Is It Possible? Do We Have an End to the Arab-Israeli War? 

“If Trump pulls off this peace treaty, will you say he did a great thing?” I asked.

He knew, and I knew, that he could not. TDS is a malady that attacks the logic systems in the neocortical brain. The syllogism goes like this: Trump is bad. Therefore, anything he does must be bad, too.

“So?” I repeated.

I could almost see that portion of his brain lighting up. Logically, he couldn’t say “no.” But since his logic system was short-circuited, he said the only thing he could: “Let’s see how long this peace treaty lasts.”

It was the only safe square available to him. And it was a good one. There have been ceasefires and peace agreements before. None of them lasted very long because, in each case, before the ink on the agreement was dry, the group representing the “Palestinian” people went back to attacking Israel.

But on Monday, we woke to find that the initial stage of this agreement had been completed. Israel released nearly 2000 political prisoners and detainees and Hamas released 20 hostages.

As I’m writing this, there are still plenty of foreseeable situations that could derail this ceasefire and peace treaty. And most of them have something to do with the fact that Hamas is a genocidal terrorist group. Yes, Hamas. Not Israel. Hamas is textbook genocidal. Their mission statement says so. They teach their children that Jews are evil and they all deserve to die. (This is not an exaggeration. Look it up.)

But there is one good reason to have hope – and that is the 21-point plan that Trump and his team put together to get the ceasefire in the first place.

Unlike prior ceasefire agreements and peace accords, this one includes terms that make it very difficult for Hamas to use the ceasefire to arm up and launch another assault. If you read it, you can see that it was written based on mistakes in the past – serious mistakes that resulted in the subsequent murders of thousands of Israelis.

It’s also unique in its approach to the governance of Palestine in the future. Instead of giving “the people of Palestine” the right to self-governance with oversight by Israel, Palestine will be governed by locals but under the supervision of a half-dozen Mideastern countries, all but one of which are Arab countries.

The genius of this is that Hamas will be able to say that it achieved peace without giving up its territory, Israel will have accomplished its goals of getting its hostages returned and disarming and effectively abolishing Hamas, and the primary enforcers of the peace agreement going forward will be Arab countries that are almost as interested in ending the war and deactivating Hamas as Israel is.

This is far from over and this peace is far from carved in stone. But for the first time since the Abraham Accords in 2020, we have a coalition of states whose interests coincide with rather than contradict those of Israel and the United States.

Our Blue Cities Are Becoming Safe Again 

Another feather in Big Orange’s cap: Since August, when the National Guard was sent into DC in response to several grisly murders, the capital city has been miraculously transformed from one of the most violent cities in the country (about one murder per day) to one of the safest.

And the same thing is happening in Los Angeles and Baltimore and Chicago, whose murder and violent crime record is not only the worst in the US, but among the worst in the world, including Venezuela, South Africa, and Afghanistan.

The Little Fight Against Big Food & Drugs Continues 

RFK Jr. continues his efforts to battle the Food & Drug Industrial Complex by, among other things, getting Trump to open up the dialog on how unhealthy the US diet is and how ineffective and dangerous many of the most commonly prescribed drugs are by uncovering and publishing hundreds of studies that support his longstanding “conspiracy theories” about vaccines and acetaminophen. (See below.)

There is no doubt in my mind – regardless of what you think about the man – that Trump is the most “impactful” (as they say) president we have had in office since Lyndon Johnson.

Is Tylenol Really Dangerous for Pregnant Women? 

Donald Trump is well practiced in saying surprising things, and when he declared that Tylenol was dangerous for pregnant women, the mainstream media jumped on it, thinking this would be another “Haitians steal dogs for dinner.”

It turns out that the statement is not as crazy as it sounds. According to a just-released report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS):

There are numerous prenatal drugs and substances that have been associated with increased risk of childhood neuropsychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders (such as autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, intellectual disability, anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, or cognitive deficits) in the scientific literature. Based on a synthesis of peer-reviewed sources (including systematic reviews, cohort studies, and meta-analyses from PubMed, JAMA, BMJ, and other databases), at least 30 specific drugs have been associated with these risks to varying degrees.

