Paradigms and Demographics

Friday, July 11, 2025

Debt Lessons from Greece

July 10, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

For many years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019), Greece has been one of my go-to examples for bad government policy.

But that’s changed this decade. I wrote earlier this year about how Greece reduced the burden of government spending over the past five years.

Yes, the public sector is still far too big, but all it took was some modest spending restraint to shrink government from nearly 60 percent of GDP to slightly under 50 percent of GDP.

I want to expand on that analysis by now sharing a chart showing what has happened to government debt.

As you can see, the IMF has calculated that gross debt as a share of GDP has plunged from more than 200 percent of economic output to less than 150 percent of GDP.

By the way, debt is projected to drop to 125 percent of GDP if Greece stays on its present path of spending restraint.

All things considered, a very strong example of both my Golden Rule and the 20th Theorem of Government.

It’s also validation of what I wrote in 2015 about Greece’s debt being sustainable. Simply stated, any nation can dig itself out of a fiscal hole with spending restraint.

Heck, these lessons go back to the 1800s.

So how did Greece reverse its decline? As the Wall Street Journal opined back in 2020, voters elected a sensible government that shifted policy in the right direction.

The eurozone’s perennial laggard suddenly finds itself six months into a remarkable economic turnaround. …Credit Kyriakos Mitsotakis, …whom fed-up voters elected prime minister in July after a decade of failed experiments with centrist technocracy and radical leftism. …Mr. Mitsotakis has cut the top tax rate on corporate profits to 24% from 28%, and some individuals have seen their tax rate fall to 9% from 22% and their property taxes cut.

He aims to introduce a flat tax of €100,000 for wealthy foreigners who move to Greece to invest. He’s also dusting off privatization plans… Athens has already proven the Keynesian doubters wrong. Bailout after bailout after dreary bailout failed because EU leaders took slow growth for granted and focused instead on tax increases to salvage the fisc.

Three years later, the U.K.-based Economist lauded Greece’s improved policy environment.

Ten years ago it was crippled by a debt crisis and ridiculed on Wall Street. Incomes had plunged, the social contract was fraying and extremist parties of the left and right were rampant. …Today Greece is far from perfect. …But after years of painful restructuring, Greece topped our annual ranking of rich-world economies in 2023. Its centre-right government was re-elected in June. …Greece shows that from the verge of collapse it is possible to enact tough, sensible economic reforms, rebuild the social contract, exhibit restrained patriotism—and still win elections.

Now, Bloomberg has added an endorsement.

Here are some excerpts from a story last week by Viktoria Dendrinou, Sotiris Nikas, and Paul Tugwell.

For many Greeks — pensioners, unemployed youth, small business owners — the scars persist in a country that was on its knees. But for the believers, the transformation of an economic outcast into a poster child for financial prudence is yielding rewards… Today, Greece is outperforming its euro zone peers on several fronts. It’s growing faster than the European average and is one of only a handful of EU nations achieving budget surpluses. …

Greece has consistently outperformed its fiscal targets at a time when many European nations face worsening public finances. …Greece’s 10-year bonds now yield around 3.30%, while the premium over equivalent German debt narrowed to its tightest level since 2008. In early 2012, the yield was 44.2%. …At 7.9%, Greece’s unemployment rate is at a 17-year-low… In 2023, the latest data available, more people moved to Greece than those departing for the first time in 14 years.

The article notes that there are still plenty of reasons to worry.

But there’s no doubt that Greece has moved in the right direction. Financial markets seem to agree, based on this chart from the Bloomberg story.

I’ll conclude with two lessons.

First, Greece shows that an economy can be rescued by adopting better policy. What Greece is doing isn’t as impressive as what’s happening in Argentina. But Argentina started in far worse shape on the “socialism slide.”
Second, Greece shows that it should be very simple for the United States to arrest its fiscal decline. All that’s required is modest spending restraint, which has happened at times in recent American history.

But notice I wrote “should be.” I’m not very optimistic that there are any Republicans or Democrats in today’s Washington that are willing to enact the policies (spending cap, entitlement reform, etc) that would save America.

P.S. Shifting back to Greece, here are two amusing videos (here and here) from 2012 about the Greek economic/fiscal crisis.

P.P.S. Sadly (but predictably), the OECD continues to give Greece bad advice.

The Fate Of The U.S. If The Left Got Control Of The Supreme Court

July 09, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Currently at the U.S. Supreme Court, the conservatives hold a 6-3 majority. While there are exceptions, most of the politically sensitive cases break along the 6-3 ideological lines. Recent prominent examples of cases breaking in that way include Trump v. CASA (limiting the ability of district judges to issue nationwide injunctions against executive actions); U.S. v. Skrmetti (upholding Tennessee statute banning transgender surgeries on minors); and Loper Bright v. Raimondo (ending the rule that courts should “defer” to administrative agencies as to interpretation of their regulations). In these and numerous other cases, the three liberal justices (Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) would have reached the opposite result.

