Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

Should the U.S. national debt be considered an actual crisis? Does it have the destructive power of a hurricane, tornado, earthquake or other crisis?

The short answer is yes but the full explanation requires a financial history lesson.

The first point to understand is that debt can be good or bad. Deciding which depends on two criteria: What is the cost of the debt relative to the returns that can be gained from investing it wisely? And what is the size of the debt relative to the income available to repay it or roll it over?

These points can be illustrated with simple examples.

If a government borrows for 10 years at an interest rate of 4.0% (the current rate on 10-year Treasury notes) and builds infrastructure that will produce economic gains of 10.0% or more for an indefinite period of time (with maintenance), that’s clearly a good use of borrowed money.

That example applies to major projects such as the interstate highway system launched under Eisenhower and the moon landing project launched under Kennedy.

But money borrowed to finance boondoggles such as the Green New Scam or to give handouts to illegal immigrants who don’t speak English, don’t have skills and in many cases are murderers or terrorists is plainly wasteful. Those uses for debt are non-productive and do nothing to enable the country to pay it back.

The U.S. national debt today is about $35.7 trillion. (Note: That figure is Treasury debt only. It ignores contingent liabilities for unpaid student loans, Social Security, Medicare, mortgage guarantees, unfunded FDIC insurance liabilities and much more). Is that a big number? It depends.

Suppose you owe $50,000 on a revolving credit line of Mastercard. Is that a problem? If you make $30,000 per year and don’t expect a big raise or a business success, then it’s a huge problem.

On the other hand, if you make $500,000 per year, the debt is entirely manageable and you can probably pay it off just by writing a check. In other words, debt’s a problem (or not) depending on the income available to pay it off.

The same is true for countries. The national debt is a problem (or not) depending on the income available to pay it off.

A good proxy for national income is the gross domestic product (GDP). By expressing the national debt as a percentage of GDP (Debt/GDP = r, where r is the ratio), you get a good idea of whether the debt is excessive.

Economists agree that a 30% debt-to-GDP ratio is entirely comfortable. It’s like owing $150,000 when you make $500,000.

As the debt-to-GDP ratio climbs, two adverse conditions result. The first is that the return on investment (sometimes called the Keynesian multiplier) declines.

Borrowing and spending a dollar at a 30% ratio might produce a 140% return. Borrowing and spending the same dollar at a 60% ratio produces only a 110% return. This is why the Maastricht Treaty that governs EU fiscal policy places a cap of 60% on the debt-to-GDP ratio of member states. (This cap is widely ignored.)

Below, I show you how the U.S. has reached the point of no return(s). There’s only one way out, but it’s just as bad as the problem. I also show you how to protect your wealth in the times ahead.

Read on…

The Point of No Return(s)

Research makes it clear that a debt-to-GDP ratio of 90% is a threshold. That is the point at which the return of each dollar borrowed and spent is less than $1.00. This means that not only do you not get your dollar back, you add more to the numerator (debt) than you do to the denominator (GDP), which makes the ratio even worse and lowers the return on the next dollar borrowed and spent.

That’s a mathematical way of saying you can’t borrow your way out of a debt trap. Where does that leave the United States today? As noted, the national debt is $35.7 trillion. GDP is estimated at $28.7 trillion. That produces a debt-to-GDP ratio of 124%, the highest in U.S. history.

Obviously, that ratio is well above the 90% red line and is getting worse by the minute as U.S. deficit spending skyrockets while growth stalls. The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will soon be pushing toward 130% and higher. That’s a level reached by failed states like Lebanon and super-debtors like Greece.

Has it always been this way? Not at all. It would be nice to believe the U.S. began under George Washington in 1789 as a debt-free nation, but that was not true. The U.S. agreed to assume the Revolutionary War debt of the individual states and the Continental Congress instead of allowing that debt to go into default, so the country began in debt.

It was Alexander Hamilton’s great insight that the U.S. could borrow more money through the U.S. Treasury to pay off the war debt. That would establish the U.S. as a good credit and enable the country to keep borrowing, both for new investment and to retire maturing debt by rolling over old debt for new debt.

That was the origin of the U.S. Treasury securities market, and it has been going strong for 235 years. The First Bank of the United States (1791–1811) and the Second Bank of the United States (1816–1836) were each established to facilitate the process of buying Treasury debt for bank notes, a type of bank money that allowed the government to pay bills and conduct business.

Most assume the U.S. national debt has been going up continuously since George Washington. That’s not true. In fact, President Andrew Jackson took the national debt to zero in 1835. The national debt (adjusted for inflation and expressed as a percentage of GDP) has moved in more of a sine wave than a straight line. That wave corresponds to the fact that debt goes up in times of war and is then reduced in times of peace.

This pattern of increasing debt to fight wars then decreasing debt during times of peace was remarkably consistent for most of American history (from The War of 1812 through Vietnam).

The debt increases were widely supported as necessary to win wars. The debt consolidation stages were widely viewed as times of wealth creation and prosperity (with brief exceptions for bank panics).

