The prospects for peace in Gaza become darker all the time

Posted on August 16, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

Like a psychotic toddler, no one in Gaza can be trusted with guns—or to keep promises.

Susan Quinn | August 16, 2026

Despite President Trump’s lauding the 15-point agreement that was supposed to bring peace to Gaza, ending the conflict looks more distant every day. The world likes to blame Israel for the delays in the process because Israel makes a popular punching bag, but it’s important to remember key points that support the Hamas and Israel positions.

Let’s remember how this disaster began: Hamas perpetrated the October 7, 2023, attack. Although Hamas likes to blame its actions on Israel’s occupation of Gaza, Israel turned Gaza over to the Palestinians nearly 20 years ago.

There is no occupation.

The next point to make about Hamas is that Israel, the United States, and the European Union have designated Hamas a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel. Can it “change its stripes” and suddenly become not only peaceful, but also willing to agree to peace with Israel?

In earlier negotiations, Hamas repeatedly changed the terms of agreements that were supposedly settled. Why does anyone think it is serious about making a firm commitment at this time?

If we look at the terms of the most recent agreement presented by Trump, there are clearly problems with executing it.

First, Hamas is choosing to interpret the agreement in a totally unsatisfactory way. It is demanding that Israel withdraw its troops while Hamas is “handing over its weapons” (that is, before it even disarms). Hamas has specified that it should be allowed to keep certain types of weapons. There is no way that Netanyahu will allow Israel to become vulnerable unless Hamas relinquishes all of its weapons first:

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The group has avoided using the term ‘disarmament.’ It says it agreed to hand over its weapons for storage under a US-backed Palestinian technocratic administration that would govern Gaza under the supervision of the Board of Peace.

Does “handing over weapons for storage” sound anything like relinquishing the weapons to you? No Palestinian group should be trusted to take custody of those arms; there will be plenty of pressure on it to give them back to Hamas.

Hamas also demanded that Israel pull back behind the yellow line when the disarming begins. But the Board of Peace issued a couple of clarifications:

After the Board of Peace meeting with the Israeli government, the Board of Peace issued a statement seemingly clarifying that sequencing problem.

‘Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the IDF beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators,’ it said.

‘This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike.’

It’s no surprise that Hamas is already trying to change the terms of the agreement.

Yossi Kuperwasser, a brigadier general in the IDF reserves and the director of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, made another significant point:

‘There’s one point missing in these points of the new agreement. The first article of the [October 2025] 20-point plan was that Gaza is going to be de-radicalised. There’s no reference to de-radicalisation here.

‘So we are left with a radical Hamas governing Gaza and still very forceful, capable of rearming itself.

‘If we withdraw from Gaza under these conditions Hamas is going to be on the footstep, on the doorstep of the same villages and communities that it attacked on October 7th.’

Identifying strategies to de-radicalize will be a difficult task. At the very least, Hamas schools should be required to change their curriculum so that children are not taught that their goal is still to destroy Israel.

Some people accuse Netanyahu of getting caught between the radicals in his government and Israeli election issues when it comes to resolving these matters. But his decision, for starters, to refuse to act until Hamas completely disarms is understandable.

It could be a matter of life and death.

Image created using AI.

Related Topics: Israel, Gaza

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Susan Quinn

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A Tour of America’s Blue Utopias – Come for the utopia. Stay because your car has been stolen.

Posted on August 16, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

I lived in Massachusetts for a number of years and even at one time owned a home there. The home was in a town called Cotuit, on the Cape, a small, pretty town that recalled the atmosphere of the television show Lost or the novel Lord of the Flies. There was an equivalent feeling of desolation and desperation and the strange notion that cannibal zombies ran the town. We determined that it was not the place we wanted to spend our free time, even though I have to say that the clam strips were delicious.

When I was a student, I lived in the Boston area, and that was a different feel, more of what we can find in our Blue American cities today. I have to say that Cambridge was ahead of its time. When I worked on the student janitorial crew, my boss, one of the wisest men in Boston—a dyed-in-the-wool Bruins, Red Sox, and Patriots fan and Vietnam vet—comforted me one day as we sat together on the steps in Radcliffe Yard. Bob said to me, “Donnie, the thing you need to know about this place is that it’s basically an insane asylum where the inmates would never think of leaving.” It is a fact of my life that the best advice I have ever received has not come from professors or academics, and certainly not lawyers, but working people.

As effed up as Massachusetts is, even I was stunned to see the spectacle of the governor signing what, in my view, amounts to infanticide into law while a bunch of cackling celebrants stood around her clapping. This finally even got a rise from the local Catholic bishops, not a frequent event because God forbid they should lose parishioners. Clearly, I have more fieldwork to do in Massachusetts to understand the delirious reaction of women to removing legal restrictions on aborting their own children at an advanced stage of pregnancy. But I suppose we can take solace in knowing that this lunacy—which was once largely confined to university campuses—is now active throughout the country, and especially in America’s major cities.

So, I think it is time we took a tour of some of our major cities and important organizations so we can show the fecundity of choices that we have in terms of where to live in the relevant blue states. I believe that it’s only fitting that we begin in the “Big Apple,” where a thirty-something, self-declared democratic socialist with no experience running anything is currently mayor of the world’s leading financial center.

New York City

Mamdani’s rhetoric and positions have struck many people, including many Jews, as openly hostile to Israel and even antisemitic, so it only makes sense that Jewish people would line up to vote for him. I’ve written about this before, and we are always reminded of the heartwarming stories of German Jewish and Hungarian leaders urging Jews not to panic and to work together with the Nazis. But the difference is that the Jews who support Mamdani today have university degrees, so they know better. And just because they elect a guy who has been reluctant to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada”—a phrase many Jews understand as a call for violence—or the destruction of the Jewish state doesn’t mean he’s not a swell guy. He cares.

He caps this off nicely with a piss-poor understanding of economics. Since we have unlimited money—don’t we?—we can have fare-free buses and city-supported grocery stores because the government runs everything so efficiently, and frozen rents because I suppose we want to make it completely undesirable for developers to build new housing structures. But the best part is that Mamdani wants to finance all this with higher taxes on corporations and wealthy people who actually provide jobs and fuel the development of the city. He appears to be shocked by the fact that rich people might leave New York City and take their jobs and development plans elsewhere.

Mamdani’s dream city is rounded off by his history of supporting the “defund the police” movement. Of the many super-dumb ideas that American socialists and communists have put forward, this may be the dumbest. It is, in fact, so dumb that it has been repeated in blue cities like Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. It is usually accompanied by dim-witted announcements from social scientists that there are “social causes” for crime and no real criminals, and then followed up with an appeal to shut down the jails.

Boston

But let’s continue our tour and mosey on up the East Coast to the city of Boston. The socialist mayor, Michelle Wu, has called for the abolition of ICE, a mantra repeated in many blue states and cities, and does not seem all that concerned about drug trafficking and human trafficking associated with illegal immigration. After all, she needs every last vote to stay in power. Logically, she has supported noncitizens voting in local elections, along with many similar lunatics in the Boston City Council. She is also a big backer of rent control, something the state eliminated in 1994. But bad ideas, like cockroaches, don’t go away, and she seems determined to employ fallacious economic theory in the laboratory she calls Boston.