But the 6-3 conservative majority is very much a result of happenstance. Donald Trump won the 2016 election by a hair, and then got three Supreme Court appointments in his first term. Had Hillary Clinton won, she would have appointed three liberals. Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland got sunk by some deft maneuvering by Mitch McConnell. Liberal David Souter, appointed by George H.W. Bush in 1990, retired in 2009 (and has since died), while conservative Clarence Thomas, appointed by the same president in 1991, continues to serve.

With a few different breaks, the Court could easily have a 6-3, or even 7-2, liberal majority. Do you ever wonder what our law might look like if that had occurred?

You don’t have to look far to find out. In Europe and Israel, the political left has found ways to control the judiciary, and in particular the highest courts, no matter which political parties win the elections. And here in the U.S., the barrage of litigation against Trump administration initiatives has given a coterie of Obama- and Biden-appointed district court judges the opportunity to show their view of how the law ought to work.

In Israel and various European countries, left-wing judges have somehow arrogated to themselves powers to overrule most any decision of the political branches that they don’t like. At Gatestone Institute on July 8, Drieu Godefredi has a roundup. Godefredi calls what is going on alternately “judicial imperialism” and “judicial tyranny.” Excerpt:

From Israel to the United States, via Europe, the judicial coup d'état has become permanent. In the West, it is not the executive that threatens the separation of powers. It is faceless judges lacking democratic legitimacy who legislate on the pretext of judging.

Consider the case of Israel. Although Israel has had conservative governments for most of the last several decades (Benjamin Netanyahu has been Prime Minister for almost 18 years out of the 30 years since 1996), the Israeli Supreme Court is firmly in the hands of the left. Rather than being named by the political branches as in the U.S., the Israeli Supreme Court’s members come from a Judicial Selection Committee, the majority of whose members are selected either by the Supreme Court itself or by the Israel Bar Association. Lacking a written Constitution like we have in the U.S., the Israel Supreme Court has decided that it can declare actions of the political branches invalid because they are “unreasonable.” Godefredi:

In the 1980s and 1990s, . . . the Court took on the power to assess the "reasonableness" of government decisions, thus giving itself a political veto over the elected government's choices. . . . There is no decision of the Israeli government and parliament that cannot be overturned by unelected judges.

The court has gone as far as to disallow appointment of cabinet officers on the grounds of “unreasonableness.”

Or consider the case of France. While the Biden administration got tied up in knots trying to prosecute its main political adversary (Trump) on some phony charge or other, the French judiciary has been more efficient. Godefredi:

Leading in all the presidential polls, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally party, has been sentenced to a five-year ban from holding public office with provisional execution. . . .

Le Pen’s alleged wrong was “assigning assistants paid by the European Parliament to French national tasks.”

Here’s another example cited by Godefredi:

In 2024, the Constitutional Council censured [struck down] several provisions of the Immigration Act, adopted under political pressure to tighten the conditions for entry and residence in France.

And in summary:

There is effectively no longer a single "right-wing" measure that can be adopted in any field by Parliament or the government without being struck down by the Constitutional Council or the courts.

Other examples cited by Godefredi include several from the European Court of Human Rights compelling European states to accept immigrants from Africa despite statutes to the contrary.

Well, the Europeans and the Israelis have nothing on some of their American counterparts. Consider the latest from one Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts. It seems that one of the many provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that became law upon signature of President Trump on July 4, would prohibit the federal government from providing further funding for Planned Parenthood. On July 7, Planned Parenthood was promptly in court seeking an injunction against the end of its funding. Note that this termination of funding was not a result of some unilateral Trump Executive Order, but rather part of a duly enacted statute. Under what possible theory could a court order that Congress could not do that?

Here is a write-up from National Review today. Excerpt:

The case went to Judge Indira Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee. Before even waiting to hear the Justice Department’s defense of a duly enacted federal law, she issued a “temporary restraining order” (TRO) ordering that the federal government, starting immediately and continuing the next two weeks, “shall take all steps necessary to ensure that Medicaid funding continues to be disbursed in the customary manner and timeframes to Planned Parenthood” and affiliates. Planned Parenthood is already asking the court to extend the order further before giving the federal government its day in court. . . .

Judge Talwani did not issue a legal opinion explaining why she was overturning an act of Congress. Her order made none of the findings required under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for a TRO. Nor is this a proper TRO. As we have previously observed, “a TRO is supposed to restrain one side of a case temporarily, so that nothing changes until the court can issue a final order changing things, which then can be appealed.

But [the district judge] tried to force the government to pay money it can’t get back.” By ordering that moneys be irrevocably withdrawn from the Treasury without an act of Congress — indeed, in direct contravention of an act prohibiting them — she is flatly contradicting the Constitution’s allocation of powers.

