Marc Faust

I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.

[Marc Faust @MGFaust]

@Ihartitz Recovering Rome odunze: 5-95-0

[Marc Faust @MGFaust]

@Ihartitz @Ihartitz

Coker: 16-204-2
Burden: 8-95-0

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Benghazi cost four American lives at a single compound, and Congress gave it ten investigations and two years of televised fury. Beirut in 1983 produced a commission within weeks, and Pearl Harbor had its inquiry inside eleven days. That is how a serious country treats a military disaster.

This week the Pentagon's own inspector general confirmed that Iran has damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings at American bases in eight countries, along with dozens of aircraft. Neither Vietnam, Iraq nor Afghanistan ever saw the American footprint across a whole region hammered at once, and the public only learned of it because soldiers leaked photographs while Hegseth shrugged about the occasional "squirter."

General Caine warned before the first bomb fell that stockpiles and defences were not ready. Hegseth, a former television host, has since fired or blocked more than eighty generals and admirals, so the war is being run with the adults removed from the building.

When a Republican congressman filed eight articles of impeachment this week, the Speaker sent the House home early rather than allow a vote.

https://t.co/HetXlxeSaU

[AT @primediscussion]

Joe Rogan can recite every random conspiracy at least loosely, but is “not familiar” with the crimes of a sitting Senator in the state he lives in, sub-50 days from mid-term elections. Prolific bullshitter.

[Luke Thomas Gets Political (LTGP) @LTGetsPolitical]

Yeah, man.

[Don Winslow @donwinslow]

It would be great if the American media could report that The Kennedy Center was operating with a SURPLUS of $40.7m in 2024 before Trump was re-elected.

SURPLUS.

And that what he says below according to the numbers I've seen just ANOTHER LIE.

[ally @missmayn]

@HQNewsNow “i don’t know enough about him”

ron just TOLD you all about him you dumb bald bitch

[ThePatrioticBlonde™🇺🇸 @ImBreckWorsham]

Unbelievable.

Trump literally just told North Carolinians still devastated by flooding that he'll withhold FEMA funds needed for hurricane relief unless the Republican he endorsed wins the midterms.

You can not make this up.

[theleahfiles @leahfiles]

Scott Bessent sat in front of Congress on Tuesday and either lied or is clueless about how to do his real job. There is no third option. But based on Bessent's testimony and what I found, it looks like we could be stealing ~$11 billion from Venezuela.

Bessent told the committee Venezuela's oil money is "one of the largest assets ever to go on the US balance sheet."

The executive order the president signed on January 9 states that the money is "property of the Government of Venezuela," held by the United States "solely in a custodial and governmental capacity." You cannot hold another country's money in custody and call it your asset, because that is the difference between a bank and a thief.

Bessent said he "won't give out" the total. I found it in 15 minutes on Treasury's own daily cash statement, the one he wants to call a balance sheet when it flatters him. It is public record. So it is hard for me to believe he can't tell Congress how much.

So let me help him and Congress out. Attached is the Daily Treasury Statement for February 5, 2026, the month the Venezuelan money left Qatar. The State Department, which runs the fund, deposited $514 million in a single day. The prior two-year high for that line was $54 million. Since January it has taken in $14.5 billion against a normal year of $3.4 billion, roughly $11 billion more than it should have. About $3.5 billion has been documented going back to Venezuela. That leaves about $7.5 billion nobody has accounted for.

SO, we took a country's primary revenue stream at gunpoint, routed it through a bank in Qatar, then a Citibank account, handed the sales to two Swiss traders with federal bribery cases, put the Pentagon in business with a man the Justice Department once named in a $1.2 billion PDVSA laundering case, and declared the whole thing immune from American courts by decree. Okay....

A little more on the people we handed this to.

(1) Trafigura is the Swiss trading house that sells the oil and now carries Venezuela's gold to US refineries too. In March 2024 it pleaded guilty in a Miami federal court to bribing Brazilian officials and paid $126 million. That is a felony conviction less than two years old, and it was handed a no-bid contract to market another country's oil "at the request of the U.S. government."

(2) Vitol, the other trader, paid $135 million in 2020 under a deferred prosecution agreement for bribery in three countries. One of Vitol's senior traders gave $5 million to the president's super PAC, then stood in the White House on January 9 and told Trump that the "influence you have over the Venezuelans" would make sure he got what he wanted. Vitol had the first contract five days later.

