A few thoughts about Portugal, the Portuguese people, and the way art is displayed in museums before I get to more serious concerns. Like why are rich Americans buying up property in London? And why did HHS break with the CDC’s COVID vaccine recommendation? Then, in today’s “Main Course,” I get to the big question – the one that’s making me crazy: Why haven’t we heard anything from the mainstream media about the stack of newly released proof about the truth behind the “Russian Collusion” story?
K and I are in Lisbon. We’ve been here for two days getting ready for the incoming tide of 40+ Fords and Fitzgeralds that will all be here with us – if their flights go as scheduled – by the end of today.
I’ve managed so far to stick to my policy of working only six hours a day when I’m on vacation, thanks to K’s indulgence. But she’s had me putting in at least 10,000 steps a day seeing the sights, visiting the museums, and enjoying the neighborhoods and parks.
I’m happy to say that, given the limited time I’ve been here, I’ve managed to come up with two gross generalizations about Portugal and the Portuguese, which I believe with all my heart, as well as an observation about the power of paintings in museums when they are placed among other forms of art. At this point, I can’t say that I believe this one with all my heart, but I’d like to.
Gross Generalization #1:
The Portuguese Are Aggressive Drivers
Every taxi and Uber driver that drove us in Porto and Lison drove at least 50% over the speed limit. Our first Uber driver, taking us from the Porto airport to our hotel downtown, was literally doubling the speed limit at every point along the way. He was especially happy speeding around a twisty section of road, thrusting the car back and forth. At first, it felt like we were racing along on two wheels. But as the minutes passed, I began to realize that he wasn’t a crazy driver. Like taxi drivers in Korea, China, and Nigeria (to name a few), he was skillful, like a race car driver, and I could see that he took pride in his skill. Maybe it’s a thing in Portugal, a remnant of some tradition that lingers.
Gross Generalization #2:
The Portuguese Are Musically Inept and Un-Cool
Live music is standard fare in the tourist haunts of Porto and Lisbon, and most of it is US and UK rock and roll. You will be entertained by it almost anywhere you go – in bars, restaurants, nightclubs, on subways, at amusement parks, and on sidewalks along every road from one tourist attraction to another. What’s remarkable about it is how bad it is. The singing. The playing. And worst of all, the interpretation. I must have passed at least 50 street musicians during my time here, and I don’t think I heard one competent musician or one song sung on key.
By the way, I’m not saying the Portuguese are the only people who can’t sing our songs. The French are just as bad. I don’t know why. Let me know if you have a theory.
Observation About Art: Paintings Still Rule
“Traditional” two-dimensional painting is, to me, the most compelling visual art. In a museum, sculpture can take me in. But in a room with sculpture and painting, I’ll be putting most of my attention to the paintings. Monumental sculpture will absorb me – but outside, where it belongs. There’s no competition with painting there… nor is there competition with video art. That is its own thing. But in a large room with all sorts of installations and kinetic art and other media, a single painting, on its own, in a corner, will draw me to it.
That’s all I’ve got from my Journal today, and it may be all I will have till the 10th, when we fly back to Florida.
Até a próxima semana!
The United States to the Rescue… Again!
Most of what I’ve been reading about London in recent years has been bad news: rising crime, falling property values, and stories about political corruption and social discord.
But just this week, a bit of good news: According to Beauchamp Estates, a luxury real estate agent based in London, and reported on in the WSJ, 25% of high-end home sales in London were made to Americans.
The attraction for Americans – wealthy Americans – is the steadily lowering property prices in the city, particularly for luxury residences in the most coveted neighborhoods. And that is the result of a slew of tax-the-rich policies that the city’s liberals began implementing in 2023.
The policies shockingly led to what they have always led to in cities throughout the developed world: the flight of the wealthiest residents from their beautiful homes to homes outside of the city’s tax jurisdiction, where the cost of home ownership – including the asset itself, the property tax, and the maintenance costs – are less onerous. And that has led to a glut of multimillion-pound houses on the London market today.
This isn’t the first time this has happened in London.
In past decades, the buy-side of the housing market has been dominated by a constant supply of international buyers who see London for what it has always been: one of the best cities in the world to make money and preserve wealth. And for as long as I can remember, a sizeable portion of those international buyers were Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. Though the Arabs’ share of the buying has been dropping since the growth of the city’s Arab population, as a whole, has started to come predominantly from the poorer Arab countries, such as Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan, the overall changes in terms of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity have been enormous. Today, a gobsmacking 41% of London’s population is comprised of people born overseas.
