Mark Smith

Individual liberty. Small government. Non-interventionist foreign policy. Constitutional money. Alienation is the cost of integrity.

[HealthRanger @HealthRanger]

Just gotta love how the remaining Trump supporters think oil prices can stay low even when the global oil supply has cratered.

Or how official inflation numbers are low, even though the cost of almost everything you need to buy keeps rising.

Or that the Strait of Hormuz is "fully opened!" when there are barely any ships moving through it, according to maritime real-time trackers.

On top of that, we have "peace" that involves repeated bombings and missile strikes, and we have a "well-attended" 250th celebration Fair that didn't even have as many attendees as my 4th grade school fair put together by young teachers and parents who had more smarts than the entire Trump administration.

Delusion is a harsh mistress. Sooner or later, she turns on you and you end up having to deal with REALITY.

[Ethan Levins 🇺🇸 @EthanLevins2]

Israel has given us OnlyFans, War, Debt, and illegal nuclear weapons that threaten the world.

Iran has given us algebra, chemistry, and Medicine.

[Olena Rohoza @OlenaRohoza]

🇺🇸🇮🇹Donald Trump attacks Giorgia Meloni — and she delivers a fiery speech he’ll never forget.
Donald Trump thought he could easily score political points by calling Giorgia Meloni ���an insult to Jesus,” accusing her of “not being woke,” and claiming that God does not discriminate. Unfortunately for “Don Dementia,” this time he picked the wrong target.
Standing at a historic location, Giorgia Meloni didn’t just respond — she delivered a full moral reckoning.
“The President of the United States just said that I insult Jesus,” Giorgia Meloni declared. “Do you want to know what really insults Jesus? Taking healthcare away from the sick while cutting taxes for billionaires.”
And that was only the beginning.
“Do you want to know what else insults Jesus?” she continued. “Deporting foreigners and separating children from their mothers.”
Then she went even further, touching on war, corruption, and hypocrisy.
“Do you want to know what insults Jesus? Bombing innocent schools in Iran and sending our brave men and women to die in yet another endless war… hiding the Epstein files and then refusing to prosecute anyone involved.”
This wasn’t politics as usual. It was a full moral indictment.
Giorgia Meloni, targeted by Trump for supporting transgender people and for saying that “trans children are children of God,” completely turned the tables. Instead of backing down, she grounded her message in the very teachings Trump tried to weaponize.
“I am not a perfect Christian,” she said. “There was only one perfect man, and two thousand years ago he was crucified.”
Then came the line that hit the hardest:
“Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves… Can we imagine war in heaven? Can we imagine hatred in heaven? Can we imagine poverty in heaven? Then why do we tolerate these things on Earth?”
This is how you respond. Not with insults. Not with fear. But with clarity and conviction.
Trump tried to discredit her. Instead, Giorgia Meloni delivered a sermon that now echoes far beyond that hall.
Please share Giorgia Meloni’s inspiring words.

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@proinexcel 1509

[Porter Stansberry @porterstansb]

As we approach our 250th anniversary, I believe it's worth noting that our government is only actually 165 years old.

The American Republic established in 1776 ended in 1861.

The Civil War cost almost a million lives: one out of every five white men of military age in the South and one out of every ten in the North. It destroyed virtually all of the wealth in the South — a 90% reduction to per capita GDP. The South would not recover economically until 1950.

But the real cost of the war wasn't economic. It was political.

The Civil War destroyed the Federalist system that our founders built to ensure the central government's power remained genuinely limited. Not limited by the goodwill of its legislators, which is no limit at all, but limited by the existence of rival sovereign States, which could restrain the central government and each other through competition.

After 1865 the only real limit to federal power was the self-restraint of the men in office. And that didn't last for long...

But, before we look at the long-term impact of America's first war of aggression, let us dispel a critical myth: that the Civil War ended slavery. Slavery was ending because of technology and economics. And it would have ended just as surely if no war had ever been fought between the States.

Britain abolished slavery, without a war, throughout its empire in 1833, freeing some 700,000 people in the West Indies alone. France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848. Russia — the most backward great power in Europe — emancipated some twenty-three million serfs in 1861, the very year of Sumter. The Netherlands freed the slaves of Surinam and Curaçao in 1863. Across the entire industrializing world, unfree labor was abandoned within a single compressed generation. And, in no other great nation, was war required.

