We’ve been preparing all wrong for pandemics by imagining bureaucratic wizards will manage them best. 

Clarice Feldman | August 2, 2026

This week, the Senate Homeland Security Committee subpoenaed Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify. The committee secured extensive daily logs he had prepared while at NIH heading up the COVID-19 response. (The committee still lacks almost 700 pages of these logs, all of which had been secreted on 11 different government servers until retrieved by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)

The contrast between what he wrote in his hidden logs and his public statements was extreme. To take but one example, he admits in the log that the six-foot distancing rule was just something made up. Here’s a video compilation of him emphatically promoting that very rule as if there were some scientific basis for it.

As a reminder of the failures of the Fauci response to the virus, here’s Toby Rogers in 2024 documenting them:

Toby Rogers V

Every step was designed to inflict maximum harm:

Splicing HIV into a coronavirus.

Blocking access to heq [hydroxychloroquine] and ivm [ivermectin].

Removing NAC [N-acetyl cysteine] from the shelves.

No early treatment.

Respirators that kill 90% of patients.

Seeding nursing homes with Covid+ patients.

Blanket DNR [do not resuscitate] orders for the disabled.

“15 days to flatten the curve” that slowed the rate of natural immunity.

Closing schools for two years.

Masks that reduce oxygen.

Shutting down gyms.

Keeping liquor stores open. Closing hiking trails and parks thus preventing people from getting vitamin D.

Remdesivir and Paxlovid that are expensive, useless, and deadly.

The most toxic and deadly vaccines in history on a new platform that will never work.

Billions of dollars spent on propaganda to convince people to accept every step of this nefarious plan.

Firings, censorship, and blacklisting of critical thinkers.

Covid is a world war, launched by the ruling class, against humanity.

all came from one delusional narcissist who was placed in charge.”

Ours is a big and varied republic “fifty states, three thousand counties,” Childers reminds us.

Wherever some slight experimentation was allowed, individual states outperformed the baseline. Florida opened beaches and schools. Georgia reopened restaurants. Leftist fury ensued — “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice” — but those states did better. We did not need them to be perfect. We needed them to be different. Difference is how science learns.

We’ve been preparing for pandemics all wrong. By anointing a single man to coordinate the world’s response, we instantly created a single point of failure. If that lone apex expert is conflicted, retarded, or worse, a malignant narcissist, then, well, we can all now see the result: The Fifth Amendment invoked for questions about tie colors.

In other words, what we needed most was room to conduct experiments. The CDC should have supported states and local governments trying different things, like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. There should have been no federal guidelines, no mandates, no vaccine incentives, no censorship, no indefinite shutdowns to flatten the curve.

Just give us the data. And maybe some money. Let us handle it.

That is not a comfortable conclusion. It’s especially uncomfortable for the public health establishment, long enriched by global pandemic preparedness programming…. And so we see that the apex problem is actually bigger than public health. It’s really a condemnation of the whole progressive project, the technocratic theory that experts beat voters and one size fits all.

They had their chance to prove collectivism works. It failed, badly. Now we must disassemble the whole public-health emergency project. Not “reform the messaging.” Not an influencer-led marketing campaign. Not “restore trust” with a fancy new logo. Strip the emergency powers, break the single apex, end the mandate reflex, defund the narrative-enforcement machine, and return experiment and judgment to states, cities, doctors, and families.

By the end of the hearing, Fauci’s reputation, once burnished to a fine gleam by an adoring press, was vastly diminished:

The Picture of Dorian Grey [sic] also comes to mind. Fauci guarded his reputation as a scientist just as Dorian guarded his seeming youth. To do so required a costly exchange. In both stories, the status of the soul (represented by the painting for Dorian) belies appearances.

Nowhere could he have anticipated [snip] that he would be trapped in a chair in a Senate chamber, ashen and defeated, surrounded by silent lawyers, his accusers on all sides, pleading the 5th amendment 111 times.

The wings completely melted. De profundis clamavi.

Classics professor Victor Davis Hanson sees the fall of Fauci as “a now all too familiar example of narcissistic and bureaucratic insiders who start with a classic rise only to fall into utter destruction.”

He adds Fauci’s name to others like John Bolton, James Comey, and Jack Smith:

Fueled by media flattery, and their over the top rhetoric, they posture as consummate “professionals.”

These egomaniacs convince themselves they are our untouchable defenders of the established Washingtonian order, as supposedly sober and judicious custodians of the government. And when warned where they are ultimately headed, and to tread lightly, they instead interpret such sound advice as the jealousy of the envious.

In the current decade that arrogance is best manifested as crusading against public enemy number one, Donald J. Trump.

So insidiously they up their Trump derangement rhetoric. They cite their titles and degrees as they vaingloriously skirt the law.

Finally drunk on leftwing media adulation, they delude themselves into believing that their megalomaniac behavior is exempt from any consequences.

And then what?

At the apex of their hubris, Nemesis strikes.

And they fall hard by their own overweening arrogance.

These unelected legends in their own minds confuse their enormous government granted powers at their disposal as bureaucrats with some sort of regal right that will exempt them from any consequences of their lawless arrogance.

And so soon they lie under oath to Congress, or call up Chinese generals to warn them about their own president, or sign patently false affidavits attesting that the Hunter Biden laptop was the work of the Ruskies, or tap senatorial phones—or almost anything that would ensure their inevitable fall from grace and utter humiliation.

