How to explain the pro-Trump supporters and the anti-Biden Democrats? The answer came to me the other day: they have been gaslighted. Continue reading
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I was hoping to be back to publishing by now
I cannot believe the last update I published was back in February. Where did the year go? Continue reading
Intrepid Report is still on hiatus
I had hoped to be back to publishing no later than January 9. As you know that didn’t happen. I am not only dealing with osteoarthritis in both knees but a nasty, super painful, wound on the left leg as well. Continue reading
Intrepid Report is taking a break
Aside from a Christmas piece written by my dear friend and colleague, Jack Balkwill, which will be published Friday, giving those who can time to act on it, I am taking an extended holiday break. Depending on how things go, I will be back to publishing Intrepid Report again in January but can’t give an exact date right now. With any luck, it will be January 2 or January 9, 2023. Continue reading
Jan. 6 Committee’s final verdict: Prosecute Trump
Donald Trump committed multiple crimes when he attempted to overthrow the government on Jan. 6, 2021, and for that, he must be charged by the Justice Department. That was the recommendation that came from the House Select Committee investigating the Trump coup when it wrapped up its probe on Monday. Continue reading
Just in time for holidays, Dems may embrace GOP plan to boot millions off Medicaid
One expert noted the pending deal has "huge stakes... for children and families."
With congressional leadership expected to imminently release the text of omnibus government funding legislation, Politico revealed Monday that Democrats are preparing to join with Republicans who have demanded an end to Medicaid policies enacted because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading
No, ‘independent state legislatures’ can’t shred constitutional rights
Far-right state lawmakers say the Constitution gives them the right to stiff voters. Legal experts say that’s bogus.
Are state lawmakers free to ignore the results of a presidential election? Continue reading
The crypto-populist pyramid scam
Here’s how to connect Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele to Sam Bankman-Fried and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
It should be obvious to pretty much everyone at this point that anything crypto is an old-fashioned grift, a scam, a Ponzi scheme. Those who got in on the ground floor of crypto-currencies and NFTs and the like—and then left when the going was good—have made out like bandits. The rest of us are left holding the bill. Continue reading
A job behind bars
A prison mental health specialist talks about the myths and realities of providing psychological care to detainees
At least two million people in the United States are incarcerated in 122 United States prisons. Little is known about the prisoners themselves. Did their background condemn them to bad behavior or did they just make grievous mistakes? Do they suffer from mental illness sometimes masquerading as criminal behavior? Can they change their life path? A mental health specialist with 25 years of direct experience provided counseling services to pre-trial detainees in Chicago’s notorious Cook County prison system, agreed to this interview. Continue reading
Musk has become a hostile non-state actor threatening America
Using Twitter as a weapons platform, apartheid child Elon Musk has become a major non-state actor threatening the national security of the United States. Treating what was once the world’s dominant social media conveyance as a toy, Musk decided to temporarily “disappear” Ukraine from Twitter’s virtual map of the world by eliminating the country’s code of UA used for two-factor authentication. In addition, Ukraine’s international phone code of +380 was also briefly deleted by Twitter as an option for creating or verifying accounts using the Short Message Service or SMS. Continue reading
‘You don’t get to lead a government you tried to destroy’: House Dems move to block Trump 2024 run
"The 14th Amendment makes clear that based on his past behavior, Donald Trump is disqualified from ever holding federal office again," said Rep. David Cicilline, the lead sponsor of a new bill raising a constitutional challenge against Trump's bid.
