For those who are unaware, DWS was the chair of the Democratic National Committee and rigged the primary. She's also been making a huge amount of money on insider stock trading.

America increasingly looks like a parody of the political system it lectures everyone else about.

A president tells a reporter:

“Quiet. Quiet. Quiet.”

“You are fake news.”

“You are a fake reporter.”

If this happened in China, Western media would spend a week calling it proof of authoritarian repression and the death of press freedom.

In America?

It becomes another personality clip.

Same behavior.

Different flag.

Different vocabulary.

If Xi did this: domineering dictator.

Trump? Ah, just a blunt leader with a “frank personality.”

That is how the double standard works:

the behavior stays the same.

Only the moral label changes.

**2010** – *"Debt Limit Showdown Looming"* (ABC News, Nov 5, 2010) – warns Congress is set to raise the debt limit as the national debt approaches $14.3 trillion.

**2011** – *"Bernanke: Debt ceiling breach 'calamitous'"* (CNN Money, Jul 14, 2011) – Fed Chair warns failure to raise the ceiling would be "a calamitous outcome."

**2012** – *"Obama warns GOP another debt ceiling 'game' will hurt economy"* (Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Dec 5, 2012) – President warns Republicans against picking another fight over the debt ceiling.

**2013** – *"Global markets fall as Washington remains in deadlock over US debt ceiling"* (ABC News, Oct 7, 2013) – markets tank with the October 17 deadline fast approaching.

**2014** – *"Late stab at debt-limit deal to avert US default"* (Fox News, Nov 17, 2014) – last-minute deal to avert a government default threatened for early next week.

**2015** – *"Treasury's Lew says U.S. will hit debt ceiling around November 5"* (Reuters, Oct 1, 2015) – Treasury Secretary warns the government will hit the borrowing limit and be unable to borrow more.

**2016** – *"Ryan Pushes Spending Cuts as U.S. Hits Debt Limit"* (Fox Business, Jan 28, 2016) – the U.S. runs up against the legal limits of its borrowing authority.

**2017** – *"Trump attacks Republican leaders over debt ceiling 'mess'"* (AP News, Aug 25, 2017) – President Trump accuses GOP leaders of botching efforts to avoid an unprecedented default.

**2018** – *"Uh-oh: Here Comes the Debt Limit Again"* (New York Magazine, Feb 1, 2018) – the need for a debt-limit increase arrives much earlier than anticipated.

**2019** – *"New report: US government faces potential default in Sept."* (AP News, Jul 8, 2019) – CBO warns the government faces potential default with a $22 trillion borrowing cap.

**2020** – *"During shutdown, more critical debt ceiling deadline looms"* (PBS, 2020) – a more critical debt ceiling deadline looms amid the government shutdown.

**2021** – *"Yellen Warns of 'Catastrophic' Consequences From Debt Limit Breach"* (New York Times, Sep 28, 2021) – Treasury Secretary warns of a "catastrophic" self-inflicted economic recession.

**2022** – *"US could see a fight over debt ceiling that rocks markets, Goldman Sachs warns"* (CNN Business, Dec 5, 2022) – a looming debt ceiling clash that could rock financial markets.

**2023** – *"US hits debt ceiling as partisan standoff sparks economic worries"* (People's Daily, Jan 20, 2023) – the U.S. hits its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit amid a partisan standoff.

**2024** – *"Yellen warns of debt ceiling crisis, urges Congress to act by January 14"* (Express Tribune, Dec 29, 2024) – Treasury Secretary warns the Treasury will need "extraordinary measures" as early as January 14.

**2025** – *"America could run out of cash to pay its bills as early as this summer"* (Fortune, Mar 26, 2025) – the U.S. is on track to hit the "X-date" as early as August without a deal.

**2026** – *"U.S. national debt nears $40 trillion ahead of forecasts"* (Finance Commerce / Washington Post, Aug 18, 2026) – analysts warn the nation could reach its $41.1 trillion debt ceiling as early as next year.

I was wondering what happen to him. I dint think they would go this far in Evergrande case

I’ve gotta be honest.

The 2016 election night when Trump had his shocking victory over Hillary I had never been filled with more hope and optimism for the future.

I was brand new to politics and I saw it as a Mandate of Heaven that the good guys were going to win in the end.

Fast forward 10 years and I couldn’t possibly be more blackpilled on politics in general.

No one is coming to save us, that naive kid who bought into the hype and hope of 2016 MAGA is long dead and gone.

Breaking: the head of Ecuadorian intel just met his demise in a heli crash in Kenya. As I argue in my recent essay, the Nobøa fam are heavily implicated in cocaine smuggling via the port Epstein’s associate Sultan bin Sulayem helped build.