So too with the once celestial and now laughingstock Anthony Fauci (who once compared himself to Albert Einstein).

The common denominator?

The greater their arrogance, the harder they certainly fall.

You probably needn’t go back as far as Greek myth to explain what just happened. It’s as if Toto knocked over the screen and revealed that the Wizard of Oz was just a humbug. Dorothy could get back to Kansas only by tapping into her own potential. As Glinda the good witch said. “You had the power all along, dear.” And that’s the point Jeff Childers argues when he says we’ve been preparing all wrong for pandemics by imagining bureaucratic wizards will manage them best.

WHO, CDC and CMS, he argues, “framed pandemic response as a coordinated system with a ‘common operating picture.’ The whole world was enslaved to it, it all came from one delusional narcissist who was placed in charge.”

Ours is a big and varied republic “fifty states, three thousand counties,” Childers reminds us.

Wherever some slight experimentation was allowed, individual states outperformed the baseline. Florida opened beaches and schools. Georgia reopened restaurants. Leftist fury ensued — “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice” — but those states did better. We did not need them to be perfect. We needed them to be different. Difference is how science learns.

We’ve been preparing for pandemics all wrong. By anointing a single man to coordinate the world’s response, we instantly created a single point of failure. If that lone apex expert is conflicted, retarded, or worse, a malignant narcissist, then, well, we can all now see the result: The Fifth Amendment invoked for questions about tie colors.

In other words, what we needed most was room to conduct experiments. The CDC should have supported states and local governments trying different things, like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. There should have been no federal guidelines, no mandates, no vaccine incentives, no censorship, no indefinite shutdowns to flatten the curve.

Just give us the data. And maybe some money. Let us handle it.

That is not a comfortable conclusion. It’s especially uncomfortable for the public health establishment, long enriched by global pandemic preparedness programming…. And so we see that the apex problem is actually bigger than public health. It’s really a condemnation of the whole progressive project, the technocratic theory that experts beat voters and one size fits all.

They had their chance to prove collectivism works. It failed, badly. Now we must disassemble the whole public-health emergency project. Not “reform the messaging.” Not an influencer-led marketing campaign. Not “restore trust” with a fancy new logo. Strip the emergency powers, break the single apex, end the mandate reflex, defund the narrative-enforcement machine, and return experiment and judgment to states, cities, doctors, and families.

By contrast to the argument that we must decentralize pandemic responses, the “scarf lady,” Dr. Dorothy Birx, who also should share the blame for the tragic fiasco with Fauci, shifts the blame to the blue states, saying they “overclosed.”

I don’t recall her arguing that when she was manipulating the data, pushing for longer lockdowns, or fearmongering with Fauci.

Clarice Feldman

On August 2, 1776, members of Congress affix their signatures to an enlarged copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Fifty-six congressional delegates in total signed the document, including some who were not present at the vote approving the declaration. The delegates signed by state from North to South, beginning with Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire and ending with George Walton of Georgia. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and James Duane, Robert Livingston and John Jay of New York refused to sign. Carter Braxton of Virginia; Robert Morris of Pennsylvania; George Reed of Delaware; and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina opposed the document but signed in order to give the impression of a unanimous Congress. Five delegates were absent: Generals George Washington, John Sullivan, James Clinton and Christopher Gadsden and Virginia Governor Patrick Henry.

Exactly one month before the signing of the document, Congress had accepted a resolution put forward by Richard Henry Lee that stated “Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

Congress adopted the more poetic Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, two days later, on July 4. The president of Congress, John Hancock, and its secretary, Charles Thompson, immediately signed the handwritten draft, which was dispatched to nearby printers. On July 19, Congress decided to produce a handwritten copy to bear all the delegates’ signatures. Secretary Thompson’s assistant, Philadelphia Quaker and merchant Timothy Matlack, penned the draft.

News of the Declaration of Independence arrived in London eight days later, on August 10. The draft bearing the delegates’ signatures was first printed on January 18 of the following year by Baltimore printer Mary Katharine Goddard.

History.com Editors

Despite topping national polls with more than a quarter of the vote, the AfD has received just 4.7% of invitations to Germany’s flagship ARD and ZDF talk shows this year—a gap that raises fresh questions about whether public broadcasters are meeting their legal duty of political balance.

Co-leader of AfD Alice Weidel sits opposite German journalist Markus Preiss prior to a summer interview with German public broadcaster ARD in Berlin’s government quarter, as the Reichstag building is seen in the background, on July 20, 2025. – Odd ANDERSEN / AFP.

Germany’s public broadcasters are facing questions over political balance after new figures revealed a striking gap between voter preferences and who actually receives airtime on the country’s most influential television talk shows.

Despite leading national opinion polls, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has made only ten appearances this year across the flagship political programs of ARD and ZDF. That amounts to just 4.7% of all invitations handed out to politicians, even though more than one in four voters now back the party, according to the latest ZDF Politbarometer.

Broadcasters are legally required to present a wide diversity of opinions while maintaining objectivity and impartiality. If television invitations reflected the political landscape shown in current polling, AfD representatives would have appeared almost six times more frequently than they actually have.