The sine wave pattern was perhaps best illustrated during the 45-year period from 1945–1990. In 1945, at the end of World War II, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio was 120%, the highest ever before today. Between 1945–1980, the ratio dropped from 120% to 30%, an entirely comfortable level.

This was done on a bipartisan basis. Democrats (Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter) joined Republicans (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford) in a multidecade effort to get the ratio under control. Importantly, this was not done by reducing the debt. It was done by growing the economy. If you expand the GDP denominator faster than the debt numerator, the ratio drops even if the debt grows.

Between 1980 and 1988, the ratio grew again under Ronald Reagan. President Reagan had a reputation as a fiscal conservative, but he was actually a big spender. To his credit, the money was spent on a 600-ship Navy, technology and the missile-interceptor program mocked as “Star Wars” but actually realized today in Patriot anti-missile batteries and other defense technologies.

Most importantly, Reagan won the Cold War. The Cold War was fought continuously from 1946–1991. George H.W. Bush was president when the Soviet Union dissolved.

Still, Reagan was the decisive actor because his defense buildup convinced Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev that Russia couldn’t keep up with the U.S. and needed to reform through glasnost (“opening”) and perestroika (“restructuring’). Those and other reforms led quickly to the collapse of the Soviet state and the emergence of the Russian Federation.

Still, the cost was high. The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio rose from 30% when Reagan took office to 53% when he left office. From there, the historic pattern would have called for gradual reduction in the ratio. That didn’t happen.

The best that can be said is that George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton kept it under control from 1990–2000. It rose slightly to about 56% but did not surge. From there, the ratio ran off the rails.

It went up to about 82% under George W. Bush (still below the 90% critical threshold), then exploded under Barack Obama. The debt-to-GDP ratio reached 100% by the end of Obama’s two terms in 2017. This trend continued under Trump and Biden to bring us to the 124% level today.

There were wars during the period 2000–2024 (War on Terror, Iraq War, War in Afghanistan and U.S. support for the wars in Ukraine and Israel) but the U.S. did not win any of those wars. At best, they were fought to a standstill (War on Terror) and at worst they ended in humiliating defeat (Afghanistan). There was also wasteful spending that had nothing to do with wars including pandemic relief, illegal immigration and the Green New Scam.

The U.S. had lost its ability to win wars and lost the will to reduce spending in times of peace. The debt-to-GDP ratio was now a steeply pitched slope instead of a gently curved sine wave.

There’s no need for default because we can always print the money. There’s no way to grow out of it because the high debt ratio inhibits real growth. The only solution is high inflation where the nominal debt may go up, but the real value of the debt shrinks dramatically. Unfortunately, the value of your stock portfolio will shrink dramatically as well.

The remedy for this crisis and threat to your wealth and well-being is a portfolio of inflation-proof assets including land, gold, silver, fine art, natural resources and some cash (invested at yields higher than inflation) for liquidity and bargain hunting when the time comes.

Don’t expect your stocks to save you. They won’t.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out … without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.”

– H. L. Mencken

If the three-ring circus that is the looming presidential election proves anything, it is that the Deep State’s plot to destabilize the nation is working.

The danger is real.

Caught up in the heavily dramatized electoral showdown between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Americans have become oblivious to the multitude of ways in which the government is goosestepping all over our freedoms on a daily basis.

Especially alarming is the extent to which those on both sides are allowing themselves to be gaslighted by both Trump and Harris about critical issues of the day, selectively choosing to hear only what they want to hear when it casts the opposition in a negative light.

This is true whether you’re talking about immigration and border control, health care, national security, the nation’s endless wars, protections for free speech, or the militarization of the U.S. government.

For starters, there’s the free speech double standard, what my good friend Nat Hentoff used to refer to as the “free speech for me but not for thee” phenomenon in which the First Amendment’s protections only apply to those with whom we might agree.

Despite her claims to being a champion for the rule of law, which in our case is the U.S. Constitution, Harris isn’t averse to policing so-called “hate” speech. In this, Harris is not unlike those on both the Right and the Left who continue to express a distaste for unregulated, free speech online, especially when it comes to speech with which they might disagree.

Then there’s Trump, never a fan of free speech protections for his critics, who has been particularly vocal about his desire to see the military vanquish “radical left lunatics,” which he has dubbed “the enemy from within.”

If it were only about muzzling free speech activities, that would be concerning enough.

But Trump’s enthusiasm for using the military to target domestic enemies of the state should send off warning bells, especially coinciding as it does with the Department of Defense’s recent re-issuance of Directive 5240.01, which empowers the military to assist law enforcement “in situations where a confrontation between civilian law enforcement and civilian individuals or groups is reasonably anticipated.”

This is what martial law looks like—a government of force that relies on the military to enforce its authority—and it’s exactly what America’s founders feared, which is why they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

Responding to concerns that the military would be used for domestic policing, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878, which makes it a crime for the government to use the military to carry out arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other activities normally handled by a civilian police force.

The increasing militarization of the police, the use of sophisticated weaponry against Americans and the government’s increasing tendency to employ military personnel domestically have all but eviscerated historic prohibitions such as the Posse Comitatus Act.

