The only people who deny financial corruption in Ukraine are those who benefit from it.  That group includes U.S. politicians who gleefully send billions of taxpayer funds into the country of Ukraine while capturing returns in the process.

U.S. advisors and consultants, along with private sector contractors and multinational corporations like Blackrock, are all beneficiaries of the vast sums of money being dumped into Ukraine. We all know this.  So, on one hand it is simple to see why the Ukraine government officials would use the same opportunity to enrich themselves

After all, U.S. taxpayers are not only buying bombs, missiles and bullets with the money sent to Ukraine, we are also paying the salaries and pensions of the same government officials who are skimming the proceeds.  The corruption is everywhere, and every entity is participating in the graft, in one form or another.

Zelenskyy’s wife goes shopping in Paris during the war.  Where exactly do politicians think she is getting the money to spend on glitzy holiday vacations?  Everybody knows exactly what is going on.  The glaringly obvious theft is a large part of the contention the American people have with this insufferable effort to fund Ukraine.

During a lengthy Time Magazine article, one of the close and key advisors to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted that the corrupt stealing of US funds is widespread.   In addition to the theft, the overall tone of the Time Magazine article paints the war effort in Ukraine, what we have always called ‘World War Reddit’ for its mostly theatrical value, as a lost cause.  This is not surprising; however, for Time Mag to make such an admission, that does indicate a narrative shift in the overall effort.

TIME – […] Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”

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Within the budget process there are two different facets. Congress is charged by the Constitution with making decisions about how to spend public money. Those spending decisions are split into two parts: authorization and appropriations.  In the recent political era the “authorization” process has essentially been nulled; no one ever asks if the program (Ukraine, Israel, FBI, etc.) should be funded. 

“Authorization” is done by Congress via legislation that “can establish, continue, or modify an agency, program, or activity for a fixed or indefinite period of time,” per the Congressional Research Service. In other words, authorization is Congress saying that money can be spent on a given item — not that it necessarily will be spent on that item.

“Appropriations” are done by Congress via legislation that authorizes agencies to make payments from the federal Treasury (i.e. it allows them to spend the money that had previously been authorized). Appropriations bills are ordinarily passed each year, but in recent years it has been common for Congress to fund the government “on autopilot” via continuing resolutions that simply allow agencies to continue spending the same amount of money they were spending under the previous funding bill.

Matt Gaetz has been trying to change this dynamic because the external recipients of the appropriation spending, the lobbyists, are the ones driving the continuation of the CR approach. The lobbyists pay congress via campaign donations. Those donations come from congressional appropriation. The CR process maintains the largesse.

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Every time this guy pops up, I am reminded of his previous fame in constructing the “YouTube video narrative” as an explanation for the 2012 Benghazi attack.  At the time, it was Jake Sullivan working in the State Dept who fabricated that entire story; yes, it was entirely his creation, and the Clinton and Obama team (then NSA Susan Rice) pushed it into the media as the official U.S. explanation.  It’s funny (not really) how no one ever calls Sullivan out on that history, given his current position.

Taking that background context, while also accepting that everything we are told about Ukraine and the official position of the U.S. as it pertains to current Israeli War aspects, Jake Sullivan’s prior manufacturing of extreme defensive narratives, abjectly false presentations, leads more credence to accepting that we are once again being manipulated by fundamentally false information.  Jake Sullivan is now Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor.

Appearing on CBS, Sullivan outlines the current coordination between the Biden administration and Israeli leadership.  While he didn’t specifically say the words in the headline, instead describing exactly that while pretending something else, Hamas is FACTUALLY holding 500+ Americans hostage as human shields. WATCH:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Jake, good morning to you.

JAKE SULLIVAN: Good morning, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Does the US know if the roughly five to six hundred Americans in Gaza have survived the past 23 days of bombing and have the hostages?

JAKE SULLIVAN:  We are in regular contact with most of the Americans who are in Gaza. We can’t say every single one, but all of the ones who reach out to us we follow up with on a regular basis, even sometimes a daily basis. And so, we know that many of them are still there, still waiting to get out. And we are working actively to try to make that happen. The challenge right now, Margaret, is that the Egyptians are prepared to let Americans and other foreign nationals out of Gaza. The Israelis have no issue with that. But ¹Hamas is preventing their departure and making a series of demands. We’re trying to work through that to create a circumstance where all of the Americans who are in Gaza are able to get out. It is a priority for the President. He has no higher priority than their safe passage out. And he will continue to work at it until it is accomplished.

[¹What is that, if not hostages and ransom?  /SD]

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Earlier today Mike Lee sent this little bit of raw data from the border, “In the last 4 weeks alone (since the beginning of FY2024), the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Sector has apprehended 5 illegal immigrants from Afghanistan, 19 from Syria, and 75 from China. It’s not a stretch—in fact, it’s putting it mildly—to say “they might not mean us well.” {link}  It is very concerning to think about who is walking into our country.

Earlier today, Texas AG Ken Paxton also asked the court for a restraining order against Joe Biden’s administration who are taking down border barriers and cutting through barbed wire in order to increase the flow of illegal aliens. [Court Filing Here] AG Paxton wants the court to stop Biden from opening the border.

TEXAS – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion for a temporary restraining order on an emergency basis after federal agents escalated their destruction of Texas’s barrier at the State’s border with Mexico. The federal government’s renewed effort to destroy Texas’s barrier and assist aliens’ entry into the country follows just days after Texas filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), DHS Secretary Mayorkas, and other agencies for numerous documented incidents of barrier destruction and occasions on which federal agents facilitated aliens’ mass entry during a severe immigration surge in recent months. 

Texas is seeking an order that would enjoin federal agents from cutting, destroying, damaging, or otherwise interfering with Texas’s concertina wire fence. (link) 

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At this point, I am writing this for a whole bunch of people, and it’s ridiculous.