But before we leave Boston, we should say a word about the Massachusetts governor. Governor Maura Healey has now signed legislation removing the state’s previous set of specified conditions for abortion after twenty-four weeks and replacing them with the “best medical judgment” of the physician. The law no longer supplies a clear gestational boundary of its own. Not being stupid, let’s understand that this makes it possible to forum-shop for a doctor willing to supply the necessary medical judgment to terminate a pregnancy very late in the process. In Rome and Sparta, they were courageous enough to call this infanticide. Here we refer to this as “health care.” Although I’m not sure that unborn children, if they could express an opinion, would agree with that assessment. And I’m not sure that female unborn children would find this as liberating for women as Governor Healey does.

Seattle

Let’s continue our journey and take a 3,000-mile journey across the country and visit Seattle’s Mayor Katie Wilson. Mayor Katie is hardly an economic success story, but then that doesn’t matter if you are a socialist. One of the controversies during the campaign involved financial assistance from her parents, including more than $10,000 in campaign-related childcare expenses that were not properly reported, for which her campaign paid a fine. But this fits nicely with all the other socialists living in their parents’ basements. In America these days, it’s not necessary to have a job, know anything about American history or the Constitution, or even believe there is such a thing as right or wrong in order to vote. Katie tapped heavily into this voter base in winning her election.

Katie has also demonstrated a command of economics sufficient to out-Mamdani Mamdani. When she was confronted with the very real scenario of wealthy people leaving Washington because of the state’s aggressive taxation proposals, she famously said, “Bye.” This is the same woman who left college in her final year six weeks before final exams because she wanted to “burn a bridge to the conventional professional world.” Now, if she had perhaps crossed the bridge, she would have seen that even socialist utopian projects like the ones dancing in her head require tax revenue. And tax revenue comes from people who make money—some of whom are millionaires. She is a perfect fit for Seattle, whose residents have gone out of their way to turn one of America’s most beautiful cities into a trash heap.

Katie didn’t just talk the talk; she also walked the walk. She campaigned on a citywide capital-gains tax designed to target wealthy residents. All of her favorite programs—subsidized transit and universal childcare—need to be paid for, and so she expected to be able to ask wealthy residents for money the same way she asked Mom and Dad. It never occurred to her that these are not her parents and they don’t have to stay around Seattle and give her money.

Katie has also fallen in line with the sanctuary-city rhetoric of not distinguishing between American citizens and people who are here illegally and making use of our resources. She has courageously directed her law-enforcement authorities not to cooperate with ICE, because why would you ever want to alienate future voters? Illegal gangs, drug and human trafficking be damned.

Chicago

But we really need to go to the Midwest to enjoy the full panoply of socialist woke delights. In one sense, we have to hand it to Chicago’s Brandon Johnson in that he not only stuck around for final exams but went on to get a master’s degree from Aurora University. The bad news is that he taught social studies and not economics. This was obvious from his support for reviving a “head tax” per employee on large businesses as part of his effort to close the enormous budget gap in Chicago. Brandon helped create that budget gap by spending outrageous sums of money on newly arrived migrants, to the detriment of actual legal residents. This created waves of outrage amongst residents who were not even receiving basic services. So, perhaps being contrite over destroying the economic infrastructure of the city, he felt that he could offer a solution by chasing businesses out of the city. Like other socialist geniuses, he made it his goal to bleed high-income earners and businesses to fund his sanctuary-city resistance.

Well, he may not have wanted to do much about drug and human trafficking carried out by Central American gangs, but at least he made up for it by reducing portions of the police budget and calling for the abolition of ICE. See how smart that is? Brandon’s rhetoric about white people and “white supremacy” has also been inflammatory. He does not consider this to be much of a problem in a city where white people happen to live, because he seems to see them mostly as an endless tax base to fund his permanent revolution.

Brandon doesn’t seem to have won over the nonwhite voters either. Polls have placed his approval rating between 23 and 30 percent, and one survey found that fewer than one in seven voters wanted him to run for reelection. He has accomplished nearly the impossible in making himself even less popular than his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, currently of Harvard University.

Los Angeles

I would be remiss if I did not include my hometown mayor, Los Angeles’ Karen Bass, in this whirlwind tour. Karen, after deploying the usual defund-the-police rhetoric, actually discovered that police do play an important function in restoring order, and her later budgets called for hiring more of them. But she has displayed the same fiscal prowess as her fellow blue mayors and governors. Her budget shortfall is only about $1 billion. In her first couple of years, Los Angeles spent billions on programs to combat homelessness. Homelessness didn’t meaningfully improve, the money disappeared into a network of agencies and contractors, and questions were buried. But Mayor Bass has a distinction that her fellow progressive mayors do not share. On her watch, her own city burned down.

Mayor Bass has a tremendous record of placing incompetent wokesters into key positions. The Santa Ynez Reservoir serving Pacific Palisades was empty and offline when the fire began, and hydrants lost pressure during the emergency. Her fire-prevention leadership included committed wokesters who seemed to make up in woke rhetoric what they lacked in practical preparation. Her fire chief was on camera after the Pacific Palisades Fire had eaten half of the oceanfront communities, complaining about not having resources. One of the fire chief’s senior officials had previously made strange comments suggesting that

resources. One of the fire chief’s senior officials had previously made strange comments suggesting that someone needing rescue might object to being carried out of a fire by a woman who looked like her. But this was better than Mayor Karen, who was in Ghana at a presidential inauguration. And she was better than Governor Brylcreem, who had taken to disappearing altogether—when he wasn’t falsely assuring residents that he was working with President Trump to resolve the problem.

Bass had plenty of warnings and can be blamed for presiding over a government that was catastrophically unprepared for it. The empty reservoir, loss of hydrant pressure, inadequate pre-deployment, and later controversy over the after-action report all belong to the government she led. It may be hyperbole to say she burned her own city down. But, in the eyes of many who lost their homes, it doesn’t seem like it.

Like all her pals on the blue team, Mayor Karen is also soft on crime, anti-ICE, and, as a bonus, seemingly anti-fire prevention. This is hardly surprising given her history on the radical Left and her work in her youth with a pro-Castro organization. Like her socialist and communist pals, she is also an unwavering supporter of abortion, earning a 100 percent score from NARAL Pro-Choice America. So, we need to ask, if we burn the homes down of all the wealthy residents, chase all of the Hollywood studios out of Los Angeles, and make it unreasonable for anyone with a business to stay or relocate to Los Angeles, where are you going to get your tax revenue? And she seems to also want to take care of the next generation by joining in the effort that has resulted in nearly 1/3 of Generation Z disappearing through abortion.

As we take our tour of American hellholes, we cannot help but think of Margaret Thatcher’s words: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Between scaring off job providers and denying any rights to unborn children, there is not going to be a lot of money—or many people—around to fund the Leftist utopias of the future. Some of these Leftists may even have to do the unthinkable and get real jobs working construction, digging holes, building shelters, and growing crops, rather than dictating to the rest of us how we should live our lives. But for the moment, as they celebrate chaos in the streets and cheer on infanticide, this is their shining moment. Let them enjoy it, because it won’t last much longer.

The Country We Forgot to Rebuild

Posted on August 16, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

American Greatness ^ | 16 Aug, 2026 | Spyridon Andrews

We saved Europe from starvation and communism. Now America needs a Marshall Plan of its own.

