“You and your big fucking day. Your 250th birthday. Where has all the time gone? Where did all the Indians go? Where have all the flowers gone? It seems like just yesterday you were lynching Turtle Island with your training bra and just look at you now! You have become such a handsome and heinous colossus over the centuries. How many bases is it now? In how many countries? Please accept my sincerest condolences for your recent spate of failed regime changes. You can’t win them all. And hey, you still got to kill most of their children.” (07/05/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Eleanor Davis-Diver
“In a bombshell financial disclosure report released last week, Donald Trump revealed he brought in $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures in the first year of his second term. A Reuters analysis last month found that, since the 2024 election, the Trump family generated more profit from crypto than any other crypto firm listed in the United States. While raking in this cash from the family business, Trump oversaw the passage of the GENIUS Act, unleashing barely regulated stablecoin onto the American financial system. And Congress, with the administration’s support, is currently working to pass the CLARITY Act, which would strip investor protections and hand over crypto regulation to an overmatched, historically ineffective agency under Trump’s control.” [editor’s note: Dramacrats got a lot of nerve … ignore the insider trading and other corruption that makes them rich, while fighting to keep someone with actual ongoing businesses (in blind trusts) from any further success – SAT] (07/06/26)
“This is the Democrat playbook when they can’t win outright: rewrite the rules, rig the maps, and push through structural changes designed to make their electoral advantages permanent. In Colorado — a state they’ve already been winning — that wasn’t enough. They needed to lock it in forever. The delegation stays 4R-4D, and 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 before they could be installed. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 — 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐬.” (07/05/26)
Source: Chris’s Substack
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
“My journey from America 200 to America 250 encompassed a fifty-year period of deep losses and incredible triumphs. To have survived two emergency surgeries in October 2025, I count my blessings that I am even here to mark the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of American independence. Quite frankly, given life-long health problems, it was almost inconceivable for 16-year-old Chris to project the possibility of 66-year-old Chris. But these fifty years of living, writing, and thinking about America and its founding document have illuminated a recurring motif in my work. What unites the 16-year-old and the 66-year-old is not merely an appreciation of ideas, but a commitment to understanding how ideas evolve alongside changing contexts.” (07/04/26)
“Social media platforms are full of ‘anon’ accounts these days. Particularly with Elon Musk’s purchase of X (formerly Twitter) and the de-censorship of that platform, many such accounts are dropping explosive ideas—about race, gender, immigration, etc.—from behind the safety of their screens. Some say this is harmful for society—free speech gone too far—while others mock the accounts for being cowardly. But anonymous communication is a time-worn American tradition, providing a useful check to government power while normalizing ideas that needed to be stated and debated all along.” (07/03/26)
“It wasn’t long ago that a losing candidate would give a dignified, mildly depressing concession speech, lick his wounds and try again in four years. That gentleman’s agreement is dead. Now, losing an election is treated as definitive proof of a deep-state conspiracy, while winning is celebrated as a mandate to crush the opposition. Elections in the U.S. now function less as democratic transfers of power and more like weaponized custody disputes. Supercharging this collective psychological break is the tech industry, which realized early on that rage drives engagement far better than nuance. The algorithms don’t want us to get along. Peace is bad for profit margins. Instead, citizens are all trapped in bespoke digital echo chambers designed to confirm their worst fears.” (07/04/26)
“No one forced Major Watson to accept an Air Force Commission. That choice — and the choice to be bound by the UCMJ and by DOD directives — was Major Watson’s and Major Watson’s alone. So was the choice to violate the rules he chose, of his own free will, to be bound by. While I’m on record as noticing that the Constitution doesn’t seem to matter much to those who rule us when those rulers find its strictures inconvenient, one of its features does make a good deal of sense for nearly any social or political system. That feature is requiring that civilians control the armed forces rather than vice versa.” (07/04/26)
“The connection with whether Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or DeepSeek are conscious or not is becoming clear. Just as the account of the evolution of genes as if they were sentient agents (albeit of the Chicago underworld variety) affords them a moral character which they lack, similarly the portrayal of AI bots as conscious entities needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt. Scientifically speaking, all that goes on is that microscopic perturbations yield macroscopic consequences. Their proliferation, or extinction, is an indirect by-product of that dynamic — nothing more. Causality abounds, but teleology, intent or consciousness do not.” [editor’s note: I suspect the only quality unique to humans may be our denial/fear that anything could possibly be like us; AI is just the current scenario in which many people feel the need to find … or perhaps fantasize … differences – TLK](07/04/26)
“The world (at least by choice) is not going back to the horse and buggy age. We live in technologically advanced societies that have given us many wonderful inventions that make our lives far more convenient, if not always simpler. We credit ‘science’ with these advances, and frankly, that is both good and bad. The good, of course, are the medical breakthroughs, etc. that have aided mankind to enjoy this existence longer and more comfortably. We all should rejoice and be thankful for this. But unfortunately, that has led some people, too many people, to elevate science as ‘God’. Thus, 1776, in all ways and thoughts, is ancient, outmoded history, to be abandoned and forgotten …” (07/04/26)
“In the 1830s, a French aristocrat named Alexis de Tocqueville traveled through the United States and returned home with Democracy in America, a penetrating analysis of a society marked by energetic voluntary associations and a restless spirit of enterprise. Tocqueville admired much of what he saw, but his verdict was not uncomplicated. Near the end of the book, he wrote, ‘I feel full of fears and full of hopes.’ Two centuries later, another European visitor is offering a portrait of America. Freddy (@FreddyLA7), a German soccer fan road-tripping across the country for the 2026 World Cup, has become an enthusiastic chronicler of American life. Where Tocqueville wrote volumes about institutions, Freddy posts photographs and exclamations about Buc-ee’s, Waffle House, and enormous houses. He’s also documenting the kindness of strangers.” (07/03/26)