Yet sometime over the course of the past 240-plus years that constitutional republic has been transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

Unfortunately, most Americans seem relatively untroubled by the fact that our constitutional republic is being transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

The seeds of chaos that have been sown in recent years are all part of the Deep State’s plans to usher in martial law.

Observe for yourself what has been happening right before our eyes.

Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe.

This is no conspiracy theory.

There’s trouble brewing, and the government is masterminding a response using the military.

Just take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030, but the future is here ahead of schedule.

We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.

By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence is becoming almost inevitable.

The danger signs are screaming out a message

The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.

According to the Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. government is grooming its armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

And then comes the kicker.

Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”

Drain the swamps.

Surely, we’ve heard that phrase before?

Ah yes.

Emblazoned on t-shirts and signs, shouted at rallies, and used as a rallying cry among Trump supporters, “drain the swamp” became one of Donald Trump’s most-used campaign slogans.

Now the government has adopted its own plans for swamp-draining, only it wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.”

And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting?

They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.”

They are “threats.”

They are the “enemy.”

They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).

In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.

In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.

If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.

Suddenly it all begins to make sense.

The events of recent years: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.

The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls.

Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

Before long, no one will even notice the floundering economy, the blowback arising from military occupations abroad, the police shootings, the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure and all of the other mounting concerns.

It’s happening already.

The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

Few seem to care about the government’s endless wars abroad that leave communities shattered, families devastated and our national security at greater risk of blowback.

The Deep State’s tactics are working.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and  Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned about the government’s nefarious schemes to lock down the nation.

Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.

And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.

The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.

Just think about it for a minute: Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars.

Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.

Did I say Machiavellian? This is downright evil.

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.

For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, and that “we the people” would become enemy #1.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re already enemies of the state.

It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by Deep State propaganda.

There’s no such thing as coincidence in Washington…

A day after former President Trump ventured into a McDonalds during a campaign stop, cooked some fries, and handed out some food to more-than-happy customers in a photo-op that went very viral (in a good way), the CDC issued a statement announcing an E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders has left one person dead and caused 10 hospitalizations.

There are 49 cases across 10 states, with most illneses in Colorado and Nebraska (not where president Trump was)…

E. COLI OUTBREAK: CDC is investigating 49 illnesses in 10 states linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers. If you ate a Quarter Pounder hamburger from McDonald’s and have severe symptoms of E. coli, contact your healthcare provider. https://t.co/g87itkupCQ pic.twitter.com/gHzUKCnTi9

— CDC (@CDCgov) October 22, 2024

“This is a fast-moving outbreak investigation. Most sick people are reporting eating Quarter Pounder hamburgers from McDonald’s and investigators are working quickly to confirm which food ingredient is contaminated,” the CDC’s alert said.

“McDonald’s has pulled ingredients for these burgers, and they won’t be available for sale in some states,” the CDC said.

“McDonald’s reported to CDC that it has stopped using fresh slivered onions and quarter pound beef patties in several states,” the CDC said.

The announcement of the outbreak sent MCD shares down 10% in the after-market (before bouncing back a little)…

The timing of the sudden share-price-crushing contagion comes after McDonald’s corporate office dared to actually accept and welcome ‘hitler, stalin, and mussolini’ into their fast-food joint.

In an email to employees that was seen by The Epoch Times, the company said that its “brand has been a fixture of conversation this election cycle” and that “we’ve not sought this” but is a “testament to how much McDonald’s resonates with so many Americans.”

“McDonald’s does not endorse candidates for elected office and that remains true in this race for the next President,” McDonald’s said in the statement, dated Oct. 21. “We are not red or blue—we are golden.”

The company said that Trump’s visit to a Pennsylvania McDonald’s location was handled locally by a franchise operator.

“Upon learning of the former President’s request, we approached it through the lens of one of our core values: we open our doors to everyone,” the company said.

And, in case you thought we over-reached here, this is how the New York Times decide to cover this Trump photo-op…

Yes, that is right – they allegedly asked MCD employees if Trump did a good job!?

When it was time to bag the order, he asked a woman at the drive-through what they did when a customer wanted more salt.

“I love salt,” he said, as he shook some onto golden potatoes.

Then, after spilling some, he paused to throw some over his shoulder in a nod to superstition, a seconds-long gesture that would have most likely been unappreciated by efficiency-loving managers had Mr. Trump been any other employee.

And remember, Kamala worked there too… according to a friend…

Finally, nothing would shock us more than if Jack Smith stepped in to probe Trump’s cleanliness…

Trump about to be arrested for the 5th time? https://t.co/kDLynBNafz

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 22, 2024

McWeaponized!!

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics,

I wouldn’t be much of a political pundit if I weren’t willing to share my prediction for what will happen in 15 days when one of the most important presidential elections in history is decided.

