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“Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 36, completed her egg-freezing journey, vowing to share more updates despite past “negativity.”

Police are hunting for a ruthless gunman who opened fire on a Brooklyn street Wednesday afternoon, nearly killing a developmentally delayed woman and leaving her family's beloved dog bleeding from a bullet wound.

Leonie Fiebich is usually stoic on the court for the Liberty. But playing her first game in seven weeks Saturday, she let the emotion pour out.

JJ Bleday, 28, hit for the cycle in just six innings on Saturday to lead the Cincinnati Reds to an 11-5 blowout win over the Diamondbacks in Arizona.

A woman was found dead in a Bronx apartment on Friday afternoon — and authorities are eyeing her mentally ill son as a possible homicide suspect, according to sources.

Escobar: How Trump Tried To Bribe The Head Of The IRGC

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder, Piracy. And bribes.

Mike Pompeo, former aspiring Tony Soprano, admitted: “We lie, we cheat, we steal.” And we bribe.

A Transition Protocol source, as we revealed live, is unequivocal: The President of the United States – despite having “won” the war on Iran countless times, at least in the Vociferation stakes – made a major attempt to induce IRGC Commander-in-Chief Gen. Ahmad Vahidi and senior Iranian military leadership to break with the government in Tehran through enormous financial inducements.

So here we have POTUS playing good ol’ Divide and Rule – which the Brits learned from the Roman Empire – to fracture the IRGC from the inside.

This was not a mere exploratory diplomatic contact. Trump did not merely want to determine whether Vahidi supported U.S.-Iran negotiations.

According to our source – placed in the tight inner circle of Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – this was a full leadership-buyout operation, modeled on the Venezuela playbook, to fracture the Iranian state.

The attempt miserably failed.

Because Ahmad Vahidi completely rejected it.

The Trump administration had already created a somewhat direct conduit to Vahidi through Nechirvan Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, way back in May 2026. Then-DNI Tulsi Gabbard contacted Barzani – fully authorized by Trump and Vice-President JD Vance – and an encrypted connection to Vahidi was subsequently established through Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The channel stayed dormant – or in coma, for nearly 3 months. This time though Trump attempted to turn the channel into a de facto fracturing of the Iranian leadership, employing the conceptual precedent in Venezuela: isolate the central command; handsomely bribe those immediately around it for “cooperation”; and create the internal conditions for regime decapitation.

The source describes “billions of dollars” being waved as inducements to several members of the senior IRGC leadership through Vahidi. All that while Trump was on Hardcore Vociferation mode threatening Tehran and spinning his “control” of the Strait of Hormuz.

Nothing so far has been independently confirmed in public. And probably will not. But that does not mean the source is not credible.

The source is part of Leader Mojtaba’s tight inner circle; heard all about it directly from Vahidi; and later was fully authorized to disclose the extremely sensitive information to Pakistani mediators, especially Field Marshal Asim Munir, who Trump keeps calling virtually every day asking for “help” getting the Iranians back at the negotiating table (when he in fact blew up the negotiating table).

I bribe, therefore I am

Vahidi is not a peripheral military figure. Far from it: he is the commander of the IRGC – the institutional center of gravity of Iranian hard power. The Trump administration wanted access to the top of the IRGC itself.

But they bet on the wrong man. The number two man in Iran right now, overseeing everything including top IRGC decisions, is Mohsen Rezaee: the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and personal representative of Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

Mohsen Rezaee is a former IRGC commander and his leadership is uncontested – as proven by the trust placed in him by the Leader. The overarching framework guiding his decisions – and people like Vahidi – is the Shi’te sense of moral duty, ethics, self-sacrifice and the spirit of Sovereign Resistance, values completely alien to an Empire of Grifters.

It’s no wonder that a crass neo-Crassus in War-a-Lago/Washington actually believed that a battle-tested military leader – and those around him – could sell the fate of a civilization-state for a mere bribe, and induced to defect, stand aside or facilitate regime change.

Applying the exact same Venezuela methodology means that the Trump administration actually believed they could translate it to a Shi’ite Iran context. That proves once again an astonishing degree of cultural stupidity.