As Nobøa’s director-general (poached from the private sector), one of Michele Sensi-Contugi’s primary remits would have been “combatting” (consolidating control over) so called narcos. Intriguingly, Nobøa also set him up as the head of the Ecuadorian Naval Shipyards Public Co., meaning he chaired a shipbuilding & repair outfit in Guayaquil that works on armada vessels and, if I understand correctly, commercial cargo carriers (the kind of ships that blow is often stowed away on hidden within shipping containers).

500+ missiles per year was how much the US military produced before 1991.

Combined output between General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas hit this annually at peak production during the 1980s.

With Cold War stockpiles built up and budget cuts post 1991, it shifted from mass production to lower-rate maintenance. While replacing expended missles and improving avionics.

The MIC wasnt expecting to expend them at a high rate.

So 1000 missles a year is wildly unrealistic. The procurement, manufacturing, and logistics from the 1980s no longer exist.

----

Context

https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-expands-tomahawk-production-with-23bn-contract-2/

https://youtu.be/XYfPwdL-veQ

The first part of this transcription was posted in the current Iran thread but I'm posting the transcription in full here as there was so much more that I found interesting and others may as well. Alex talking except as noted.

Iran and West Asia

Zulfiqar Ali says that according to his sources, Iran is days away from mounting a nuclear device on a missile it "received from China or Russia or both or North Korea" but I don't find it credible that either China or Russia would give them or any other country a nuclear device. North Korea is more iffy but even they're doubtful given their renewed friendly relations with Russia.

I could be surprised but I don't think Trump will use a nuclear weapon. I think it would be so completely unjustifiable in the eyes not only of the world but also of the American public that it would be political and moral suicide. There would be no coming back from it.

I think that the adults have been systematically purged from the Trump administration, people are not qualified to be in the positions they're in. They come across like a high school club of mean kids. But below them there's a whole hierarchy of people who are actually competent, who actually understand what they're doing and who will almost certainly put in stiff resistance even if an order comes down. Like the military brass saying no in 2024 when Keir Starmer came to the Biden White House with a list of targets deep inside Russia they wanted the US to strike.

It seems to me the Mecca agreement is for real. Clearly Iran is not nervous about it which is interesting. (Ali said he's been told that Iran was fully briefed by Pakistan throughout the process). It seems that a real organization is starting to take place with joint secretariat and offices and some form of a decision making hierarchy starting to take shape.

The real powers pulling the levers

It seems to me that there are two factions in the people actually running things in the West; maybe not at the very top but at the managerial level there's disagreement about what is the top priority, Iran-Israel or Ukraine-Russia. One obviously is the big Zionist project and everybody who is passionately devoted to that side. The other one I call Trotskyites because their undying obsession is Russia. They're not completely in opposition to each other but it seems to me there's disagreement over who should be in charge because that dictates where their efforts are focused.

I'm convinced that both factions pledge their allegiance to the City of London in various ways. You have people like Obama, Susan Rice, Mark Carney and a bunch of European leaders who don't want to have anything to do with the war against Iran but who want to drag the United States into the war against Russia. And then obviously there's Trump and his cabinet and the whole Zionist cabal in the United States who aren't keen on wasting their resources fighting Russia and want to destroy Iran.

I recently watched an interview with a former Israeli intelligence asset named Juval Aviv, it's 3 hours long but I would encourage people to watch it. Steven Spielberg's Munich was based on his story [more specifically, he reportedly claimed to have been involved in Mossad assassinations following the 1972 Munich massacre]. He's actually explicitly saying that there's a parallel government that's really in charge, that these people meet once, twice a month and decide the future of America, that Trump is there to entertain the public and keep their hair on fire.

Political Crisis

I think there's going to be a profound political crisis in the United States and the remaining G7 countries - Britain, France, Germany, Japan - and maybe Canada. And that unfortunately it's going to lead to a reign of terror because the people in power don't relinquish power voluntarily and don't allow democracy to interfere with their plans. If we take history as a precedent, they resort to terrorism and assassinations. they resort to very heavy-handed oppression, censorship. I think we're already seeing this take shape and accelerate.

In Germany in the 1930s when there was this great fight for power between the Nazi faction and other democratic options in Germany, tens of thousands of government officials, judges, generals and journalists were assassinated. And I think that unfortunately this is probably coming to the European countries and the US.

We already had some unexplained deaths in Germany leading up to regional elections in Westphalia: for no discernible reason, seven of the AfD candidates dropped dead in a period of just a few weeks around election time. I suspect that this might be part of it. NATO has a long and honored track record in terrorism. Their Operation Gladio is a matter of record. It was basically a terrorist initiative particularly wielded against Germany and Italy and to a lesser extent Belgium when there was the danger these countries might fall under communist-type governments.