Instead, Germany’s governing and establishment parties continue to dominate prime-time political discussion. Politicians from the CDU and CSU accounted for 91 appearances, representing more than 43% of all invitations, despite polling at 23%. Despite polling at only 12%, the SPD appeared 56 times, representing over a quarter of all political guests—more than double its expected share under proportional representation.

The AfD’s limited presence is not only reflected in the number of invitations but also in the subjects its politicians are asked to discuss. Party co-chair Tino Chrupalla, the AfD politician invited most often this year with three appearances, was primarily questioned on foreign policy. During one appearance, he also discussed economic policy, but he was not invited to focus on issues such as migration, domestic security, or social policy, subjects that have become central to the party’s political platform.

Measured by overall airtime, the AfD’s presence also remains minimal. Programs featuring at least one AfD representative totaled roughly 12 hours through mid-July.

Out of an estimated 185 to 190 hours of political talk show broadcasting, only around 6% featured any AfD politician at all.

The figures show that Germany’s television political landscape bears little resemblance to the current electoral one. While the AfD has emerged as the strongest force in national polling, the firewall against the biggest conservative force in Germany is still active in all parts of the media.

Zolta Győri, European Conservative

This video, presented by *Doc Rich*, argues that the *Democratic Party* is in a state of financial and political “shambles” leading into the upcoming midterms. The creator cites several factors, including poor fundraising numbers, internal conflict, and low voter favorability.

**Key highlights from the video include:**

* **Financial Difficulties:** The video reports that the *DNC* is struggling with debt and has low cash reserves compared to the *RNC*. It highlights a *New York Times* report noting that the *Democratic Party* has even asked vendors to delay billing until after the midterm elections (1:24 – 2:06). Additionally, the *DNC* reportedly used its headquarters as collateral for a $15 million line of credit (2:09 – 2:17).

* **Internal Struggles:** The video discusses friction within the party, including an alleged interaction between *Hakeem Jeffries* and *Bernie Sanders* regarding endorsements (0:33 – 0:46), as well as a reported outburst by *DNC Chair Ken Martin* (2:23 – 2:56).

* **Low Approval Ratings:** The creator highlights data suggesting the *Democratic Party’s* brand is suffering, with low favorability ratings (7:37 – 8:02) and a majority of voters viewing the party as “too liberal” (8:29 – 8:52).

* **Midterm Outlook:** The video analyzes the competitive landscape for the *House* and *Senate*, arguing that *Republicans* are gaining ground due to redistricting and the current political climate, making it difficult for *Democrats* to retain control (11:28 – 14:48).

Ultimately, the creator posits that the combination of financial constraints, negative public perception, and economic concerns (like cost of living) puts the *Democrats* at a significant disadvantage for the upcoming elections (16:07 – 17:03).

(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com …

Doc Rich

Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party are dismantling democratic Hungary as we have known it since 1990.

A large crowd attends a demonstration organised by the former government party-coalition Fidesz–KDNP (Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance and the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) to protest against the 17th amendment to Hungary’s constitution, in front of the Sándor Palace in Budapest on July 9, 2026. – ATTILA KISBENEDEK / AFP

I belong to the generation that brought about genuine regime change in Hungary. I had the privilege of being part of the overthrow of the communist regime, when, in 1990, after decades of dictatorships forced upon us by the German and Soviet occupations, the Hungarian people finally won their freedom and established a democratic constitutional state.

In 2011, the National Assembly, the sixth freely elected after the change of regime, adopted Hungary’s Fundamental Law, thereby bringing the transitional period of the regime change to a close, establishing guarantees of national sovereignty, laying the foundations of the democratic rule of law, and setting Hungary on the path to prosperity.

After the 2026 elections, the Tisza Party changed Hungary’s constitutional system through a constitutional coup. Following the 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law, Hungary is no longer a democratic state governed by the rule of law. An era of autocracy has once again dawned in Hungary.

The Tisza government’s constitutional amendments, in fact, flout the written and unwritten fundamental principles of European constitutional democracies and fundamentally alter Hungary’s constitutional order.

Firstly, through tailor-made legislation with retroactive effect, they are preventing the leader of the largest opposition party from standing as candidate for Prime Minister again. Viktor Orbán is being cut off from the people, and the people are being cut off from Viktor Orbán.

Secondly, without any constitutional justification, they removed the democratically elected President of the Republic from office with a single line included in the final provisions of the amendment to the Fundamental Law. Through tailor-made constitutional amendments, they are removing the President of the Constitutional Court and terminating the terms of office of several constitutional judges. In doing so, they are abolishing the separation of powers, eliminating checks and balances, and dismantling the rule of law.

Thirdly, they are establishing a new investigative authority —a political police force —endowed with extraordinary powers and operating under only limited judicial review. Public media will be placed under direct government control.

Fourthly, the term of office for members of parliament will be limited to twelve years. This will effectively remove a significant proportion of well-known political figures from political life. If such a rule were in place in the European Parliament, 164 MEPs would be barred from standing for re-election. Manfred Weber or Daniel Freund would not be able to stand. In Germany, nearly sixty percent of CDU MPs would be excluded from the next election. The Italian Prime Minister, the German Chancellor, the Spanish Prime Minister or Donald Tusk would not be able to stand again. The severe restriction of the right to stand for election has brought an end to political competition in Hungary. And where there is no free political competition, there is no democracy either.