More than 40 House Democrats introduced legislation Thursday aiming to bar former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot, citing the 14th Amendment clause prohibiting insurrectionists from holding federal office. Continue reading
The federal program that can protect workers when foreign trade kills their jobs
James Boutcher seized control of his future several years ago when foreign dumping cost him his entry-level position amid a series of job cuts at Century Aluminum in Hawesville, Kentucky. Continue reading
The economic realities we face at the end of 2022
Economies around the world were shocked and damaged over the course of 2022. Global capitalism had been brewing conflicts among the major powers (the United States, China, and the EU) for some time as their relative strengths and vulnerabilities shifted. U.S. capitalism and its empire are widely perceived as waning. Europe’s role as a U.S. ally and indeed its economic future became correspondingly riskier as a result. China’s economic growth encountered problems but continued to be remarkably positive and often crucially supportive of world economic conditions in ways that were once more closely associated with the role of the United States. China’s deepening alliance with Russia as well as its burgeoning global economic reach frightened many in the United States. Years of increasingly aggressive competition, tariff and trade wars, and bans and subsidies, mostly initiated by the United States, culminated this past year in global economic warfare. Continue reading
The Yemen yes-men ride again
“Today,” US Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Masquerading-as-I-VT) said in a December 13 statement, “I withdrew from consideration by the U.S. Senate my War Powers Resolution after the Biden administration agreed to continue working with my office on ending the war in Yemen. Let me be clear. If we do not reach agreement, I will, along with my colleagues, bring this resolution back for a vote in the near future and do everything possible to end this horrific conflict.” Continue reading
New MAGA coup evidence revealed in GOP texts: Be scared!
Host of Republican lawmakers pushed for the Jan. 6 coup and are about to become leaders of the government they wanted to overthrow.
It is a well-accepted maxim that elections have consequences. Voters may not have fully realized, however, that by putting Republicans in control of the House, even by the slimmest of margins, they were granting enormous power to people who openly plotted to overthrow the government. Continue reading
‘Chilling’: Republican state AG’s Office sought list of trans Texans
"This is an alarming attack on the privacy, safety, and dignity of transgender Texans," said the ACLU.
“Despicable.” “Disgusting.” “Egregious.” “Terrifying.” Continue reading
You’d better watch out: The surveillance state is making a list, and you’re on it
You’d better watch out—you’d better not pout—you’d better not cry—‘cos I’m telling you why: this Christmas, it’s the Surveillance State that’s making a list and checking it twice, and it won’t matter whether you’ve been bad or good. Continue reading
The Nakba Day triumph: How the UN is correcting a historical wrong
The next Nakba Day will be officially commemorated by the United Nations General Assembly on May 15, 2023. The decision by the world’s largest democratic institution is significant, if not a game changer. Continue reading
DeSantis’s thugocracy and a dead body: Welcome to the Mafia state
It should come as no surprise that Florida’s neo-fascist mobbed-up governor and 2024 presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis now has the dead body of a close friend to deal with. In a scene reminiscent of the television series “The Sopranos,” the body of 50-year old Kent Stermon, a prominent Jacksonville, Florida political donor to DeSantis, was found in his vehicle on December 8. The vehicle was parked at the Mayport Post Office on Mayport Road in Atlantic Beach. A post office employee leaving work discovered Stermon’s body around 8 pm. The Mayport Naval Station is where DeSantis performs much of his Naval Reserve active duty as an officer in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps. Continue reading
The U.S. egged on the coup in Peru
On December 7, 2022, Pedro Castillo sat in his office on what would be the last day of his presidency of Peru. His lawyers went over spreadsheets that showed Castillo would triumph over a motion in Congress to remove him. This was going to be the third time that Castillo faced a challenge from the Congress, but his lawyers and advisers—including former Prime Minister Anibal Torres—told him that he held an advantage over the Congress in opinion polls (his approval rating had risen to 31 percent, while that of the Congress was just about 10 percent). Continue reading
A joyful day’ as Biden signs Respect for Marriage Act
"The antidote to hate is love," the president said during a White House signing ceremony. "This law and the love it defends strike a blow against hate in all its forms."
Human rights advocates cheered Tuesday’s signing by U.S. President Joe Biden of the Respect for Marriage Act, landmark legislation to codify limited protections for same-sex and interracial marriages passed in response to right-wing attacks on civil rights. Continue reading
The right to die a dignified death and escape suffering
People commit suicide when they want to stop the pain more than exist another minute in their world of shit. It is, therefore, a very sensible thing to do. After all, when our pets are in pain, we sometimes “put them to sleep” to save them from a long suffering. Humans are often not granted the same right for ourselves. Continue reading
Brittney Griner and the U.S. State
Brittney Griner's ordeal in Russia is over. But she has been secreted away for "reintegration" and the U.S. continues its own brand of international hostage taking.