The brilliant historian William Manchester, in his work The Glory and the Dream, covers four tumultuous decades of American life, stretching from 1932 through 1972. In his treatment of postwar Europe and America, he points out the disastrous situation in which Europe found itself. In 1947, the British Empire was bankrupt and breaking apart at the seams. Greece was embroiled in a civil war that threatened to turn it communist, while Turkey faced growing Soviet pressure. Great Britain, which had been supporting anti-communist efforts in both countries, was out of cash. A desperate call came to Washington: Britain could no longer provide the aid needed to prevent these two countries from falling into the communist orbit.

Meanwhile, the fractured European countries were full of unemployed, homeless, and starving people. Our old ally Joseph Stalin controlled half of Europe through the advance of the Red Army and a bungled Roosevelt foreign policy, while other countries were defenseless against the Soviet war machine. Having these countries fall to the communists was not going to bring freedom or comfort to Western Europe, and a plan was badly needed not only to feed and rebuild Europe but also to protect it from falling into the totalitarian orbit.

Although the plan was devised within the State Department, it was determined that George Marshall was the man to sell the idea of continued aid to Europe to the American people. He announced the proposal in a commencement address at Harvard University. Hard-line Republicans, including the soon-to-be-famous Joseph McCarthy, were not thrilled with the idea of endless aid to Europeans whom many—correctly—felt were unappreciative and undeserving of endless American assistance. Nonetheless, the Marshall Plan came into being, costing American taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars to rebuild infrastructure and provide food, fuel, machinery, and grain from the American Midwest to prevent starvation in Europe. Military assistance came through related but separate American programs. For a nanosecond, Europeans expressed some gratitude. Winston Churchill praised Marshall’s decision as statesmanship “on the highest level.” He recognized that America had used its extraordinary postwar power to rebuild other countries rather than exploit their weakness. Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary, described Marshall’s proposal as a “lifeline to sinking men” and said that it “brought hope where there was none.” The French—albeit briefly—were complimentary. George Bidault, the French foreign minister, said that “the noble initiative of the Government of the United States is for our peoples an appeal which we cannot ignore.” Not exactly gratitude, but probably as close as a French person would ever come to giving it.

Even two years earlier, the United States had already begun the relief effort. Farms, factories, railroads, and power grids had been destroyed. Food production had collapsed, and there was nothing even approaching adequate housing, fuel, medicine, and sanitation. The United States supplied enormous quantities of wheat, flour, powdered milk, cooking fats, medicine, clothing, coal, trucks, and other necessities. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, largely funded by the United States, fed millions of civilians and provided medicine, clothing, and shelter. In addition, the United States eventually welcomed hundreds of thousands of displaced persons into the country. The Marshall Plan was rolled out over a little more than four years, costing approximately $13.3 billion at the time—about $183 billion in today’s dollars, but more like $1 trillion when measured by its relative weight in the American economy.

As we know, it wasn’t long before French and British socialists condemned the United States for the extraordinary acts of generosity it undertook to save Europe from starvation and a bleak totalitarian future. Nowadays, we look in amazement as Europe enacts speech codes, welcomes populations containing people who want to reduce women to property, and speaks lovingly of figures like Stalin and Mao. Anyone who has lived in Europe cannot be surprised, given the state of the press, the universities, and the fact that it is nearly impossible to find a decent cocktail on the whole European continent. In fact, in one memorable moment shortly after the arrival of American aid, French Communists introduced legislation to prohibit the importation, manufacture, and sale of Coca-Cola in France and its remaining territories. The legislation failed, but the warm sentiment was … typically French. What a bunch of swell guys.

The takeaway here should not be that Europeans today are both misguided and ungrateful. We already know that. The takeaway is that the Marshall Plan and continuing American aid did help prevent Western Europe from falling within the Soviet orbit and revived European economies to such an extent that these countries were eventually able to form the European Union—among other reasons, to give themselves the economic scale to compete with us. Today, we see bestsellers in Italy such as Viaggio in America by Federico Rampini, an Italian scholar and journalist trying to persuade Europeans that we aren’t all that bad. Bad certainly, but not that bad. Heartwarming. I suppose this is progress.

The unfortunate part of all of this is that while we have spent trillions in cumulative foreign assistance around the world to incur the wrath and hatred of the French and socialist Italian professors, our own problems have been mounting. What we have missed while traveling through the world looking for accolades that are never coming is that our own country is falling apart. And there are obvious reasons for this. George Marshall knew that communism was not going to be defeated simply by giving speeches about the superiority of capitalism. Communism is awful; its record demonstrates that. However, hungry and destitute people do not eat speeches. Unemployed men do not raise families on political philosophy. Distributing Adam Smith and Ayn Rand books at political rallies is not a long-term solution. The importance of the Marshall Plan—the very reason it worked—is not that it merely attacked communism. It rebuilt communism’s strongest competitor.

It is time for another Marshall Plan, but the country that needs rebuilding is our own. We did not need to ban Marx or call for ideological purity to put an end to the Soviet Union. The American approach in Europe—and the approach that needs to be deployed here—is to counter bad ideas with better ideas. We need to do here what we did in Europe: rebuild the economic, educational, and civic conditions that make collectivist and authoritarian ideas look as bad as they are.

It is not a big surprise that, after three generations of filling our kids’ ears with garbage in the universities while providing scant opportunities for young people, they do not feel that capitalism is working for them. We have constructed a ridiculous system wherein 18-year-olds and their parents are told, encouraged, and compelled to borrow enormous amounts of money for a degree that does not lead to the opportunity they were promised. So, we have swarms of alienated young people whose heads are already full of Marxist propaganda, who carry substantial student debt, cannot afford a house, move from one temporary or demeaning job to another, and wonder whether having a family is economically feasible. Then they listen to speeches about how capitalism is working wonderfully. Well, it is for hedge funds and private equity investors. Not so much for Middle America.

INVEST IN THE BROADER POPULATION: College is not the answer for the broader population. It never has been. It has traditionally been for those who wanted to enter professional careers requiring additional education. But the notion of studying literature as a path to a job in anything other than teaching literature—jobs that are tough to come by—is not realistic. The answer is to employ capitalism in an intelligent manner for our young people, not merely for a few rich kids from New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. America’s Marshall Plan should include a massive expansion of apprenticeships, vocational education, and employer-based training. We should make it once again respectable to become an electrician, machinist, contractor, mechanic, nurse, farmer, or small-business owner. Because we need these jobs, we should invest in them. We need to remove needless licensing barriers and encourage companies, with appropriate subsidies, to hire and train inexperienced workers. A free-market society cannot survive if entire generations or populations conclude that the market has no place for them.

CREATE OWNERS: Capitalism should be geared toward creating more owners, not merely more consumers and debtors. Although Marxism is a dead end, some Marxist critiques of capitalism are valid, and we should have the self-awareness to address our deficiencies. Accumulating great wealth in the hands of a few while creating a massive underclass is not the goal of capitalism. If that is what is happening, then it is not functioning properly.

CREATE THINKERS: We will not create owners unless they can think. The purpose of our school system is not to manufacture Democrats or Republicans. If that is what is happening, then taxpayer dollars should be withheld. The goal of education is to produce intelligent and moral adults who are capable of examining ideas and reaching conclusions on their own. There is no reason not to teach Marx, but we should not proselytize for Marxism. We should examine the promises it made and what actually happened. Similarly, there is no reason to conceal our country’s sins. But a civilization that teaches only its sins should hardly be surprised when its children conclude that the nation needs to disappear. We also need to teach Washington’s decision to surrender power; Lincoln and the abolition of slavery; the immigrant experience; the Marshall Plan; Apollo; and America’s contribution to music. The story of America is the story of a society repeatedly trying to live up to elevated principles it has often violated. But it is also the story of a country that is self-aware and strives to be good.