Any of these measures would, in itself, be extremely serious. However, taken together, with these gross violations of the Fundamental Law, the new rulers of Hungary have created an illegitimate system aimed at the exclusive exercise of power.

The arbitrary and dangerous decisions of Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party are unprecedented in Europe. That is precisely why the deafening silence of the European Union’s institutions is particularly grave and inexplicable. For many years, Brussels engaged in incessant political attacks against and the vilification of patriotic Hungary, whilst the European Parliament, in a political witch-hunt, debated Hungary almost on a weekly basis for years on end. The European Commission withheld EU funds to which the Hungarians were legally entitled, citing so-called rule-of-law concerns. Now, however, at a time when the democratic rule of law is truly being dismantled in Hungary, these same institutions remain silent. All this proves that the so-called rule of law procedure is nothing more than a political tool of blackmail, devised to rein in Member States that oppose the mainstream power politics of Brussels and defend their sovereignty tooth and nail. With this complicit silence, Brussels has lost all credibility on rule-of-law issues once and for all.

In Europe, the same scenario has been repeating itself for more than a decade. The liberal-globalist elite, who call themselves progressive, are attempting to sideline their political opponents through targeted legal proceedings, constitutional reforms that disregard democratic principles, and the use of criminal law. The objective is the same everywhere: to render sovereigntist, patriotic and nationally committed politicians and parties incapable of functioning through politically motivated proceedings and political reprisals.

That is not the freedom and democracy that we, the people of Central Europe, fought for. We reject that in Europe, a centralised system and its allies should once again use the instruments of power to decide who may stand for election and who must be removed from public life through administrative measures. We will therefore fight with every available lawful and democratic means for free and fair elections, and to eliminate all forms of politically motivated discrimination.

No one should be allowed to take away the Hungarian people’s right to a free, safe, and peaceful life and to prosperity.

If we give this up, Hungary loses. And so does Europe.

Dr. Tamás Deutsch is a founding member of Hungarian conservative party Fidesz. He was a member of the Hungarian Parliament between 1990 and 2009, the Minister of Youth and Sports in the first Orbán government, and then the Deputy Speaker of Parliament between 2004 and 2006. He has been a member of the European Parliament since 2009, and the head of the Fidesz delegation to the European Parliament since 2019.

Tamás Deutsc, European Conservative

Homer’s epic poem, “Odyssey,” is in the news lately, primarily because Christopher Nolan has produced a three-hour, and I can use the word impressionistic, retelling of the “Odyssey.” And a lot of people have criticized it; a lot of people like it.

I’m gonna talk about the film later in one of our episodes, because I have now seen the new film, and Jack Fowler and Sami Wink and I have talked variously about it.

But I wanted to today just talk about the “Odyssey” as a work of literature and history. A lot of people, I think, have the wrong impressions.

We hear that Homer wrote this or wrote that. He did not write it. It was composed orally. What do I mean by that? I mean, the actual incident of a Trojan War probably occurred somewhere between 1200 BC and 1100 BC, in the last gasp, so to speak, of the Mycenaean palatial culture in Greece.

Now, the Mycenaeans were Greek speakers, but their mode of economic, cultural, political organization was more Near Eastern, more like the Hittites or the Egyptians.

In other words, they had palaces that, in sort of a totalitarian fashion, parceled out food and shelter and land, and then received taxes and tribute at a central clearing house, all recorded on Linear B tablets: the Greek language, but without the Phoenician-like alphabet, which had not been invented yet.

So when that collapsed, whether it was because of the Dorian invasion or whether it was because of sea peoples who swept in and destroyed these vulnerable, centrally located palaces in Mycenaean civilization, if you decapitated Gla or Thebes or Mycenae or Argos, then the entire structure would have no central direction.

There was not a lot of independent, autonomous people. So this culture vanished right after the Trojan War. And we should remember that because in the poem, a lot of people have trouble getting back from Troy, and when they get back, what they find is not good. Odysseus comes back; suitors are in his house.

Agamemnon comes back; he’s killed. Ajax doesn’t come back. I could go on, and that might reflect the oral poetry’s attempt over subsequent centuries to show that there was an actual Mycenaean event.

So what’s happened is the society collapsed, and we probably saw one-tenth of the population survive, and there was not sophisticated agriculture anymore, monumental building, none of the signs of the Mycenaean prosperity and security.

It was a dark age: a small, scattered, decentralized population, more goat, sheep, and cattle raising than intensive farming, and more confined to the Greek peninsula itself rather than a Mediterranean-wide seafaring people.

During this depression era, I guess we would call it analogous to the European Dark Ages, roughly from the sixth century AD to nine hundred AD, all writing of the Mycenaeans was lost. People lost all knowledge of what had gone on and after, oh, we could say 20 or 25 generations, they magnified what little they remembered about the Mycenaeans, as you would expect.

This was the era of Greek mythmaking. So when a farmer or a herder or anybody walked by a Mycenaean palace in ruins, he said, “The Cyclops must have built it.”

Or if he fell into a tholos tomb, he’d say, “There were great demigods who built this.” And the tales of the Mycenaean lords then became exaggerated when they were carried on generation after generation by schools of bards. Perhaps they were disabled, perhaps they were blind like Homer reputedly was, but they kept the stories alive.