So we now have District Judges who think that they can order the President to spend taxpayer funds that Congress has specifically directed cannot be spent. I would expect this one to get overturned promptly on appeal. But that’s only because of our current Supreme Court. Is there any doubt that a Supreme Court with a majority of Ketanji Brown Jacksons would uphold Judge Talwani’s order?

Thursday, July 10, 2025

The Truth Isn't Unkind. It's Just the Truth

By Rich Kozlovich

One of the writers at American Thinker posted an article entitled, My daughter’s mean girls, saying how her 29 year old daughter's "wide circle of friends" use Facebook to stay in touch, but found she became a pariah when they discovered she voted for Trump. Now she's struggling to understand them and find common ground, and it's not working, and she's deeply hurt. The author, her mother, is troubled not knowing how to help. I responded in the comments section, and here's my response with some edits.

Okay, I have the answer for you, but you will have bear with me.

Let’s lay some foundation with this: Wisdom is the application of knowledge and understanding, and Winston Churchill is alleged to have said anyone under thirty who’s not a liberal has no heart. Anyone over thirty who’s not a conservative has no intelligence.

Here’s the way the brain works, and it’s in three steps.

Step One: Up until the age of ten or twelve, depending on who you read, the brain is structured in such a way as to understand languages. That’s foundational.

Step Two: Then the brain restructures itself to gather, store, collate, and correlate information more easily.

Step Three: Then the brain restructures itself again for the purpose of utilizing all that’s been learned, aka, understanding, and that doesn’t take place until after thirty. But there’s a caveat to that. The willingness to accepting the intellectual and emotional transformation, which is what Leftists refuse to do and never get past stage two, and which is why your daughter will never break through.

Leftists are nuts and any attempt to find that “bridge” is an effort in futility. By the standards of yesteryear your daughter is still a child growing up in a culture that's entirely too accepting, and too critical of traditional values, and culture is king. However, she’s on the border of step three. Tell your daughter to just move on and find friends with whom she has shared values, and the sooner the better.

Thomas Sowell, who I think is one of the world’s finest thinkers, considered arguing with a leftist a complete waste of time. And he’s right. They suffer from a serious case of ignorance, and are arrogant in their ignorance. Ignorance is fixed by learning. Refusing to learn is stupidity. You just can’t fix stupid. Life is too short to waste it on stupid people, they’re just an unending source of torment. The sooner she grasps that and moves on the happier she will be, and after she’s in her thirties she’ll realize that.

In the mean while, ask her this. Would she marry someone who thinks and acts like these leftist friends? If not, then why would she want to have them as friends?

I got a big thumbs up reaction from readers to that comment and this reply from Kay Fiset:

An excellent comment. Your advice concerning friendship is spot on. In our current climate, especially if you live in a blue state or city, it can still be difficult to find like-minded friends, but it’s a lot easier if you’re a Christian, IMO. Not that progressives cannot be found in Christian circles, but they do not predominate. Many Christians do have another problem: they believe in being nice. Jesus was never “nice” because He always spoke the truth. He was kind and loving, but not nice. Niceness leads to gullibility, again IMO.

I was involved in my industry's affairs for many years, and the Executive Director of our national association, who has now passed, and who I actually liked, once said to me that I say unkind things. I responded saying the truth isn't unkind. It's just the truth. And the sooner this young woman grasps and accepts the truth, the better her life will be.

California’s Useless Republicans

July 10, 2025 By Robin M. Itzler @ American Thinker

Almost weekly, another Republican in the once golden state tells me he or she is leaving for a red state. Formerly the envy of the nation, California is now in steep decline due to decades of botched Democrat leadership and policies. However, some pathetic Republican leaders share responsibility for the state’s failures, which pile up faster than feces and needles on a San Francisco street. When accused of not holding firm, they claim there is little they can do as the minority party.

The current voter registration in California breaks out this way:

Democrats 46.2%
Republicans 24.7%
Other 29.1%

Some of those “other” voters are former Republicans who threw up their hands in disgust and re-registered as No Party Preference. The category also includes folks who want to turn cities into communist cesspools—but enough about Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

Here are three recent examples of California Republicans “leaders” lacking strong America First values:

$10,000 to Sing The Star-Spangled Banner

Registered Republicans are regularly inundated with emails, texts, and letters from the California Republican Party (CRP) begging for contributions. Steve Frank of California News & Views reported that CRP will be paying a massive $10,000 for an opera singer to sing The Star-Spangled Banner during the CRP’s September three-day statewide convention in Orange County. The performance is planned for the Saturday evening dinner.

According to those who follow the CRP, Chair Corrin Rankin approved the outlay without board approval. Chair Rankin informed the board that her “friend” is singing at a discount, and she did not allow any discussion.

California Republicans, whose mailboxes and inboxes are stuffed with CRP donation requests, will be thrilled that the previous chair earned a huge annual salary of $250,000 plus benefits, bonuses, and travel expenses. The current chair’s salary was increased to a whopping $260,000 plus benefits, bonuses and travel expenses. Mind you, the governor of California (a state with nearly 40 million residents) is only paid $224,000.