CREATE ADULTS: The new Marshall Plan should not be about prolonging adolescence but about creating adults. The infantilization of our adult class is apparent in the way 60-year-olds try to conduct themselves like teenagers. Adulthood should be the goal—something our own congressional candidates hardly display in their incredible inability to work together or behave like grownups. A republic depends on adults who can do things: cooperate, endure disappointment, care for children and parents, and accept responsibility for themselves and others. Clearly, we are failing at this. That means we need to take action to relearn these skills.

One widely circulated idea that needs to be implemented as soon as possible is a large American Service Corps. If I were an employer, I would be looking for individuals who had volunteered for this kind of service rather than spending their time vaping in the university cafeteria. Young Americans could spend a year or two working in conservation, disaster relief, tutoring, elder care, hospitals, infrastructure, or the military and receive significant benefits afterward toward housing and the building of a family and future. Why are we not investing in creating responsible adults?

INVEST IN COMMUNITIES: Another element of a new Marshall Plan would be investing in the communities themselves—the same way we did in Europe. We have spent the last seventy years measuring success on a national scale rather than a local one. Gross domestic product can be a misleading statistic. We can have an impressive GDP while losing factories, stores, banks, newspapers, and the reasons young people once had for remaining in their communities. The entire republic was built on the notion that everything of importance should not be concentrated in the cities. Why do we care only about a handful of metropolitan centers that are increasingly crime-ridden, crowded, and expensive while abandoning the rest of the country?

Industry, federal offices, and research facilities should be moved out of high-population centers in an effort to rebuild small-town and regional America. There should be incentives for businesses to locate in communities that have lost major employers. We should not stand idly by while global banks swallow up our community banks. Modern broadband infrastructure should be extended to less populous areas, and we should encourage the rehabilitation of older and more elegant buildings rather than the construction of ugly strip malls. There should be incentives for remote workers or “digital nomads” to move to small towns, similar to those offered by the European countries trying to steal our digital workers away.

DEMOCRATIZE CAPITALISM: This is about democratizing capitalism. We can demonstrate that it works better than its totalitarian nemesis. The Trump Accounts have been an excellent start—this program needs to be expanded. If an 18-year-old receives a statement showing that he owns pieces of hundreds of American companies, suddenly the stock market is not an abstraction for rich people. The stock market is now something in which we all participate, and our children will understand that it represents the basic building blocks of America: transportation, software development, communications, food service, aircraft, manufacturing, and farming.

BUILD COALITIONS: Finally, the new Marshall Plan offers Republicans and Democrats a way to revitalize their political coalitions. Moderate Democrats do not need to become Republicans, but they are certainly repulsed by the “democratic socialists”—aka communists—who threaten their party. A Republican may say that he favors entrepreneurs while a Democrat supports organized labor. However, they should be able to agree that a 25-year-old who works hard should have a shot at a decent job, a family, a house, a safe neighborhood, and a piece of the American dream. Instead of talking past each other, there should be a common effort to invest in that portion of America that has gotten the shaft for seventy years while we have been floating all over the world trying to make life better for everyone other than Americans.

The next Marshall Plan does not require rebuilding Europe. Europeans are fine now, and their future is up to them. The next Marshall Plan requires rebuilding Detroit, Cleveland, Fresno, Youngstown, and a thousand places that no one remembers or sees on social media. We can defeat communism. But we do so by helping create a society in which all Americans have a piece of the capitalist system, and that system works well for everyone. We can demonstrate why capitalism is better than communism, as we did in Europe. And we should have enough confidence in our principles to give it another shot here at home.

Communists are running pretty people to garner the female vote

Posted on August 16, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

In a telegenic age, ensuring that candidates are pretty people to appeal to shallow, ill-informed voters is a great Trojan horse for our enemies.

M.B. Mathews | August 15, 2026

2026

American Thinker AI

Ditto the latest two handsome men: Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, and Oliver Larkin, who is running against U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz for the 2026 Democrat nomination in South Florida’s 25th Congressional District. They are making the rounds of TV interviews in hostile territory, such as Sean Hannity’s TV show. Both men are fit, handsome, and well-dressed. Eye candy for the female voter prone to feel rather than to think.

The problem with this approach—running good-looking people—is that they are very unlikely to be the ones who actually run the offices they win. You can bet good money that, like Biden, others will hold the power and the reins, controlling them from behind the scenes. The pretty public candidates are merely placeholders for the death-cult communists, socialists, and jihadists around the world.

The actual people running are ciphers—ill-equipped both psychologically and intellectually—to run anything, but they serve a great purpose by getting elected so that the real powers behind the thrones can dismantle the Constitution, courts, banks, and all means of American production. China, Russia, and Iran have a common desire: They want a free America crippled, or they want her for themselves. They want her riches, her beauty. It’s political rape.

These hostile nations’ fondest wish is to force the American people into poverty and into cages, then steal all their wealth.

The Trojan horse pretty boys in American elections are bait for ignorant women, emotional women, hateful women, and not a few such men. The human psyche has a visceral reaction to pretty people—they like them. What these pretty people say is irrelevant because (a) they are not Trump, and (b) they’re too pretty to do bad things. People forget that “a pretty face can hide an evil mind.”

It is obvious that one part of the plan to use communists and Islamists to fundamentally change America is to use good-looking people, mostly men, to get the votes of mainly women. (Although attractive young women like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who makes herself every girl’s best friend, are meant to appeal to both men and women.)

We have three good-looking, well-dressed, well-spoken men in office or running for office who are communists. Mamdani, to the shallow-minded, is handsome, with a crinkly, benign smile. He speaks well (if you don’t listen closely, and too many women don’t), is confident, and is thoroughly malevolent in his intent. He is not a “Democratic Socialist.” He is a communist, just as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was communist, so let’s get that out of the way right quick.

These hostile nations’ fondest wish is to force the American people into poverty and into cages, then steal all their wealth.

Beware of pretty candidates. We already made several mistakes with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others. They are all communists at heart. Worse, they easily succumb to the siren call of pride and power. We love the country.

The destruction that pretty people wreak upon those who dare touch them is legendary, and not in a good way. That is what the pretty candidates will be doing if elected—taking people to hell with them. Medusa lives, and the “Democratic Socialist Party” is where she lives. America is being lied to, and they are loving it on the Left

I am reminded of William Blake’s prophetic poem The Everlasting Gospel (c. 1818).

This life’s dim windows of the soul

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America’s Strategic Oil Reserve Hasn’t Been This Low Since 1983. Now Experts Are Sounding the Alarm

Posted on August 16, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

The United States is therefore approaching potential future emergencies with a much smaller strategic cushion than it possessed during much of the SPR’s history, while simultaneously dealing with infrastructure that has undergone decades of drawdowns and refilling

America’s emergency oil stockpile has fallen below 300 million barrels for the first time since the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was filled in the early 1980s. Now, some energy experts are warning that the problem may go far beyond simply having less oil available during the next crisis.