For example:

* Anticonvulsants/Antiseizure Medications (5+ drugs) – These are commonly linked to neurodevelopmental risks, especially autism and intellectual disability, due to interference with brain development.

* Antidepressants (15+ drugs) – Prenatal exposure, especially in the first trimester, has been linked to ASD, ADHD, altered brain development, and behavioral issues.

* Antipsychotics (7+ drugs) – Associated with neurodevelopmental disorders and learning difficulties.

* Opioids (4+ drugs) – Linked to lower cognitive/motor skills, ADHD, and behavioral disorders.

And one of those 30+ drugs is – you guessed it – acetaminophen (as in Tylenol).

Holy Moley! I Can’t Believe This Happened! 

Bari Weiss, the former award-winning NYT and WSJ reporter who, in 2021, founded The Free Press, has been named the editor-in-chief of CBS News.

CBS News, perhaps the most distinguished of the legacy news channels, was recently taken over by David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance. And one of the first decisions Ellison made was to buy The Free Press and hire Weiss.

This is big news. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad at this point, but it’s big. CBS News was a staunchly pro-Biden, anti-Trump establishment company. The Free Press is a renegade start-up whose political, social, and economic views range across the ideological divide but settle, at least in Weiss’s view, in the center. In fact, when she quit the NYT’s editorial staff in 2020, she accused the company of being hostile to her unwillingness to toe the establishment line.

The Free Press – which I’ve been a subscriber to and a fan of since its inception – had an impressive start. As of April, the site had a reported 1.25 million readers and 155,000 paid subscribers. Critics argue that Weiss, who built a career largely in newspaper-based op-ed roles, lacks experience in broadcast journalism.

The question on my mind – and I’m sure thousands of others – is whether her move to the news company that once employed Walter Cronkite will change her great accomplishment of putting out news and views that are not filtered through an ideological lens, or whether she can make CBS a news source that people can trust.

What Is Elon Musk Doing in Memphis? 

You don’t have to be a fan of Elon Musk to know that once he sets his mind to doing something, he pursues it intelligently but also megalomaniacally, and that results in a very high probability of accomplishment.

According to a colleague of mine, Musk is currently hyper-busy on what my colleague believes is his next multibillion-dollar adventure. He is building a huge data center – something called “Colossus” – in Memphis.

You can find out more about it here.

Manchester England: Two Killed, Three Hospitalized 

Last week, in Manchester, England, a man named Jihad al-Shamie attacked people outside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue. Two were killed. Another three were hospitalized.

Writing about the incident in The Free Press, the British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore said this:

This was the inevitable result of two wild years of anti-Jewish racism and radicalism, dehumanizing anti-Jewish slogans and images, blood libels, support for terror, calls to “globalize the intifada” and “decolonize Israel now,” unleashed on the streets and in the media.

These were barely policed by policemen who stood by; nor by politicians who swung between crowd-pleasing Manichaean hyperbole and sensible, balanced reassurance; nor by the television anchors who disgraced the noble vocation of journalism with irresponsible exaggerations and mistakes that were never corrected; nor by the National Health Service doctors openly keening to kill Jews who are still working in hospitals, despite condemnations from Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting.

This is a country where British citizens are arrested for praying quietly in front of an abortion clinic or a woman standing quietly with a sign in front of a hospital. And where people are thrown in jail for criticizing ten years of unpoliced rape of young British girls by Pakistani Muslim men, and others are put in jail for protesting the murders of innocent children.

And get this: When he carried out the attack, al-Shamie was on bail for an alleged rape.

The Free Press continues:

So today we want to explain how we arrived here and where Britain might go next.

We begin with an eyewitness account of the atrocity, courtesy of a team of reporters at The Mill, a start-up local newspaper in Manchester. They describe the awful events that made this Yom Kippur “the darkest of days” for the city’s 300-year-old Jewish community. Read their report here.