Compare the Republican chair’s huge salary to the chairman of the California Democrat Party, who earns just $127,500 a year. (Guess losing pays better.)

There are about 85 words in our national anthem. At $10,000, it comes to approximately $118 per word. How many local talented singers would have been honored to sing this glorious song at the Republican convention? Instead, CAGOP Chair Corrine Rankin signed the contract that will let her opera singer friend belt out the song for $10,000. Maybe the song will start with:

O say can you see

How the California GOP

Wastes our money on thee…

This extravagant $10,000 expenditure by CRP Chair Corrin Rankin offers a prime example of why many America First Patriots in California donate directly to candidates and ignore the elitist CRP.

Some GOP State Lawmakers Don’t Know the Meaning of Illegal

Anyone who enters the United States of America illegally has broken our laws. While no one disputes that some illegal aliens are worse than others, it doesn’t change the fact that if someone comes into our country without proper documentation and processing, they are here illegally!

On June 27, six Republican legislators signed a letter to President Trump that now provides Democrats with “ammunition” in their assault on President Trump’s goal of deporting all ILLEGAL ALIENS. These Republicans are:

Diane Dixon, Assembly Member, 72^nd District
Laurie Davies, Assembly Member, 74^th District
Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, Senator, 19^th District
Heath Flora, Assembly Member, 9^th District
Suzette Valladares, Senator, 23^rd District
Brian Jones, Senate Minority Leader

The two-page letter includes the usual yada-yada-yada about supporting ICE, wanting illegal alien criminals deported, and working with the Trump administration on an immigration program. That’s all fine, but what part of “illegal” do these Republican senators and assembly members not understand?

Americans did this dance with President Reagan in 1986 (Immigration Reform and Control Act), and won’t do it again! It would be grossly unfair to immigrants who legally come to the United States through the long and costly legal process.

As President Trump repeatedly said during the campaign, all illegal immigrants who invaded our country must return to their home nations. Trump never hinted at work programs, exemptions, visa programs, or anything except mass deportation! America First Patriots will be livid if exceptions or amnesty are offered after the “Big Beautiful Bill” gives ICE and other law enforcement agencies the necessary funding to deport illegal aliens.

Republicans Vote Themselves a Raise

The Orange County Board of Supervisors (OCBOS) discreetly voted itself a hefty 25 percent salary increase. The five-member OCBOS has three Democrats and two Republicans. Democrat Katrinia Foley is up for re-election this year, so it made “cents” for her to vote “no” to avoid giving her opponents another talking point about her radical leftist views.

With Democrat Foley voting it down, the two Republican supervisors had an outstanding opportunity to stop this wasteful $49,000 per supervisor expenditure. To quote John Belushi from Saturday Night Live (when the show was funny), “But Nooooo!” Instead, Republican Supervisors Janet Nguyen and Donald Wagner voted yes to give themselves an enormous raise!

Following the public outcry, the two Democrats who voted yes promised to donate their raise, which really means that Democrat Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Doug Chaffee are donating our tax dollars. Sarmiento plans to donate his entire $49,000 raise (our tax dollars) to help illegal aliens pay legal fees in immigration courts. What joy! Chaffee will give his raise (our tax dollars) to a University of Redlands scholarship fund for students studying environmental studies. More joy!

Democrat policies in California provide the hammers that are building a third-world state, with some Republican “leaders” providing the nails.

Robin M. Itzler is a regular contributor to American Thinker. She is the founder and editor of Patriot Neighbors, a free weekly national newsletter. Robin can be reached at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com.

"A Thing of Beauty Is a Joy Forever" — John Keats

Susan Daniels, Jul 09, 2025, @ Susan's Newsletter

Several years ago, I went to St. Petersburg, Russia. My lifelong dream was to visit the Hermitage Museum. I saw some of the most beautiful works of art there, including a 10’ tall automated, gold peacock clock. It was built for Peter the Great in the 1870s by a British craftsman, James Cox, and still works.

The most breathtaking thing I saw in Russia was the Amber Room in Catherine’s Palace. It is a reproduction of an entire room stolen by the Nazis. In today’s prices the room would be valued at $250 million.

And when the Nazis were done:

But, whether at the Hermitage or any of the many palaces in St. Petersburg, which was once called Leningrad, there waits at every doorway a heavyset, dour-looking matron daring you to make a wrong move.

Great Moments in State Government

July 9, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Why is the private sector efficient and the government inefficient?

I answered that question back in 2017, noting that there is feedback (both positive and negative) in the private sector. With government, by contrast, it seems that there are no consequences of any kind.

…people in the private sector make mistakes (most new business ventures ultimately fail, for instance), but I explain that’s part of a dynamic process in a market economy. Every success and every mistake leads to feedback, both via the price system and also via profits and losses.