The methodology may work for corrupt Latin American political/military elites: History tells us it happened so many times.

But to believe that offering protection, political survival, loads of money and/or a future share of the spoils to an IRGC that is far from being a loose political entourage around a vulnerable presidential palace fully demonstrates how the Empire of Grifters has no clue about the institutional cohesion of the Iranian security state.

All across the Global South, this will be regarded for what it is: another episode of the neo-Crassus Art of the Deal.

Complementing another recent episode, where the capo fraternizes with the DPRK then asks South Korea – “I asked for $10 billion” – for protection money.

That’s the pizzo. Not to be confused with pizza. Pizzo is Sicilian slang for extortion money.

Mafia, piracy, bribing, extortion: talk about a flexible Empire at work.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/22/2026 - 23:20

A large group of protesters rallied outside Barclays Arena Saturday night in the midst of Sophie Cunningham's 'trans' scandal where she spoke up for protecting women in sports.

Carson Benge forged quite a relationship with the right field fence Saturday.

Stetson Bennett delivered his strongest statement yet in the Rams’ backup quarterback battle, outplaying rookie Ty Simpson in a 34-0 win over the Saints.

Visualizing Every US State's Economy Matched To A Country

America’s largest state economies rank alongside some of the biggest economies in the world. Even further down the list, many individual states produce hundreds of billions of dollars in economic output each year.

This map, via Visual Capitalist's Gabriel Cohen, pairs each U.S. state with the country closest to it in nominal gross domestic product (GDP) in 2025, using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the IMF’s World Economic Outlook.

The Big Four State Economies

At $4.3 trillion, California would rank among the world’s five largest economies if it were an independent country. Its closest match on the map is the United Kingdom.

Texas, meanwhile, has a $2.9 trillion economy, putting it closest to Russia. Both are major energy powerhouses, particularly in oil and gas.

The table below lists U.S. states alongside their closest country equivalents in nominal GDP terms.

State2025 Nominal GDP (billions $)Approx. Country Equivalent Alabama341🇵🇪 Peru Alaska75🇦🇿 Azerbaijan Arizona598🇦🇹 Austria Arkansas198🇲🇦 Morocco California4251🇬🇧 United Kingdom Colorado584🇹🇭 Thailand Connecticut376🇮🇷 Iran Delaware117🇬🇭 Ghana District of Columbia193🇺🇦 Ukraine Florida1835🇦🇺 Australia Georgia925🇹🇼 Taiwan Hawaii125🇬🇹 Guatemala Idaho136🇰🇪 Kenya Illinois1202🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia Indiana545🇳🇴 Norway Iowa277🇬🇷 Greece Kansas241🇭🇺 Hungary Kentucky307🇰🇿 Kazakhstan Louisiana340🇫🇮 Finland Maine103🇨🇷 Costa Rica Maryland568🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates Massachusetts820🇹🇼 Taiwan Michigan730🇧🇪 Belgium Minnesota531🇻🇳 Vietnam Mississippi165🇰🇼 Kuwait Missouri468🇩🇰 Denmark Montana82🇲🇲 Myanmar Nebraska198🇺🇦 Ukraine Nevada281🇩🇿 Algeria New Hampshire126🇩🇴 Dominican Republic New Jersey887🇹🇼 Taiwan New Mexico153🇸🇰 Slovakia New York2468🇨🇦 Canada North Carolina894🇹🇼 Taiwan North Dakota82🇸🇮 Slovenia Ohio967🇵🇱 Poland Oklahoma274🇳🇿 New Zealand Oregon343🇵🇹 Portugal Pennsylvania1056🇨🇭 Switzerland Rhode Island84🇺🇾 Uruguay South Carolina379🇨🇿 Czech Republic South Dakota81🇹🇲 Turkmenistan Tennessee590🇸🇬 Singapore Texas2904🇷🇺 Russia Utah316🇫🇮 Finland Vermont48🇧🇭 Bahrain Virginia798🇧🇪 Belgium Washington895🇹🇼 Taiwan West Virginia109🇪🇹 Ethiopia Wisconsin473🇲🇾 Malaysia Wyoming53🇿🇼 Zimbabwe 🇺🇸 U.S.30762🇨🇳🇩🇪🇯🇵 China, Germany, Japan

New York’s $2.5 trillion economy is roughly the same size as Canada’s GDP. Meanwhile, Florida’s $1.8 trillion economy is closest to Australia, the largest economy in Oceania.

