01a Apocalyptic

Blurb:

It’s  the Great Fear that is just eating away at the poor folks at Politico. It was first expressed by that periodical in December when they suddenly realized that with so many Democrats (and none clearly in the lead) that in the open primary for governor of California that it was possible that with only  two Republicans in that race, that both of them could end up in first and second place due to the Democrats splitting up the rest of the votes among themselves.

A couple of months later in February that fear not only did not go away but intensified with poor Politico going full delusional to the extent of pretending that if they only concentrated on the top two Democrat candidates while absurdly ignoring the two GOP candidates whom many polls are showing in the first and second spot, thus qualifying to run against each other in the general election, that maybe the problem would just go away. The result of completely ignoring the Republican candidates who could both qualify for the general election earned Politico some well deserved mockery.

Blurb:

Speaking with FRANCE 24’s Sharon Gaffney, Elke Schwarz, Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London, says that there’s “a radical acceleration” in the speed of acquisition of military targets through the use of AI and how quickly action is taken on these targets, which raises concerns about the lack of human oversight, especially considering that AI models have “25 to 50% reliability, which means they are wrong very often”.
from www.france24.com

Blurb:

For more than 15 years, Fox News has periodically asked registered voters: “Do you think it would be a good thing or a bad thing for the United States to move away from capitalism and more toward socialism?”

In January 2009, when the U.S. economy was mired in the Great Recession, 23 percent of respondents said they believed that would be a “good thing” versus 65 percent who said that would be a “bad thing.”

By July 2010, the portion of registered voters who considered a transition from capitalism to socialism a “good thing” reached an all-time low of 18 percent, while those who considered more socialism a “bad thing” reached an all-time high of 69 percent.

Today, 38 percent of Americans, more than double the number in 2010, think it would be a “good thing” for the United States to move away from capitalism and more toward socialism.

Blurb:

The latest chapter in the long saga of government surveillance surrounding President Donald Trump may also be the most brazen.

According to recent reporting, in 2022 and 2023 the FBI under the Biden administration obtained the phone records of Kash Patel, who is now director of the FBI, and Susie Wiles, who serves as White House chief of staff. At the time, Patel was acting as Trump’s representative in dealings with the National Archives and Records Administration, while Wiles was managing Trump’s presidential campaign.

In one instance, the FBI secretly recorded a conversation between Wiles and her attorney. That category of communication sits at the very core of legal protection in the American system. Attorney-client privilege exists so that individuals can seek legal advice without fear that the government is listening.

Blurb:

DUBAI: Drones fell near Dubai airport, injuring four people, while ships were hit in or near the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday (Mar 11) as Iran kept up its campaign disrupting oil markets and air and maritime traffic.

The oil-rich Gulf has borne the brunt of Iran’s attacks in response to US-Israeli strikes that sparked the Middle East war, with Tehran targeting US assets but also civilian infrastructure.

Iran has also targeted Gulf energy infrastructure and choked shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries nearly 20 per cent of global oil production, prompting wild swings in prices.

Blurb:

Iran’s attacks on oil infrastructure and pledges to choke off a vital waterway left markets on edge Tuesday as the United States promised blistering new strikes. The war entered its 11th day with no end in sight as its effects rippled across the Middle East and beyond.

For the first time since the war began, the Pentagon released details on the number of American troops who have been injured, saying eight of the roughly 140 service members wounded are in serious condition.

Both sides sharpened their rhetoric as they dug in, with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth again promising the most intense strikes yet, while Iran’s leaders ruled out talks and threatened U.S. President Donald Trump.

Blurb:

That post, however, quickly drew heavy backlash for appearing to downplay the attempted bombing that took place.

CNN later deleted the post, then apologized, writing on X, “A post regarding the two individuals arrested for throwing homemade bombs outside of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home failed to reflect the gravity of the incident thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting. It has therefore been deleted.”

Balat was seen on video throwing the explosive device that failed to detonate. At the same time, he yelled “Allahu Akbar.” Kayumi and Balat indicated to police that they carried out the actions because they had pledged allegiance to ISIS, according to the criminal complaint.

