Badlands News Brief
Obamas Resurface as the Establishment Hedges
The News Cycle is almost impossible to track these days. At least, to do so fully.
That’s where we come in.
In the Badlands News Brief, the Badlands Media team hand pick news items of interest from the previous days to give you an overview of the biggest goings-on relevant to the Truth Community with some Badlands flavoring to help wash it down.
But before we get onto the Brief, we want to introduce you to a new Sponsor of the Badlands Substack: Kimchi One, a fermented product by our friends at Brightcore.
Click the banner below to check out their exclusive offer to Badlanders.
Now, onto the news from Tuesday, August 20 …
Barack and Michelle Obama look to add a flavor of 2008 to Harris’s bid
Barack Obama and Kamala Harris first met 20 years ago, when she was the district attorney in San Francisco and he was running for the Senate from Illinois. In 2008, she knocked on doors for him in Iowa ahead of the caucuses that helped propel him to the presidency. On Tuesday night, he will return to his hometown of Chicago to deliver a speech at the Democratic National Convention that he hopes will do the same for her.
Obama arrives at this moment balancing his governing partnership with and affection for President Joe Biden and his friendship with Harris. Having helped engineer, with other party leaders, Biden’s departure from the 2024 campaign, Obama is no doubt determined to remain respectful of his vice president while pointing to a post-Biden future for his party and reviving the sense of hope that marked his 2008 campaign. — WAPO
Our Take:
and will undoubtedly have thoughts on the actual statements given by Barack and Michelle at Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention on the Rumble edition of the Brief, but, since we’re in the realm of editorializing, here, I’m going to do what I do best, and focus on the Narrative.The Obamas being back in the Central Narrative is not the win the establishment media apparatus seems to think it is, as the modern persuasion of the shrinking Democratic party doesn’t so much identify as Democrats, but a strange, chaotic mix of Marxists and disillusioned Centrists, with some legacy Dems left for good measure, whose votes were never going to be under threat by the MAGA agenda in any event.
Ostensibly, if you’re looking to drum up support for what seems to be positioned as an ultra new age progressive ticket with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, you want to distance yourself from the Old Guard, rather than relying on it to propel you further into the very establishment branding you’ve worked so hard to shed.
Of course, Harris is far less popular than any of the figures pumping her at the DNC, including the Obamas, no matter what this community thinks of them … but their standing has never been lower in the Collective American Mind, and stagnation is often the death of the Finite Player.
So, all that remains to be seen is … are the Obamas and Clintons truly rolling out the red carpet to endorse Kamala Harris ahead of an even more absurdist election steal than they effected in 2020?
Or are they prepping the mass psychological ground for an October surprise that everyone on both sides of the game board seems to be projecting awareness of?
The clock is ticking, the band is playing … and the deck chairs are being rearranged.
How long before this thing sinks, and what form will the iceberg take? —
Harris super PAC founder says public polls are too optimistic
The founder of the main outside spending group backing Kamala Harris' presidential bid says their own opinion polling is less "rosy" than public polls suggest and warned that Democrats face much closer races in key states.
Chauncey McLean, president of Future Forward, a super political action committee, or super PAC, that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to back Harris in the Nov. 5 election, spoke on Monday during an event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
"Our numbers are much less rosy than what you're seeing in the public," said McLean, who rarely talks publicly.
Harris enters the Democratic National Convention in Chicago riding a wave of public polls that show she has already reshaped a race that strongly favored Republican Donald Trump in the final weeks of President Joe Biden's candidacy. Harris is leading in a compilation of national polls by FiveThirtyEight 46.6% to 43.8% for Republican Donald Trump, and has pulled ahead in several public battleground state polls.
Future Forward has created a massive polling operation that created and tested some 500 digital and television ads for Biden and some 200 for Harris. They have talked to some 375,000 Americans in the weeks after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee on July 22.
McLean said the group has at least $250 million left to spend, planning a wave of advertising from digital to television between Labor Day on Sept. 2 and Election Day on Nov. 5. — Reuters
Our Take: A few days after Kamala Harris took over the campaign from Joe Biden, my friend Darren called me with his take on how Harris was resonating with black voters.
‘The honeymoon is over,’ he said, weeks ago, nailing it — and not just with black voters, but with all voters. Kamala is only viable with voters that haven’t heard her speak. Now even the Washington Post is criticizing Harris for being too inaccessible and scripted, and that means she’s having to speak. It’s going how you would expect.
