Stacks farmstead

This is so cool to see they’ve been watching their dad so long that he’s able to do it himself already. Dad and mom are doing a great job. God bless the family👏

Smoke was reported coming from multiple manholes in the Foggy Bottom area as a power surge and outages affected more than 1,000 Pepco customers Monday. wjla.com/news/local/power-ou…

Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer. Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war. To that end, he’s applied maximum pressure to his closest allies in the administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper. Both oppose a negotiated settlement to the war they’ve so grievously mismanaged; both are pushing to restart major combat operations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe are also following Netanyahu’s lead, as are leaders of the Democratic Party. In a recent meeting on the subject, former president Barack Obama said he opposes the current Iran peace deal being drafted in Doha. The rest of America’s longtime allies in the Middle East are terrified by the prospect of more war. On September 27th, Netanyahu flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to enlist the UAE in his lobbying effort for a final attack on Iran. The Emiratis refused. After eight months of conflict, Gulf economies are teetering. So are global energy and fertilizer markets. They won’t recover soon. Globally, there are a total of about 850 supertankers used to transport oil from producers to the rest of the world. In October alone, 11 of them were badly damaged in Hormuz. At this pace, a global depression is imminent. A nuclear strike would radically accelerate the destruction. Fallout from a ground explosion at Pickax Mountain would contaminate the Persian Gulf, poisoning the water supply for 100 million people. And those are just some of the immediate consequences for the region. The rest of the world is every bit as exposed. No country other than the United States has ever used a nuclear weapon in war. Some would like to. An American nuclear attack on Iran would set a new precedent. The Russians have already told at least two other governments that an American nuclear strike on Iran would free them to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Pakistan and India would be tempted to do the same against each other, as would North Korea against Seoul. After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final. We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months. Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called “battlefield nukes” easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it. Close observers say Trump is likely to decide by next weekend whether or not to use nuclear weapons. That would be November 7, six days from now. To his credit, he’s hesitating. At the moment, Trump is listening to his vice president, JD Vance, and to his envoy and friend Steve Witkoff, both of whom argue a deal with Iran can be made. They’re right, though it won’t be simple. The Iranians are famously frustrating to negotiate with under any circumstances, and elements of that government have become more radical since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family were killed in February. After decades of isolation, even relatively moderate Iranian leaders seem confused by how decisions are made in the West. (There is a widespread belief in Tehran, for example, that the United States government controls Israel.) But overall, people who have spoken to decision-makers in Iran say there is consensus there that more war is bad for everyone and a deal is worth making. One group that hasn’t been consulted so far is the global population — the hundreds of millions of people who will be killed along with their children if Trump is pushed by Netanyahu into launching a nuclear strike next week. Now would be the time for them to speak up.

BREAKING: Pentagon investigating a suspected cyberattack after freezers at 6 U.S. military bases mysteriously malfunctioned, spoiling large quantities of food. —Reuters

🚨 Scott Bessent Just Warned The Fed Of An Energy Supply Shock: This Is A Really Terrifying Warning For The Markets U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned of an energy supply shock and urged the Federal Reserve to keep an “open mind” on interest rates. That warning comes at an extraordinarily dangerous moment for the global financial system. U.S. Debt has reached $40 Trillion with Treasury yields being at record highs. Oil is elevated above $100 despite reassurances that oil is flowing through strait of Hormuz to pre-war levels. And the Federal Reserve faces an increasingly uncomfortable choice. Fight inflation and risk crushing the economy OR tolerate inflation and risk losing control of the bond market. America is on course to spend more than $1 TRILLION annually in interest payments… just servicing its debt. READ THAT NUMBER AGAIN. Every 25bps hike by the Fed increases interest expense by almost a $100 Billion. That means refinancing pressure is a serious vulnerability. Japan could become the trigger for a global liquidity shock. BoJ and Finance Minister have warned that they will not hold back any longer from protecting their own economic interests after Scott Bessent held them from liquidating their $1.4 Trillion in U.S. Treasury holdings. He even went on to expand Fed’s FIMA facility to Japan, dump dollars and euros to prop up the yen. A liquidation from BoJ could literally collapse the debt market through the yen carry trade unwinding. Japan’s @yutokanzakireal warned that the “allies”, which is the U.S., is finding a scapegoat like AI, cyberattacks or oil crisis to collapse the current economic order.: SCOTT BESSENT JUST CONFIRMED IT‼️ All financial crises are engineered by the central banks, IMF, BIS and G-SIBs. They’re planning something far bigger this time because the condition is worse, not better.

Bill Gates predicts a massive number of people will reject AI and choose to "live like the Amish."