“In a big blow to the Trump-deranged community, Melania Trump’s eponymous movie knocked the lights out on its opening weekend. It came in at No. 3 overall, and its $7 million box office take in three days is almost unheard of for a documentary. ‘Melania’ is crushing it on Rotten Tomatoes, too, with a 99% audience score on the ‘popcornometer’ easily besting the sneering critics’ 10% on the Tomatometer ratings. Like everything to do with Donald Trump’s two presidencies, whatever the leftist media’s opinion, the American public thinks the opposite. The inverse media-ometer is one of the most reliable gauges of public sentiment in this country.” (02/01/25)
“A Russian cargo plane typically used to transfer military equipment landed at a military airfield in Havana Sunday night, echoing flight patterns seen ahead of the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The U.S.-sanctioned Ilyushin Il-76, operated by Russian state-linked airline Aviacon Zitotrans, was tracked landing at San Antonio de los Baños Airfield, a Cuban military installation roughly 30 miles south of Havana, according to public flight data. Flight-tracking records show the aircraft stopped in St. Petersburg and Sochi in Russia; Mauritania, Africa; and the Dominican Republic. Each landing would have required approval from host governments, offering a window into which countries are continuing to permit Russian military-linked aviation activity despite Western sanctions.
“A small contingent of security forces with Syria’s interior ministry entered the city of al-Hassakeh on Monday as part of a deal between Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, which control the city. The SDF announced the new agreement with the central government on Friday, aiming to stabilize a ceasefire in the country that ended weeks of fighting, in which the Kurdish-led force lost most of the territory it previously held in northeastern Syria. It lays out steps toward integrating the force into the army and police forces, and integrating civilian institutions in SDF-controlled areas into the central government. Under the deal, government military forces won’t enter Kurdish-majority areas, but small contingents of security forces reporting to the interior ministry will enter the cities of al-Hassakeh and Qamishli to secure state-affiliated institutions such as the civil registry, passport offices and the airport, and to restart work at those institutions.” (02/02/25)
“Football taught me rich people could be stupid. Even as a kid, I’d seen plenty of movies and TV shows where rich people were greedy, cruel, vain, and unlikable. But stupid? Obviously, rich people are smart! Otherwise, how did they become rich? But as any NFL fan knows, some franchises are just always bad. Superstars wilt when traded to these teams; top draft picks fail to live up to their billing. No coach can fix their problems. And when you look under the microscope at these teams, to understand why they never win or get their act together, there’s often a common answer: a billionaire, convinced of his own brilliance, swerving the team into a ditch over and over again.” (02/02/25)
“The U.S. Senate will soon grill Kevin Warsh as President Donald Trump’s nominee to head up the nation’s central bank starting in May. The position is one of the most powerful in Washington. The Federal Reserve, with its mandate from Congress to ensure stable prices and full employment, helps steer both the American and world economy, mainly by setting interest rates. Given that the Senate easily approved the former Wall Street lawyer two decades ago to sit on the bank’s board – as the Fed’s youngest-ever governor – it might not probe him hard on one of his most intriguing yet disputed ideas. Yet, it should. Mr. Warsh, a graduate of Stanford and Harvard, maintains that the American people – in their curiosity, ingenuity, freedom, equality, and collaboration – are as important as the Fed in keeping inflation low.” (01/30/25)
“Honestly, if you’d told me a couple of weeks ago literally anything about failed CNN personality Don Lemon, it would have taken me a minute to remember who he was. If I really think about it, there’s a good chance I would have had to think about it for a second or two even back when he had a show on CNN, but now that he’s gone the only thing I think of is how he had a job with Twitter for one show, an interview with Elon Musk, and was so stupid that he got fired immediately after it. Until he helped raid that church in Minneapolis, that was going to be how I remembered him…If I remembered him at all. Now it’s like the j*****s who facilitated left-wing nutjobs screaming at families trying to worship God, then claimed they were white supremacists anyway.” (02/01/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“I don’t know what to say today. We are ruled by abusive monsters. The US is preparing for war with Iran. They’re going in for the kill shot on Cuba. The latest batch of Epstein emails looks horrifying. The US is full of protests because ICE keeps killing people. Israel is still massacring civilians in Gaza as Australia prepares to host its president for an extended visit. Reuters has confirmed that Biden officials actively obstructed the circulation of internal USAID reports that Gaza was being turned into a nightmarish hellscape in early 2024. There’s so much cruelty. So much abuse. You’d think all this evidence that we are ruled by deranged psychopaths would unite us against them, but it doesn’t. The population is more angrily, bitterly divided against itself than ever.” (02/01/25)
“Iran’s supreme leader warned Sunday that any attack by the United States would spark ‘a ]regional war’ in the Mideast, further scalating tensions as President Donald Trump has threatened to militarily strike the Islamic Republic. The comments from the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are the most-direct threat he’s made so far as the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and associated American warships are in the Arabian Sea, sent by Trump there after Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests. It remains unclear whether Trump will use force. He’s repeatedly said Iran wants to negotiate and has brought up Tehran’s nuclear program as another issue he wants to see resolved. But Khamenei also referred to the nationwide protests as ‘a coup,’ hardening the government’s position as tens of thousands of people reportedly have been detained since the start of the demonstrations.” (02/01/25)
“Whether Don Lemon broke federal law in his role in an attack on a Minnesota church will be up to a jury, but we can already say he deserves the max for his crime against journalism. At issue, both in the criminal case and the one in the court of journalistic ethics: Was the former CNN anchor present at the disruption of the church service in St. Paul to document the event or was he participating in it? It was quite clearly the latter. In the moments prior to the harebrained ‘protest’ in the house of worship that left children in tears, Lemon can be seen outside, on video he took himself, telling his viewers the ‘operation is a secret,’ adding, ‘I can’t tell you what’s going to happen, but you’re going to watch it live.'” [editor’s note: Is a journalist embedded with a military unit betraying his profession if he doesn’t broadcast classified attack plans in advance? – TLK} (01/31/25)
“Students poured into Dolores Park on Friday afternoon, sporting baggy pants, backpacks and protest signs as they joined thousands of workers and organizers for a national day of action demanding Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents be removed from communities nationwide. A drum circle pulsed through the crowd — with maracas shaking and a cowbell clanging — as teens waved signs bearing cheeky slogans like, ‘We are skipping our lessons to teach you one,’ ‘End the ICE age’ and ‘Sex is good but have you ever tried fucking the system?’ Cars passing the park honked in support while chants of ‘Minnesota to the Bay ICE ICE go away’ rippled across the hillside, driven by impassioned local labor and student organizers from a makeshift stage near the base of the park.” (01/30/25)