For reasons I can only guess at, these demographic changes haven’t worried wealthy American buyers as much as they’ve worried “native” Londoners.
Just the Facts
* In 1980, London’s population was 6.7 million. In 1980, it was just a bit more. In 2000, it was 7.3 million. In 2010, it was 8 million. And today, it is 9.9 million.
* 41% of London’s population is now comprised of people born overseas. Of these, approximately one-third were born within European Union countries, while the other two-thirds were born outside of the European Union.
* Most of the London residents born outside of the UK were born in India.
* About 20% of London residents consider themselves to be Christian; 20% consider themselves to be non-religious; 16% consider themselves to the Muslim; and the other 44% do not specify any religious affiliation.
Health and Human Services Breaks with CDC Recommendation for the COVID Vaccine
It happened in May. I somehow missed it. But the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will no longer be recommending that children, teenagers, and pregnant women get the mRNA jabs.
Studies showing that the COVID vaccine fails to protect infection or spreading of the virus have been publicly available for four years. But in the last year, dozens of studies have also surfaced that demonstrate a correlation between the vaccine and serious heart damage among the general population. The risk/reward ratio for everyone – not just children, teenagers, and pregnant women – is just impossible to ignore.
Why Aren’t the NYT and the Mainstream Media Reporting on This?
In
In the past week, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of US National Intelligence, has released a trove of documents from, among other classified files, the CIA’s 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).
What they reveal is more detailed and documented proof that the whole Russian Collusion story was built on a house of cards – misinformation, doctored evidence, and completely fictitious, and in some cases salacious, whole-cloth lies.
For some of us, this is not news. We’ve been reporting on it – in bits and pieces – since Trump took office in January of 2017. But that reporting often felt like pissing in the wind because the entire intelligence community of the Biden administration was calling the facts that we cited “disinformation” and our surmises of what was going on within the “Deep State” conspiracy theories. And while our voices were belittled and our characters besmirched, their voices were amplified by the mainstream media, and their stories were winning them Pulitzer Prizes!
The Propagandists: Will They Ever Tell the Truth?
None of what is coming out now will be news to all those who participated in the fraud. But it should be news, shocking news, for anyone who genuinely believed that Trump was colluding with the Russians and anyone who believed a word of what Chuck Schumer said non-stop from 2016 to… well, today.
These recent disclosures prove that the NYT, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and a host of other corrupt media were telling lies. Lies that were obvious to anyone who had a shred of intellectual integrity and political curiosity – which rules out the mainstream media, half of our elected officials, nearly the entirety of Hollywood and the Entertainment Industry, and the tens of millions of US voters who succumbed to TDS.
And by the way, all of it is available to the public – the actual memos and meeting notes and email transcriptions that were gathered and held by high-ranking officials in the intelligence committee, the Justice Department, and the FBI.
I meant to cover this in a long report next month, but so much has been coming out in the last two weeks that I felt I had to write about it now.
The latest data dump by Gabbard provides indisputable confirmation that the 2017 ICA, which claimed that Putin “developed a clear preference” for Trump and “aspired to help” his chances, was primarily based on four pieces of evidence, none of it credible.
Bought and Paid For by Hillary Clinton and the DNC
The main one – the Steele dossier – which was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, was commissioned at first to sway voters against Trump in the 2016 election. When that failed, it was used to cripple his presidency by diverting Congress from giving any attention to his agenda, which was achieved, and to get him impeached and booted from office, which ultimately failed.
The other three pieces of so-called evidence were even worse. Their sources were anonymous, unverifiable, and largely discredited. And it was not members of the Trump administration saying that. The CIA, which was looking at the evidence separately, concluded (in writing) that it was either weak or outright fabricated. (Among the written and recorded reactions by CIA investigators were descriptors ranging from “seriously flawed” to “factually false” to “manipulating the manipulations.”)
When John Brennan, James Comey, and others at the top of the intelligence community saw the report, they alerted Obama to its conclusion and assured him that they were going to bury it so deep in the files that not even a bunker-busting bomb could dig it up. And that is when Obama stepped in, calling them together to come up with a second draft.