In America, slavery did not end because of General Grant and the boys in blue. It did not end because of a moral awakening. The cause was economic.

Chattel slavery extracts muscle power from human beings. Therefore, slavery only makes economic sense if muscle power is the binding constraint on production. Once machines had multiplied the labor output of muscle by hundreds of times, slavery was not only immoral but inefficient. In an industrial economy a slave costs more than he yields. As a result, capital flees from slavery into factories. All over the world. And even in the South.

Slavery ended everywhere at roughly the same time for the same reason: innovation and economics. It would have ended in the American South regardless of who won at Gettysburg. Even Brazil, the last holdout in the Western hemisphere, freed its 725,000 slaves with the Golden Law of 1888. No war was required: slavery was no longer productive.

With apologies to the celebrants of Juneteenth, slavery was not legally abolished in the United States until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in December 1865. The institution died, not because of the war, but because the world had entered the machine age.

The unnecessary destruction of half of our country and almost a million people wasn't the greatest tragedy of the Civil War. The greatest tragedy was the loss of Federalism and the hard-won liberty Americans won in the Revolution.

The Civil War destroyed the federal structure of the American republic, in which the several States were sovereign in their own spheres, with genuinely different legal systems, cultures, and traditions. The national government was beholden to the States, with only limited and enumerated powers.

The clearest proof of this change lies in our language. Before 1861, the United States was a plural noun. Men said the United States "are." After 1865 our country became singular. The United States "is."

The doctrine that a state could check the central government — by interposition, by nullification, in the last resort by departure — died at Appomattox, and with it the last structural brake on the power of the federal government died too.

The framers had not relied on parchment to limit the government they created. They relied on competition. So long as the States were genuinely sovereign — so long as a man oppressed in one State could remove to another, so long as the national government had to reckon with twenty or thirty rival centers of authority each jealous of its own jurisdiction — the central government could not easily grow into a Leviathan. The States were not administrative subdivisions. They were the Constitution's immune system.

What followed the Civil War was America's first empire -- in the South. And Empire's require a strong central government. Thus began a long erosion of the line between the citizen and the State, and between private institutions and public power.

Twelve years after the war, the Supreme Court considered whether a State could fix by law the prices a private grain warehouse charged its customers. The owners argued it was a taking of their property without due process — that what a man does with his own property, and what he charges for its use, is rightfully his own affair. The Court disagreed. Chief Justice Waite ruled that when private property is "affected with a public interest, it ceases to be juris privati only," and may be regulated by the government for the common good (Munn v. Illinois, 1877).

That was the end of private property in America. After all, if the national legislature may decide which property is "affected with a public interest," and may then dictate its prices and uses, there is in principle no property the government may not control.

Justice Stephen Field saw it and dissented with prophetic fury. The doctrine, he warned, "is nothing less than a bold assertion of absolute power by the State to control at its discretion the property and business of the citizen." A legislature that could fix the uses and prices of property "against the consent of the owner" could "deprive him of the property as completely as by a special act for its confiscation or destruction."

New York City's landlords are finding out the truth of this reality. They believe they own their properties. But they are about to find out otherwise, as rents will now be controlled by the mayor, who is a communist. This will spread. A communist ruling over all of America is only a matter of time. Why? Because the law provides an unlimited incentive for such power. There is nothing in America the government cannot take from you. Nothing.

The proof of the unlimited central authority was established in blood. The courts followed where the armies led. And the first American Empire — the North's conquest of the South — led to more such military adventures, which continue to this day.

In its first century, the United States heeded its founders' warnings against entangling alliances, a large standing army, and foreign military adventures. But the creation of the massive Northern army created its own momentum. Only 20 years after Reconstruction, the country clamored for another Empire and war against Spain. America became an imperial power, with possessions from the Caribbean to the far Pacific — Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines.

The consolidated nation that emerged from the Civil War was the precondition for the American Empire that emerged in 1898. Power flows to the center, and the center's reach has no natural boundary.

The Leviathan must be fed.