The rapid drawdown could threaten the underground salt caverns that hold the crude, potentially reducing how quickly the United States can respond to another major supply disruption. The warnings come as the U.S. releases 172 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR, in response to supply disruptions caused by the Iran war. When the current drawdown is complete, the reserve is expected to contain only about 243 million barrels.Geographic Reference

That would put the SPR below what some experts consider its practical operating floor and raise new questions about the long-term viability of one of the country’s most important energy-security assets.

The Reserve Is Heading Into Uncharted Territory

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created after the oil shocks of the 1970s to give the United States a massive emergency supply of crude that could be released when wars, natural disasters or other disruptions threaten energy supplies. At its peak, the reserve held more than 700 million barrels.

Its oil isn’t stored in conventional above-ground tanks. Instead, crude is held thousands of feet underground inside roughly 60 enormous salt caverns at four major sites along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana.

Those caverns are now becoming a growing source of concern as inventories fall to levels not seen in more than four decades. The Department of Energy has said at least 70 million barrels must remain in the reserve to safely manage the caverns, but several energy experts argue that number represents a physical minimum rather than a realistic level at which the system could continue operating normally.

Former Biden administration energy adviser Amos Hochstein has been particularly critical of the 70-million-barrel figure.

“Don’t believe the people out of the government that are saying the SPR can go to 70 million barrels. It’s nonsense,” Hochstein told CNBC. He argued that taking the reserve that low could deplete it to the point where fully restoring its capabilities becomes extraordinarily difficult.

Hochstein had already warned in June that dropping below 300 million barrels could put the storage system itself at greater risk. “I don’t know anyone who believes we can go below 300,” he said at an Atlantic Council event, adding that some experts believe approaching that level could physically damage the caverns where the oil is stored.

Energy Department Pushes Back

The Department of Energy strongly disputes claims that the storage caverns face collapse as oil is withdrawn.

Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich said the caverns remain full because water replaces the oil removed from them. “The caverns are always full. All that changes is the ratio of oil and water that is filling them,” Dietderich told CNBC, adding that the Trump administration is “responsibly managing the SPR as the critical national security asset it was designed to be.”

But the mechanics of replacing that oil are precisely what concern some engineers. Extracting crude from the SPR involves pumping water into the bottom of a cavern, which pushes the oil upward and allows it to travel through wells into pipelines.

The problem is that fresh water dissolves salt. During repeated and rapid drawdowns, that process can gradually alter the shape and dimensions of the underground caverns, potentially creating problems that accumulate over decades of use.

Why Repeated Drawdowns Matter

The Government Accountability Office warned in a May report that repeated partial drawdowns followed by refilling can repeatedly leach the same portions of a cavern, potentially creating “undesirable shapes.”

The GAO found that most SPR caverns remained in “very good condition” following the massive 2022 drawdown. However, the watchdog also highlighted a longer-term structural concern: every drawdown cycle expands cavern volume and reduces the spacing between neighboring caverns inside the salt dome, which ultimately reduces their long-term viability.

That matters because the SPR has been used far more frequently than originally envisioned. Siddharth Misra, a petroleum engineering professor at Texas A&M University, said the reserve was originally designed around approximately five full drawdowns but has instead experienced dozens of large and small releases during its roughly four decades of operation.

According to Misra, repeated injections of water and extractions of oil have contributed to cavern deformation and salt falls from cavern ceilings while weakening the aging storage system over time. Rapid withdrawals can be particularly problematic because large quantities of fresh water must be injected to push the crude toward the surface.

Misra warned that the process can create flatter, less stable cavern roofs while thinning the salt pillars separating neighboring caverns. In a worst-case scenario, those changes could increase the geological risk of structural problems.

The Critical 250 Million to 300 Million Barrel Range

Misra estimates that the practical operational floor for the SPR is somewhere between 250 million and 300 million barrels. At current inventory levels, he said cavern integrity and the reserve’s overall operational capabilities face elevated risks.

That makes the projected post-drawdown level especially significant. Once the current 172-million-barrel release is completed, the SPR is expected to contain approximately 243 million barrels, putting it below the lower end of Misra’s estimated practical operating range.

Other analysts believe the reserve has more room before reaching a critical threshold. Rapidan Energy has estimated that the SPR has a “soft-ish floor” of roughly 170 million barrels, below which cavern integrity and pumping infrastructure limitations would increasingly argue against further withdrawals.

The disagreement illustrates an important distinction. There may not be a single number at which the Strategic Petroleum Reserve suddenly becomes unusable. Instead, its ability to operate efficiently could gradually deteriorate as inventories fall.

Less Oil Could Mean Slower Emergency Releases

One of the SPR’s biggest advantages isn’t simply the amount of crude it contains. It is the ability to move huge quantities of oil into the market quickly when a major supply emergency occurs.

That capability may decline as inventories fall. Misra said that once the reserve drops below 300 million barrels, its ability to pump oil at the rapid speeds needed during an emergency can become constrained.

As the oil layer near the top of a cavern becomes thinner, sludge can move closer to extraction equipment. Pipes and pumps may face greater risk of damage, while operators could have less flexibility to move crude through the system at maximum capacity.

Seventy million barrels may therefore represent a strict physical minimum needed to keep extraction pipes safely submerged in oil rather than water. But that doesn’t mean the United States could efficiently release those remaining barrels at the speed required during a major crisis.

For an emergency reserve, that distinction is critical. Hundreds of millions of barrels underground provide much less protection if infrastructure limitations prevent them from reaching the market quickly enough.

Aging Infrastructure Is Already a Problem

The reserve’s infrastructure challenges aren’t entirely theoretical. Energy Department officials told the GAO that they were holding portions of the SPR infrastructure together with “Band-Aids” and that it was uncertain how long those fixes would last.

As of December 2025, more than one-quarter of the SPR inventory was unavailable for drawdown because of construction and cavern outages, according to the GAO. Those limitations could become increasingly important if another major supply crisis emerges while the reserve is still recovering from the Iran-related

Concerns Have Crossed Party Lines

Warnings about the physical condition of the SPR aren’t confined to one political party. Republican lawmakers raised similar concerns when the Biden administration released a record 180 million barrels in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting surge in global energy prices.

The SPR subsequently fell below 350 million barrels in 2023 before inventories were rebuilt to approximately 415 million barrels ahead of the Iran war. The latest crisis has now reversed much of that rebuilding effort and pushed the reserve below 300 million barrels.

That cycle illustrates the increasingly difficult balancing act facing Washington. Releasing oil from the SPR can soften the economic damage from a severe global supply disruption, helping stabilize crude supplies and potentially limiting increases in gasoline and other energy prices.

But repeatedly drawing down and refilling the caverns can impose physical costs on infrastructure that wasn’t designed for unlimited cycles. Policymakers must therefore balance the immediate economic benefits of releasing crude against preserving the reserve’s ability to function during future emergencies.

Hurricane Season Adds Another Risk

The timing creates an additional concern as the United States moves through Gulf Coast hurricane season. Major hurricanes can disrupt offshore oil production, refineries, pipelines and ports across Texas and Louisiana, precisely the region where much of America’s energy infrastructure and the SPR itself are concentrated.

Hochstein warned that a major hurricane striking Florida or Louisiana while inventories remain depressed could put the United States in a difficult position. “Below 300 million, which is where we are now, it is not that we can’t do it, but it slows the flow and puts us in danger,” he said.Geographic Reference

A severe hurricane occurring alongside continued disruptions from the Iran war could force Washington to confront two energy emergencies simultaneously. With the reserve already heading toward roughly 243 million barrels, the government’s ability to respond as aggressively as it has in previous crises could become increasingly constrained.