All of which leads to continuous changes as people – especially entrepreneurs – seek to better serve the needs and wants of consumers, since that’s how they can increase their income and wealth. In other words, Adam Smith was right when he said that self interest encourages people to focus on making others better off.

By contrast, when politicians and bureaucrats allocate resources (either directly via spending programs, or indirectly via regulation or tax distortions), feedback mechanisms are very weak. Once politicians intervene, they never seem to care if they are generating positive results.

Today, let’s look at an example of this phenomenon.

It comes from New York, where the state government recently tossed $100 million in a toilet.

Here are some jaw-dropping details from a report by Greg Floyd of Albany’s CBS affiliate.

More than $100 million was spent on specialty lighting intended to illuminate New York State bridges, but the lights were never used and have been sitting in storage for two years. The New York Power Authority purchased the lighting equipment and design plans under former Governor Andrew Cuomo…

However, the lights remained in cardboard boxes inside a warehouse, costing taxpayers an additional $2.1 million in storage fees over seven years. In late June, the state attempted to recoup some of the costs by auctioning off the lights. Despite the initial $100 million investment, the auction yielded only $383,000. Taxpayers are left to bear the financial burden of the unused lighting project.

This absurd bit of government inefficiency motivated a talk radio host to post a tweet summarizing what happened.

Except he’s being too nice.

The government didn’t squander merely $99.6 million. You also need to add the $2.1 million in storage costs.

So the total loss is $101.7 million.

Returning to the point I raised at the start of today’s column, I can’t help but ask if anyone lost their job because of this horrific example of waste?

Andrew Cuomo was forced to resign, but because of sexual harassment rather than taxpayer harassment. So that doesn’t count.

But what about the political appointees and bureaucrats who were involved with this boondoggle? Did any of them suffer any adverse consequences?

Given the no-consequences track record of government, I’m doubtful.

P.S. I feel sorry for the voters of New York City. Their main choices for Mayor are the profligate Andrew Cuomo, the corrupt Eric Adams, and the lunatic Bolshevik Zohran Mamdani.

P.P.S. For other examples of inane policy at the state level, click here.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

P&D Geopolitical Edition, July 9, 2025

By Rich Kozlovich

There's every indication China's "President for Life" Xi may be facing some serious issues for his continued rule. I'd hoped he'd last long enough to fully destroy China's economy. His hero Mao was on the verge of doing so before Nixon and Kissinger bailed him out, but I don't think that's going to happen now, at least with Xi at the helm.

There's been a lot of purges going on with charges of corruption including his military. I'm sure all the corruption charges against these military people are valid. For a long time there was a tacit understanding between them and the Xi cabal.... don't bother us, and we won't bother you.... and Xi needed them, ergo the corruption metastasized.

How Long Can a System Built on Lying, Cheating, and Corruption Survive

But for them to be exposed and purged, and Xi couldn't or wouldn't stop it, one has to ask why? In my opinion that's the real story, and needs closely watched to see who the players are behind this. I'm of the opinion every military in the world has a von Stauffenberg cabal, and I also believe every government in the world has a von Stauffenberg cabal, including China.

There's a youth league faction of Xi's government who favor "socio-economic reforms to reduce inequality as well as collective leadership and consensus-based rule", which Xi seriously marginalized almost to extinction early in his rise to power, but that movement appears to be resurging. So, if Xi's tossed out and they become dominant it's possible they wouldn't be so hot to continue all China's international mischief making, it's not good economics.

But as of right now, China's spending massive amounts of money on their military with the worlds first twin-seat fifth-generation fighter jet, which can be used to control for "unmanned wingman aircraft and could also be used as electronic attack aircraft and airborne command posts." All of which becomes more interesting remembering nothing about China is ever as it appears. So, is there more than what appears here on the surface? I think so. What tanks and jets were to 2oth century warfare, drones and lasers will be for 21st century warfare.

I've reported that Russia can't produce it's own military hardware, but now China is helping Russia build a drone factory in Khabarovsk that will produce 10,000 drones a month. Clearly the intent is to produce drones China will be using also, with Russia footing the cost of the project.

This is a city at the far Eastern end of Russia sitting right on the border of China, and at one time a region once owned by China. I find that interesting! There's also evidence they're getting support from "Chinese academic institutions and firms sanctioned by the United States." More reason to impose more economic hardships on China.

The world's nations have a debt load of almost 310 trillion dollars, and much of that can't be repaid, nor can it be collected. And that includes China. Much of that money is gone and China won't be able to do a thing about it.

Their Road and Belt schemes are failing, their loan traps to smaller nations is weakening their economy, their BRICS scheme is demonstrating a serious failure in planning, organization, and implementation, since as far as I can tell they have no logical plan for implementation, what currency will replace the dollar, and there's bickering in their group as it becomes more obvious any scheme they adopt must benefit China, even if it impacts the rest negatively, and that's not sitting well with them.