Now, we only have two of them: The “Odyssey,” about the return of Odysseus from the Trojan War, and the “Iliad,” a four- or five-day snapshot of the 10-year-long war. But we know there was probably 20 or 30 tales about the kidnapping of Helen, the sack of Troy, whatever happened to Agamemnon, etc., etc.

In these oral poems, then, Homer would get together with people, and over about a day and a half, almost two days, he would recite 1,200 lines, the entire poetry, by memory.

Now, because things repeat, one-third of the poem is repeated. That’s the way the oral poet composed. So if he wanted to move from the Calypso scene back to a very different atmosphere on Ithaca, then he could just plug in entire type scenes: how to build a raft, how to build a fire.

And these repetitions can be from the noun-adjective, swift-footed Achilles, long-suffering Odysseus, or they can be a whole line or a whole page in a modern text, but it was not written down. Somehow, Homer was probably the last generation in this bardic tradition when the city-state reemerged under a Western concept that we would call Western civilization.

Sophisticated learning, writing returns with a Phoenician alphabet, history, rhetoric, science, all of that starts to reemerge, or get born maybe is a better word, and the last version of Homer is written down, and the bardic tradition ends.

So Homer then is the authoritative text for these stories, and we don’t know his predecessors.

Now, very quickly: Well, what’s the history of it then? The history of, in the “Odyssey” and the “Iliad,” there’s little, tiny memories of Mycenaean civilization five or six hundred years earlier. In the second book of the “Iliad,” there’s a catalog of ships, and they name all the places where the Greeks came from.

And believe me, Homer, in that period when he composed it, 750, had no idea where some of those places were. There’s a mention of a silver-studded long sword or a boar’s-tooth helmet. He doesn’t know what those are. He just knows that they sound old, and they’re carried down generation after generation in the bardic oral tradition.

We know that there are some grammatical forms that are not Ionic, like those that Homer composed when he was probably a resident of what is now western Turkey or the Cycladic Islands, I should say the islands near the coast of modern Turkey or Ionia. And we call that the Ionian dialect. That’s what most of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” are composed in.

Remember, twelve thousand lines, but it’s in a hexameter, dactylic hexameter. Da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da. The line ends don’t rhyme, but they have the same shared meter.

And here and there, there’s what we call Arcadio-Cypriot grammatical signs, and that we know that when the Mycenaean palaces fell, people fled to Arcadia and Cyprus, and maybe some of their dialect got included into the bardic tradition.

So there are Mycenaean relics, and then over those four or five centuries of bardic transmission, there’s a lot of Dark Age things. And that would be primacy of javelin throwing or archery over close combat, or it would be more tales of goat herdsmen and lamb herdsmen and cattle than olive growing or grain growing or grape growing.

And then there’s the majority of it, I would say 55 to 60 percent: Homer being a unique genius and the one bardic poet we know of in that long tradition, the one closest to the city-state and the one whose version was recorded and therefore saved with a written text because writing had reemerged.

We know that he drew on things from his own contemporary world, and there is intensive agriculture. Laertes’ farm is intensively farmed. There are people in assemblies now that vote. We know in the “Iliad” there’s a mention of mass warfare, not just chariot or javelin or archery, but massed heavily armed people with spears that would resemble Homer’s own time, with phalanx or what we call hoplite warfare.

Let me just finish then. What do critics get wrong? They criticize Christopher Nolan because there’s not Bronze Age armor, but there isn’t in Homer either. There are just little traces of evidence from the Mycenaean or Bronze Age. They criticize him because of the dialogue. Well, we don’t know. And that’s from a different translation by Emily Wilson.

There are better translations. Richmond Lattimore’s is the best. But the dialect in Homer is repetitive and, as I said, formulaic, and it doesn’t approximate what most people are speaking.

So if you’re gonna criticize the colloquial verse of Matt Damon, you have a point in that Homer’s own poem, when people heard it in 750 orally recited, or they read it 100 years later when it was composed or redone with a written text, it would have sounded archaic and not necessarily colloquial.

These are just some of the items that are in the background of Homer’s Odyssey, and to the degree that they frame a film version, or to the degree that a director should work within both the poem and the historic realities in which it was composed, I’ll talk about in a subsequent one of our talks.

Victor Davis Hanson, Epoch Times

Most people don’t understand that, for leftists, Islam offers more than just a common totalitarian enemy in the war against the West.

Andrea Widburg | August 1, 2026

Yesterday, the barrier between Spain and Morocco broke, as up to 60,000 young, military-aged Muslim men swam from Morocco past the border at Ceuta and Melilla into Spain. The incentives were twofold.

The first was that Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s hard-socialist president, announced that illegal aliens in Spain who applied for legal status would receive it. The second was that the leftist Supreme Court announced that, while those who entered Spain over a land border could instantly be turned away, those who entered through a waterway would instantly be registered as asylum seekers, entitled to a full hearing. Spain’s geography and the shared coastline between Morocco, Ceuta, and Melilla made the outcome obvious.

We also know why Spain’s leftists are happy to welcome Muslims: As leftists, they hate their national heritage and everything it stands for. When Spain parted ways with its Catholic past, it did what leftist nations do when they abandon the Biblical faiths: It stopped having children. Its birthrate is almost half the rate needed for a nation to maintain its population, let alone grow.

