Puppet MastersS


Briefcase

It didn't start with Trump

Ron Paul
mises.org
Tue, 21 Oct 2025 00:00 UTC
IRS website
© AdobeStock
"What do you expect when you sue the president?" Hearing that comment, some people may guess the comment was made by someone addressing one of President Trump's political opponents who has been targeted for federal prosecution. That quote, though, is much older. It is from an IRS agent addressing officials of a conservative organization that was being audited during Bill Clinton's presidency. This illustrates that the use of federal agencies to punish presidents' enemies did not start with President Trump.

The administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used tax investigations against political opponents. Targeted individuals included publishers of newspapers that were highly critical of Roosevelt's domestic and foreign policies.

President John F. Kennedy used the IRS and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to drive his conservative critics off the radio.

President Lyndon Johnson also used the IRS and the FCC to silence conservative critics. One tool that was used to silence conservatives was to accuse broadcasters of violating the "fairness doctrine" by favoring conservative commentators.
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Big Bomb

New unlimited-range cruise missile can bypass air defenses - Russian military


RT
Sun, 26 Oct 2025 15:11 UTC
Burevestnik cruise missile test
© Sputnik / Russian Defense MinistryA screenshot from a video showing the Burevestnik cruise missile test, provided by the Russian Defense Ministry.
Russia's new unlimited-range nuclear-powered missile, the Burevestnik, can evade missile defenses, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov has said. He made the remarks on Sunday during President Vladimir Putin's visit to a Russian Army command post.

Putin held a meeting with Gerasimov and other senior military commanders, during which he was briefed on the situation along the line of contact with the Ukrainian Army and on the Russian Army's offensive training exercises, including the country's strategic nuclear forces. According to Gerasimov, the Burevestnik test took place on October 21.

Comment: Trump may have to rethink his "Golden Dome" project.

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Stock Down

Germany Blows Up Last Nuclear Plant Towers While Economy Collapses

Thomas Kolbe
Zerohedge
Mon, 27 Oct 2025 14:06 UTC
Gundremmingen Nuclear power plant
On Saturday, the last cooling towers of a German nuclear power plant were demolished in Gundremmingen, Bavaria. Germany thus continues, symbolically and materially, its isolated energy policy path. Even the increasingly dramatic economic situation seems unable to shake the German spirit.

It was a gloomy, rainy day, that Saturday, October 25, 2025, when at precisely 12 o'clock noon the last two cooling towers of a German nuclear power plant collapsed into dust.


Damp and cold, that's what you'd call the weather in Swabian Gundremmingen. Typical German October weather. No trace of climate change. Even the second-perfect timing of the explosion showed a final glimpse of German virtues: at 12:01 pm, German nuclear power, embodied by the massive towers of the reactors, became history.

For now. The condemned are known to live longer, but more on that later.

Comment: Germany used to be the powerhouse of Europe. That era is fast disappearing and the rest of Europe is following suit.

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Comet

Flashback SOTT Focus: Independence Day

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sott.net
Mon, 07 Jul 2003 07:58 UTC

Comment: The following was written by SOTT's founding editor Laura Knight-Jadczyk over 20 years ago. Thus it was written during the first Bush administration and predicted, correctly, that the psychopaths and lunatics who emerged from the shadows in the US after 9/11 would steadily destabilize both the US and the rest of the world. What remains to be seen is whether her other prediction comes true: the arrival of intense cometary activity that neutralizes the psychopaths' push for total control and grants humanity its 'independence'. In this article, Knight-Jadczyk proposes a 'cosmic mechanism' through which ages and civilizations are 'reset', and thus, begun anew...


comet lemmon
© @AJamesMcCarthy / XC/2025 A6 (Lemmon)
Last year on the 4th of July we drove down to the local mall to watch the fireworks display. We bought boxed dinners from Colonel Sanders, and listened to Vivaldi as the evening sky was transformed into a Cosmic Fairyland of Magic and Mystery. Little did we know, it would be the last Fourth of July we would celebrate. Seven months later, we were on a plane, leaving the U.S. - probably forever - and as I took my last look at the country of my birth, my heart was heavy with the awareness of what is very likely in the future for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

What do I mean?