She spoke on night one of the convention, and said ‘good evening’ an awkward number of times, interspersed with a softer variation of her trademark cackle. She dropped some word salad and then did a whole ‘Thank you and good night!’ closing, in the middle of the evening’s events, before heading into the crowd to watch the rest of the speeches. Strange stuff.
Polls are fake, obviously, but they provide important data points. A thin veneer of astroturfed ‘joy’ is covering desperation, panic, and a settling realization that Harris is going to lose. For the politics-as-usual crowd, it’s time to jump ship.
Within that framing, it makes sense that Super PAC leaders would begin to hedge on Harris. Big money donors are not terribly keen to throw good money after bad, and Harris is a bad investment. Super PAC leaders are going to prioritize their donor relationships over allegiance to an unviable candidate, and I expect to see them focusing hard on the down ballot races in the run up to November 5.
Make no mistake that Harris is an unviable candidate. To quote Tony Goldwyn, the actor whose fame ties to back his role as illegitimate President Fitz Grant in the smash TV show Scandal, Kamala was a great ‘opening act.’ —
Outgoing envoy to UN says body’s building ‘should be closed and wiped off the face of the earth’
Outgoing Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan says the United Nations building in New York is “unnecessary” and “should be closed and wiped off the face of the earth.”
In a snippet from an upcoming interview in Hebrew with i24News, Erdan also says: “I’m coming out with a feeling of satisfaction on one hand, of my battle and work here, but on the other hand with great distress and frustration with the fact that this building, which may look nice from the outside, is actually twisted and distorted.” — Times of Israel
Our Take: Perfection.
This is what 5D Chess looks like.
When I first started writing about the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) targeting the Israeli government and its officials, there was backlash and confusion among some of you, believing that I was unwittingly endorsing global government by celebrating its institutions.
Quite the opposite, actually.
As I have written before, the modern State of Israel is a creation of the UN, born out of the 1947 Partition of Palestine document. Since then, the UN has taken dramatic steps to protect Israel from all forms of accountability, denying any lawfare filed against them up until South Africa's complaint that was filed last November, and brought to trial this past February. This was a major indicator that something had shifted within the UN—outside forces had likely infiltrated it, or were otherwise influencing it in ways that had never before occurred.
Ultimately, I knew that these developments would not go unanswered by the ruthless cadre of violent men who control the State of Israel; Men who do not embrace the teachings of Jesus (mercy, forgiveness, and peace) and are quickly consumed by feelings of vengeance and scorn. That is the culture of the Israeli ruling elite, because that group came out of the Eastern European ghettos where the pressures of hardship, famine, and extreme poverty throughout the 18th and 19th centuries forged a wicked subculture that metastasized into violent organized crime, and that syndicate grew its power, belching forth such factions as the Bolsheviks of 1917, and later the Banderites—the Ukrainian Nazi organization led by Stepan Bandera, whose taste for unprovoked violence against civilians was too extreme for the German Third Reich. (The Banderites are now known as the Azov Battalion; they are the exact same group.)
This extreme violence was exported to Palestine in the 1930's, where it reigned for decades. And while the subculture did seem to subside over the decades, it did succeed in fomenting a counterpart on the Arab side (Islamic terrorism), and was rejuvenated in 1989, when the Soviet Union began to collapse, and the [Jewish] Ukrainian Mafia began emigrating into Israel—known as the "Refuseniks"—leading to a gangland war with the Israeli authorities, as the Mafia exerted its influence onto Israeli society.
That influence campaign seemed to achieve its major objective with the merger of the Refusenik's political party with the Likud Party in 2003, aided by American-Israeli Ron Dermer's close relationship with Bibi Netanyahu. (Dermer had helped the Refuseniks first form their political party and run for office in 1995.)
So now you have a cartel-controlled government with a history of violence, operating with complete geopolitical impunity thanks to its longstanding relationship with UN leadership, as well as its significant political leverage over Congress, thanks to its extensive network of lobbying groups such as AIPAC.
My guess is the plan was to use UN Peacekeeping Troops (along with NATO) in the Middle East, in the forthcoming World War against Iran and her eastern allies.
With that all in mind, let's watch this video rant by Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan:
"...there is no place more corrupt and morally twisted than the UN, and we all must unite to spread this message worldwide, demanding the closure and dismantling of this organization..."