Spain and Islam also share a common cause: hatred for America and Israel, specifically, and the West, generally. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.

But President Sanchez unwittingly hit upon one other reason the left loves Islam, and that’s Islam’s powerful and compatible spiritual essence. Spirituality and leftism? That sounds ridiculous, but give me a minute to make my case.

This idea came from a New York Times op-ed in which President Sanchez argued for allowing unlimited numbers of illegal aliens from across the Muslim world:

We, as Western nations, must choose between becoming closed and impoverished societies or open and prosperous ones. Growth or retreat: Those are the two options before us. And by growth, I’m not talking only about material gain, but also our spiritual development.

“Spiritual development”?! What in the world is he talking about?

Well, it occurred to me that he may be on to something. Leftism is nihilistic. It believes only in the state, and the state is an infinitely changing entity that responds to and sets rules for the needs of those in power.

Leftism offers no solutions to the fundamental, existential issues: Why am I here? (You’re a parasite. The state thinks most of you should die.) Why shouldn’t I murder, rob, cheat, assault, sleep with my sister, etc.? (You’re free to do so, as long as it benefits the state.) What happens at the end? (You’re dead. Just dead.)

Islam is different. For starters, it believes in itself. In Europe, Christianity is a dead letter.

Sure, there are pockets of Christians, but leftism either wipes out Christians or, what may even be worse, it coopts them. So you have a Pope who encourages unassimilable Muslims to enter Europe illegally, or leftism has churches that preach that God is utterly wrong when it comes to that whole gender binary thing, that homosexual sex should be encouraged, that marital sex is a farce, and that God really expects nothing of anybody. Priests in various faiths announce that they’re not even sure there is a God, so they’re kind of riffing the whole thing.

Islam is different. It stands for something. And here’s what’s really great about what it stands for: It stands for a lot of the things leftists love.

My cousin, who converted from being a Jewish atheist to Christianity, and then became a pastor, spent decades working in the Virginia prison system. Many years ago, he wrote an email to me that stated something very profound about how common it was for prisoners to convert to Islam. What’s significant is that they didn’t do so because they felt remorse for their crimes, repented, and sought redemption. Instead, something very different was going on:

It is not a contradiction to be a Muslim and a murderer, even a mass murderer. That is one reason why criminals “convert” to Islam in prison. They don’t convert at all; they simply remain the angry, judgmental, vicious beings they always have been. They simply add “religious” diatribes to their personal invective. Islam does not inspire a crisis of conscience, just inspirations to outrage.

And there it is: The “spiritual” nexus between Islam and socialism.

For socialists, Islam is everything they want, plus it answers the big questions: Why am I here?

To serve Allah.

Why shouldn’t I murder, rob, cheat, assault, sleep with my sister, etc.?

You’re free to do so, as long as it benefits Islam.

And then there’s the kicker: What happens at the end?

It’s not the end. You ascend to Paradise. If you’ve been a soldier for the cause, you get a wonderful paradise, plus endless sex with 72 women, a good sales pitch for leftist men.

If you’re a regular guy, you get to live in a wonderful paradise, complete with sex with your “purified” spouses, something that will work for leftist men.

As for women, they get to be young, free of negative emotions, material goods, and surrounded by friends and family…but no sex. For leftist women, riddled with angry emotions and utterly degraded and demoralized by hook-up culture, this may actually end up sounding very good.

We’ve long thought that there’ll be a war at the end between the Muslims and the leftists, with the world going to the last ideology standing. Listening to President Sanchez, I suspect that all but the most die-hard leftists will be easily sold on Muslim conversions.

American Thinker

Hey gang, it’s me, Dr. Steve, your back porch professor. I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend and a great start to the month of August. But I can tell you who most certainly is not, and that’s none other than the 84year-old icon of t he Washington establishment, Mitch McConnell. Uh we’ve got some pretty stunning updates on the condition of McConnell who was reportedly hospitalized back on June 14th and has not been seen since.

His office has been virtually silent the whole time. They’ve given almost nothing. No updates, just a line about him receiving excellent care. No condition, no prognosis, nothing. No public appearance, no statement, no proof of life. Literally he he is effectively our own version of Mosha Bakamani, the supposed supreme leader of Iran that literally no one has seen. We have our own version of that Moja Mitch. But we do have some breaking news here and it actually goes all the way back to July 12th nearly a month after he was hospitalized.

So, as many of you know, McConnell’s team officially released a statement and a photo saying a fall left him briefly unconscious and that he was also dealing with a mild case of pneumonia. And alongside that statement came this photo with McConnell in the hospital bed smiling with his wife Elaine Chow holding up a newspaper to prove the date as if he was a hostage or something like that. I mean, it’s the oldest trick in the proof of life playbook. And of course, almost immediately, there were accusations all over the internet that the image was AI generated.

For the record, I have no idea. I just I don’t have that kind of expertise. I have read digital forensics analysts who reviewed the photo. They found no evidence of AI manipulation. At least that’s the ones that are being reported. Again, I don’t know, but that’s not where the real story is.

Three days after that photo on July 15th, Chow was photograph ed leaving the rehab facility. Okay, fine. No problem. But then nothing, more silence for almost 2 weeks. And then right on cue, just days before critical political deadline, a second proof of life photo resurfaces, supposedly taken on July 26. And you can see both these photos online. And this is where it gets interesting when you look these up.