America’s Emergency Cushion Is Getting Thinner

The United States still has hundreds of millions of barrels of emergency crude underground, and the Department of Energy maintains that the reserve can continue operating safely. The immediate question isn’t whether the SPR suddenly stops functioning when inventories cross an arbitrary threshold.

The bigger concern is whether continued depletion gradually reduces the reserve’s ability to do the job it was created to perform. With inventories at their lowest level since 1983, aging infrastructure already limiting access to portions of the stockpile and experts disagreeing over how much further the reserve can safely be drawn down, the margin for error is shrinking.

The current release is intended to help America weather today’s energy disruption. But if inventories ultimately fall to approximately 243 million barrels, Washington could face a much harder question the next time war, a hurricane or another major supply shock hits:

How much emergency oil can the United States afford to use today without weakening its ability to respond tomorrow?

David Clemen

Global Market News

Why Americans now hate each other more than ever

Posted on August 15, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

by John Mac Ghlionn, opinion contributor – 08/15/26 1:00 PM ET
Comments:63

Researchers at the Marquette Law School Poll recently identified a sharp generational decline in trust across the United States. Americans born before 1960 still hold onto a baseline assumption that their neighbors will not rob them, given half a chance. They are the most trusting demographic in the country.

The numbers worsen with each successive generation. The cohort born in the 2000s registers the highest levels of distrust ever recorded by the project. A significant portion of young adults operate under the functional premise that everyone else is a threat.

The situation gets significantly uglier from there. A comprehensive 25-country survey published by Pew Research Center earlier this year found that Americans do not merely distrust one another. Increasingly, they see their fellow citizens as morally bankrupt. American citizens are far more likely to view their fellow countrymen as fundamentally evil than citizens of the other surveyed nations.

Specifically, 53 percent of U.S. adults explicitly stated that the average American has bad morals and ethics. This matters enormously. A society cannot thrive when most people no longer believe their fellow citizens are fundamentally decent.

Morality is the basic, invisible software that prevents human primates from tearing each other apart over grocery store parking spaces. It establishes the rules of engagement. When a population loses faith in that shared software, the entire social contract converts into a hostage situation. Viewing the opposing political or cultural faction as mistaken allows for regular political debate. Viewing them as beyond redemption eliminates the possibility of finding common ground. You do not negotiate with a monster. Instead, you try to destroy it before it destroys you.

This moral panic created an environment of pure, unadulterated contempt. For more than ten years, tracing back to President Trump’s rather surreal 2015 escalator descent, America’s dominant political emotion has evolved from anger into deep, structural disgust.

Relationship expert John Gottman spent decades analyzing why marriages fail, famously identifying contempt as the single greatest predictor of divorce. Gottman described contempt as a toxic mix of hostility and ridicule that involves placing oneself on a higher moral pedestal than the other person. In his research, once a couple begins communicating through eye-rolls and mockery, the relationship is clinically dead.

A nation is nothing more than a vast network of interpersonal relationships. It is a giant marriage between millions of people who never chose to live together but have to share the same house. Right now, the American marriage is in the absolute final stages of a Gottman-style disaster. The partners are sleeping in separate bedrooms, hurling insults, and actively wishing the other would slip on a patch of ice.

The primary reason this trajectory will likely worsen is that the incentives align perfectly with animosity. Media algorithms, political fundraising operations, and cultural gatekeepers generate billions of dollars in revenue by validating this exact contempt. A peaceful, trusting populace is economically useless to the current infrastructure. Modern America has built a business model out of demonizing the person next door. To keep the money flowing, people must stay angry enough to click, donate and hate.

The institutional elite discovered that rage scales infinitely better than unity. A divided populace creates highly predictable voting blocks and captive consumer markets. This calculated division ensures that the industry of outrage remains fully funded and sustained. Every political campaign relies on the explicit premise that the opposition intends to dismantle civilization — either forcing you into communism or fascism, neither of which, if we are being honest, sounds particularly appealing.

The current generation entering adulthood has never experienced a society in which cooperation was the default setting. They grew up watching the adults in the room treat the opposing political party as an existential threat to survival. To see the Marquette data as an anomaly is a mistake. In truth, it is a preview of the next 30 years. The country is locked into a cycle where distrust breeds contempt, contempt destroys relationships, and destroyed relationships ensure that the next generation doubles down on the disdain. The country is settling into a permanent, highly profitable state of mutual loathing. For much of its history, the United States has been united more in name than in reality. Now, it’s a nation divided not only by borders, but by an unbridgeable psychological gulf.

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John Mac Ghlionn is a writer and researcher who explores culture, society and the impact of technology on daily life.

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Comment by Gregory Martin.GMGregory Martin48 min agoWas there a need for this article before trump took office?🫪Not in my lifetime….reply 0 0sharereport
Comment by Richard Windsor.RWRichard Windsor52 min agoRepublicans hate Democrats because they are told to everyday.Democrats hate Republicans because they’ve destroyed America by turning it over to the top .01%The two sides are quite differentreply 0 0sharereport
Comment by Frank X.FXFrank X1 hr agoAmericans hate each other like high school clicks hating one another. Jocks hating the nerds, princesses hating the goths, preps hating the poors. We all sit in the lunch atrium in our corners. High School. Trump just ‘class president’ as typical sided with one of the factions and doesn’t care about the others. Typical high school during lunch time.Thus the problem: there’s no adults in the room.reply 1 0sharereport
Comment by Jack.JaJack1 hr agoGrifters , Reivers and liars.stesling every nickel.Thankfully November is soonreply 1 0sharereport
Comment by dbhsound.dbdbhsound1 hr agoThe State of Hate was created by Trump, but it wouldn’t be resolved if Trump were to suddenly disappear tomorrow. The Trump Taint is endemic in government now and will take a long time to fix. When our long national nightmare of “President Trump” is over, America will have to be de-MAGA-fied.reply 6 0sharereport
Comment by Bob Strayer.BSBob Strayer1 hr agoThe country is divided between anti fascist and oto fascist.reply 2 0sharereport
Comment by jwags31972.jwjwags319722 hrs agoOur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.John Adamsreply6 replies 2 3sharereport44 older repliesshow older replies
- Reply by jwags31972.jwjwags3197223 min agoReply to Bob StrayerHe would know. He helped write it.reply 0 0sharereport
- Reply by jwags31972.jwjwags3197220 min agoReply to dbhsoundI dont consider any current politicians as moral or religious. Civic duty has been corrupted by power and greed.reply 0 0sharereport
Comment by JamesDuncan.JaJamesDuncan2 hrs agoIndependents flipped 40 points against Trump.Even white non-colleg males flipped 17 points against Trump.Everyone is uniting against Trump.reply2 replies 11 1sharereport
- Reply by Imho.ImImho1 hr agoReply to JamesDuncan🤞🤞🤞 And, more importantly, his enablers come Novemberreply 1 0sharereport
- Reply by Callix C.CCCallix C53 min agoReply to JamesDuncanAgain. They did this the last time in 2020 after the disasterous first term.What I can’t understand is, they promptly forgot everything they hated about him, turned around and voted for him again.If another charismatic takes the stage, they will fall right in line and vote them in again.I’m afraid though, we might be too late to save the day this time. They’ve had a decade to lay the groundwork and two years to implement whatever sneaky plans the heritage foundation has and I wonder if a Democrat will ever win an election again.Read morereply 0 0sharereport
Comment by Aaron Levitt.ALAaron Levitt3 hrs agoBottom line: In the past, leaders of both parties worked, albeit imperfectly, to bring Americans together. Trump pours his energy into splitting us apart: divide and conquer.reply1 reply 12 0sharereport
- Reply by oled.ololed45 min agoReply to Aaron LevittBlind to the antics of Pelosi, Schumer, and Comey and their allies in the press to stop Trump from upsetting the USAID and ‘opened borders’ gravy train, I guess. The venom started with the Obama-ites.reply 0 0sharereport
Comment by rla1000.rlrla10003 hrs agoTrump the Uniter? Please, just go away, Donnie.reply 3 0sharereport

