders in countries like Mexico and India lobby so hard to keep US borders open. They need that cash.

One problem I have consistently seen with mainstream coverage of this issue is that it often overlooks the fact that migrants who steal from American taxpayers almost always have help from people within our government.

To be sure, most Americans understand that the Biden Administration, for example, widely supported open borders and the mass invasion of foreigners. What they might not understand (until recently) is how deeply blue states and blue city governments have been involved in the scams. Minnesota is a prime test case.

The question needs to be asked: Who taught these third world migrants how to set up false business fronts to defraud taxpayer subsidies? Who has been hiding their blatantly illegal activities? How have they been getting away with the scam for so long despite incidents of high level whistleblowers calling out their criminality?

I often hear the argument (largely from migrants and leftists) that because these people are so clever in their racketeering they deserve to stay in the US. In other words, why would we want to kick out hundreds of thousand of people who are “so resourceful.”

First I would point out that it’s a common misconception that conmen are highly intelligent. You don’t have to be a polymath to rip innocent people off, you just have to be evil. Evil is often mistaken for genius because high trust societies have a hard time comprehending predatory behavior. They don’t catch it because they don’t expect it. Midwestern states like Minnesota used to be high trust, but that is quickly changing.

Continue reading

Apparently many colleges and universities are using funds meant for research to build new buildings and pay overhead. From Paul D. Thacker at realclearwire.com:

The panic and outrage were palpable last February when President Trump announced plans to trim reimbursement rates for government-funded scientific research.

“This is going to decimate U.S. scientific biomedical research,” Northwestern University biologist Carole Labonne told Bloomberg. “The lights will go out, people will be let go, and these [medical] advances will not occur,” David Skorton, CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, told PBS. “The goal,” University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom warned on BlueSky, “is to destroy U.S. universities.”

The sky has not fallen on American research in the 10 months since. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is still paying the same 50% to 70% in indirect costs – the premium added on top of grants meant to reimburse universities for providing labs and other research infrastructure – because lawsuits have frozen the president’s proposed policy. One Trump official admits this is unlikely to change because the administration will almost certainly lose in court. The current system, which provides the lion’s share of billions of dollars each year for often-unspecified overhead costs to universities, has the backing of Congress. As it stands, there appears to be no momentum, even among Republicans, to reform the practice.

“It’s basically a slush fund,” one NIH official told RealClearInvestigations. “We just don’t like to call it that.”

A RealClearInvestigations analysis of these indirect payments reveals a long, largely forgotten history of concern about taxpayer-sponsored research. Although many researchers have cast Trump’s proposal as an attack on science, this issue isn’t the need to fund research activities that sometimes lead to beneficial discoveries, but whether some of the billions that support the necessary infrastructure and equipment are actually being shifted to purposes such as staffing and buildings that have little or no direct connection to the actual research. 

Continue reading

Perhaps the biggest bone of contention is whether or not the Muslims will observe Sharia law or the laws of the state and country they’re in. From Darlene McCormick Sanchez at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

JOSEPHINE, Texas – This rural town with farmland stretching to the horizon might as well be a million miles away from New York City with its skyscrapers and big-city worries.

But the residents of the Big Apple and Josephine have something in common—controversy over the construction of a mosque.

Perhaps not since the “Ground Zero Mosque” was proposed two blocks from the World Trade Center site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has a mosque drawn so much attention.

The proposed 2009 Manhattan mosque and Islamic cultural center was known as Park 51. It faced sharp public criticism for plans to place a symbol of Islam so close to where thousands died from an attack by radical jihadists. Groups such as Stop Islamization of America led protests against “radical Islam” before the project was eventually abandoned.

More than a decade later, as Muslim migration to Texas has increased, a similar uproar has risen over a proposed Muslim-focused neighborhood anchored by a mosque in rural Texas, some 40 miles from Dallas.

Promotional materials first described EPIC City, named after the East Plano Islamic Center, as the “epicenter of Islam in America.”

Following backlash at the local, state, and federal levels, it changed its name to The Meadow.

Continue reading