In 1913, every American became a direct serf to the national government: The Sixteenth Amendment gave the federal government the power to tax incomes directly. The size of a government is set, in the end, by the size of its revenues. The income tax removed the ceiling.

The Seventeenth Amendment, ratified the same year, provided for the direct election of United States senators. Under the original Constitution, senators were chosen by the state legislatures. This was the last vestige of State sovereignty. It could not be allowed to stand. The Senate stopped being the guardian of federalism.

And… then… with these Constitutional impediments finally vanquished, you saw Leviathan act to ensure its permanent dominance: it would control the money supply.

In December of 1913, Congress created the Federal Reserve System. The power over money, which the Constitution had strictly withheld from the central government, was enshrined into law. Income tax, a central bank, and the removal of the states from the Senate — all in one year.

The Revolution that began in 1861 was complete. America's Empire had begun.

Munn established that the government may dictate the use of private property. 1898 established that the consolidated nation would project power without limit beyond its borders. 1913 established the revenue, the money power, and the removal of the states from their guard post. The 1964 Civil Rights Act expanded this dictatorial power into every private transaction in America.

Government of the people, for the people, and by the people has been destroyed.

We now live in an Empire, not a Republic.

The Civil War didn't free any slaves; it enslaved all of us.

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@Nickisbackbaby I maintain my immune system, which protects me better than vaccines and without any adverse effects.

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@ThrillaRilla369 El Chapo (Shorty)

[Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil @ivan_8848]

🚨President Putin’s Message to the German Government and the German People

This is how the coup de grâce is delivered – without weapons, verbally…

“We don’t want to attack you! Why would we? Those times are long gone! Anyone who is still in their right mind and can think clearly understands that.

First:

You already have national debt amounting to 2.5 trillion euros, and no serious economist has any idea how you ever plan to pay that back.
And now you want to take on another 1 trillion euros to arm yourselves against us.
Do you want the Russian people to foot that bill? Never!
Second: Your country is teeming with millions of migrants who cost you 50 billion euros a year. Should the Russian people be held accountable for that?

Third: A considerable portion of your population is so deranged that they believe they can influence the climate by cycling and eating insects. Perhaps this massive brain damage could be fixed, but that
would cost us something too.” a lot.

Fourth: – Your education system was once exemplary. Now, in many classrooms, hardly any teaching takes place anymore because almost no one speaks German.
Fifth: – Your infrastructure is crumbling, and you can’t keep up with the repairs.

Sixth: – Your railways were once the pride of the entire world. Now your trains run like they do in India.

Seventh: – We don’t need your famous engineers. During the sanctions, we learned that we can get by without them. But if we do need them after all, we’ll turn to China. There they’re not only cheaper but
also better.

Eighth: – You have neither raw materials nor energy sources. So why should we conquer your country? To solve problems we wouldn’t even have otherwise? Realistically speaking: Even if you called us,
surrendered, and raised white flags, we still wouldn’t come!

[Ryan Rozbiani @RyanRozbiani]

🇧🇭🇮🇷 The Pentagon Is HIDING What Iran Did to the U.S. Fifth Fleet's Home Base

A new Wall Street Journal report reveals Iran spent FOUR MONTHS pounding the centerpiece of U.S. naval power in the Persian Gulf with missiles and drones.

The damage was extensive:

1. The U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters is no longer usable.
2. The Naval Security Forces training facility was destroyed.
3. Two satellite communications terminals were knocked out in the opening hours.
4. At least a dozen additional buildings were damaged across the base.

Then came the cover-up. Washington leaned on satellite firms to restrict imagery, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth REFUSED to give Congress a damage figure, and the Pentagon's own $29 billion war estimate left the Gulf bases out entirely.

Now the Pentagon is considering moving key facilities underground and shifting infrastructure farther WEST, out of Iran's missile range. You DON'T relocate your strongest bases after WINNING a war.