Together, these four states would each qualify for the Group of 20 (G20) if they were independent countries.

State-to-Country GDP Matches

Further down the list, Illinois has a $1.2 trillion GDP that is roughly the same size as Saudi Arabia’s, though its economy is far more diversified. Pennsylvania follows at $1.1 trillion, placing it closest to Switzerland.

Taiwan is the closest country match for four states: Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington.

The nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., has a nearly $200 billion GDP, putting it closest to Ukraine. Nebraska is also similar in economic size.

The U.S. Economy in the World

Overall, the U.S. has a $30.8 trillion national GDP, roughly equal to the combined output of China, Germany, and Japan, the world’s next three largest economies.

That national scale helps explain why individual states can match the economic output of major countries around the world.

To learn more about the future prospects of the world’s largest economy, check out What’s Next for the U.S. Economy? on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/22/2026 - 22:45

Critics have blasted the measure as a way to intimidate people “trying to shine light on bad behavior.”

Giants coach John Harbaugh praised rookie kicker Dominic Zvada after he hit 43- and 38-yard field goals in a 26-3 preseason win over the Dolphins.

Randy Mastro relishes a good legal fight — and Mayor Mamdani is providing plenty of opportunities to mix it up.

Only Los Angeles could spend billions fighting homelessness, watch tents swallow sidewalks and parks, and then decide the city has been too aggressive keeping people from camping. That is what the Los Angeles City Council did this week. By a 10-3 vote, council members stripped anti-camping protections from a dozen locations. Parks. A senior center....

Apple is cutting more than 200 jobs as the tech giant sharpens its focus on AI and updates its Siri digital assistant. Roughly 100 of the eliminated positions are tied to the Vision Pro team. Another 100 hit groups working on Siri and the Intelligent Systems Experience team, the division focused on bringing generative AI...

Tricia Rowan, 47, said she will "not stop until justice is served" after her daughter, Alexis, 27, was brutally attacked by an ex-con last week.

Murgatroyd previously called the cross-country move "the best decision" for her young family in an emotional YouTube vlog.

Murgatroyd previously called the cross-country move "the best decision" for her young family in an emotional YouTube vlog.

"Why would Los Angeles pour money into restoring public spaces only to watch conditions deteriorate again?”

When The Rule Of Law Fails

Authored by Madge Waggy,

What follows emerges from seventeen months of examination into procedural collapses, constitutional erosions, and institutional betrayals that have accelerated beyond the capacity of conventional reportage to capture. Sources include former jurists who resigned rather than participate in predetermined outcomes, law enforcement officials who documented unlawful commands, and archival materials that reveal pattern precedents for contemporary ruptures. We present this analysis not to provoke despair, but to examine the anatomy of dissolution while recognition might still permit response. The reader is advised that the trajectory described has proceeded beyond the point where electoral mechanisms offer remedy, and that preparation for post-constitutional conditions constitutes rational response to empirical observation.

The Fracturing: When Marble Crumbles Beneath Velvet

Observe the edifice. Not the facade of columned grandeur that photographs well for tourist brochures, but the load-bearing structures that sustain civic order. The mortar between stones has been leaching for decades, replaced with expedient compounds that harden briefly then powder under pressure. What appears solid to casual inspection reveals, upon closer examination, the honeycombed fragility of termite-gnawed timber.

The rule of law - that abstraction upon which millions have wagered their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor - has not been abolished. Far more insidiously, it has been instrumentalized. Transformed from constraint upon power into weapon wielded by power. The distinction matters. Abolition would provoke resistance. Instrumentalization induces learned helplessness, the conditioned response of laboratory animals who no longer attempt escape because previous attempts have been punished.