On May 13, I wrote a bit on the Planet X Hoax: Will the world end on Thursday? As I noted at the end of this commentary: "The dogs are barking, but they are barking up the wrong tree."

For so many years we have heard about "End of the World" hoaxes and panics that it is becoming rather tiresome and tedious. When was the last time you heard about the Photon Belt nonsense? That one was pretty popular for awhile. Kept everybody going like crazy while dozens of folks made lots of bux off books and "ascension" courses to help people survive the "enlightening" of the planet.

Well, the "photon belt" apparently fizzled... and then the Hale Bopp Frenzy cranked up leading to some mass suicides and a general air of paranoia all over. What a lot of people didn't notice was that there were some extremely strange things going on here on the Big Blue Marble while Hale Bopp was decorating our skies - the weather was changing dramatically and Europe experienced what was called "The Flood of the Millennium." One has to wonder if the Hale Bopp affair was not just another form of distraction away from what was really going on - sort of a Cosmic O.J. Simpson trial?
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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: NewsReal: War & Peace: The Method Behind Trump's Ukraine And China Flip-Flops


Sott.net
Sun, 26 Oct 2025 20:50 UTC
trump china trade tariffs sanctions russia newsreal
© Sott.net
From "500% tariffs against China" and "Tomahawks for Ukraine" to "a comprehensive trade deal" and "imminent peace with Russia," a day is a long time in Trumpian politics. Besides driving us all mad with endlessly contradictory Truth Social posts, can we figure out what the American president really wants to achieve on the world stage? In the end it boils down to maximizing economic advantage for Americans, while minimizing death and destruction for everyone else. Worthy of the title "peacemaker"? Perhaps, but it's a messy business.

Also on this NewsReal, is he serious about going to war against Venezuela? Probably not. And is he serious about not letting Israel "annex" the West Bank? Probably. But ask us again next week!


Running Time: 02:08:40

Download: MP3 — 118 MB

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Warning

Trump's 'peace plan' traps Gaza in limbo

Mitchell Plitnick
Mondoweiss
Sat, 25 Oct 2025 00:00 UTC
TrumpNeti jet plane
© Official White House photo/Daniel TorokPresident Donald Trump • Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu • Ben Gurion Intl. Airport, Israel • October 13, 2025
Gaza is now trapped in the limbo of the uncertainty surrounding the Trump plan. The U.S. might prevent Netanyahu from resuming Israel's genocide, but unless Palestinians gain full control over Gaza's future, it's just a slower form of killing.

On Tuesday, Israeli military sources announced that, in their estimation, Hamas still has some 20-25,000 fighters, although many of them are new recruits who are not well trained. They also said Hamas still has "hundreds" of rockets, although the majority of Hamas' arsenal is said to have been destroyed.

Retired General Giora Eiland, who still has a significant position in Israel's military hierarchy, added that the tunnel network in Gaza is still some 80% intact.

If these estimates are true, and that is far from clear, it's either an admission of grave failure by Israel or an admission that destroying Hamas was never the point of the genocide that Israel has committed over the past two years. Or, possibly, both.

These statements are meant to arouse a feeling in Washington and in Israel that the "job" is not yet finished and Israel must be allowed to resume its genocide.

Comment: Given the multiple factions and complexities involved, the author has managed to lay out a fair and comprehensive discussion with 'apposite' points and realistic conclusions.

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Cardboard Box

Trump admin found 'more than $1B' in taxpayer dollars were spent on illegals' healthcare

Becca Lower
RedState
Fri, 24 Oct 2025 10:31 UTC
Senator Chuckie Schumer
© J. Scott Applewhite/AP/FileSenator Chuck Schumer
Over the past three-plus weeks since the start of the Schumer Shutdown the Democrats continue to spread the rhetorical equivalent of cow manure about millions in taxpayer dollars not going to pay for illegals' healthcare in the U.S. Their audacious kabuki theater continues apace.