[Ella Frei @EllaFrei17]

My name is Ella, I'm 17 years old.
I do long jump. I play volleyball. I go to school in New Richmond, Wisconsin.
When my school allowed a biological male into the girls' restroom without telling parents —
I went to the school board.
With my name attached.
In my own town.
I got bullied for it. Harassed online. Even some of my own teachers came after me.
I'm still here.
Because here's what I know:
The net in women's volleyball is set nearly a foot lower for a reason.
A biological male can hit a ball across that net at force that could seriously injure a girl.
And in track — all it takes is three biological males entering the girls' category
and not a single girl in this state stands on a podium.
I didn't speak up because it was easy.
I spoke up because somebody had to.
The Supreme Court is about to answer the question every girl in America is asking.
We're ready.
@JenniferSey
@xx_xyathletics

[susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى @susanabulhawa]

Please stop repeating the lie that "Hamas killed 1200 people on October 7"

Repeating it over and over doesn't make it true.

First, the official number of dead is 1139. Second, and most important, we have no idea how many people Hamas killed or whom they killed.

It is now an uncontested fact—supported by video evidence, victim and eyewitness testimonies, and journalist investigations—that Israel deployed their Hannibal Directive, killing an unknown "hundreds" of Israelis.

It is a fact that ALL of those burned cars (hundreds), are the result of Israeli Apache helicopters incinerating them and everyone inside them. There were at least 28 helicopters, who had to restock their weapons and refuel at least once. Each Apache carries 16 hellfire missiles, 70 Hydra-70 rockets, and 1,200 30mm cannon rounds. And each of them emptied all their munitions on that day.

In addition to the Apaches, Israeli tanks fired onto Israeli homes, knowing their citizens were inside.

Predictably, there has been no meaningful investigation into what happened that day. Until then, it is dishonest to keep repeating this zionist lie.

It is a lie! Just like the 40 beheaded babies were a lie. Just like the mass rape was a lie. The babies in ovens. The cut off breasts.

I just shared the link to that BBC documentary because it was removed at the behest of zionists. But it too is problematic because it begins with that same lie. Pay attention, please. Lives are at stake.

[Mel @Villgecrazylady]

Tyler Robinson, a 22 year old guy raised in a 2 parent, loving, close knit Christian family… a guy with no history of mental illness or violent behavior… a guy who also had no history of political activism or even unhinged social media posts…

THAT guy did NOT wake up one morning and decide to drive 4 hours north to a college campus he’d never been to, park his car on campus, spend less than an hour scoping the place out to figure out the best sniper’s nest…then walk around aimlessly in the neighborhoods adjacent to the university, while playing Wordle with his friends… only to return in completely different clothing than he left his house in, with his grandpa’s rifle shoved down his pants…

He did not walk confidently across this campus he had never been to prior to that day… directly to the spot he somehow knew would provide him with the perfect shot… despite having left the campus prior to the event being totally setup… and then calmly commit first degree murder of the biggest conservative podcaster in America, in broad daylight in front of a crowd of 5,000 people.

He did not fire the perfect shot, which somehow no one caught on video, then quickly collect his belongings and make the perfect get away… only to stash his rifle in the woods, unseen, directly across the street from the campus… where bomb sniffing dogs couldn’t find it but FBI agents 4 hours late to the party could.

THAT. DID. NOT. HAPPEN.

The idea that the above story is somehow significantly more believable to people than the alternative theory that a professional assassin took Charlie out and it got pinned on an unknowing patsy… it honestly just blows my mind.

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@cspanJeremy I'm no Thune fan, but maybe he can't stand the stench.

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@VinnysCorner1 Fridge Perry

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@ImBreckWorsham He can run for president of Israel.

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@bade1hp 204

[Specter @DemonFramed]

There is no revolution coming. There is no uprising that overthrows the government. The elites have spent decades preparing for every possible threat to their power.

People love saying, “There are more of us than them.”

So what? How can millions of people unite when they hate each other over race, gender, politics, religion, and even sports teams? A divided population is a defeated population.

The truth is, the system doesn’t need to suppress everyone. It only needs to keep everyone distracted, angry, and fighting each other.

And voting? People act like they’re choosing the future of the country. Most of the real decisions are made long before the average person ever steps into a voting booth.

There is no grand awakening coming. No mass rebellion. The people at the top understand human nature better than the people at the bottom understand themselves.

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@TheOfficerTatum Gaza? Iran? Lebanon?

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@AshtonForbes @AnaKasparian You don't "have to hear" anyone.

[Mark Smith @MarkDSmith]

@RT_com Either no one should have nukes, or everyone should have them.