This attack did not happen in a vacuum. It happened, writes Ayaan Hirsi Ali, because Britain has been subverted. By that she means that the country has been transformed from within. “To look at Britain today is to see subversion in action,” she writes. “The lesson of Manchester is stark. When we appease, the subversion grows. And with it comes terror.” Why has Britain allowed this to happen? And what can be done to fix it? Read her essay here to find out.

Simon Sebag Montefiore says that the intifada has come to the UK. And the scale of the problem was made clear not just by the terror attack yesterday morning, but also by what he calls the “bloodthirsty fiestas” that followed in the streets of London and Manchester. Britain, he writes, “tossed helplessly on a storm partly of its own making.” Can its leaders steady the ship?

Trump Takes Aim at Big Pharma 

Trump made front-page news again with his announcement that acetaminophen – the primary active ingredient in Tylenol – is dangerous for pregnant women and that the FDA would be issuing a notice of the risks. Also that evidence supporting RFK Jr.’s longtime concerns about the dangers of vaccines would be released. As usual, his remarks were not formally scripted but extemporaneously delivered with the help of what looked like an index card with scribbled notes. This was evident when he attempted to pronounce acetaminophen, a stumble that, by the time anyone reads this, will no doubt have been broadcast all over the Free World.

Unsurprisingly, the food and drug industry media (which includes most of the mainstream conservative channels and streaming services) dumped on Trump’s remarks. There were lots of charges of misinformation and irresponsibility, but nothing I could take seriously since they were all purposely misleading statements meant to maintain the public’s naïve belief in the safety of what Americans put into their bodies.

I spent some time trying to dig up the actual facts from reports on actual scientific studies that observed basic scientific protocols, such as controlling for variables and observing meaningful test specifications. And I found, once again, that Google had buried them even deeper so that I could not find some studies that only weeks before I had not only read but taken notes on. Chat GPT was even less reliable, coupling up press releases that said nothing, explained nothing, and blamed no one.

There were some new postings, but, not surprisingly, they were all pro-pharmaceutical pieces published by non-profit institutions that were themselves supported by Big Pharma.

When RFK Jr. was first nominated for his post, I wrote that he was probably liberal public enemy number one – even above Trump and Musk. So far, he’s been able to work without a serious attempt on his life. But he should have protection 24/7.

Just the Facts 

Did you know that the Food/Drug-Industrial Complex is larger than the entirety of the US military and sends considerably more billions to the coffers of our elected representatives than the Military-Industrial Complex?

Japan Vaccine Study Revisited: What the Official Data Revealed 

Speaking of fake news manufactured by Big Pharma, here’s an update on the Japanese study on the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines. In researching this story, I came upon a “report” from the “Public Health Communications Collaborative” (PHCC) that said “there is no evidence of any investigation into COVID-19 vaccines by the Japanese government” and that “there isn’t any evidence of widespread deaths caused by the vaccines.” Since that statement was an outright lie, as there by now dozens of studies and millions of reports to the contrary, I wondered what this PHCC group was. It turns out to be a non-profit funded in 2020 (interesting!) that apparently gets a lot of its funding from Big Pharma and has been accused of being a Big Pharma shill.

Last week, Japan’s independent citizen coalition, United Citizens for Stopping mRNA Vaccines, released a report on a study they conducted covering more than 21 million Japanese citizens, obtained through FOIA requests. (I didn’t know that Japan had an FOIA protocol. Good for them!)

Professor Yasufumi Murakami, a scientist at Tokyo Science University, said that the study suggests that as many as 610,000 Japanese died from the COVID vaccines.

As I said when I first reported this, the numbers matched rising excess mortality figures during the period studied. The data showed that those who received multiple doses faced earlier, steeper death spikes. The study itself is long and boring, but I’m pretty confident I was able to grok its conclusion – that the COVID vaccines cause delayed, cumulative damage, destroying immune systems, causing heart issues, and triggering organ failures.

In Japan, as in the US, this report had little effect on the government, as health authorities continued to advocate for mRNA vaccines, including the “reiteron” (replicon) shots, which have been reported to have even higher adverse reactions and death rates.