Earlier in Oct., House Speaker Mike Johnson explained to former Bill Clinton campaign operative, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, exactly how - and why - Dems have demanded the federal government keep the gravy train going for illegals across the country to pay for their healthcare; it's the primary purpose for the shutdown.

All the while, even with much of the federal government in sleep mode, the Trump administration continues to work on lowering the cost of medicines for every day Americans with a second deal with a major pharmaceutical company.

RedState wrote that there's already ample documentation on how much fraud, waste, and abuse is endemic in the Medicaid program, with Oregon set to dole out a massive amount--about $1.5 billion--in healthcare benefits from 2025-2027, 25 percent of it covered by federally-funded tax dollars.
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Bizarro Earth

Europe's Suicide Pact: Debt, War Economy, And The Climate Cult

Thomas Kolbe
ZeroHedge
Sun, 26 Oct 2025 15:19 UTC
EU summit 2025
The EU summit on Thursday in Brussels focused primarily on security issues. To put it bluntly: Ukraine must somehow turn its lost war against Russia into a victory, and the EU must be militarily ready for action by 2030. The fact that this would only be feasible with a functioning economy has apparently not yet dawned on the power center in Brussels. Instead, they are preparing for a major fiscal "liberation strike," giving bureaucracy a lush boom of its own.

When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz traveled to Brussels for the EU summit, his fiery rhetoric about EU bureaucratization followed him closely. "Let me put it in very vivid terms: We need to stick a branch into the wheels of this Brussels machine so that this stops," Merz declared in September at a conference of the SME and Economic Union — playing, for a brief moment, the role of someone who understands the concerns of the small-business community.
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Stop

Trump hits Canada with new tariffs over 'fraudulent' ad


RT
Sun, 26 Oct 2025 10:13 UTC
US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney
US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Washington, DC, October 7, 2025.
Earlier, the US president ended trade talks with Ottawa over the commercial, which he said was misleading.

US President Donald Trump has imposed an additional 10% tariff on Canadian goods for airing an anti-tariff commercial that he described as "fraudulent."

Trump has long defended tariffs as a way to counter what he calls unfair trade practices by countries including China, Canada, and Mexico, which he says harm US industries. Earlier this year, he imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum before later expanding them to 35% on a broader range of goods, including timber and cars, as part of the wider campaign.

The announcement came two days after Trump said he terminated trade talks with Canada over a commercial aired in Ontario that used quotes by former US President Ronald Reagan to criticize Trump's tariffs. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump said Canada was caught red-handed running "a fraudulent advertisement," claiming that "selective audio and video" were used to misrepresent Reagan.

Comment: Trump's favorite tool is sanctions which has worked well to bully his vassals. Against bigger players, it has mostly backfired.

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Star of David

Trump's push to uphold Gaza ceasefire is creating a political crisis in Israel

Qassam Muaddi
Mondoweiss
Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00 UTC
VanceNeti
© GPO/Israeli PM Youtube Channel screenshotUS VP JD Vance and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu meet in Israel amid accusations the US is 'babysitting' Israel to make sure it adheres to the ceasefire with Hamas • October 22, 2025
Israel isn't a vassal state of the U.S., JD Vance said. But when it comes to the ceasefire in Gaza and annexing the West Bank, Israeli decision-making is deeply intertwined with Washington's current priorities.

The succession of U.S. officials arriving in Tel Aviv over the week has fueled consternation in Israeli political circles as Washington ups the pressure on Israel to stick to U.S. President Donald Trump's Gaza ceasefire plan. Israeli political circles have bristled at having to bend to the American President's will, as opposition use the opportunity to lambast Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for turning Israel into a "vassal" of the United States.

Virtually all of Trump's inner circle has made the rounds in Tel Aviv throughout the past week, including U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Vice President JD Vance, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

They were all there, JD Vance said, to monitor the ceasefire, rushing to add: "But not monitoring in the sense of, you know...you monitor a toddler." But Israeli media referred to the flurry of visits as American "Bibi-sitting."

Comment: Excellent summation of the current political theater between US and Israel with Netanyahu hung out to dry.

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