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Tehran is losing its grip on Hormuz, and with it all its leverage

Posted on August 15, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

Opinion by Mark Dubowitz, Richard Goldberg

The reality is that the combination of Operations Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury upended the regime’s hopes of turning Hormuz into a permanent hostage.

Its ruling clerics will now pay the price for activating a blockade without their most important insurance cards — perhaps sooner than they think.

President Donald Trump attends the Patriot Games at Spire Academy in Geneva, Ohio, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Had the regime in Tehran followed late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s plan — weaponized its nuclear program, built an arsenal of thousands of ballistic missiles and drones and assembled its regional proxies into an even more formidable force — then its blockade of Hormuz would likely be permanent.

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That kind of potency would have deterred American and Israeli action and rebuilt Iran’s economy into a formidable global energy power.

Instead, after several months of airstrikes by the US and Israel, Iran’s nuclear and missile programs are badly damaged, and its economy is collapsing from a blockade and sanctions.

Flowing elsewhere

Its terrorist allies around the region, from the Houthis in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon, are no longer the threat that they were on Oct. 7, 2023 — the day of the deadly invasion of Israel by Iran-backed Hamas.

STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE LATEST NEWS BY SUBSCRIBING TO MORNING REPORT NEWSLETTER

Simply put, a weakened Iran played its Hormuz card too soon.

Each day that goes by leaves its regime more vulnerable to punishing military and economic pressure.

The results are already becoming visible.

According to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, an average of 9 million barrels of oil are passing through Hormuz daily, while between 5 million to 7 million barrels are reaching consumers through “newly upgraded pipelines and export facilities.”

A sculpture overlooking the Strait of Hormuz is seen along the seafront in the port city of Bandar Abbas, in southern Iran on Monday, August 10, 2026. AFP via Getty Images

Wright’s figures have been disputed by oil industry analysts and other commentators, who.

Many of them insist that the true number of barrels is much lower, arguing as well that the febrile situation in Hormuz means that oil exports will continue at a trickle instead of a flood.

about:blank

Beyond Walks

Why Iran became so difficult to defeat

stared at glowing radar screens as the Middle East moved

But what that ignores is that the many ships moving covertly through Hormuz with US assistance, going uncounted by analysts who rely solely on open-source data.

It also ignores the spectacular transformation of the oil export route that’s currently underway.

The United Arab Emirates is fast-tracking a new west-east pipeline to Fujairah, which will allow exports to bypass Hormuz at minimal cost lies outside the strait.

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company announced in May that construction was about 50% complete, with operations expected to launch next year.

This means that the UAE can soon bypass Hormuz at minimal cost.

The Saudis are moving in a similar direction, seeking to add 1 million to 2 million barrels per day of capacity to their east-west network running to the Red Sea.

The United States should now actively work with its Gulf allies to eclipse Iran even further.

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The US Development Finance Corporation, which possesses $205 billion in investment capacity, is uniquely capable of facilitating export routes that avoid Hormuz.

It can also demand a significant share of the equity in this burgeoning consortium, with the benefits passed on to American US taxpayers.

Stay the course

The situation further afield works to America’s favor too, as well with the United States continues to set records for oil and gas production and exports.

Venezuela’s oil exports reached approximately some 1.16 million barrels per day in July, with roughly 786,000 of those heading to the US — the highest US-bound volume in seven years.

As in the Gulf, further investment here could increase production considerably.

The real loser here is not the United States but China, which relies on Middle Eastern oil far more than the US does.

Alternative routes out of the region coupled with non-Middle Eastern oil will bolster US dominance of energy markets while reducing the leverage of both China and Iran.

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All the noise around Iran’s supposed stranglehold on oil supplies transiting through the Strait of Hormuz is missing the point.

The reality is that the combination of Operations Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury upended the regime’s hopes of turning Hormuz into a permanent hostage.

Its ruling clerics will now pay the price for activating a blockade without their most important insurance cards — perhaps sooner than they think.

President Donald Trump attends the Patriot Games at Spire Academy in Geneva, Ohio, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

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That kind of potency would have deterred American and Israeli action and rebuilt Iran’s economy into a formidable global energy power.

Instead, after several months of airstrikes by the US and Israel, Iran’s nuclear and missile programs are badly damaged, and its economy is collapsing from a blockade and sanctions.

Flowing elsewhere

STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE LATEST NEWS BY SUBSCRIBING TO MORNING REPORT NEWSLETTER

Simply put, a weakened Iran played its Hormuz card too soon.

Each day that goes by leaves its regime more vulnerable to punishing military and economic pressure.

The results are already becoming visible.

A sculpture overlooking the Strait of Hormuz is seen along the seafront in the port city of Bandar Abbas, in southern Iran on Monday, August 10, 2026. AFP via Getty Images

Wright’s figures have been disputed by oil industry analysts and other commentators, who.

Many of them insist that the true number of barrels is much lower, arguing as well that the febrile situation in Hormuz means that oil exports will continue at a trickle instead of a flood.

about:blank

Beyond Walks

Why Iran became so difficult to defeat

stared at glowing radar screens as the Middle East moved

But what that ignores is that the many ships moving covertly through Hormuz with US assistance, going uncounted by analysts who rely solely on open-source data.

It also ignores the spectacular transformation of the oil export route that’s currently underway.

The United Arab Emirates is fast-tracking a new west-east pipeline to Fujairah, which will allow exports to bypass Hormuz at minimal cost lies outside the strait.

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company announced in May that construction was about 50% complete, with operations expected to launch next year.

This means that the UAE can soon bypass Hormuz at minimal cost.

The Saudis are moving in a similar direction, seeking to add 1 million to 2 million barrels per day of capacity to their east-west network running to the Red Sea.

The United States should now actively work with its Gulf allies to eclipse Iran even further.

Day Of The Dead 2 Oz Silver 3D Bar – Sugar Skull, Marigold (Any Color) – .999 Pure

Money Metals Exchange·Sponsored

The US Development Finance Corporation, which possesses $205 billion in investment capacity, is uniquely capable of facilitating export routes that avoid Hormuz.

It can also demand a significant share of the equity in this burgeoning consortium, with the benefits passed on to American US taxpayers.

Stay the course

The situation further afield works to America’s favor too, as well with the United States continues to set records for oil and gas production and exports.

Venezuela’s oil exports reached approximately some 1.16 million barrels per day in July, with roughly 786,000 of those heading to the US — the highest US-bound volume in seven years.

As in the Gulf, further investment here could increase production considerably.