So here goes: Donald Trump will win, and he will win convincingly. But that doesn’t mean the progressive left won’t have a meltdown. Just as in 2016, when Trump was first elected president, the media will be dismayed, the Democrats will be shocked, and there will be protests in the streets, possibly violent. Congressional Democrats such as Jamie Raskin will try to prevent Trump from being sworn in by declaring him an insurrectionist.

Seven so-called battleground states are supposed to decide the election: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona. But even more important will be the experience of the American people, who in large measure have come to regret the election that put Joe Biden in the White House four years ago.

That is the underlying story that the media will never acknowledge. Polling within the last year shows that less than one-third of Republicans believe Biden is the legitimate president, and 36% of all Americans have doubts about the 2020 election. That is only a feeling, not a fact, but feelings decide presidential elections, and the almost gleeful anti-American thrust of Biden’s presidency has given more than 60% of potential voters a feeling that we are on the wrong track as a nation.

Five days before the 2020 election, I published a spoof that proved modestly prophetic as a warning about the pitfalls of a Democratic victory. Called “The Short Happy Presidency of Joe Biden,” it predicted that Kamala Harris would invoke the 25th Amendment immediately after Biden’s inauguration in order to seize power in a bureaucratic coup.

It didn’t quite happened that way, of course, but 3½ disastrous years later, Kamala along with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi seemingly used the specter of the 25th Amendment to force Biden to end his reelection bid. Life imitating art.

In my pastiche, President Trump had appeared close to sealing his victory in the 2020 election, thanks to late mail-in votes in Pennsylvania. But “in an emergency session, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court convenes and reverses its earlier ruling that late votes could be counted for up to three days. The new ruling asserts that late voting amounts to election interference ‘on account of Trump winning,’ thus handing the state and the Electoral College victory to Biden.”

Exaggerated, yes, but prescient in regard to how courts across the country would eventually rule in Biden’s favor on almost every issue, refusing to look at the evidence of fraud or unconstitutional irregularities.

Perhaps the most prophetic aspect of my column four years ago was how I depicted the reaction of Trump to losing a disputed election. Just two days after the inauguration of first Biden and then Harris:

Former President Donald Trump announces that he is running for re-election in 2024 after taking a four-year rest to catch up on his golf and make a few billion dollars. Trump says his new role model will be Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve non-consecutive terms. “If it’s good enough for Grover, it’s good enough for me!” Trump also tries out a new campaign slogan, as he takes a swing at Biden voters with a red, white and blue cap inscribed with “TUSA,” short for “Told U So America!”

When you think about it, that really is the underlying message that Trump has been sharing for the past four years. And Americans got the message – because it matched their lived experience. They saw with their own eyes that the wide-open Biden border was being called secure by Biden, Harris, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They saw that Biden’s Supreme Court nominee couldn’t say for sure what makes a woman a woman, and then they watched as boys began to dominate girls’ sports. They watched prices on the rise and safety in decline. Worst of all, they stood helpless as the world seemed to be rushing headlong toward World War III, first in Ukraine, then the Middle East, all the while as China has been threatening to cripple the world economy by attacking Taiwan.

So, yes, Trump will be elected as the 47th president of the United States, and the liberal talking heads will melt down just as they did in 2016. But what matters most is what happens after the election, and whether the experience of Americans will reflect renewed prosperity, a safer world, and respect for tradition and common sense. Many will try to prevent that, but making America great again should be a unifying goal. “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

And if I am wrong and Kamala Harris becomes the 47th president, I pray that divine providence takes hold of her and guides her to protect, defend, and strengthen these United States and their Constitution. Seems like a long shot, but without Trump, prayer is all we got.

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA and on X/Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClearPolitics,

On an Oct. 13 MSNBC broadcast with anchor Jen Psaki, Democratic strategist – and former political advisor to President Bill Clinton – James Carville denounced Donald Trump for putting “the entire Constitution in jeopardy.” Carville offered a concrete example of the right’s subversion of American freedom and democracy: “The Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas have totally greenlighted the idea that you could round up, use the military to round up your political enemies.” A former political advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Psaki replied with a smile, “We love the truth telling.”

Carville and Psaki are typical. The left often portrays itself as the rigorous defender of truth against relentless right-wing disinformation while resolutely promoting progressive disinformation, including the falsehood that disinformation is a distinctively right-wing phenomenon.

Small wonder that Carville did not elaborate on his extraordinary accusation, and that Psaki did not ask why he singled out Justice Thomas or how the Supreme Court authorized the rounding up of political enemies. Perhaps Carville had in mind the court’s holding last July in Trump v. United States “that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” But the Constitution does not give the president authority to round up political enemies.

Did Carville glibly attack Trump and did Psaki politely play along? Did partisan rage distort Carville’s judgment as well as Psaki’s? Did Carville resolve to assert – and Psaki to endorse – whatever it takes, including nightmare scenarios, to protect democracy from Trump?

It is hard to read hearts and minds. But one can confidently affirm that deceiving about politics is as old as politics.