And you can see both these photos online. And this is where it gets interesting when you look these up. When you look at these photos side by side, the one of Ciao leaving on July 15th and the one supposedly taken two weeks later, she’s wearing the exact same outfit, same shirt, same pants. Even her hairstyle lines up with the earlier date, not not a later one. And and this is it’s being widely recognized even by left-wing outlets like the Daily Beast and TMZ. In fact, Chiao reportedly appeared with a noticeably different, more reddish hairstyle at a public event on July 29th, just 3 days after the photo she supposedly took on July 26.

Now, could a wealthy woman repeat an outfit? Well, of course, sure, no problem. But the Daily Beast’s own editor-inchief flag something interesting here. The outfit was an off-brand. It was from Chico’s, right, which apparently is an inexpensive, you know, mid-range casual woman’s clothing brand. But Ciao is a multi-millionaire and she’s known for wearing very luxurious, very expensive clothing. d

Now, the point the Daily Beast editor was making is that it seemed unusual for someone with Chiao’s wealth and reputation for careful presentation in public to be photographed twice in the same casual budget brand outfit, which added the suspicion that the second photo wasn’t actually taken on a different day as claimed, but was possibly the same photo session just reused or an older photo relled. And also, it’s being widely reported that the photo carried no verifiable metadata and it wasn’t taken by any neutral press photographer.

Here is what they are not telling you. There’s a catch buried in Kucky’s Constitution. If a vacancy happens too close to a regularly scheduled election and McConnell’s seat is already up in November 2026, the seat may simply sit vacant until the winner of that election is sworn in come January. That deadline is widely cited as falling right around August 3rd. Meaning if McConnell’s office can produce just enough proof of light life to get past that date, right, a photo here, a statement there, the entire question of who replaces him and how gets punted away for months, thus denying the Senate a key pro MAGA vote that would be enough to pass the Save Act. We’re just one vote away from getting the Save Act passed by reconciliation

Of course, that’s not proof of fraud, but it’s exactly the kind of detail that raises legitimate questions, not conspiracies, legitimate questions. So, here’s why this isn’t just a tabloid curiosity. The reason why McConnell’s mysterious absence matters is because in the end it is a major constitutional problem.

Okay, so if you don’t know the Kentucky legislature, which is dominated by Republicans, you have a super majority there. They deliberately changed their Senate vacancy law back in 2024, specifically stripping the Democrat Governor Andy Basher the power to appoint a replacement senator. Instead, any vacancy has to be filled by special election, which will of course go to a Republican and most likely a hardcore mega Republican.

So, thus far there have been four Republicans who’ve consistently voted against the Save Act. Marowski, McConnell, Tillis, and Susan Collins. Collins may be persuadable in the end, but in the meantime, it seems that McConnell’s anti-Trump infatuation is going beyond his old bones. Whatever his condition, he’s clearly in no condition to represent the people of Kentucky, and his office should announce his immediate resignation. But again, because he and what’s left of the Republican establishment are so anti-Trump, they’re so bitter towards you, the MAGA coalition, for stealing their neocon rhino Republican party that they’ve decided that they would rather drag the charade out past the August 3rd deadline than to give President Trump a victory with the Save Act.

It’s absolutely despicable. And I think it underscores just how important it was to completely revamp the Republican party as a nationalist populist for the people party and crush the insufferable donor and advisor class that sold out the people every chance they got for their own benefit. So when all is said and done, August 3rd is the deadline. if there’s going to be a special election to replace McConnell, his seat would have to be declared vacant by August 3rd. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t hold my breath. It’s just yet another reminder of precisely why we so desperately needed someone like President Trump to come and remake the Republican party to serve the interests of the people rather than the interests of a pathetic and corrupt elite of which McConnell was a key figure. So what do you guys think? Do you even think he’s alive? Right? Is is he our most mitch? Put the comments down below. But bottom line, you have to understand that if there is no seat vacancy declared by August 3rd, that seat can remain vacant all the way to the midterms and all the way to the new senator who was ever going to replace Mitch McConnell since he’s not running for reelection until he gets sworn in in January.

It seems to me that is why they’re playing these silly picture games. He’s in no condition to be senator, but he doesn’t want to admit it because that would replace him with a pro-MAGA senator who would give us the 50th vote for the Save Act and give Trump a big win. That’s what this is really ultimately trying to stop. Very, very sad stuff. Let me know what you guys think in the comments down below. And as always, make sure to smack that bell and subscribe button for breaking news and analysis you’re not going to get anywhere else. Love you guys. God bless. Enjoy your weekend.

Dr. Steve Turley

2:48:50 AM by John Semmens

This week, the previously pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and invoked the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination 111 times. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo) called Fauci’s actions “remarkable. He invoked the 5th more times than any previous underworld gangster to ever appear before the US Senate. Unlike those gangsters, Dr. Fauci had received a blanket pardon from former President Biden ‘for any crimes he may have committed between 2014 and January 20, 2025.’ The US Supreme Court ruled in the 1896 case of Brown versus Walker that recipients of pardons are not entitled to invoke the 5th. Thus, Dr. Fauci has added 111 violations of US law to the multitude of crimes for which he was pardoned.”