As Matt Taibbi said in a recent post, this saga bears a disturbing resemblance to the Iraq WMD scandal of 2002-2003, where fake intelligence was pushed to justify a war. James Clapper even admitted that he was ordered by Dick Cheney to “find the WMD sites,” and boasted that those fake images “carried the day” at the UN. Today’s media and officials are doing the same thing – pushing “evidence” that doesn’t hold up and refusing to face the truth.
The Actors, the Actions, and the Actual Facts
The leaked, manipulated reports and the political vetting process demonstrate how intelligence was weaponized for partisan purposes, not truth.
* In the agency’s 2017 ICA, the CIA’s analysts concluded, with some debate over certain heavily redacted portions of the documentation, that the evidence supporting Putin’s “preference” for Trump was “seriously flawed,” “fabricated,” or “uncorroborated.” Their concerns were overridden by Brennan and others, leading to the final assessment.
(Source: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2020)
* The main supporting source – the Steele dossier, which was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC– was basically bought-and-paid-for political propaganda. The dossier, a 35-page report assembled from June to December 2016 under contract by Christopher Steele, a counterintelligence specialist, contained allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between Trump’s presidential campaign and the government of Russia prior to and during the election campaign.
Both the 2019 OIG report and the 2023 Durham report raised doubts about the dossier’s reliability and sources, with the latter stating that “the FBI was not able to corroborate a single substantive allegation contained in the Steele Reports.” The new evidence, which includes much of the redacted material, goes a step farther, exposing evidence that the report was not only riddled with unverified statements, but that many if not most of them were known to be false when the report was written.
(Source: The New York Times, 2019)
* FBI and CIA analysts have testified that they repeatedly advised supervisors that the dossier was not credible. In fact, they said it failed to meet even the most basic standards of credibility. But their warnings were ignored. This was corroborated in some of the documents that were declassified and released to the public last week.
(Source: House Intelligence Committee reports, 2020)
* John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, ordered the inclusion of unverified information to support the narrative, despite internal objections. Until Gabbard began releasing these classified documents, there was plenty of speculation that the cover-up began at the highest level, including with Brennan, but nothing solid enough to refute his denials of wrongdoing. Now there is.
(Source: Newly declassified memos, 2023)
* The “evidence” of Russian “aspiration” to help Trump was based on a suspicious, unanswered email from 2014, with no source or verification. This was one of many unverified “facts” that Chuck Schumer and the other leaders of the Democratic coalition used to justify their years-long campaign to besmirch Trump’s reputation and have him impeached.
(Source: House Intel, 2020)
* The intelligence community’s own review concluded that Russia was not trying to support Trump’s election. It did report on various attempts by Russia to make the election seem manipulated, but the purpose of that, they said, was not to help Trump. (In fact, there is evidence in the newly released files indicating that Russia preferred dealing with someone they considered a predictable enemy than with Trump, who they saw as dangerously unpredictable.)
(Source: ODNI, 2020)
* The Brenan-revised report was given to the FBI for approval and endorsement, but the FBI demurred. The FBI review was conducted independently by its own analysts. They found so many suspicious claims and unverified assertions that they refused to endorse it. They described it bluntly as “not credible.”
(Source: FBI internal records, 2020)
* Although dozens of CIA agents were involved in analyzing the evidence, the final report was written by just five senior-level analysts. And despite the nearly unanimous assertions by the analysts that the report was largely unverified and riddled with doubtful claims, they decided to publish it as it was, with only vague admissions in small type that they knew much of the evidence was weak or fabricated.
(Source: House Intelligence, 2020)
* A key piece of the evidence that supported the Russian Collusion narrative was an email proposing engagement with “a pro-Kremlin official.” The newly released evidence reveals that this was a 10-month-old copy of a report that contained no clear source, no date, and no facts that could be verified.
(Source: House Intelligence, 2020)
* Top officials, including Brennan and Comey, decided to provide the report to the Oval Office. Once President Obama got hold of it, it was only a matter of days before the mainstream press got it – treating it as credible throughout Trump’s administration.
(Source: House Intelligence, 2020)
* A recent analysis of the declassified documents reveals that much of the intelligence used was “manipulated” and “cherry-picked” to produce a desired narrative – similar to the fake WMD intel used to justify the Iraq war.
(Sources: Webb, 2020; Clapper, 2020)
* Despite promises of transparency, the government suppressed or redacted critical evidence, including the absence of any credible proof that Russia “aspired” to elect Trump.