But the Japanese public, like the American public, has lost faith in their government’s position on the vaccines. Since last October, vaccine uptake has tanked: Fewer than 10,000 doses of the new vaccines have been administered. Over 100,000 Japanese citizens have petitioned for an immediate halt to all mRNA vaccination programs.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry – led by companies like Meiji Seika Pharma – has launched lawsuits against critics, including Congressman Kazuhiro Haraguchi after he developed lymphoma and had spike proteins found in his tissues post-vaccination. The authorities are actively suppressing dissent and preventing transparency, effectively burying the full extent of the damage.

I’ve implied it many times. Now I’m going to be blunt. The dangers of COVID – the virus – were greatly exaggerated by Big Pharma, most governments, and the mainstream media. To make matters worse, the dangers of the vaccines were greatly discounted or flatly denied by the same group of miscreants.

I believe that in several years, after the dust settles and the perpetrators of the lies have moved on to other campaigns, the COVID fiasco will go down as the greatest mass medical experiment in history.

Every week that passes, new evidence of the lethality of the COVID vaccines is published by a reputable scientific organization. And almost immediately thereafter, some shill with a degree hired by Big Pharma pops up in the media outlets, disputing the findings and repeating the lie that the vaccines were and are perfectly safe.

Opinions and an Update on the Charlie Kirk Assassination 

From Eric Rosen, The Rosen Report
“As a nation, we are divided on a myriad of major topics (border, crime, abortion, deficits, vaccines, wealth distribution, DEI, climate change, men in women’s sports, healthcare, gun laws, wealth distribution, Israel, Ukraine, trade, and the list continues. Great nations don’t stay great forever, and I fear ours is cracking under the weight of division and hate. The cornerstone of this nation is the freedom of free speech. If we lose the ability to have differing political viewpoints, and if the answer to our differences of opinion is violence, we will not survive as a free and democratic nation. Let’s hope Kirk’s needless assassination is a wake-up call to allow people to find commonalities rather than exploit differences.”

From Will Rhan, The Free Press
“We’ve all heard a version of this sentence in the last couple days. The hedging, from those who are keen to express their horror at the assassination of a 31-year-old conservative activist – but even keener to reject any possible association with his views. (Views that, it’s worth mentioning, he shared with millions of Americans.) Perhaps America’s problem is encapsulated by these caveats: Signaling our tribe is more important than basic human decency.

”From California Governor Gavin Newsom
“We should all feel a deep sense of grief and outrage at the terrible violence that took place in Utah today…. I knew Charlie, and I admired his passion and commitment to debate. His senseless murder is a reminder of how important it is for all of us, across the political spectrum, to foster genuine discourse on issues that deeply affect us all without resorting to political violence.”

AI Update: Will Your Thermostat Belong to Your State Government? 

Ohio is fast becoming a hub for massive data centers to deal with AI and other digital demands. These data centers use an immense amount of power and water to function. Some people are justifiably concerned about the load on US energy providers in the coming years, including some lawmakers.

In Ohio, Congresspeople are promoting a bill that would let utilities lock you out of your own thermostat during times of “high demand.” House Bill 427, backed by Rep. Roy Klopfenstein, is being sold as a money saver.

Right now, he and those supporting the bill say not to worry. Compliance will be voluntary. But, according to one source I read, it’s a ruse: “In Australia, the same promise ended with 170,000 families stripped of air conditioning in the middle of a brutal summer. In truth, once you give up that control, it’s gone. What begins as optional quickly turns mandatory, leaving families powerless while utilities decide when you sweat or freeze…. This isn’t about lowering bills – it’s about who controls your home.”

What do you think?

COVID Update: Florida Ends Vaccine Mandates 

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced that Florida is dropping vaccine mandates. Talking to CNN, he said that mandates are acts of coercion – that they work “only when the public has faith in the government that issues them, and the COVID mandates put an end to that.”

Twenty other states are said to be considering similar bills.

After years of questioning the COVID mandates, President Trump responded cautiously. On Truth Social, he wrote, “I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated.”

Education Update: American High School Seniors Are Stupider Than at Any Time in History 

According to results released Sept. 9 by the US Education Department, American high school seniors’ scores on major math and reading tests fell to their lowest levels on record. The number of 12th graders who were proficient slid by two percentage points between 2019 and 2024 – to 35% in reading and 22% in math.