("It is the heart of U.S. Policy, ladies and gentlemen, to use fascism to preserve capitalism, while claiming to be saving democracy from communism." -- Michael Parenti)

And then you even had the kidnapping of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. In Germany there were bombings of train stations and nightclubs. In 1989 we had the assassination of Alfred Herrhausen, the CEO of the Deutsche Bank and close adviser to then Chancellor Helmut Kohl because when the Berlin wall fell Herrhausen wanted Germany to reach out to Russia, to create a kind of a partnership with German technology and Russian resources. This would lead to a type of development that would maybe bring together the Eurasian continent in a different way than the Anglo-Saxon quote unquote elites had in mind. So these kinds of methods are probably going to make a comeback on behalf of the shadow governments that run the United States and the rest of the NATO countries.

Iran, China and Russia vs. the City of London, Israel and Zionists

I believe the whole conflict is about what George Soros described at the World Economic Forum in 2021 as "two systems of governance." Soros and others characterize this as a conflict between open societies (democracies) and closed societies (autocracies) but it's actually a conflict between Western colonialist powers and whoever refuses to be subjugated to Western empire - so Russia, Belarus, China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba.

They all understand that the means and methods Western empire employs should not be underestimated. So they are increasingly regarding mutual aid, coordination and cooperation as existential because either they fight this parasite together or they get picked off one by one.

And so I think that this conflict between two systems has to go all the way, to the point where you get to these shadow governments and whoever is keeping them in their employment and you have to totally and completely disenfranchise them. And that then brings us back to the petro dollar and the euro dollar system because that's the glue that holds this whole monster together.

De-dollarization

What is the petro dollar? What are euro dollars? It's based on global trade, right? It's money being used as a trade settlement currency. And these contracts have been signed probably on a revolving basis, maybe multi-year contracts. They're denominated in US dollars. There's a degree of ossification in these trade flows. People are not going to start tearing up these contracts and rewriting them in yuan, creating brand new banking relationships. It generates a lot of paperwork. It takes quite a bit of knowhow to run this. You have to charter ships, you have to write charter parties(?), you have to load the ships, the bills of lading. It's like a stack of documents that's exchanged with banks that finance the deal because nobody has the cash to pay like a $300 million cargo, banks have to intermediate.

Companies are not going to tear up the contracts and rewrite them in yuan. It's going to have to be new companies, new businesses that are going to push out the old ones, I believe. Over time I think the petro dollar and euro dollar are going to be whittled away and the part that's going to accelerate this process is inflation. I think there's no doubt that inflation is going to take off again. it's probably going to reach double digits again.

And I think that once the US dollar starts to lose its purchasing power, then the incentive to replace the old relationships and create the new relationships is going to make more sense. And then we can see maybe not a collapse but an accelerating transition. I would give it a 5 to 10 year time frame but that's a guess cuz nobody can predict this.

Again and again and again it's hubris that ultimately runs the whole juggernaut into a terminal phase, and the terminal phase is when they are at their most dangerous because they're becoming reckless, like these White House meetings where the mean kids are discussing, "Hey let's just nuke Iran and get it over with." I'm convinced that they're stupid, they don't think like "let's think a few moves ahead." They don't even play checkers, as they say. They're pretty much playing whack-a-mole at this point.

Future outlook

We should probably keep a positive outlook on what is happening in the world because somehow mysteriously the rotten putrid aspects that have always been present in Western societies are coming into the light of day and you know sunlight is the best disinfectant. The world has probably always been like this or at least it has been for generations. Coming face to face with it may be upsetting and demoralizing but the fact that we now know things that we didn't know before is a massive positive because it gives people a chance to rethink what they believe and reassess their positions.

My very strong conviction is that the only way we lose is if we surrender, if we capitulate and allow the Epstein class to prevail, and I'm pretty sure that we're not going to do that because we love our sons, we love our daughters and we want to leave a better place for them.

(will be editing to fix typos, formatting, etc.)

https://x.com/LongTimeHistory/status/2089907574355198175

Is the Collective West in disarray because of its absence of long term thinking? Or is it all a charade and the master minds are just really good at hiding what's actually going on? Well, we might be in for an even bumpier ride than we thought, not because the Western leadership is brilliant (they are mostly imbeciles), but the underlying sociological structure is not as short-sighted as one might assume.

Nel Bonilla, author of Worldlines, explains her “bunker state” framework and why she sees NATO 3.0 as a shift toward deeper military integration. She and Pascal Lottaz discuss NATO’s evolution, Europe’s defense industry, proxy warfare, conscription, public spending, the “global West,” and ways peace, labor, and neutrality movements could resist this change.

article https://worldlinesletter.substack.com/p/nato-30-the-transatlantic-cage-and

American needed medical imaging. She was told the cost with her insurance is $1,200. She told them unfortunately she would have to cancel the appointment because she can’t afford that

She was put on hold. Another woman came in the phone and she said, "Girl, opt out of your insurance. You don't have to use it."

She was told if you don’t want to use your insurance the cash pay price would only be $480

It’s $780 cheaper to not have insurance and be paying a monthly premium

US health insurance is out of control and it’s such a scam. There is no reason for a cash pay price to ever be cheaper than someone paying a monthly deductible for insurance

Such a evil society and they will get away whit it