Do you see?
White hats have taken the vengeful nature of the Eastern European gangsters who rule Tel Aviv, and weaponized it against their globalist brethren in New York and Geneva. Israel can't start WW3 without an army, and now the IDF has been depleted thanks to the Gaza adventure, NATO is tied up in Ukraine, UN/EU troops have been getting routed across Africa by the Wagner Group, and national governments across the world have soured on the idea of helping Israel in any way at all.
Simply put, the globalists have no army they can field in the Middle East. World War 3 will be postponed, indefinitely. And the UN may soon be a failed relic of the past, as the globalist oligarchy directs the remainder of its vengeful fury inward at its own corrupt institutions.
5D Chess like you read about. —
RFK Jr. campaign 'looking at' joining forces with Trump, running mate Shanahan says
The independent presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering abandoning his quest for the White House to "join forces" with Republican nominee Donald Trump, Kennedy's running mate Nicole Shanahan says in a new interview.
Shanahan said the campaign is also considering remaining in the contest to try to win more than 5% of the popular vote and "establish ourselves" as a third-party alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties, and build on that ballot access for the 2028 election.
Shanahan's comment came as Vice President Kamala Harris is set to accept the Democratic presidential nomination in Chicago later this week. — CNBC
Our Take: There are a few layers to this Narrative Deployment, and after we get a bit of the low-hanging fruit out of the way, I think it’s all smooth sailing where it concerns the MAGA and America First movements, and of course, Donald Trump’s campaign.
For starters, RFK Jr’s campaign is borderline meaningless in the larger context of the 2024 election, especially where it concerns the Trump campaign; that said, what little impact it has had from a polling or even projected voting perspective has benefited Trump. VERY few people who have ever cast a vote for Donald Trump are going to cast one for Kennedy … but MANY disillusioned and disaffected liberal voters absolutely would.
It’s difficult to know if Kennedy has been trying to act as a pied piper for the establishment or for patriots, but I’ve been saying for over a year that his presence in the narrative is only helping Trump, while continuing to cast the current Dem party as establishment extremists … which isn’t actually a contradiction these days.
I do think Kennedy will end up working with the Trump Admin … but, unlike some, I do not believe these negotiations are actually playing out live in the media space; I believe whatever deals needed to be made have been made. The rest is a matter of timing, and awakening.
As for awakening … I also do NOT believe it’s a coincidence that we have a Trump and a Kennedy battling the establishment in the public narrative on the eve of an administration that promises disclosure above all else. —
JD Vance visits Kenosha, emphasizes crime, safety efforts
Vance's stop at the Kenosha County Courthouse marked his fourth visit to the battleground state as the vice presidential nominee.
In addition to touting the Trump campaign's support for law enforcement, part of Vance's remarks criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for her previous praise for "Defund the Police" efforts in 2020.
"Kamala Harris is going around and asking people to be their president of the United States, but she won't answer a single question. She won't interact with the American people unless there’s a teleprompter standing between them and her," he said.
Vance also pointed out protests and unrest that happened in Kenosha that year, while Trump was president, after the police shooting of Jacob Blake. — FOX News
And …
President Trump Delivers Remarks on Crime & Safety
Our Take: The Trump-Vance campaign went hard on crime in a pair of campaign stops Tuesday.
VP candidate JD Vance held a rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin, casually delivering remarks before taking questions from the media. He prioritized local reporters in the Badger State, before exchanging barbs with the Washington Post and other national outlets. President Trump was in Michigan, speaking in front of law enforcement officers and equipment for nearly an hour.
Both events were natural and relatively informal, unscripted and fact-based. Both sets of remarks focused on the reality of rising crime during the Harris-Biden Administration.
Vance focused on a child’s right to public safety, a constitutionally dubious assertion but a strong emotional plea. Trump focused on systemic challenges for public safety, such as fully funding and outfitting local law enforcement’s ability to keep the peace. He also touched on business crime and its impact on American workers.
The strongest moment of 45’s remarks was the excruciating detail he shared about migrant crime, including rapists and child predators, followed by his specific plans to turn this heinous reality around. Mass deportation and a renewed focus on public safety, at the most local levels, were features of Trump’s detailed policy plans.
While democrats in Chicago angrily tell us how joyful and future-focused they are, Trump and Vance are resonating with the experiences and concerns of Americans — and they’re promising authentic, common sense solutions to make America great again.