Circumstances change. Regimes come and go. Empires rise and fall. Parties win and lose. Yet even as modernization and technology revolutionize human affairs by generating material abundance, destabilizing settled expectations, and eroding inherited understandings, human beings remain social and political animals. Individuals need one another’s company and cooperation while – given diverse backgrounds, disposition, abilities, and interests – differing over what is useful, just, and good. Some strive to exercise power over others while most try to minimize the power that others exercise over them. Through it all, passion and prejudice constantly buffet everyone’s reasoning, and auspicious opportunities and dire predicaments tempt even the virtuous to portray the facts as other than they are.

No doubt novel opportunities abound today for promulgating lies and disseminating the family of departures from the truth that human beings routinely produce, distribute, consume, and rail against. In particular, the Internet, digital communications, and social media have facilitated the acquisition and transmission of immense amounts of information. This has greatly increased the quantity and accelerated the velocity of casual errors, self-deceptions, well-meaning half-truths, fraudulently marketed opinions and ideas, and outright lies that swirl through political culture.

Both right and left in America partake of the free-for-all of duplicity – often crude, occasionally artful – that plagues American politics. There is, however, an asymmetry.

Both sides insist that the other is exclusively at fault for the decay of public discourse. But the left controls the commanding heights of education, mainstream and social media, and government bureaucracy.

The left’s false contention that the right exercises a monopoly on manipulation, deceit, and falsehood is particularly damaging because the left amplifies its accusation through domination of the nation’s communication, elite opinion formation, and rule-making and law-enforcement institutions. This substantial advantage in the struggle to shape public opinion encourages the left’s sense of superiority while blinding progressives to their own intellectual subterfuges and ideological swindles. It also foments outrage on the right. Conservatives justify their extreme statements and outrageous claims as playing by progressives’ rules.

Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel recently illustrated the left’s propensity to wrongly present disinformation as a specifically right-wing pathology. Author of “Galaxy Brain,” The Atlantic’s newsletter “about technology, media, and big ideas,” Warzel argues in “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is” that an unprecedented assault on truth has “been building for more than a decade.” The crisis stems, he maintains, from a calamitous combination of right-wing extremism and digital technology that breaks reality into two – a world of truth inhabited by the left and a world of “dark” falsehoods that the right creates, outfits, and calls home.

“This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creation opportunity,” writes Warzel. “This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world.”

Warzel would have placed his analysis of just how badly political discourse in America has deteriorated on much sounder footing if he had recognized that the left also employs digital technology to fabricate and maintain a separate world. In the left’s alternative reality, the remorseless siege of systemic racism, sexism, and other sinister forms of oppression obliges progressives to abandon basic requirements of evidence and argument to rally the faithful and save the nation and the world.

Responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, maintains Warzel, have set a new low. “Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories,” he writes, “the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism.” He gives chilling examples careening around the Internet of harebrained conspiracy theories about government malfeasance and implausible stories of official neglect, or deliberate disregard, of storm victims that have delayed the delivery of essential government services. These remind that people can easily dupe others and be duped, especially when hurricane season coincides with election season, and individuals are armed with smart phones and social media accounts, and distrust elite institutions.

Warzel is rightly alarmed that “Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality – or desire one at all.” But his one-sided analysis inadvertently underscores that fault for the splintering of America does not lie solely with Trump and his backers.

Or even primarily.

Yes, Jan. 6, 2021, was a disgrace. Yes, right-wing rhetoric can be ridiculous, ominous, and vile. And yes, right-wing activists also exploit the Internet to stoke grievance and stir up resentment and rage.

Still, progressives tend to neglect that Trump and his voters have reasons, accumulating for decades, for distrusting institutions fundamental to the nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom and dominated by progressives: universities, the mainstream media and social media, and the federal bureaucracy.

Contrary to the common view on the left that Trump inaugurated a war on truth, our universities have for at least two generations sought to emancipate students from the traditional understanding that higher education’s purpose is to pursue knowledge and cultivate independent minds. Instead, through a succession of intellectual fashions and fads – including positivism, relativism, postmodernism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, identity politics, and intersectionality – universities have fostered the incoherent and partisan belief that since moral values are socially constructed, progressive policies must prevail.

Meanwhile, our progressive media – mainstream and social – and our progressive federal bureaucracy have collaborated to promote progressive national narratives by censoring opinions that challenge the progressive perspective and weaponizing the law against those who oppose progressivism’s hegemony.

The most egregious such collaboration revolved around the charge – widely presented as established fact by the press, defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, and elected Democratic officials and progressive intellectuals – that Donald Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election. This weighed down President Trump and hampered his administration. Yet after a two-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose team contained several experienced and high-powered Democratic lawyers, issued a lengthy report stating that the investigation “did not establish that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Another disreputable collaboration to advance progressive ends sought to push Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden over the finish line in November 2020. A few weeks before the election, the New York Post accurately reported that a laptop containing incriminating evidence belonged to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The mainstream media, social media, and the FBI censored the Post’s reporting while disseminating the falsehood that the computer was a product of Russian disinformation.

A third major collaboration occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The New York Times and the Washington Post derided the notion that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab, which it likely did, and government officials, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, suppressed the lab-leak hypothesis. In addition, the mainstream media, social media, and federal government teamed up to discredit and silence those who raised questions about the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines.