(1) – No, Mark Meadows never told Jack Smith that President Trump didn’t declassify records.  That was the Lawfare leak to ABC News in August – intended to dilute the defense of declassification in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.  It was made up by Jack Smith, and leaked to ABC for a specific purpose.

(2) – No, Mark Meadows never told the DC grand jury (under immunity) that he informed President Trump that Joe Biden’s election was legitimate. Again, that was a Lawfare leak to ABC News this week – intended to undermine President Trump’s DC defense (mens rea, know it) that Trump’s state of mind was such that he knew he was violating the law by saying the election was stolen.  This story was made up by Jack Smith and leaked to ABC for a similar specific purpose.

In reality, Meadows was questioned under oath, during the grand jury, and asked if Joe Biden was the legitimate President.  Meadows responded (encapsulated), “Well, he’s president isn’t he”?  The rest is a manufactured narrative.

(3) – No, Mark Meadows never wore a wire as a confidential informant while he was President Trump’s Chief of Staff.  Again, yet another Lawfare fabrication to the alt-right media, via layers of plausible deniability – intended to get President Trump to attack Mark Meadows and provide fuel for Jack Smith to request the reinitiation of a currently suspended gag order against President Trump.  The ABSURD story is pure Lawfare bait.  The absurdity of the story is why even ABC News couldn’t be used.

And right on cue….

(NYP) – Special Counsel Jack Smith has implored a judge to revive the partial gag order in the federal election interference case against Donald Trump — citing the ex-president’s “threatening” social media posts about former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Smith’s team argued in a filing late Wednesday that Trump, 77, is capitalizing on a stay in the gag order “to send an unmistakable message to a foreseeable witness in this case… with knowledge that it would reach him.” (read more)

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This is deep weeds inside baseball, but boy howdy does it tell a story. Representative Matt Gaetz (MAGA, FL) goes through the details of yesterday’s House republican conference assembly as they select a Speaker nominee.

What Gaetz reveals in detail is how Kevin McCarthy has been working the conference to undermine any other Speaker candidate so that McCarthy would be renominated as the only possible alternative. The insight and details are really interesting. This is a must watch.

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Yes, smiling is in order.  You see folks, even when the professionally Republican do not want to admit it, MAGA, We The People, now control the Republican Party.

As forecast, GOP House Whip Tom Emmer won the secret ballot for House Speaker.  Carrying a coalition of the entrenched right-wing of the DC UniParty, that was not a surprise.  However, as fast as Rep Emmer’s hopes surfaced, they were quickly obliterated by President Trump and the atomic hammer of truth.

“I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social app. “RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them.”

…. And just like that, Tom Emmer drops out.

Everything President Trump said in that statement about Emmer was exactly correct.

[…] “House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) dropped out of the Speaker’s race Tuesday, just hours after the conference nominated the Minnesota Republican for the top job”… {link}

Go Trump! 😂

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Tucker Carlson releases a lengthy discussion of the ramifications of an expanded Israeli War in the Middle East.

(2:00) Col. Douglas Macgregor
(4:20) Threats to the homeland
(6:12) Iran & its missiles
(13:00) Going into Gaza
(19:40) American hostages
(22:45) Impact on the American economy

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The slate is set for a Monday evening conference in the Republican House of Representatives as nine GOP politicians have registered by the deadline today to put their names in the nomination process.   After the conference meets on Monday night, there will be a secret ballot vote on Tuesday.

The absolute worst-case scenario is Tom Emmer (R-MN) who has just received the endorsement of Kevin McCarthy.  Emmer wants to abolish the electoral college for presidential races in favor of a national popular vote. Unfortunately, Emmer likely carries around 70 automatic votes from the professionally Republican caucus.

On the opposite side of that spectrum is Byron Donalds (R-FL) who is pure MAGA and also running for the job.

WASHINGTON DC – The House GOP’s enormous speaker field is officially set, with nine Republicans seeking to somehow unify their splintered party after almost three weeks without a leader.

It’s the most crowded field since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s fall 19 days ago. The latest round of candidates includes current GOP leaders — like Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Vice Chair Mike Johnson (R-La.) — as well as more surprising rank and file members like Reps. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.). Another last-minute addition, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), who serves as GOP policy chair, raised eyebrows on Sunday.

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On the issue of foreign policy influence, and on the issue of rebranding his political campaign Joe Biden’s trip to Israel was abject failure. Jordan, Egypt and even the Palestinian Authority refused to meet with him. The only thing left for the team in control of Joe Biden to do, was shift the purpose of the trip into a dynamic of magnanimous Joe wanting to fly around the world to provide moral support.  Because Zoom and phone calls were not an option. lol

I’ll have more on this in a few minutes.  In the interim here’s the officially prepared speech that Joe Biden read as prepared for him by the people in charge of foreign policy. WATCH:

[Transcript] – THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Please have a seat. I come to Israel with a single message: You are not alone. You are not alone.

As long as the United States stands — and we will stand forever — we will not let you ever be alone.

Most importantly, the — I know the recent terrorist assault on the people of this nation has left a deep, deep wound.

More than 1,300 innocent Israelis killed, including at least 31 American citizens, by the terrorist group Hamas.

Hundreds — hundreds of young people at a music festival of — the festival was for peace — for peace — gunned down as they ran for their lives.

Scores of innocents — from infants to elderly grandparents, Israelis and Americans — taken hostage.

Children slaughtered. Babies slaughtered. Entire families massacred.

Rape, beheadings, bodies burned alive.

Hamas committed atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS, unleashing pure unadulterated evil upon the world.

There is no rationalizing it, no excusing it. Period.

The brutality we saw would have cut deep anywhere in the world, but it cuts deeper here in Israel.

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