Blurb:

 

The NYPD has confirmed that the device thrown at conservative protesters in New York City was not just a crude explosive—it was a shrapnel bomb packed with nuts, bolts, and screws designed to maximize carnage. Police say that had it detonated, the blast could have killed or maimed large numbers of people in the crowd. New York came frighteningly close to a mass-casualty attack.

Blurb:

A left-wing activist network is training liberals how to slip onto juries in federal cases and then vote “not guilty” to derail prosecutions brought by the Trump Justice Department.

Recordings and training materials tied to the group Freedom Trainers show activists being coached on how to conceal their left-wing views during jury selection and then use jury nullification once they are seated on a jury. The webinars, slide decks, and pamphlets behind the effort all push the same approach: Blend in during selection, say the right things to get seated, and use the jury room to block convictions.

The premise is straightforward. Look like any other potential juror, avoid signaling their radical political agenda, and make it through voir dire, the jury selection process, without raising suspicion. Once deliberations begin, however, the guidance shifts sharply.

Blurb:

Tokyo stocks plunged Monday, with the Nikkei index losing over 2,800 points and marking the third-largest point drop in history, as crude oil futures surged amid growing prospects of a prolonged Middle East conflict.

The 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average ended down 2,892.12 points, or 5.20 percent, from Friday at 52,728.72. The broader Topix index finished 141.09 points, or 3.80 percent, lower at 3,575.84.

On the top-tier Prime Market, the main decliners were nonferrous metal, glass and ceramics product and machinery issues.

The U.S. dollar mostly stayed in the upper 158 yen range in Tokyo amid concerns about the impact of surging crude prices.

At 5 p.m., the dollar fetched 158.45-47 yen compared with 157.79-89 yen in New York and 157.52-55 yen in Tokyo at 5 p.m. Friday.

Blurb:

Advanced violence is democratizing.  AI, in conjunction with dramatic improvements in robotics, energy production, and sensors, will increasingly enable ever-smaller groups of people to use targeted violence more effectively, and from a distance. Over time, this shift will dramatically impact all varieties of force projection: state-on-state war, various forms of low-intensity conflict, and how states enforce internal order. 

Perhaps understandably, however, national security discourse about the AI revolution has generally focused on more earth-shattering scenarios: superintelligence, state-to-state conflict, and the prospect of unleashing new biological weapons. These are all critical questions that deserve extensive scrutiny. But super-empowering small groups of people will shift security dynamics in crucial, if less dramatic, ways as well. Non-state actors will use AI-backed tools to conduct relatively simple attacks using increasingly autonomous weapons. In this scenario, it will be the ability of AI-empowered weapons to deliver destruction discriminately, rather than at a catastrophic scale, that will be critical. 

Blurb:

To house the hundreds or thousands of temporary workers needed to build an AI data center, developers are increasingly relying on temporary villages known as man camps.

This style of camp was popularized as housing for men working in remote oil fields. For example, as a Bitcoin mining facility in rural Dickens County, Texas is converted into a 1.6 gigawatt data center, Bloomberg reports its workers are living in gray housing units with access to a gym, a laundromat, game rooms, and a cafeteria that grills steaks on-demand.

A company called Target Hospitality has signed multiple contracts worth a total of $132 million to build and operate the Dickens County camp, which could eventually house more than 1,000 workers.

Blurb:

Seven American service members are dead, dozens of Iranian children were murdered by a U.S. missile strike, oil is raining from the skies to poison the air for thousands of people living in Iran following an Israeli missile strike, and oil and gas prices worldwide are surging as the war has led to the blockade of a critical waterway used to transport oil.

But hey, at least we have a new Iranian leader who is in some ways worse than the murderous oppressor whom the United States killed a little over a week ago!

Indeed, Iran announced on Sunday that it replaced Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with his son Mojtaba Khamenei. The 56-year-old religious cleric lost his mother, wife, and a son, as well as his father, to U.S. strikes.