Iran is not to be trusted no matter what they say and do publicly. Behind the scenes they asked for a meeting with Trump over their nuke program, which Trump rebuffed since it been destroyed, and then Iran claims they never asked for such a meeting, not trusting Iran should be (SOP), Standard Operating Procedure. Russia is willing to restore Iran's enriched uranium supplies, and now China has supplied Iran with their HQ-9B surface-to-air missile systems. Why does China care. They get around 80% of their oil from Iran. That's a major weak point for both of them, and the last thing China wants happening is for Israel to destroy Iran's oil producing sectors.

Finally, Putin attacked Ukraine claiming he was afraid of NATO, which was an excuse, not a reason for his revanche aggression, and what ended up happening was he scared the western European powers so more nations joined NATO. Trump forced them to step up and start funding NATO on their own and raise their contribution percent from 2 to 5 percent, and now they're laying down plans to repel any Russian incursion into Europe's NATO members.

Trump says he's pretty much had it with Putin, and in spite of wanting to end sending more military hardware to Ukraine, which is depleting America's supplies, he's backed away from that saying events made it necessary to keep Ukraine supplied.

There's actually a lot more going on, but this will do for today.

The Epstein Case: Far Ranging and Nuclear, Part V

By Rich Kozlovich Tags: The Epstein Case: Far Ranging and Nuclear Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

It was generally believed, and promised, President Donald Trump would bring in a team that would cut right through the Deep State like a hot knife through butter, and to a large degree they have. So what happened with the Epstein case? Let's start by saying it this is a coverup, it's not the first one involving Epstein.

This whole thing stunk to high heaven from the beginning, which I outline in Parts 1 through IV, but the phrase, "Something is rotten in the state Denmark", really is hitting home now. As time went by nothing coming out of the DOJ, seemed to make sense, and so too with the FBI.

They claim Epstein really did committed suicide, and have a video showing an empty hallway as proof, yet at least 1 minute is missing from the footage of his prison wing. Bondi says according to the Bureau of Prisons that minute is missing every night as they reset the video. Okay, I can buy into that, but that doesn't explain why Epstein didn't have a cellmate after his was transferred and not replaced the night he died. His guards were supposed to check on him every 30 minutes and didn't. Two guards fell asleep at their desks and falsified their records, and two cameras were inoperable that night. Given all the big time people allegedly involved in this case, doesn't that kinda seem suspicious? Or is it a conspiracy theory? After all, we need more conspiracy theories since so many of them have turned out to be true.

They're claiming there's no evidence that Epstein blackmailed powerful political figures, yet no one can tell the world where all his billion dollar empire came from, none of which was reported to the IRS. If Epstein wasn't blackmailing people, why did he have recorded tapes of their behavior? There is an abundance of evidence that points to conspiracy to hide the truth as the DOJ announced they would not be pursuing charges against any of the criminals they have on tape.

The FBI allegedly has “tens of thousands of videos” of sex crimes by wealthy powerful men. If there's no conspiracy to cover up what went on, why is it then with all this evidence only Epstein an Ghislaine Maxwell were arrested?

And they're saying no further Epstein records will be released. If there are no further records, why say they won't be released? One former CIA Officer says the Deep State probably destroyed the list long ago. A lot of people think that's really amazing since at one point Pam Bondi said the list was "on my desk right now".

Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft asks: If there was No Epstein client list why did a New York court deny the Gateway Pundit’s legal request for the list based on an anonymous ‘John Doe’ who was allegedly on that list, if there is no list? Hoft goes on to ask:

Who is this person [John Doe] and why is he the lone person fighting to keep the Epstein client list hidden from public view? What is his connection to Epstein? Why did the court side with this anonymous and powerful power player?

Nick Lopez notes in his commentary, The government's Epstein problem, "either they were lying then, or they’re lying now, maybe both. They don’t get to claim that there are no client lists after issuing statements going back over a decade saying there were “client lists”.

And this from what was generally considered conservative leadership committed truth, justice and transparency. One writer suggests the reason for this deception is now all that evidence of corruption can potentially lead to "blackmail-driven control over various heads of state and corporate leaders."

But no matter what, I don't think this is going away, and I believe the stench of this could impact the administration. But one thing is sure, the credibility of the "reformed" DOJ and FBI is now totally questionable.

"Pamie, you got some splainin to do".

The Milei Miracle

July 8, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I’ve written extensively about the amazing libertarian reforms being implemented by Javier Milei in Argentina. Here’s a very short video celebrating his accomplishments.

Except the headline of this column is misleading. What’s happening in Argentina is super impressive, but it’s not a miracle.

Yes, Milei’s reforms are generating great results, but that is exactly what libertarians and small-government conservatives said would happen.

Let’s start with this celebration of the amazing growth of private-sector wages since Milei took office in late 2023.