(Sources: House Intelligence, 2020; Wired, 2020; Webb, 2020; Greenwald, 2020)
Okay, that’s my summary of the essays, articles, and documents I’ve read in just the last six days. I think it’s convincing, although I admit that if you haven’t been following the story as closely as I have, this may all be too much to take in.
I’m giving you a bunch of links below so that you can, if you want to, look more deeply and carefully into the evidence and arguments. Spend an hour today reading through them and then ask yourself: Is this really news?
And if it is, aren’t you shocked by it? Or do you think it’s just the way the game of politics is played today – and that in the future, regardless of who is in the Oval Office, we should expect more of the same?
Here are the links:
Classified Report on Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey Finally Released
Click here.
New Whistleblower Report Drops as Pressure Mounts in Russia Case
Click here.
Note on New Trump-Russia Disclosures
Click here.
Will Democrats Go to Jail for Russiagate?
Click here.
FBI Helped Clinton Campaign Orchestrate Russiagate
Click here.
New Whistleblower Report
Click here.
Another Major Document Release
Click here.
Not convinced? Here’s what I invite you to do: Write me an essay refuting the facts above, citing your sources (as I did), and I’ll publish it in the next issue.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: Is It a Pandemic?
I’m sure you heard about the 27-year-old man who drove from Nevada to NYC last week, entered what he thought was the headquarters of the NFL, and killed four people and critically injured a fifth before offing himself. “Luckily,” he left a note of explanation: He believed he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma, which causes symptoms including memory loss, confusion, and aggression.
The disease is common in football, with 99% of donated NFL player brains indicating CTE.
The thing I don’t understand about the CTE story is why it is always about football players. If it’s caused by repeated small brain concussions, where are all the stories about old boxers getting CTE? If you count the head blows they suffer in training, they must endure far more head trauma than football players do.
Stargazing Alert!
Photograph by Ralph Ehoff, Getty Images
Hint: It’s in Utah, a state where such amazing views of the stars are not uncommon.
Answer: It’s Rainbow Bridge National Monument in one of the state’s certified “dark sky” communities and parks.
See the others here.
From SL re my “report cards” on Trump in the May 13 and July 4 issues:
“I really enjoyed your recent tally of Trump’s record and have sent it to a number of people. My friend KR was one. Here is his column, with quite a different take. And here’s what he had to say about your column:
This is utter BS. Trump wants to rule as an authoritarian, he’s made the Supreme Court his accomplice, he is anything but a supporter of democracy abroad, he’s a bully, racist, and antisemite, tariffs make no sense, no country has benefited more from the post WWII economy than we have, he’s lowering taxes for the rich, he’s corrupt, he’s inviting election corruption, too, his policies are killing hundreds of thousands in Africa, he is ruining American universities and undoing the research they do, etc.
TA wants to know what I decided to do with my investment portfolio…
“In the July 20 issue, you said that you were going to be meeting with Dominick, your financial advisor, to discuss how the mounting federal debt will affect investments. I’m looking forward to hearing what he said – and what you decided to do.
“My advisor seems not to think that it is a problem. I’m retired, and he keeps me in a diversified mix of stocks and bonds. I have added gold, silver, and commodities on my own outside of the managed accounts. My advisor says the model he uses is based on history going back to the Great Depression. I guess the period during WWII was a time of high debt in this country, and we survived. But this time around seems to not end.”
My Response: Glad you asked.
I can’t comment on your particular situation because I don’t know exactly what assets you own. And even if I did, I am not licensed to give (or interested in giving) personal investment advice.
But I do enjoy writing about my own ideas about building wealth – which I consider to be a much more expansive and much more pragmatic topic. And it just so happens that once a year I write a report for my family, friends, and some of my Japanese subscribers that covers all my thoughts and sometimes my decisions about adjusting my asset balance for the following year.
I’m working on that right now, and will include a portion of it in next week’s issue.
You’ll want to take a look at it because, as you know if you know me, when it comes to investing money I’ve worked hard to earn, my number one rule is: Get richer every day. And that means I treat my stock investments differently than most financial advisors and brokers who make a living by speaking/writing about stocks and bonds as if they were the only two wealth-building options.
Possum & Squirrel’s Waffle Maker
Sidewalk artist David Zinn, who works in Ann Arbor, Michigan, recently turned a cement-smeared manhole cover into a waffle iron for a chalk-drawn possum and squirrel, whom he named Clem and Stuart. Take a look here.