WNBA player Brittney Griner was arrested in Moscow on February 17, 2022, exactly one week before the Russian government began what it called its Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Griner was returning home from playing in Russia during the off-season and was carrying CBD oil in her luggage. While legal in much of the United States, any marijuana formulation is illegal in the Russian Federation. She was finally released on December 8, 2022 in a prisoner swap for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Continue reading
Brave lawmakers foiled Manchin’s dirty deal
If Manchin and his ilk think toxic gas pipelines are so important, they should run them under their own neighborhoods.
If you sometimes wonder whether Congress is obtuse, narcissistic, or just stupid, a trantrum by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin provided evidence that the answer is yes. Continue reading
New York Times strike: From reporters to rabble-rousers
Workers at the “newspaper of record” stopped working to demand better pay and labor rights—but only for a day. What would happen if they actually flexed their power.
Strike activity in the United States appears to have reached an all-time high as the unionized staff of the New York Times recently joined the ranks of iconic brands like Starbucks and Amazon in agitating for their rights. More than 1,100 staffers, represented by the NewsGuild of New York, staged a one-day walkout on December 8, saying their hand was forced “due to the company’s failure to bargain in good faith, reach a fair contract agreement with the workers, and meet their demands.” It was the first time in 40 years that the paper boasting of publishing “All the News That’s Fit to Print” experienced such a labor action. Continue reading
Is America blind to Trump’s genocide?
April 7, 2020, was the day everything changed in America. And hardly anybody realizes it. Continue reading
Musk and Thiel are highly deportable
Two of the world’s wealthiest men—Peter Thiel and his friend and business colleague Elon Musk—became U.S. citizens through the naturalization process. Both are aiding and abetting neo-Nazi and other far-right causes in the United States and fit the bill of “undesirable aliens.” Thiel, through bankrolling the political campaigns of dangerous Nazi sympathizers like Blake Masters in Arizona, and Musk, in re-platforming hundreds of neo-Nazis on Twitter, pose a threat to the constitutional governance of the United States. Thiel and Musk are as deportable from the United States as were dozens of Nazis who were discovered to have carried out war crimes during World War II. In any event, Thiel does not seem to care very much about his acquired U.S. citizenship since he also carries a New Zealand passport and is attempting to obtain one from Malta. Continue reading
Kavanaugh’s attendance at right-wing holiday party raises new ethics concerns
The justice attended a party with former Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller, whose legal organization has interests in at least one case the court is deliberating.
Just days after a former evangelical activist testified before Congress about the ease with which he and his associates lobbied right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justices, Politico reported that Justice Brett Kavanaugh attended a private holiday party with a number of high-profile conservatives, sparking alarm among ethics watchdogs. Continue reading
How the corporate takeover of American politics began
The corporate takeover of American politics started with a man and a memo you’ve probably never heard of. Continue reading
SPACE JUNK: The corporate media’s fawning coverage of billionaires’ space tourism is one of the best examples of junk food news of the past year, written by Jen Lyons, Marcelle Swinburne, Sierra Kaul, Gavin Kelley, and Mickey Huff
Adapted from Project Censored’s “State of the Free Press 2023”
Remember the Cold War Space Race between the former Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s? During the past year, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk went ahead and turned that into a modern-day dick-measuring contest, for lack of a better phrase, to see who could get there first for the longest. Their space outfits, extensively reported on by CNN Science, received more attention than the pollution caused by this narcissistic billionaire power competition, in which one rocket launch produced an estimated 300 tons of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere, where it can remain for years. Continue reading
‘Tragedy unfolding’ as cleanup of largest-ever Keystone Pipeline oil spill continues
Around 600,000 gallons of crude tar sands oil spewed Wednesday from the pipeline into a northern Kansas creek that's part of a watershed providing drinking water for 800,000 people.
Cleanup and assessment efforts continued Monday after a Canadian fossil fuel company’s pipeline spilled nearly an Olympic-sized swimming pool’s worth of crude tar sands oil into a northern Kansas creek that feeds a watershed providing drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people. Continue reading
A Christmas story from Hell
Posted on December 23, 2022 by Jack Balkwill
The traditional Christmas story is about an unmarried, pregnant, Jewish teen named Mary who, on a freezing night in Bethlehem, seeks a warm place to rest and give birth. Nobody would allow the girl a bed. Today, it is unlikely that such a person would not be shunned as much as the Biblical Mary, as we allow people to die in the Land of the Free when they fall to the bottom of the capitalist ranks where there is a dearth of mercy. Continue reading →