Or how about the astounding way that Milei has conquered inflation (I also like how this tweet mocks the statists like Piketty who frantically and erroneously warned that Milei’s election would produce an economic catastrophe).

The folks at National Review have a new editorial about Argentina’s amazing renaissance.

Here are some excerpts.

Argentina’s economy is growing at 7.7 percent, according to the latest year-over-year data. …Argentina is achieving this growth not through a strategic industrial policy or a mercantilist trade policy. It’s achieving it by rolling back the overextended public sector, slashing the government budget, controlling the money supply, and removing price controls. …He turned a budget deficit into a surplus in his first full year in office. He eliminated half of the country’s cabinet departments. …

When Milei took office in December 2023, inflation was 25 percent per month. In May, it was 1.5 percent. …the poverty rate…has been falling since the second half of last year and is now lower than when Milei became president. …Milei knows that these are not miracles. They may feel miraculous for people who have been suffering, but they are exactly what economic principles suggest would happen when government controls are removed and people are made free to buy, sell, produce, and consume as they see fit. People have known about this since at least the time of Adam Smith, yet they continue to be surprised when it works.

I especially like the conclusion of the editorial.

If Argentina can become a byword for free markets, responsible fiscal policy, and supercharged economic growth, anything is possible — even a rejuvenation of those principles in the United States.

Let’s also look at some excerpts from Scott Lincicome’s article for the Cato Institute.

Thanks to decades of Peronist mismanagement and corruption, an Argentinian economy that once paralleled those of the world’s wealthiest countries had become a global laughingstock with skyrocketing inflation, routine fiscal crises, and crippling poverty. …Inaugurated in December 2023, Milei immediately set about to reverse these and other trends by shrinking the bloated Argentine bureaucracy, slashing government spending, and in turn getting inflation under control. Within the first month, he’d cut the number of government ministries in half—from 18 to nine—and cut spending by 30 percent…

Milei’s deregulatory work that’s even more impressive… Milei in his first year in office “fired 37,000 public employees and abolished about 100 secretariats and subsecretariats in addition to more than 200 lower-level bureaucratic departments.” He’s also rapidly deregulated across the economy…in Milei’s first year in office, his administration had implemented 672 regulatory reforms (331 eliminated and 341 modified), or around two per day for an entire year.

All told, an amazing set of results.

I also can’t resist citing one more sentence.

Milei’s team of legal experts and economists have pursued a clear mission: “to increase freedom rather than make the government more efficient.”

Let’s close with another tweet.

Here’s Noah Smith, who is not a libertarian, shared two days ago.

Give him credit for acknowledging Milei’s success.

I’ll add two comments about this tweet, one about economic data and the other about predicting whether Milei would get great results.

Regarding data, I don’t think anyone should get overly excited by one month or one quarter of economic data. Even one year of data might create a misleading impression (which is why my Anti-Convergence Club is always based on decades of data). That being said, there is every reason to expect continuing strong results for Argentina.

Regarding predictions, Smith’s tweet asserts that libertarians didn’t expect Milei to be so wildly successful. At the risk of sounding like a politician, I agree and disagree.

The “agree” part is that many libertarians were worried at the beginning of Milei’s presidency that he might face immovable opposition from the Peronist-controlled legislature. We also worried that the special interest groups might launch massive – and successful – protests that would derail necessary reforms. So if you asked me in December 2023 for my prediction, I would not have been overflowing with optimism.
The “disagree” part is that I have always had total and absolute confidence that radical pro-market policies will produce great results, anywhere and everywhere. And I assume other libertarians (as well as Reagan-type conservatives) share my faith that good policies lead to good outcomes. So if I was told in December 2023 what Milei would have accomplished in his first 18 months, I would have fully expected the great news we now see.

In other words, what’s miraculous is that the reforms happened. The subsequent economic renaissance has been boringly inevitable (but totally wonderful).

P.S. I am cautiously optimistic that Milei will get more allies in the legislature after Argentina’s mid-term elections later this year.

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Christian Persecution: A Worldwide Horror Story That's Growing in Frequency and Intensity

By Rich Kozlovich, Tags: Christian Persecution, Heresy

I'm going to start this article with this quote from an article I read some time in the past. However, I didn't link it, nor do remember who said it, but I think it's a good start to this piece, so I'm going to use it as it outlines what's going on in general all over the world.

For decades, evangelical Christianity championed Israel and religious freedom. As a result, it often found itself clashing with supremacist strands of Islam. Deep concern over Christian persecution largely in Muslim-majority countries post-Soviet collapse fueled wariness of political Islam's aggressive forms.

Recently, things have begun to shift. Some evangelical institutions in the US have begun to embrace woke ideologies, softening their stance on Islamism. Meanwhile, as evangelicalism wanes in the U.S. it is surging in the global south. There, Christians face radical Islam head-on, and staunchly pro-Israel positions remain in the ascendant. This shift is shaping new dynamics. In Iran, for example, evangelicals are quietly building the underground church's strength, and hoping for the fall of the regime.