To do their share to arrest the splintering of America, progressives must do more than profess their love of the truth. They must act like they mean it.

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter.

This morning, the Supreme Court rejected former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s appeal to bring back his civil rights claim against the former president.

Cohen alleged former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and other federal officials put him back in prison as retaliation for promoting a book critical of Trump.

“[A]s it stands, this case represents the principle that presidents and their subordinates can lock away critics of the executive without consequence,” Cohen’s petition states.

As Sam Dorman reports for The Epoch Times, Cohen had argued that two lower courts wrongly dismissed a claim that former President Donald Trump violated his rights by ending his prison furlough during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Cohen’s petition, he had objected to a federal form that probation officers asked him to sign, which prohibited him from engaging with the media, including posting on social media.

At the time, he was writing a book critical of the former president.

Cohen’s attorney, Jon-Michael Dougherty, said the ruling “signals a dangerous moment in American democracy,” and raises questions about free-speech rights.

Both Trump and the Justice Department filed briefs opposing Cohen’s petition.

Cohen had attempted to claim a private right of action under the Supreme Court’s 1971 precedent in Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents.

While that case upheld a cause of action related to unlawful search and seizures, Cohen asked the Supreme Court to consider whether it should apply to his circumstances.

He alleged that he faced “retaliation for his refusal to waive his right to free speech.”

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar similarly raised concerns about separation of powers and argued that Cohen could have pursued alternative remedies such as the Bureau of Prisons’ Administrative Remedy Program.

Trump told the court that Cohen’s attempt to expand the precedent under Bivens would disrupt the constitution’s separation of powers. He added that the doctrine of presidential immunity presented an “insurmountable obstacle” to Cohen’s claim.

Trump attorney Alina Habba said the Supreme Court had correctly denied Cohen’s petition, and “he must finally abandon his frivolous and desperate claims.”

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The FBI and a federal agency dedicated to cybersecurity issued a warning on Oct. 18 about efforts by foreign actors trying to “spread disinformation” regarding the upcoming Nov. 5 election—with just over two weeks ago before the contest.

The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said they have “no information suggesting cyber activity against U.S. election infrastructure” that has “compromised the integrity of voter registration information, prevented an eligible voter from casting a ballot, impacted the integrity of any ballots cast, or disrupted the ability to count votes or transmit unofficial election results in a timely manner.”

But the two agencies said that foreign adversaries still might promote “false or misleading narratives” to sway the election or to undermine American confidence in its election systems and processes.

Specifically, the two agencies warned of election-related content produced by artificial intelligence (AI) that has lowered the guardrails for malicious or foreign actors to create more advanced schemes to influence the election.

“We are seeing foreign actors use these tools to develop and distribute more compelling synthetic media messaging campaigns and inauthentic news articles, as well as synthetic pictures and deepfakes (video and audio) at greater speed and scale across numerous U.S.- and foreign-based platforms,” their joint bulletin said.

“These efforts to develop content are designed to undermine voter confidence and to entice unwitting consumers of the information to discuss, share, and amplify the spread of false or misleading narratives.”

In one example of AI-aided content produced by foreign actors ahead of the election, the agency said that Russian groups have “created and deliberately designed” web pages “to look like legitimate mainstream news websites” such as The Washington Post or Fox News.

“Russian malign influence actors also created fake social media profiles posing as U.S. citizens to direct users to these fake news websites and purchased social media advertisements to drive traffic to the specific fake articles on the fake news site,” the two agencies cautioned.

The PSA highlights specific examples of tactics we have seen used by Russia and Iran during the 2024 election cycle to target all Americans. These include things from mimicking national level media outlets like The Washington Post and Fox News and creating inauthentic news sites posing as legitimate media organizations to using paid influencers to hide their hand.

In late September, three Iranian government employees were charged and identified by the Department of Justice for a wide-ranging hacking conspiracy that targeted both current and former U.S. officials as well as political campaigns.

The bulletin was referring to an indictment that was returned last month that accused Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri, and Yasar Balaghi of trying to hack the campaign of a presidential candidate, without providing names. But in a news conference last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed that they were targeting the campaign of former President Donald Trump.

Iran-backed hackers who breached the Trump campaign in June and July sent emails with hacked campaign materials to people associated with President Joe Biden’s campaign as well as various media outlets, said the FBI, CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last month.

But the agencies said that the the campaign of Biden, who suspended his presidential bid in late July, was not interested in the hacked materials. There is also no evidence the Biden campaign even responded to the emails, which were described by the intelligence and cybersecurity agencies as unsolicited.

“It is important for voters to critically evaluate information sources, particularly as disinformation campaigns evolve to use AI-generated content,” both CISA and the FBI said in a news release accompanying the bulletin. “Both agencies urge the American public to rely on trusted information from state and local election officials and to verify claims through multiple reliable sources before sharing them on social media or other platforms.”