The real loser here is not the United States but China, which relies on Middle Eastern oil far more than the US does.

Alternative routes out of the region coupled with non-Middle Eastern oil will bolster US dominance of energy markets while reducing the leverage of both China and Iran.

1 Ounce Silver Bar – .999 Pure (Secondary Market)

NEW ALLEGATION ROCKS MAINE SENATE RACE: Local Man Says He Saw Far-Left Democrat Troy Jackson Slap Longtime Partner with Open Hand — Comes After 1988 Police Report of Jackson Punching a Man

Posted on August 15, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

Maine’s far-left Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Troy Jackson is facing explosive new allegations of domestic violence just weeks after Democrats scrambled to install him as their candidate against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

Kim McBreairty, an Allagash man who has known Jackson for decades, told The Maine Wire he personally witnessed the progressive logger open-hand slap his longtime partner, Lana Pelletier, outside a pub in neighboring St. Francis years ago.

Kim McBreairty said he was approaching the entrance one evening when he saw Jackson standing with Pelletier. “He just open-hand slapped her beside the head,” McBreairty recounted.

The force of the blow, he said, caused her head to tilt and her hair to fly. She turned and walked toward their vehicle. Jackson followed. Neither entered the pub.

McBreairty emphasized it was an open hand: “Just whacked her.” The Maine Wire noted it has not independently corroborated the account.

The allegation lands as Jackson already faces scrutiny over a 1988 Fort Kent police report obtained by the Bangor Daily News.

At age 19, Jackson kicked in a door at a home around 2 a.m., grabbed a man by the throat, and punched him in the face hard enough to cut him with his glasses, over Pelletier, described in the report as his then-ex-girlfriend.

Jackson told the man to “stay away from Lana Pelletier or else.” The misdemeanor assault was resolved with a $50 fine. Jackson does not dispute punching the man.

The same police report states that Pelletier told the responding officer Jackson had “pushed her around” after the assault and that she planned to seek “cease harassment papers.”

No record shows she followed through. Both Jackson and Pelletier now deny any violence toward her. Pelletier says she has no memory of making the statement and that it is “not accurate.” Jackson insisted: “I have never been violent with my partner Lana, or any other woman.”

Pelletier is Jackson’s longtime partner of roughly 40 years, the mother of his two adult children, and, according to reporting, his second cousin. They are second cousins.

Jackson was rushed into the Democratic nomination in late July after Graham Platner’s campaign collapsed under sexual assault allegations from an ex-girlfriend. Democrats needed a replacement who could still excite the party’s left flank.

Jackson fits the bill: he supports Medicare for All, has called for abolishing ICE, backs ending U.S. military support for Israel, and has drawn support from the Democratic Socialists of America orbit and figures like Bernie Sanders allies.

This is the same Troy Jackson who once threw a water bottle during a heated 2021 argument with a female state senator (witnesses said it did not strike her).

Now, new claims of striking his partner surface just as he tries to introduce himself to voters statewide in one of the most consequential Senate races of 2026.

Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit

The economic performances of red states vs blue states.

Posted on August 15, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

I asked Grok how the red states and blue states performed economically between 2000 and 2026. It only gave me up until 2024, but if trends continued, the red states have continued to close the gap and may actually be higher income economies than blue states.

Approx. Real GDP CAGR 2000–2024 Yearly Red-leaning group ████████████████ ≈ 2.3–2.6% Blue-leaning group ██████████████ ≈ 1.9–2.2% U.S. overall ███████████████ ≈ 2.1%

Approximate cumulative real GDP growth (total multiplicative increase)

These are simple compounds of representative average annual rates over 24 years:

Red-leaning group (~2.4% average annual): Growth factor ≈ 1.77 → ~77% total cumulative real growth.

Blue-leaning group (~1.9% average annual): Growth factor ≈ 1.57 → ~57% total cumulative real growth.

U.S. overall (~2.1%): Growth factor ≈ 1.65 → ~65% total cumulative real growth.

Slightly higher/lower averages shift the totals meaningfully because of compounding:

2.5% annual → ~81% cumulative. 2.3% annual → ~73% cumulative. 2.0% annual → ~61% cumulative. 1.8% annual → ~53% cumulative.

Today

Women Laugh and Applaud as Massachusetts Governor Signs the “Kill Your Baby Anytime” Legislation

Posted on August 14, 2026 by theartfuldilettante

Liberal Democrat Governor Maura Healey signs bill allowing babies to be aborted all the way up to birth.

Fox News says, “Democratic Gov. Maura Healey was met with applause and smiles as she signed away Massachusetts’ gestational limits on abortion, making the deep-blue state the 10th to permit the procedure up to birth.

Under the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, health care workers will have greater discretion in determining whether to perform an abortion later in pregnancy, without facing legal penalties under the state’s previous restrictions. Massachusetts is now the tenth state to allow this kind of de-humanizing law.”

Healey said the law is intended to ensure families facing medical complications late in pregnancy can abort their babies in Massachusetts rather than having to travel out of state. Those complications can include maternal health complications and fatal diagnoses”

Like most progressive women, Healey equates abortion with healthcare and safety rather than cruelty and murder.

What Does the Giver of Life Say to those who Disregard the Life of the Innocent?

So much has been written on this subject that it hardly matters if we add just another whole article. Perhaps all we need is one single simple verse of scripture that implores the hearer to wise up, get human, have a heart, stop lying to yourself.

See it for yourself.

“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Mt. 18:6

We Just Don’t Want To Talk About It

One of America’s most outspoken and powerful anti-abortion sites, LifeSiteNews, reveals the outcome of a recent poll that concluded that only one-third of all Americans care to even raise the issue of abortion.

Life Site says, “A new quarterly poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) revealed a troubling climate for free expression in the United States, with only 32% of Americans saying they feel “very comfortable” sharing their views on abortion rights without fear of reprimand.”

It may be the fear of getting fired from work, kicked off social media, or just general disdain among peers, but some of the free and the brave do not want to make waves.

A Place to Speak Up for Those Who Cannot Remain Silent

It turns out that LifeSiteNews not only keeps up a good fight against abortion, but it provides a place for those who want their voices to be heard. The site recently posted a news item entitled “Sign the Petition: Governor Must be Excommunicated for Approving Abortion Until Birth.”

They have created a petition urging the Archbishop of Boston to declare the excommunication of Governor Maura Healey.

Sign the petition.

Would The Pilgrims Still Be Prideful?

This author has had the pleasure of roaming through the former Plymouth Plantations, now referred to as Plymouth Patuxent Museums. As a boy, I spent a great deal of time in and around the famous Plymouth Rock and the beaches of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

When I heard what Governor Healey had signed into law, I cringed, remembering not just the village and how it indicated the willingness of people to undergo great hardship to produce a new nation. They were proud of every advancement they made in spite of hardship and difficulty to create a land of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

According to author Samuel Francis Smith editor of the Baptist Missionary Union, it is why he referred to the pilgrims as having pride.

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!

How would Samuel Smith pen this famous line today? Perhaps thusly.

Land where our unborn died,
Land of the loss of pride

“So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord.” Dt 21:9

Michael Bresciani

NewAmericanProphet.org

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What Does the Giver of Life Say to those who Disregard the Life of the Innocent?

We Just Don’t Want To Talk About It

A Place to Speak Up for Those Who Cannot Remain Silent

Would The Pilgrims Still Be Prideful?