The text of the "minerals deal" that was signed yesterday is substantially different from earlier drafts

For one, it says that *future* US military assistance to Ukraine (not past assistance) will constitute "capital contributions" to the newly established joint investment fund. This can now be presented as the US in some sense getting "paid" for continuing to arm Ukraine, which could be a useful political argument for continuing to arm Ukraine -- but with a more profitable "deal" The agreement contemplates that Ukraine could or will receive "reparations" for the invasion from Russia. This may come as news to Russia

Trump's former and likely future National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien, wrote an essay intellectualizing Trump's foreign policy. He says Trump defies "globalist orthodoxies" by strengthening NATO and increasing US military entanglements with Japan, Israel, and the Gulf states O'Brien pines for Trump to correct the mistakes of Biden, who he says has not militarized Taiwan quickly enough. The next Administration must push Taiwan to expand conscription, and also start treating Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam like client states on par with Israel

Just read the memoir of Spiro "Ted" Agnew, who resigned as Vice President in 1973. Lots of background intrigue I hadn't been familiar with. In particular he alleges that Gen. Al Haig, Nixon's chief of staff, threatened to get "nasty and dirty" with him if he didn't resign, which Nixon (erroneously) believed would take the pressure off *him* for Watergate. Agnew inferred Haig's statement to be a potential threat of assassination. He felt he was betrayed by Nixon, and even in their retirements would not accept Nixon's phone calls. Agnew was an unexpectedly talented writer, and also wrote a best-selling novel
Agnew makes a pretty persuasive case that he was politically targeted by vindictive DOJ prosecutors with various interlocking political agendas who wanted to "get him" for petty graft related to his tenure as Governor of Maryland. The story is rather convoluted, but essentially Agnew was accused of taking "kickbacks" through engineering projects he doled out to state contractors. But he fairly convincingly establishes (through documentary evidence he obtained years after the fact) that there was never any solid corroboration for the allegations, which were pried out of desperate witnesses who had been subjected to wildly strong-arm tactics by the US Attorney's Office in Maryland and Washington DOJ

Agnew eventually agreed to resign "in the national interest" and plead "nolo contendere" to a downgraded income tax charge. He was on the verge of an indictment, and arguments that the Vice President could not be indicted in office had failed to gain traction

He felt especially betrayed because Nixon would tepidly defend him in public, while working behind the scenes to sandbag him through aides and surrogates. Agnew says his wife was even threatened with prosecution

One thing I didn't realize was that Agnew arranged a meeting with the Speaker of the House, Carl Albert, whom Agnew respected despite Albert being a Democrat, and appealed to him to hold House hearings on the allegations because he insisted any judicial proceedings in Maryland had been tainted by media leaks. Agnew cited the precedent of Vice President John Calhoun in 1826. Nixon underhandedly signaled his disapproval of this tactic, so it never happened and Agnew resigned

Agnew complains that he was essentially disappeared afterwards. Frank Sinatra gave him a $200,000 loan after he left office to handle his legal and living expenses -- Agnew claims he would've been destitute otherwise

WTF? The Arizona man accused of plotting a mass shooting at a rap concert to incite "race war" ahead of the 2024 election claimed to have "fought as a mercenary in Ukraine and killed Russian soldiers," according to the FBI affidavit. (He spoke to an FBI informant at gun shows) The man allegedly tried to recruit his FBI informant friend, as well as an undercover FBI agent he had just met at the gun show, to drive cross country to Atlanta to commit the mass shooting. His goal was to ensure that "every whitey will be the enemy across the whole country"

The new TIME interview with Biden is an utter disaster. Here is a thread with the soul-crushing lowlights First, Biden repeats the common Democratic folklore that Trump wants to "abandon" US alliances, and in particular wants to "eviscerate" NATO. At this point, this is just pure mind-melting myth. Trump brags to this VERY DAY about how he secured additional spending commitments from NATO member states.