Given his relative youth, Iran’s new supreme leader could have many years left to rein over the nation with an iron fist. That means we spent billions, lost American lives, and potentially decimated the global economy only to put in someone who may in fact be more extreme than the previous guy who brutally oppressed both dissenters and women.

Blurb:

The author of that post on X was referring to an online intelligence dashboard following the US-Israel strikes against Iran in real time. Built by two people from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, it combines open-source data like satellite imagery and ship tracking with a chat function, news feeds, and links to prediction markets, where people can bet on things like who Iran’s next “supreme leader” will be (the recent selection of Mojtaba Khamenei left some bettors with a payout).

I’ve reviewed over a dozen other dashboards like this in the last week. Many were apparently “vibe-coded” in a couple of days with the help of AI tools, including one that got the attention of a founder of the intelligence giant Palantir, the platform through which the US military is accessing AI models like Claude during the war. Some were built before the conflict in Iran, but nearly all of them are being advertised by their creators as a way to beat the slow and ineffective media by getting straight to the truth of what’s happening on the ground. “Just learned more in 30 seconds watching this map than reading or watching any major news network,” one commenter wrote on LinkedIn, responding to a visualization of Iran’s airspace being shut down before the strikes.

Blurb:

Zohran Mamdani maintained the right to peaceful protest on Monday, two days after two counterprotesters allegedly deployed two explosive devices during an anti-Muslim demonstration targeting the New York City mayor.

“Anti-Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me, nor is it anything new for the one million or so Muslim New Yorkers who know this city as our home,” Mamdani said in a Monday press conference. “While I found this protest appalling, I will not waver in my belief that it should be allowed to happen.”

Mamdani called the demonstration a “vile protest rooted in white supremacy,” but stressed that “violence at a protest is never acceptable.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirms that he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, were at a museum in Brooklyn when an improvised explosive device was thrown near their home during a weekend protest.

NBC News (@nbcnews.com) 2026-03-09T16:51:09Z

Blurb:

Though Democrats claim Republicans are “protecting the powerful by allegedly suppressing the release of the Epstein files, political contribution records show that Democrats have received tens of millions in campaign contributions from a major Epstein-files figure.

That figure is none other than Microsoft founder Bill Gates. On Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked Gates to testify over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

At a recent staff town hall at the Gates Foundation, the Microsoft founder’s philanthropy, Gates admitted that he had an affair with two Russian women affiliated with Epstein, a Wall Street Journal report claimed based on a recording of the event.

Gates, however, told the staff that while he had those affairs, the women were connected to Epstein only later. Gates reiterated, “I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” in his interactions with Epstein.

Blurb:

President Donald Trump says a sharp increase in high oil prices is a “small price to pay” in the fight against Iran.

“Short-term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, are a very small price to pay for the U.S. and world safety and peace,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding, “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”

Oil prices have risen to more than $100 a barrel since the United States launched its attack on Iran in conjunction with Israel, killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and striking hundreds of Iran’s military targets.

Crude oil futures in London and New York soared almost 30% to nearly $120 a barrel on Monday, one of the biggest one-day jumps on record in early trading, threatening to raise costs of products from gasoline to jet fuel.

Blurb:

Anytime something happens in these United States of America that makes the left look bad, we on the right snark to each other about how the media will gloss over it, glorify the perpetrators, and make the progressive in question seem less bad. Like the two ISIS-inspired bombers in NYC. Sure, attempting to people up with and IED is bad, but the real villains were the tens of people Islamophobiaing in the street. Even by our usual low standards for the journalsiming industrial complex, this CNN framing is something.

Terrorists inspired by ISIS? Meh. Emir Balat and Ibraham Kayumi were just two teens who, on an unseasonably sunny day, made a mistake that could change their lives forever.

Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could’ve been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather.

But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home. Here’s what we know so far.

Blurb:

Pop legend Stevie Wonder told white people to “overcome” their “hate” and “white supremacy” during his time at the mic during Reverend Jessie Jackson’s public funeral on Friday.