The results are from tests administered to tens of thousands of students in early 2024 as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

I didn’t plan to include News & Views in this issue, but something happened over the weekend that was big and urgent. So I’m mentioning it here, with the promise of following up on it soon…

Trump Demands the Truth About the COVID Vaccines 

It looks like President Trump suspects he was misled by the CDC into thinking that Operation Warp Speed (his strategy to use government resources to accelerate the development of the COVID-19 vaccine four years ago) was a success – that it resulted in a vaccine that was both safe and effective.

Those of us following AERS (the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System) have known for many years that the vaccines were neither effective nor safe. But that’s not what the government agencies have been saying.

In a recent announcement on Truth Social, Trump said this:

It is very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs. Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.

I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not??? They go off to the next “hunt” and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out the success or failure of the Drug Companies Covid work.

They show me GREAT numbers and results, but they don’t seem to be showing them to many others. I want them to show them NOW, to CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!! I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as “BRILLIANT” as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???

Is Buffett Really Selling So Many Stocks? 

If Warren Buffett is selling stocks, I have to believe he has a good reason. Maybe it’s a reason I should be listening to. Here’s a recent account of what he’s doing that will help you understand how I feel about the stock market right now.

Did Obama Commit an Attempted Coup d’État? 

On Thursday morning, I opened K’s copy of the NYT to see how the Gray Lady was coping with all the bad-for-Democrats news that has exploded since Trump and his team decided to stonewall the press about the Epstein files.

The biggest story, as far as I’m concerned, was Tulsi Gabbard’s report in which she said the recently declassified FBI and Justice Department files presented clear evidence that President Obama was the mastermind behind the Russian Collusion hoax.

According to documents she read to the press, just before the 2016 election, Obama’s intelligence community and Justice Department officials, who had been investigating the veracity of the Steele dossier, called a meeting with him to present their findings: that Trump was not a Russian asset, that he was not colluding with the Russians, and that, although there was plenty of evidence that Russia was “meddling” with the elections, it was not to favor Trump. Its purpose was the same as it has been for decades: to sow doubts and discontent among American voters about the integrity of American democracy.

Gabbard also presented evidence for what had already been evident in bits and pieces for years: that the Steele dossier, which was fabricated by an actual Russian agent, was paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton reelection foundation with the express purpose of damaging Trump’s credibility and his effectiveness as president after he surprised everyone (including the Russians) by winning.

Multiple FBI officials, including Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, worked assiduously and secretly to craft this story, even though they knew there was no credible evidence to support it. And they continued to promote this falsehood even after the Mueller report confirmed that there was no evidence that Trump had anything to do with the Russians.

At this point, the response from the mainstream media has been to characterize it as “no news” or “old news.” But as far as the American populace is concerned, there is nothing old or inconsequential about it. In fact, if the establishment press and all those implicated in Gabbard’s report cannot kill this story, it means that, in theory, Obama could be charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States under 18 US Code § 371, and obstruction of justice under 18 US Code §§ 1512 and 1505.

Both are felonies carrying potential penalties of up to five years or more in federal prison. Moreover, illegal surveillance – such as the illegal wiretapping and FISA abuses documented during this period – could involve violation of rights protected under the Fourth Amendment. And under Title 18, these are serious federal offenses that can lead to criminal charges.

The questions I’m now asking are: Will Gabbard be able to credibly back up her data and her findings in the next several weeks (before America’s short-term attention span wanders off to something else)? And: If the evidence for them becomes overwhelming, will anyone have the courage to try to prove it?

I’ll be watching this story as it develops, checking in with White House briefings, reports from Gabbard, and reportage and commentary in independent social media.

Just the Facts 

1. The Origin of the Accusation: 
* The narrative that Trump colluded with Russia originated from intelligence assessments and opposition research files, especially the Steele dossier, which was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC.
* The Steele dossier contained unverified and suspicious claims, but it played a pivotal role in launching the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the subsequent Special Counsel probe.