It makes zero sense for Trump to "eviscerate" NATO, a key tool of American hegemonic power, which Trump bombastically pledges to maintain and expand.

Absolutely nothing from the actual record of the Trump Administration reflects doing anything to substantively undermine NATO. Rather, the opposite: He literally signed off on two rounds of NATO expansion, and he elevated Ukraine into a NATO subsidiary status. He increased the funding of the Pentagon funding vehicle for US troops in Europe. He set up new military garrisons in Poland.

Trump even recently posted an endorsement of his pro-NATO stance from the NATO secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg.

This is so disastrous because it perpetuates the political dynamic whereby Trump is given incentive to further demonstrate how steadfastly supportive he is of NATO, to refute this never-ending myth.

Please Watch! In July 2023, Trump hosted an "Israel Heritage Foundation" gala at his Bedminster estate. Rabbi David Katz proclaimed the Third Holy Temple will be re-built in Jerusalem "very soon," thanks to the heroic efforts of Trump. Trump then recited a Blessing from "Hashem" One of the main missions of the "Israel Heritage Foundation" group is to advocate for Israeli "sovereignty" in what they refer to as "Judea and Samaria," which translates to full US-backed Israeli annexation and absorption of the West Bank

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) organized a letter to Columbia today demanding the "anti-Jewish" protest be disbanded immediately due to "hate speech"

"The time for negotiation is over," they warn. These people are absolute menaces to the First Amendment





Note, the 21 House Dems who signed the letter are not narrowly objecting to the encampment. They are explicitly denouncing the political speech being expressed there, which they claim is intolerably "anti-Semitic" and therefore creating an "unsafe environment" for Jewish students

I’m currently at Princeton wearing my Yarmulke, waiting to be inundated with all the vicious anti-Semitism we’re told has overtaken our once-great Elite American Universities. I’ll let you know if I survive 😭 Arrived at the protest zone and immediately encountered a bunch of fellow Yarmulke-wearers calmly attending the rally despite allegations of extreme danger. Very frightening. So unsafe. Wow

Harvey Weinstein's NYC trial was a fraud, as the judge confirmed by vacating his conviction. Still incredible that the marquee "victim" admitted she engaged in "consensual sexual relations" with him before and after the alleged rape, and sent him emails telling him she loved him Judge Rivera rules that if the evidentiary standard by which Weinstein was convicted were allowed to stand, it would "eviscerate" the most basic protections for defendants to be convicted on the basis of actual "proof," as opposed to extraneous and uncharged "supposition"

Trump, standing alongside Mike Johnson, confirms he supports Ukraine “aid” in the form of a “loan” that will almost certainly never be paid back. Trump had already floated this savvy idea weeks/months ago through his top surrogate and first 2024 Senate endorser, Lindsey Graham Trump supporters and opponents alike have long been convinced that Trump is a virulent opponent of Ukraine "aid" -- but this has always been a total canard. In fact, Trump evidently wants to open the floodgates to limitless Ukraine "aid" by reintroducing a version of "Lend-Lease"

Trump finally elaborates on his Ukraine position. He says he'll get the European countries to match what the US is sending to Ukraine. That's not a call for cutting off arms to Ukraine -- it's a call for increasing arms. He also once again brags that he increased funding to NATO John Bolton and other war pundits are going around warning that Trump will abandon Ukraine and withdraw from NATO. They did the exact same thing in 2016 -- then Trump did the opposite when in power. They perpetually need a fantasy version of Trump to fuel their angsty obsession

When a strange event occurs, the media's real job is to chastise random people on social media for reacting strangely to the event -- and to spin it as yet another instance of "dangerous" speech being allowed to proliferate online -- instead of figuring out what actually happened It's so boringly formulaic: sit on Twitter collecting the wackiest reactions to aggregate into a Very Important News Article about unapproved speech putting unknown persons in "Danger." Then throw in an obligatory quote from the ADL, and there's your edgy Rolling Stone web item