Authored by James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer via Americvan Greatness,

Vice President Kamala Harris’s disastrous performance in her interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier was notable for two reasons.

• First, to the degree that there was any discussion of foreign national security threats to America, Harris only mentioned Iran. She failed to mention the disastrous war in Ukraine, where more than a million are dead, and the threat of nuclear war exists. Harris failed to reconcile her administration’s billions in dollars of military and civilian aid to Ukraine and policy actions against Russia for the most significant military threat in Europe since the end of World War Two. Worse though was her failure to make any reference to the existential threat from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

• Second, her performance in response to salient questions—ones that had the chance to inform American voters—was an amalgamation of incoherence, anger, and deception that revealed a candidate who is uniquely unsuited to be president of the United States. The fact that she is the Democratic candidate and might become president is alarming to America’s friends, as it is welcomed by America’s enemies.

In the interview, she had the opportunity to discuss her analysis of threats to America. While Iran is certainly a regional danger and a threat to the U.S. and its allies in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, it pales in comparison to the existential threat of the CCP. Indeed, Iran and Russia would be far less of a concern if the CCP were not given a free hand to back these aggressor nations. That the PRC is a grave and fundamental threat is revealed by its hyper-aggressive policies against the American people, U.S. allies like Japan and the Philippines, and partners like India and Taiwan.

An example of the CCP’s threatening military posture was put on display when Exercise Joint Sword 2024B launched on October 14, in which People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces encircled Taiwan to coerce its new leader, President Lai Ching-te, into a posture of subservience to the PRC. Thus far, those coercive attempts have failed. But Joint Sword 2024B revealed three aspects of the growing PRC threat. First, it showed the increasing capabilities of the PRC. Second, it demonstrated the ever-increasing penetrations of Taiwanese air and seaspace in an effort to normalize those violations and mask the actual invasion when it comes. Third, the first participation of the Chinese Coast Guard in the encirclement of Taiwan occurred.

• First, with respect to the increased capabilities of the PLA Navy, it should be noted that their first aircraft carrier, Chinese Navy Ship (CNS) Liaoning/CV-16, conducted 90 fixed-wing take-offs and recoveries and 50 more from their embarked helicopters during their operations in the exercise. That is 140 sorties from a PLA Navy aircraft carrier in just one day. By any measure, the PLA Navy’s carrier aviation capabilities are now approaching U.S. Navy aircraft carrier air wing levels in terms of the number of sorties. It is the case that PLAN aircraft have a more limited range and weapons capacity than their U.S. Navy counterparts, due to the Liaoning’s ski-ramp launch, but the fact remains that within just two years, the Liaoning has gone from launching an average of just 30 sorties a day in 2022 to a 140 today. That is a real strategic trendline that presidential candidate Harris demonstrated no awareness or strategy to counter.

• Second, regarding PLA incursions into Taiwan’s air and seaspace, exercise Joint Sword 2024B provides another inflection point in the PRC’s dramatic transformation of the military status quo in the cross-strait environment. During the exercise, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported that it detected a total of 153 PLA aircraft, 14 PLAN ships, and 12 Coast Guard ships operating around Taiwan and that 111 of those aircraft crossed the centerline of the Taiwan Strait and entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zones from the west, southwest, and east. To put that into perspective, from 1954 to 2020, PLA aircraft only crossed the centerline four times. This pattern of PLA air force incursions across the centerline began in earnest in 2022 when the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the PRC no longer recognized the centerline—a clear violation of the previous agreements between Beijing, Taipei, and Washington to not forcibly alter the status quo. Yet since then, and now with exercise Joint Sword 2024B, the Biden-Harris administration has made no mention of this hyper-aggressive behavior by Beijing or taken any actions to rectify it.

• Third, the Joint Sword 2024B exercise was unique in that it demonstrated the use of non-PLA ships from the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) in this PLA-led exercise. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense reported up to 17 CCGs were detected operating in the waters off Taiwan, or as the PRC’s Global Times noted, the “CCG conducted multi-unit, multi-formation, and multi-subject drills around the island of Taiwan, focusing on strengthening the control network around the island.” The implications of these unprecedented actions by the CCG are to demonstrate that the CCP’s strategy to bring Taiwan under its control, either by blockade or an outright invasion, will use the entirety of the PRC’s assets—a whole of government effort. These facts at sea demonstrate that the PRC’s 2019 declaration of a “People’s War” against the United States is not just propaganda but is advancing in tangible ways.

Americans need to understand the scope and scale of the CCP’s grand strategy as evidenced by the PLA Navy and the CCG’s demonstrated actions during exercise Joint Sword 2024B. The evidence is undeniable: the CCP intends for the PRC to become the dominant naval force, not just in Asia but across the globe.

This reality comes against the backdrop of a Biden-Harris administration that keeps downsizing the size and capabilities of the U.S. Navy.