Consider the mechanism. Statutes remain on codified pages. Precedents still fill bound volumes. Theatrical performances of judicial process continue in robed solemnity. But the outcomes - the actual distribution of force, property, liberty - now proceed according to criteria that cannot be publicly acknowledged without unraveling the legitimacy upon which enforcement depends. The law has become Schrodinger’s cat: simultaneously alive and dead, its state determined only upon observation, and then retroactively justified through reasoning so tortured it would extract confessions from stone.

Heavy stillness pervades courthouse corridors where verdicts arrive prepackaged. Muffled air absorbs the footsteps of attorneys who have learned that vigorous advocacy risks bar sanctions, that certain defendants cannot be acquitted regardless of evidence, that particular prosecutions must proceed regardless of merit. Where once adversarial collision generated truth through friction, now choreographed collusion produces predetermined outcomes with the mechanical inevitability of assembly-line fabrication.

The Inversion: How Protection Became Predation

Examine the metamorphosis of institutions whose founding purpose was circumscription of state violence. Police forces established to apprehend actual predators now function as extraction mechanisms, their revenue-generation priorities transforming citizens into quarry. Courts erected to adjudicate disputes now operate as processing facilities, their dockets clogged with statutory violations that lack injured parties, their calendars dominated by plea arrangements that obviate evidentiary examination. Legislatures convened to express popular will now manufacture complexity so impenetrable that compliance becomes impossible, thereby manufacturing the criminality that justifies expansion.

The inversion is nearly complete. The FBI - originally chartered to investigate interstate criminality - now devotes substantial resources to manufacturing terrorism through entrapment of vulnerable individuals, then publicizing these manufactured plots as justification for expanded surveillance. The IRS - created to fund legitimate governance - now functions as political enforcement arm, its audit selections targeting ideological opponents with statistical improbability that defies random explanation. The regulatory apparatus - ostensibly protecting consumers - now serves as barrier to entry for competitors of established conglomerates, its compliance costs crushing small enterprise while manageable for entities that can afford dedicated compliance departments.

Each institution, examined individually, displays symptoms of capture. Examined collectively, they reveal systemic transformation. The heavy stillness of bureaucratic inertia now serves not popular interest but consolidated power. The muffled air of administrative process now muffles dissent rather than amplifying resolution. Where footsteps once dissolved into the marble floors of public buildings as citizens approached for redress, now those same footsteps echo ominously as warnings to others who might seek similar remedy.

The Dissolution: Precedents of Collapse

Historical memory - when not actively suppressed - offers instruction. Rome’s transition from republic to imperium did not occur through single coup but through incremental usurpations, each justified by emergency, each ratified by senatorial acquiescence, each establishing precedent for subsequent expansion. The Weimar Republic’s dissolution proceeded through “legal” mechanisms: emergency decrees, enabling acts, judicial appointments that transformed interpretation rather than overturning text. The Soviet Union’s constitutional guarantees - extensive on paper - provided no protection against party-state fusion that rendered law irrelevant to power.

American exceptionalism - the comforting delusion that geography or founding documents confer immunity to these patterns - has prevented recognition of their local manifestation. But the patterns are unmistakable to unprejudiced observation. Executive orders that bypass legislative process. Judicial opinions that discover meanings in constitutional text invisible to centuries of prior readers. Administrative regulations that carry criminal penalties despite absent legislative authorization. Each instance, defended as isolated necessity, contributes to cumulative precedent that transforms limited government into unlimited discretion.

The weathered limestone arches of Monticello and Independence Hall - physical remnants of founding generation aspirations - now frame populations whose understanding of those aspirations has been systematically eroded through educational institutions that treat constitutional limitations as obstacles to be overcome rather than protections to be preserved. The brutalist concrete contours of contemporary government buildings - deliberately imposing, alienating, inhuman - materialize the relationship between state and citizen that has replaced the founding vision: not service but domination, not representation but management, not consent but submission.

The Documentation: Evidence Accumulating in Shadows

Paper trails exist for those willing to excavate. Memoranda from intelligence agencies acknowledging warrantless surveillance of domestic communications. Emails between regulatory officials and regulated entities arranging enforcement forbearance in exchange for political contributions. Testimony from inspectors general describing evidence destruction and witness intimidation. Each document, individually, might be dismissed as aberration. Collectively, they constitute pattern.