It's really wild that the Maine Secretary of State just seized the power to unilaterally block presidential candidates from the ballot, based on a brand new non-judicial administrative procedure she literally just made up herself, supposedly to enforce the federal 14th Amendment Shenna Bellows, who was never popularly elected statewide, says the usual rules of evidence don't apply to her newly-invented procedure, which is governed by Maine administrative law, therefore authorizing her to accept the Jan 6 Committee Report as admissible probative evidence

According to Bob Woodward, Trump began "wondering aloud" in 2017 whether Netanyahu was "the obstacle to peace," rather than the Palestinians

Bibi then showed Trump a video of Mahmoud Abbas saying crazy stuff. Rex Tillerson said the video was a fabrication by Bibi to trick Trump Tillerson said in 2019 that dealing with Netanyahu required "a healthy amount of skepticism," as Israel repeatedly gave "misinformation" to Trump. "You've been played," Tillerson recounted telling Trump. "It bothers me," he said, that such a close ally "would do that to us"

By what authority does the State of Florida have the ability to forge an "alliance" with a foreign country? This resolution in the Florida State Senate was introduced by a Democrat representing Boca Raton. A version of it was then unanimously passed by the entire state legislature in a special session earlier this month called for by DeSantis

It's true, the Guardian really did remove the text of a Bin Laden letter from 2002 because it was going viral on TikTok. Apparently censorship is preferable to letting the youngsters read notable historical texts (as if they're too dumb to find it elsewhere on the internet) Bin Laden's "Letter to America" is worth re-reading. It's comforting to assume that all the great historical villains are just pure, unadulterated evil and have no comprehensible logic for their actions. Newsflash: You can (and should!) read stuff without endorsing it

Dropping a 2,000-pound bomb on a dense urban area and then insisting you didn't "intend" to kill any non-combatants highlights the futility of relying on claimed "intention" for evaluating this kind of warfare Let's say the dropper of the bomb genuinely did not intend, in their conscious mind, to kill any non-combatants

...So?

I can place a grenade in a mailbox, and genuinely not intend to kill anyone -- but would my "intent" really be the relevant factor in assessing what I'd done?

Mike Johnson, the new GOP Speaker of the House, tells Sean Hannity:

- "We can't allow Putin to prevail in Ukraine"
- US "boots on the ground" may be required to "stand with Israel"
- Supports Israel directly attacking Iran
- Russia, China, and Iran are "the new Axis of Evil" For well over a year there's been this recurring delusion that the House GOP is intent on defunding Ukraine

It's always been a total joke: wish-casting from people who want to believe the GOP is something it's simply not

Johnson served dutifully alongside McCarthy in leadership

Megachurch pastor John Hagee appears on Fox News to provide his expert biblical analysis of the situation in Israel: "This land belongs to the seed of Abraham"

Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and others attended Hagee's annual "Christians United for Israel" summit in July Hagee is a certifiable lunatic who preaches that "the final battle of Jerusalem is about to begin." As prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel, Hagee argues, **Russia** will join with Persia and China to wage an "unholy war to destroy the nation of Israel and exterminate the Jews"

At pro-Palestine march in Birmingham, England. When asked to explain the sign, she explicitly said she agreed with Hamas massacring Israelis, because those killed in the attack were “colonial settlers.” No, I’m not exaggerating; that’s what she said. She wouldn’t give her name Others I’ve spoken to take a different view on the permissibility of killing Israeli civilians but it would be inaccurate to say her view is any kind of extreme outlier

Heads of Churches in Jerusalem give press conference on hospital bombing: "We are people of the cross, we are not military experts. But I want to tell you something. There are many buildings, many houses, many places that have been bombed by Israel. And these are facts" The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem hosted the press conference. It was said that yesterday was a day of fasting and prayer. There were children singing and playing in the hospital courtyard, many of whom were later bombed. The hospital received three evacuation orders from Israel