Truth is always more powerful than gaslighting.
MAGA. —
Ukraine passes law to ban ‘pro-Kremlin’ orthodox church
The Ukrainian parliament has approved legislation banning religious organisations with ties to Russia, paving the way for Kyiv to end the activities of the Moscow-linked orthodox church on its soil.
The Verkhovna Rada approved the law on Tuesday in its second and final reading, with 265 lawmakers voting in its favour and 29 against, according to MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak.
Ukrainian officials have long argued that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate operates as an arm of the Russian Orthodox Church to undermine Ukraine and that it is complicit in Russia’s full-scale war.
In particular, Ukrainian officials accuse the UOC-MP of working closely with Russia’s powerful security service, the FSB.
The bill needs to be signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to become law, but he signalled in a meeting with Ukrainian religious leaders on Saturday that he would not hesitate to do so.
Zelenskyy said Russia used the church to suppress the independence of other states and to limit the freedoms of their citizens. “Therefore, it is our common duty to guarantee Ukrainian spiritual independence,” he said. — Financial Times
Our Take: So I think it is important to educate everybody on certain matters, as they come up. Because your government and the corporate media have no interest in doing so.
The conflict in Ukraine is a spiritual battle, as President Putin has said. It is, at least in part, a religious war.
We have discussed the emerging Jewish Supremacy movement in the radical factions of Israel, and how these factions do not embrace a Biblical (Torah) doctrine of Judaism, but a far more recently conceived "Mystical" doctrine of Judaism (Kabbalah), which emerged in Poland and Ukraine in the 18th century.
During this time, there were many figures who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. One was Sabbatai Zevi in the year 1666; another was one of Zevi's followers, Jacob Frank, who claimed to be his reincarnation (and therefore, the Messiah) in the 1750's. Though they were not contemporaries, and never met, Zevi and Frank together amassed a huge following that presented challenges to both the Jewish Establishment as well as the emerging sect of Mystical Kabbalists in Eastern Europe.
One of these Kabbalists who opposed Jacob Frank was Israel ben Eliezer, recognized as the father of Hasidic Judaism, who became known as Baal Shem Tov ("good Master of the Name"), better known by the acronym "BeShT." Besht is described as a "shaman"—a mystic healer—who claimed to have a "direct connection to the divine," and could imbue decorative pieces of paper with encantations written on them (called "amulets") that, when read over the body of a sick person, would heal them with divine magic. These mystic leaders distinguished themselves from traditional rabbis by referring to themselves as "rebbe."
While Besht never claimed to be the Messiah, his great-grandson did. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov lived from 1772 until 1810 in the Pale of Settlement. He was known for his parables, which were taken from well-known Eastern European folk stories and deeply infused with Kabbalist (mystic) imagery. Nachman is best known for connecting Kabbalah with the Torah, which is how this mystical art of sorcery (which comes from central Asia—the Turkmen) became connected to the Biblical stories of the ancient Israelites. And all of this happened after the American Revolution.
Nachman died in Uman, Ukraine in 1810, and his gravesite is now considered a holy site. Throughout his life, he told his followers that the most important thing they could ever do was to spend Rosh Hoshanah—the Jewish New Year—in his physical presence. (His teachings led to his exile from his home in Breslov by his fellow Jews.) While he taught his followers that they should only pray to God, for a time he did claim to be the Messiah. (He was said to have intense mood swings, and is believed to have had severe chronic depression and was probably bipolar.) Because of this, tens of thousands of Israeli citizens make the "pilgrimmage" from the Holy Land to his gravesite in Ukraine—a practice that has caused many problems between the two governments, given the current conflict with Russia.
What's funny is that the current leader of this specific sect—the Breslov Hasidic—is a rebbe in Israel named Eliezer Berland who also claims to be the Messiah, however he has been convicted of several crimes, including raping many women. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail for rape, and later in June 2021, sentenced to another 18 months for fraud.
Berland was then arrested (along with others) for his connection to two murders in the 1980's and 1990's that Israeli authorities claim were part of a occult ritual where the victims were lured to a specific location by Berland's followers, and then killed.
"Another suspect is reportedly the son of a former senior government minister."
"Police have previously said that some of those arrested were questioned over allegations of kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy to commit a crime. Not all are suspected of direct involvement in the killings."