2. The Obama Administration’s Role: 
* According to declassified documents and recent investigations, the Obama-era intelligence community, including CIA Director John Brennan and other senior officials, used the Steele dossier and other questionable sources to produce the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).
* The Obama administration’s officials publicly stated that Russia “developed a clear preference” for Trump, aiming to influence the election in his favor. However, far from being based on solid evidence, much of the report relied on poorly sourced or outright discredited information.
* Evidence now suggests that the assessment was heavily politicized, with analysts objecting to the credibility of key sources but being overruled by Brennan and others.

3. The Clinton Campaign’s Involvement: 
* The Clinton campaign financed and directed opposition research against Trump, which included the Steele dossier.
* A memo from the FBI Office of General Counsel acknowledged the broader campaign role in funding and supporting efforts to link Trump to Russia.
* The campaign’s strategy was to frame the story that Russia was helping Trump cheat, seeking to undermine his legitimacy even before he took office.

4. The FBI and DOJ’s Decision-Making: 
* Official reports reveal that key FBI and intelligence officials knew the Steele dossier was unreliable but chose to use it to justify the FBI’s surveillance efforts, including obtaining FISA warrants on Carter Page.
* The FBI also drafted a surveillance warrant application that relied on the dossier, knowing that much of it was unverified or dubious – yet they pushed forward, perhaps to justify the investigation.

5. The Political and Media Push: 
* The investigation was promoted heavily by Hillary Clinton, the Obama administration, and media outlets as proof of collusion.
* The bombshell came through the Mueller investigation, which ultimately found no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia – yet the entire narrative had long since done its damage in the public mind.

6. The Post-Mueller Revelations: 
* Recent declassified documents and reports from House investigators have shown the assessment was based on demonstrably false or unsupported evidence.
* For example, the so-called “Russian preference for Trump” conclusion was built on weak sources, including a vague fragment, uncorroborated emails, and unreliable foreign reports.
* Top officials, including Brennan and Comey, knew the evidence was flimsy or false but still promoted the narrative because it served their political goals of undermining Trump.

7. The Evidence of Collusion (or Lack Thereof): 
* Mueller’s final report in 2019 concluded there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but the effort itself – driven by false evidence – had already poisoned the political environment.
* The findings indicated that FBI and DOJ officials exploited the Russia investigation for political advantage, with most of the “evidence” carefully curated and manipulated.

Further Reading 

The claim that Putin “aspired” to help Trump was based on four pieces of evidence.

Well, no, says Matt Taibbi, writing in Racket News.

If you are a Washington Post reader, you may have read the response to Tulsi Gabbard’s accusations of John Brennan, James Comey, and the rest of the principles who lead the Russian Collusion hoax by their “fact-checking expert” Glenn Kessler:

“Why did the intelligence community become more convinced that Putin directed the effort to swing the election to Trump, instead of just seeking to inject turmoil in the US elections? As the news reports misquoted by Gabbard show – and as subsequent investigations confirmed – additional, credible intelligence showed that Putin decided to back Trump over Clinton. That’s not a conspiracy but a natural evolution from careful investigative work.”

“Careful, investigative work”! Here’s what Taibbi, who probably knows more about this story than anyone right now, had so say about that.

And this came in just this morning: Charlie Kirk questioning Gabbard in detail about statements already being made by the mainstream media to discount her announcement.

Another Campaign Promise Delivered?

The News: The federal government will now subsidize private-school tuition, via unusually generous tax credits for donations to nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations, known as SGOs. But governors will decide whether SGOs in their state are eligible to receive federally subsidized donations.

The Views: This should be a big win for school-choice proponents and the parents of kids living in “underserved” communities – i.e., Black and Hispanic kids living in mostly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. But there’s a snag: State governors get to decide whether their state’s SGOs can access this federal manna.

What It Means: Most or perhaps all Republican governors will say yes to these dollars. But Democratic governors will be under pressure from teachers’ unions and school boards that know that, given the choice, many Black and Hispanic voters will say “yes” to this chance to send their kids to Charter schools and other non-public schools, which will mean fewer dollars to pay their bloated salaries.