What is Islam all about? The moral foundation of Islam and leftism is identical. Hate, greed, envy, lust, violence, and the desire to attain absolute power in order to control everyone's life. In Islam that manifests itself in practices such as mass murder, rape, and violence of every sort, along with "practices such as child marriage, honour killings, female genital mutilation,all of which are rooted in doctrine, not cultural misunderstandings."

Islam and the Children: What the Doctrine Demands, and What the West Is Ignoring. - This article details how Islamic doctrine impacts children, both in Islamic societies and in the West. Drawing from primary Islamic texts — including the Koran, Hadith, and Reliance of the Traveller — it shows how children are expected to begin religious practices by age 7, are beaten by age 10 if they resist, and may be denied secular education. Practices such as child marriage, honour killings, and female genital mutilation are shown to be rooted in doctrine, not cultural misunderstandings.

It documents real-world consequences: the child martyrs of Gaza, the enslavement of Yazidi girls, the denial of education for Afghan girls, and the systemic rape of non-Muslim children by grooming gangs in the West. Meanwhile, Western children are being softened up through Islamic rituals disguised as cultural inclusion — kneeling in mosques, fasting for Ramadan, and celebrating ‘world hijab day’ in classrooms.

This article isn't just going to discuss the horrors Islam is perpetuating on humanity, it will link articles as source pieces, from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. This is a horror story that's worldwide, and growing. Nearly 400 million Christians are being persecuted globally, with Islam and leftism, in all it's manifestations, as the driving forces for these horrors. And Western civilization is either being silent, or actually in cooperation with this outrages.

Raymond Ibrahim tracks this at his website on a monthly basis, and here's what happened in in February 2025. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, which isn't democratic or a republic, seventy Christians, men, women and children were “tied up and decapitated with knives.”

In Egypt young Christian girls are being kidnapped and being trafficked and the police do nothing. Muslims are setting fire to churches, with the official position is these are "natural occurrences", and in Pakistan "a Muslim man twice abducted a married Christian mother of three children, raped her, fraudulently converted her to Islam, and fabricated an Islamic marriage. Christians are abducted, humiliated and accused of crimes with no relief from authorizes.

In France a Muslim immigrant imprisoned and murdered...the word used slaughtered three Christians in a church in Nice. In Spain “Islamic State terrorist organisation is threatening to attack Catholic cathedrals in Spain, in an organized and open attempt to destroy Christianity in Europe, which is also being done in Syria.

In Indonesian Muslims attack Christians demanding the rejection of Christian worship in their community, but that's nothing compared to the nightmare Christians face in Nigeria which is being called '“pure genocide” with Muslim terrorists “leaving a trail of bloodshed, destruction and despair”. In Uganda a Christian evangelist was beaten and stabbed for leading "a 75-year-old Muslim widow known as Hasifa to Christ', all in public.

‘Red Wednesday’ events to be held in over 20 countries to raise awareness of Christian - Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), an international Catholic charity, is organizing hundreds of activities in more than 20 countries for Red Wednesday, which is on November 20 this year.

The global event aims at raising awareness of Christian persecution and religious freedom issues throughout the world. Initially a single day of solidarity, marked by illuminating churches and secular buildings in red, it has grown into extended initiatives in some areas, such as “Red Week” or “Red November,” featuring prayer vigils, testimonies, conferences, and exhibitions. Next week’s event is marked by the release of the 2024 edition of Persecuted & Forgotten?, a report highlighting conditions for Christians in 18 countries where persecution is severe.

According to the report, most of these nations have seen conditions worsen or remain unchanged. ACN USA presented the report at the USCCB Plenary Assembly on November 12, encouraging U.S. bishops to support “Courage in Faith Week,” an initiative inviting bishops to advocate for persecuted Christians, offer Masses for martyrs, and engage their parishes in solidarity.

Thousands of Christians Killed and Imprisoned for for Their Faith in 2024, Report Reveals In 2024, 4,476 Christians were murdered around the globe because of their beliefs. Another 4,744 were imprisoned. Over 7,670 churches and Christian properties were attacked, too. Those numbers are reported by Open Doors—a global ministry dedicated to serving persecuted believers—which has released its 2025 World Watch List. The annual report reveals the top 50 countries where Christians are most likely to face severe consequences for their faith, from the loss of homes and jobs to imprisonment and death.

History is everything, and here are the articles I've been storing going back to some time which lays historical foundation for all that's discussed.

AFRICA

AMERICA

ASIA

EUROPE

It's a fact Christianity is no longer the foundational religious or social paradigm of Europe. In Ireland the government froze a Christian teacher's bank account after he refused to use gender neutral pronouns, and not only did they freeze them, they planned to seize them, and any other assets he may own, as directed by their courts. How can this in any way be considered legal?

MIDDLE EAST