So, when Bret Baier asks candidate Harris what America’s number one foreign adversary is and there is no mention of the PRC, Americans know this candidate is not competent to assume the office of the Presidency. Americans need to pay attention because U.S. national security is on a knife’s edge—to the U.S., the CCP is a hyper-aggressive regime that is determined to realize its grand strategic objective of dominance. Yet Harris displays no strategic gravitas. She evinces no evidence of the seriousness of the situation or of an understanding that deterrence of the CCP’s hyper-aggression is on her shoulders—let alone having a plan to address this threat.

Deterrence of the CCP is everything. If it fails, this country will be at war with the PRC. Harris appears oblivious to the demands and requirements of deterrence. Accordingly, before the PRC blockades or invades Taiwan or launches an attack against the Philippines in the South China Sea, Americans must have a president sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office who has the knowledge, experience, and courage to prepare our nation for the demands of deterrence of the CCP’s aggression. It must have a president who signals in stark and no uncertain terms to the CCP that their aggression is certain to fail—and so they had better not try it in the first place. A president who not only can talk tough but has the wherewithal to rebuild the U.S. deterrent. The catechism of deterrence is straightforward: weakness invites aggression; strength deters it. Americans must elect a president who understands this catechism and so defends our nation from all threats—most especially from the existential threat of the PRC.

Via Common Dreams

“We have not observed indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon.” That sentence is the concluding line from an allegedly leaked (or hacked) U.S. intelligence document posted online this week and later reported on by Axios, CNN, and other outlets.

As Axios reported on Saturday, “U.S. officials are extremely concerned about a potentially major security breach after two alleged U.S. intelligence documents about Israel’s preparations for an attack on Iran were published by a Telegram account affiliated with Iran.”

The Associated Press and independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein both cited government sources who said the documents appeared to be authentic. While U.S. officials have yet to comment publicly on the material, reporting confirmed an investigation into their authenticity and how they came to be in the public domain was underway.

Since a barrage of missile strikes aimed at military targets in Israel by Iran on Oct 1, a retaliatory strike in response to Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other attacks, the world has been waiting for Israel’s promised military response.

Assuming the documents are authentic, what they show is that U.S. intelligence—as is well known and despite being close allies—keeps a close and clandestine eye on Israeli military operations.

CNN cited an unnamed U.S. official who called the documents being made public “deeply concerning,” though the outlet did not publish the documents in full. The documents, according to CNN,

are marked top secret and have markings indicating they are meant to be seen only by the US and its “Five Eyes” allies — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

They describe preparations Israel appears to be making for a strike against Iran. One of the documents, which says it was compiled by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says the plans involve Israel moving munitions around.

Another document says it is sourced to the National Security Agency and outlines Israeli air force exercises involving air-to-surface missiles, also believed to be in preparation for a strike on Iran. CNN is not quoting directly from or showing the documents.

NEW: A set of classified U.S. intelligence documents purporting to show information about Israel’s plans to strike in Iran have been confirmed as authentic in a report by CNN (https://t.co/8AVOexA1Y8).

Drop Site News has also been reviewing these documents since they were posted… pic.twitter.com/VKOEq9qcbo

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 19, 2024

It has long been known that Israel has a nuclear weapons program and maintains a nuclear arsenal, but it remains both Israeli and U.S. government policy never to acknowledge or confirm the existence of either. In one of the documents, the U.S. specifically references Israel’s ability to deploy a nuclear weapon, though it categorizes the threat of doing so in this case as low.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, recently banned from X for posting an internal opposition research dossier that the Trump campaign had compiled on JD Vance, posted images of both documents to his substack page, as he excoriated major outlets for refusing to do.

“As with the J.D. Vance Dossier, which the entire media knew about but refused to publish, it appears the media has once again lost its nerve – and its sense of what’s news,” Klippenstein wrote.

According to Klippenstein’s assessment:

The intelligence report includes a rundown of the various aspects of Israeli military activities that the U.S. is monitoring to inform its judgments and conclusions: weapons handling, air defense, ground forces, Navy, Air, Special Forces, and even Israel’s Nuclear Forces. But even then, only the weapons handling and special forces categories are identified as having a “medium” predictive ability in regards to determining Israel’s action; the rest are designated “low” predictive ability.

The second intelligence report is titled “Israel: Air Force Continues Preparations for Strike on Iran and Conducts a Second Large-Force Employment Exercise.” The document details Israeli activities during an evident “mission rehearsal” (in U.S. lingo) that could be indicative of how Israel will strike Iran. Citing imagery analysis and other sources, the NGA report notes that the Israeli Air Force is already conducting covert drone operations over Iran (evidently doing its own spying), and how, as part of Israeli Air Force activity, has been handling air-launched ballistic missiles and other weapons.

From the leaked US intel documents: “we did not observe any Jericho II medium-range ballistic missiles … we have not observed any indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon”. Notice the NF – no foreigners – marking for that paragraph. https://t.co/Bkfq9KtWew pic.twitter.com/YE9IFKN301

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) October 20, 2024

Defending release of the full documents, he explained that both provide “insight of enormous public interest as we stand at the precipice of a broader conflict” and contained “information that directly bears upon U.S. obligations and actions. It is for that reason that I’ve decided to publish the basic documents.”