Just the Facts 

* Overall, the US tax expenditure on education is among the highest in the world at $16,000 per student annually. In comparison, Canada, Germany, the UK, and the Scandinavian countries spend between $10,000 to $13,000 per student annually.

* As for education, the US ranks between 15th and 20th in reading, science, and math, behind the countries mentioned above as well as Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, and Australia.

* But when it comes to Black students, they consistently score lower on standardized math assessments than white and Asian students. For example, in 8th grade, only 13% of Black students were proficient in math, compared to 45% of white students and 52% of Asian students.

* Similar disparities exist in reading, with Black students showing lower proficiency levels than white and Asian students. In one study, 23% of Black students demonstrated proficiency in reading, compared to 82% of white students.

Putting more money into public schools hasn’t worked. Taxpayer funding for US public elementary and secondary schools rose from $14,453 in 2019 to $16,280 in 2020.

Trump’s African Peace Deal Advances 

The News: The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda-backed rebel group M23 signed a declaration of principles in Qatar July 19, bringing the two antagonists one step closer to a permanent ceasefire agreement, intended to end one of Africa’s longest conflicts.

A Bit of History: After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which resulted in the slaughter of 2 million people, about 2 million Hutus crossed into the DRC – and so the fighting continued, adding an additional 6 million deaths.

My View: Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for this. Thirty years of bloodshed, 8 million deaths and 7 million displacements were basically ignored by every Western Democracy (and their media). Then Trump intervened earlier this year, secured a ceasefire, and we are now on the threshold of a peace agreement. (I’d like to know how he did it. By threatening tariffs?)

And Then There’s This… 

After my disappointment with Trump’s decisions re the Epstein files, I felt obliged to mention this as a piece of news.

On Friday, Venezuela released 10 jailed Americans, as well as agreeing to accept scores of migrants the Trump administration dumped in El Salvador after President Maduro refused to let them back into Venezuela – reportedly because he knew that most of them were incarcerated criminals that were permitted to get out of jail if they took advantage of Biden’s policy of giving Venezuelans a free pass over the southern border and into the US.

So it was a win-win for Trump and his State Department. How Maduro was persuaded to make the deal has not been explained yet, but I’m guessing it had something to do with tariffs.

“Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement in which he thanked El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

You can read the details here.

Don’t Buy That Hotel on Ventura Boulevard! 

Hotel owners in LA are up in arms, I’m reading, because of the city’s new $30-an-hour minimum wage. The LA city council voted to boost the wage for workers in hotels with 60 or more rooms to $30 by 2028. It’s not something I’ve thought about much, but it doesn’t take much thinking to realize that a big part of the expense of running hotel is the cost of all the people cleaning the bathrooms, changing the linens, and replacing light bulbs.

According to Nigel, hotel occupancy in LA is currently at 74.9%, which, also according to Nigel, is in the “healthy” range. But because the cost of everything in LA is so high, the profitability of the city’s hotels has been poor for many years.

Speaking to a WSJ reporter, Jon Bortz, CEO of Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, said, “We would love to sell our LA hotels. But nobody wants to buy them.”

Another Celebrity and Another Nazi Salute? 

A hugely popular right-wing Croation singer and tens of thousands of his fans performed a pro-Nazi WWII salute during a massive concert in Zagreb, according to the Associated Press. His name is Marko Perkovic, and one of his most popular songs, which ignited the salute fest, begins with what the AP says is called the “For the homeland – Ready!” salute, which was used by Croatia’s Nazi-era puppet Ustasha regime that ran concentration camps at the time.

As I was putting the issue to bed, this came in from The Wall Street Journal: “Trump Wins the Battle of NATO”

After decades of US presidents politely asking members of NATO to kick in their “fair share” of the costs of running the alliance, Trump appears to have finally made it happen. On June 25, he announced all of NATO’s major members, except Spain, had agreed to gradually raising their country’s total contributions to the alliance to 5% of their GDPs. (Up from the current 2% floor.)

The allies committed to spending 3.5% of their GDPs on “hard military power” by 2035, and another 1.5% on “peripheral but still useful” defense investments, such as hardening cyber defenses.