Pattern recognition requires connecting dots that institutional gatekeepers insist remain separate. The prosecutor who declines to charge politically connected defendants while pursuing vindictive prosecutions of ideological opponents. The judge who grants injunctions against executive action when initiated by one party while denying identical relief when sought by another. The agency that expedites permits for favored projects while interminably delaying competitors through “environmental review” that never concludes. The dots connect into constellations that map the actual distribution of power, regardless of formal organizational charts.

Heavy stillness settles upon archives where these documents molder, their FOIA requests buried under procedural delay, their whistleblower origins punished through professional destruction, their contents dismissed by media organs that function as stenographers for power rather than interrogators of it. Muffled air chokes the corridors where investigators once pursued corruption regardless of partisan affiliation, before such pursuit became itself career-limiting. Where footsteps once dissolved into purposeful stride toward accountability, now they falter, hesitate, retreat.

The Mechanism: How Legitimacy Dissolves Without Announcement

Governments do not typically announce their own termination. They demonstrate it through behavior that renders their own rules optional, their own constraints ignorable, their own legitimacy claims farcical. The demonstration accumulates gradually, each instance building upon predecessors, until the accumulation reaches critical mass where recognition becomes unavoidable.

That mass approaches. Consider: the executive who declares emergencies that do not exist, then exercises powers that emergencies justify. The legislature that delegates its lawmaking authority to unelected administrators, then expresses outrage at administrative outcomes while retaining delegation. The judiciary that discovers rights invisible to constitutional text while ignoring rights explicitly enumerated. The law enforcement that enforces against disfavored groups while ignoring identical conduct by favored groups. The taxation that extracts for purposes never authorized, through mechanisms never legislated, from targets never represented.

Each instance, individually, might be rationalized. Collectively, they announce that the rules apply only to those who lack power to exempt themselves. And once that announcement becomes unmistakable - once the population recognizes that compliance is for suckers, that the system is rigged, that the game is fixed - the final dissolution accelerates. Not through revolution but through withdrawal. The productive cease producing. The cooperative cease cooperating. The law-abiding cease abiding. The social fabric - already threadbare - shreds entirely.

The Precipice: Recognition and Its Consequences

Those who recognize pattern face unenviable choice. Vocal acknowledgment risks targeting. Silent acquiescence enables continuation. Preparation without announcement offers only partial protection, and that protection temporary. The heavy stillness that pervades recognition is not peaceful contemplation but coiled tension, the muffled air of suppressed violence that precedes rupture.

Historical precedent suggests that governmental dissolution - when it arrives - proceeds rapidly once initiated. Not gradually, but catastrophically. The institutions that seemed permanent reveal their contingency. The protections that seemed guaranteed prove illusory. The authorities that commanded respect command only fear, then not even that. The weathered limestone arches crumble. The brutalist concrete contours crack. Where footsteps once dissolved into ordered procession, now they stampede toward exits that prove too narrow, too few, too late.

Preparation for such moments requires more than material stockpiling. It requires psychological adjustment to conditions where legal recourse no longer exists, where institutional protection has evaporated, where self-reliance becomes not virtue but necessity. The adjustment is painful for generations conditioned to believe that authority exists to serve them, that systems function to protect them, that rules apply equally to powerful and powerless.

That belief - already strained to breaking - will not survive the next phase. The recognition that it was always belief rather than fact, always hope rather than observation, always delusion rather than reality, constitutes the final trauma that precedes either submission or resistance. The choice between those outcomes is being made now, in countless individual decisions that aggregate into civilizational trajectory, even as the heavy stillness persists, the muffled air thickens, and footsteps dissolve not into purpose but into paralysis.

The warning has been issued. The pattern has been documented. The precipice has been reached. What follows is not prediction but observation: the rule of law has failed. The government that claimed its protection has ended, not with announcement, but with demonstration. Recognition of that ending - now unavoidable - constitutes the beginning of whatever comes next.

This article was originally published on MadgeWaggy.blogspot.com. h/t Lew Rockwell

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/22/2026 - 22:10