The “Isn’t She Lovely” singer appeared during Jackson’s “homecoming” event and told the crowd that “Rev. Jackson and I had a long and strong history.”

“It was personal and political. We were able to love each other and support each other through the good and the bad. I knew his heart, I respected his mind, and trusted his soul. I wish we could say everyone did,” he said of Jackson, who died in February at 84, according to CBS News

Wonder also performed the song “As,” along with “They Won’t Go When I Go,” which he said “speaks the truth in my heart.”

But Wonder also delivered an attack against white people.

“It is you, and you know who you are,” he lectured. “You need to overcome hate. You need to overcome the mindset of white supremacy…You shall overcome the need to dominate every single country and its people.”

Blurb:

“We want everyone here to stay in New York,” comedian and counterprotester Walter Masterson was saying at an anti-Islamification demonstration Saturday when a Muslim man who pledged allegiance to ISIS allegedly chucked a bomb over his head into the crowd.

But that close call wasn’t enough to shake Masterson’s open-borders convictions. Within hours he doubled down on the same mass-migration position that helped enable the situation he found himself in.

“As a born and raised in New Yorker, everyone is welcome,” Masterson said. “Everyone except chief goatf-cker Jake Lang.”

Blurb:

 

Florida officials say that two high school girls laughed and joked with each other after they were arrested for allegedly plotting the murder of a fellow classmate.

Isabelle Valdez, 15, and Lois Lippert, 14, were unaware that they were being recorded as they discussed their plans in the back of a police vehicle in January, according to the Altamonte Springs Police Department.

They also discussed the blood pact about Lanza and whether someone ratted on them.

Police were alerted to the alleged plot through an anonymous tip on Jan. 22 saying a student at Lake Brantley High School in Altamonte Springs was being targeted in a murder scheme.

On Jan. 23, both girls went to school, and by 7:38 a.m. police had asked a security guard to get Valdez out of class.

Blurb:

When Democrats’ lawfare failed to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, the party of “democracy” turned to the last available lever of power they possessed to stop Orange Man Bad: the lower judiciary.

Through the art of judge-shopping, left-wing activists and groups have spent the past year strategically filing lawsuits in districts dominated by Democrat and liberal Republican appointees to challenge virtually every aspect of Trump’s agenda. And with little convincing rationale, many of these rogue judges have eagerly issued overreaching orders blocking the president from enacting it.

The latest example of this phenomenon came on Friday, when a three-judge panel comprised mostly of Democrat appointees rejected (2-1) a request by the Trump administration to pause a ruling by D.C. District Judge Ana Reyes. In her order, the Biden-appointed Reyes blocked the government from revoking Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitian nationals residing in the United States under the program.

Blurb:

The censorship crisis in Europe has recently reignited global concern over protecting free expression. Europe has consistently made headlines for overreaching restrictions — from Vice President JD Vance highlighting the continent’s crisis of censorship to, more recently, Elon Musk’s high-profile challenge against the European Union in defense of online free speech. But the growing attacks on free speech across the Atlantic aren’t the only offenses to watch. Censorship in Brazil has been escalating since 2019, and the violations against free expression are just as alarming.

In Europe, we’ve seen: a sitting parliamentarian prosecuted for sharing a Bible verse on X, a comedian arrested for social media posts criticizing gender ideology, and citizens criminalized for merely praying silently in their own minds, among many other severe free speech violations. Brazil is producing its own wave of censorship abuses, much like these.

Blurb:

As everyone knew he would, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has appealed Marion County Judge Christina R. Klineman’s “absurd” ruling that the state’s 2022 abortion law violates the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“We disagree with the court’s decision and have already appealed,” an offices spokesman said. “As we have with every challenge against our pro-life law, we’ll continue fighting to protect the lives of the unborn.”

Indiana Right to Life President and CEO Mike Fichter said, “We are encouraged by Attorney General Todd Rokita’s immediate move to appeal this injunction.” He called the 17-page decision “a perversion of the law’s intent.”