(3) Alejandro Betancourt is the Venezuelan businessman the Pentagon just took a 35 percent stake alongside. His earlier company, Derwick Associates, won billions in no-bid power-plant contracts under Chávez. Federal prosecutors in Miami named him as an unindicted co-conspirator in a $1.2 billion scheme to launder PDVSA money. He hired Rudy Giuliani in 2019 to lobby the Justice Department about it. The AP reports that investigation was "paused earlier this year." Spain reopened its own case against him in June. He has never been charged and denies wrongdoing, and he now has the United States military as a business partner under a contract nobody outside the government has read.

(4) And David Rivera, a former congressman and Marco Rubio's old housemate, was convicted on May 1 of acting as an unregistered foreign agent after taking a $50 million contract from Citgo's parent company to lobby for normalizing relations with the Maduro government. Rubio testified at his trial. Rubio's State Department now signs off on every dollar that leaves the Venezuela account.

The president says we "paid for that war many times over" and that "to the victor belong the spoils." The executive order says it isn't our money. Bessent says it's our asset and won't say how big. Meanwhile Venezuela's acting president spent July writing to King Charles begging for gold in a London vault while we sat on eleven billion dollars of her country's oil revenue.

The written agreement Bessent promised Congress in February still has not been produced. When asked Tuesday when they'd get it: "I'll check with my staff."

Sure as heck looks like we are stealing from Venezuela and Congress doesn't have a clue, doesn't care, or both.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

The folks who want flock cameras in your neighborhood, the folks who wanna read your emails without a warrant, the folks who say, “If you’re not doing anything wrong, why do you wanna hide it?” have withheld 3 million Epstein files and redacted the rest.

[Mykhailo Rohoza @MykhailoRohoza]

Thirty years ago, a photo like this could have destroyed a politician’s career overnight. Today? Barely worth interrupting the news cycle.

But don’t worry — I’m sure the guardians of “Christian family values” are preparing their furious statements as we speak.

Any minute now. Any minute…

[Molly Ploofkins @Mollyploofkins]

'Jared Kushner says Ukraine should give Putin what he wants to end the war.'

'A Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin paid for Don Jr.’s wedding.'

'Trump blames Zelenskyy for record-high diesel prices.'

The Trumps serve Putin, not the USA.

[William Murphy @420GHz]

America has 5,427 data centers.

China has 513.

China has roughly 5× the population.

There is no “AI race” in any meaningful material sense. There is a U.S. infrastructure blitz dressed up as geopolitical destiny.

Fuck the propaganda.

[Citizens for Ethics @CREWcrew]

We know Trump's taxes were being audited when he got the corrupt deal with IRS to drop audits.

We know he owed at least $100 million in underpaid taxes on one property alone.

So, yes, we know Trump's IRS audit deal is a constitutional violation. https://t.co/ZtQCx9aWlF

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

I said it at the time (and before!), but I truly believe that American voters electing Donald Trump for a second term in 2024 was the dumbest and most self-harming choice made by an electorate in the history of humanity

[Acyn @Acyn]

Garcia: So, to be clear, we have a president that is $2 billion richer just from this last year. We have a son whose wedding is being paid for by rich Russians and oligarchs that have connections to Putin. We have Jared Kushner, who got $2 billion for his investment firm from the Saudis while also doing diplomacy in the Middle East.

We have the Kushners who are trying to buy private islands and selling all sorts of merchandise that’s being promoted, oftentimes through government resources. We also have, of course, this insane amount of stock trading that the president himself is doing to enrich himself and his family.

And, of course, the sons sitting on boards of private companies that are then getting contracts from the federal government. The amount of corruption is unprecedented. And not only are they lining their pockets, they’re stealing the wealth of hardworking Americans, they’re stealing the hard-earned labor and wealth of working-class people, and then funneling that money to themselves and to the rich donors and large corporations and CEOs across this country.

As they get richer, costs go up for the American people. And we know that Republicans in the House and in the Senate are complicit by not calling out this corruption.

[Stella Parton @StellaParton]

Imagine a country where the citizens seem to think it’s normal for their President to tell them in front of the whole world to “cheat like hell” in the upcoming election and no one has said anything about it. Not Congress, SCOTUS, Governors, former Presidents, no one!

[sam @sam_d_1995]

this is an extra funny take when you realize that Abdul actually went to Michigan (and played football in high school) & Talarico actually went to Texas

…while their Republican opponents both went to private colleges

[scary lawyerguy @scarylawyerguy]

Really is wild to watch this global meltdown caused entirely by Trump's bad decision making w/no expectation he will do anything to solve his own fucking problem. Suffice to say, not exactly the same standard an Obama or Biden was held to.