Back in September 2022, after Berland was released from one prison sentence, but awaiting trial on newer charges, Israel and Ukraine had a diplomatic dispute, when Israel allowed Berland to leave the country to make the pilgrimage to the gravesite in Uman for Rosh Hoshanah. However, Ukrainian authorities turned him away at the border.
So my question is, why is the US government participating in this stuff? Why are we supporting this new-age religion that doesn't seem to be at all associated with Biblical Judaism, and instead is based on some sort of occult magic sorcery? I don't care if people want to practice that stuff, but why are Christians being fooled into supporting it? —
Biden staying at $37M ranch of donor ‘friend’ whose links to prez drew ethics concerns
President Biden is spending a five-day vacation with his family at the $37 million estate of a billionaire donor whose appointment by Biden to a federal advisory board drew ethics concerns — with the White House describing the businessman as a “friend,” indicating he will stay for free.
Biden, 81, traveled to the Santa Ynez, Calif., ranch of Joe Kiani, CEO of medical technology company Masimo, after delivering an emotional, late-night farewell speech Monday at the Democratic National Convention.
Kiani, 59, poured cash into supporting Biden’s political campaigns and family foundation before scoring an appointment in September 2021 to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which advises the executive branch on policy areas involving Kiani’s business. — NY Post
Our Take: On Monday night, I told Alpha that we wouldn’t see Biden again after his farewell speech. All signs point to the party distancing from Joe, hoping people will forget that Harris is actually, currently, in power.
Yesterday, I learned that, rather than attending the remainder of the convention, Biden went on vacation. Weird he didn’t just go back to running the country, right?
Nice knowing you, scrotus. —
BONUS ITEMS
Judge rejects latest attempt by Hunter Biden to dismiss tax-related charges
A federal judge on Monday rejected the latest attempt by President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden to dismiss several tax-related charges he faces in Los Angeles, all but ensuring that the case will go to trial as scheduled early next month.
In July, attorneys for Hunter Biden filed a pair of motions seeking to dismiss his cases in both California and Delaware, citing a decision by a federal judge in Florida to dismiss the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump.
But on Monday, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, the Los Angeles-based federal judge overseeing the tax case, denied that bid, concluding in a seven-page ruling that his attorneys' arguments failed on both procedural and factual grounds. — ABC News
Russia offers safe haven for people trying to escape Western liberal ideals
Moscow will provide assistance to any foreigners who want to escape the neoliberal ideals being put forward in their countries and move to Russia, where traditional values reign supreme, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.
Under the document, such foreign nationals will have the right to apply for temporary residence in Russia "outside the quota approved by the Russian government and without providing documents confirming their knowledge of the Russian language, Russian history and basic laws."
Applications may be based on the rejection of their countries’ policies "aimed at imposing destructive neoliberal ideals on people, which run counter to traditional Russian spiritual and moral values."
The values are listed in the foundations of Russia’s state policy in this field, while the Russian government is expected to compile a list of countries imposing unhealthy attitudes on their citizens. The Foreign Ministry has been instructed to start issuing three-month visas to such applicants as early as in September. — TASS
We hope you enjoyed this brief look back at the major news items you might have missed in this ever-escalating and ever-accelerating news cycle as the Information War continues to rage on around us.
As always, if you have any thoughts on these news items or the MANY others swirling in the digital ether, drop into the comments below to share them with your fellow Badlanders.
Badlands Media will always put out our content for free, but you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Help our collective of citizen journalists take back the narrative from the MSM. We are the news now.
WOW what a great day of Takes. Ashe, BB and GBPH y'all really out did yourselves today.
The DNC shit show is such a perfect backdrop to the absurdity of all the Uniparty horseshit. One of the best encapsulations of the DNC shitshow was from Chris Paul on his podcast from yesterday referring to "Vasectomy Taco Trucks" outside the hall, really made me laugh, but also paints a perfectly absurd picture.
Could not pick out any one comment today you were all hitting on all cylinders.
Keep up the great work.
God Wins!
God Bless!!!
I keep saying what's coming has NEVER happened before so makiing predictions based on history are futile is completely being proven in our current Presidential administration circus. If anyone thinks they can predict this November my hat is off to you. God took charge in 2016 and he's been directing things since. Watching the Dems slowly ignite into flames as they crash is immensely satisfying. It's GAME OVER for the DS the sheep just need to be shown. These wins in the news give me lots to share to help that process!