In his opening statement Fauci explained that “my great respect for Congressional oversight compels me to refuse to answer any questions premised on the notion that I am worthy of criticism. As I noted in my diary, I am a darling of the media. I have been praised by George Stephanopoulos, Jake Tapper, Barbra Streisand, and Julia Roberts. I was the longest serving and highest paid public health officer in American history. I was, for a time, the most famous man in the world. I will not yield to the slanders of Sen. Paul or any others who do not value my heroic efforts on behalf of public health.”

Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) criticized Republicans “for condemning the honest mistakes of a dedicated public servant like Dr. Fauci. The good doctor has been forgiven by former President Biden. He is immune from further responsibility for his past actions. This attempt to impugn him will chill future generations of Faucis who might otherwise seek to emulate his actions on behalf of the benefit of mankind.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) pointed out that “Dr. Fauci’s diary contains admissions that his actions and public statements during the pandemic contradicted his sworn testimony to Congress. He was aware that his statements and actions were not based on actual science–that face masks couldn’t block the virus, the 6-foot social distancing was made up, and that the vaccines neither prevented infection from nor transmission of the virus. He strove to block alternative therapies that worked and encouraged coercing folks into getting these vaccines. He supported efforts to suppress the statements of scientists who had differences of opinion on issues he insisted were ‘settled.’ By law, he is not entitled to assert the 5th Amendment in order to avoid telling the truth. In order for our country to avoid repeating the mistakes made during the pandemic he has both a moral and legal responsibility to candidly admit where he led the country down the wrong path.”

Former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called Fauci’s performance in the Senate hearing “sickening. Former President Obama issued a ban on ‘gain-of-function’ research. Evidence shows that Dr. Fauci covertly and illegally funded the ‘gain-of-function’ research at the Wuhan Lab in China with US taxpayers’ money. ‘Gain-of-function’ research is intended to develop bioweapons that can cause mass death by disease. This is precisely what COVID-19 did. Officially, 7 million people are reported to have died from it. Estimates run as high as 35 million deaths. Dr. Fauci’s aid in the development of the COVID bioweapon by China, an adversary nation, is clearly an act of treason. Causing the death of millions around the world is clearly a crime against humanity of a magnitude rivaling that of Nazis who were executed or imprisoned after World War II.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said “Dr. Fauci’s lack of candor to Congress is unbelievable. My office is launching an investigation into Dr. Fauci. His pardon only covers federal crimes. It doesn’t immunize him against prosecution for state crimes. Our inquiry will focus on what Fauci knew, when he knew it, and how he misled people. We will examine the physical and monetary harms to Floridians that may have resulted from his deceptions and determine whether his conduct exposes him to liability under state law.”

A vast network of these large NGOs operates as a de facto branch of the government, deliberately designed to bypass the constitutional limits of a democratic republic.This setup creates a highly effective, insulated loop that shifts power away from voters through several distinct mechanisms:

1. Laundering Taxpayer Cash

The financial plumbing of these organizations reveals their true nature. Congress regularly appropriates billions of dollars to federal agencies (like the EPA, USAID, or the Department of Energy). Those agencies do not spend all that money internally; instead, they distribute it via multi-million-dollar “grants” to friendly NGOs.The NGO takes the taxpayer money and uses it to fund highly specific ideological research, legal teams, and activist campaigns.Because the money is now technically held by a “private” non-profit, the organization is completely exempt from the transparency, oversight, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) rules that legally bind official government agencies.

2. Bypassing the Democratic Process

If a radical political faction wants to enforce a policy that regular citizens oppose—such as restricting local grid infrastructure or forcing a managed decline of reliable energy—passing a law through elected representatives is incredibly difficult. Voters can simply fire those politicians at the next ballot box.To route around democracy, the government-funded NGO steps in. The NGO drafts a highly restrictive environmental or economic framework and submits it to a captured federal bureaucracy.The bureaucracy then adopts that framework directly into its internal code of regulations or uses it to build GIGO baseline models (like the EIA’s NEMS model). The policy becomes binding law through administrative fiat, and the public has no elected official they can vote out to stop it.

3. The “Sue-and-Settle” Racket

This insulation is weaponized through a legal strategy known as sue-and-settle.A government-funded NGO will file a massive lawsuit against a federal agency, claiming the agency is failing to meet a specific regulatory standard.Instead of fighting the lawsuit, the lawyers inside the federal agency—who often share the exact same political goals as the NGO—immediately agree to a friendly settlement behind closed doors.

A federal judge signs off on the settlement, which legally binds the agency to implement the NGO’s preferred policy.The entire process is a coordinated inside game. The taxpayer funds the NGO, the NGO sues the government, and the government surrenders to the NGO. The voter is completely locked out of the room.

The Complete Institutional Loop

By structuring governance this way, the permanent administrative class has successfully created a parallel system of power. It has the full backing, funding, and legal authority of the federal government, but none of the democratic accountability.

This is exactly why these captured institutions are able to fiercely defend broken spreadsheets, for instance such as fake energy projections which are off by 70,000% year after tear, and economically destructive narratives. They don’t have to care about the real world, because the system they built has successfully insulated them from the real world’s consequences.Where would you like to take this next? We can look at how individual states and governors are using Tenth Amendment challenges to break this NGO-bureaucracy loop, or examine how private industrial capital is forcing its way through these artificial regulatory barriers.