🚨🚨DEVELOPING: Multiple sources tell the Maine Wire that an RCV thumb drive for Biddeford is missing. We've heard reports that Bath is missing as well, and Bowdoinham ballots need to be re-scanned. The election was a week ago, and we still don't have results for several races due to the RCV tally process.

Here is what I think happened on the Iran misadventure: 1) the proponents of regime change hoped and prayed that murdering the Ayatollah and IRGC leadership would result in a domestic uprising. But they’re pretty smart - and knew this was at best 50/50; 2) they thought that once the USA was knee deep in this business - they could drive Trump into a full blown war to effect ‘regime change.’ Boots on the ground. And they thought the American population would puppy-dog after them. This was deeply cynical - they thought they could manipulate public opinion into a war of choice, slow-walk them into something that no one wanted; 3) the American people are totally fatigued with Middle East nonsense - they want nothing to do with sandbox feuds over there. The war proponents underestimated the extent of opposition - and really don’t even care what people think, because they are monomaniacal about this; 4) no effort to sell this ‘war’ was even made. That actually shows that someone in the administration was using his brain, because it wasn’t a sale you could close. But that also meant that you couldn’t maintain this for long. The Bush administration sold us the Iraq war for the better part of a year - with lies and misinformation - but they at least thought public opinion mattered. The Trump administration made no effort, probably because they knew it was impossible; 5) for whatever reason Trump decided to proceed with a war that could only succeed if it was over in a couple weeks. It was a mistake, as was withdrawing from the Obama treaty - even if that wasn’t a good treaty. Because if you cannot gain American public opinion for a war, you cannot sustain it for long. And that means you cannot win the war if your enemy is prepared to hunker down and take punishment and wait you out; 6) I think all of this was predictable. You cannot engage in colonial style warfare, as though the USA were the sole superpower, if you cannot generate domestic support. That is the point people in the Trump administration should have known - and almost certainly did know, but rolled the dice anyway; 7) the upshot IMO is that the USA should only project power in its own hemisphere, and even that modestly. It should seek to reform domestically to be a stable republic - and not try so hard to force everyone into its mould. There is a lot to like about the USA - and making this place better, and showing it to the world, is better diplomacy than killing people in sneak attacks.

My blood just ran cold. I told NO ONE in the media about Graham’s violence until the New York Times came to my home in April. I was never GOING to tell anyone. But HE knew what he had done. And now we know HE told people 7 months before I ever said a word. Because he knows what he did. Thank you, Nick, for helping me prove that Graham was worried I would tell the world what he’d done to me.

The revelations six years later are pouring out so quickly that it is impossible to keep up much less mentally process all this: * The Director of National Intelligence has documented 120 US-funded/owned biolabs in 30 countries many of which are manufacturing and manipulating infectious diseases. * Senator Rand Paul's committee has released the receipts concerning US funding/backing of the manufactured SARS-CoV-2 virus/vaccine as part of this program. * Senator Johnson has produced definitive evidence that US public health agencies knew of the grave dangers of the shot to everyone but said nothing. * Many officials are privately admitting/proving that the whole point of lockdowns was to preserve population immunity for the shot and block other avenues toward wellness. * Hardly any of this makes the national news and one wonders if the public mind has any awareness at all.

Europeans discovering America is some of the best content of the internet right now:

Here’s what one Signal message uncovered. I messaged a group admin asking how my family in NJ could help the Delaney Hall protesters. Within minutes she sent me a supply list and a Venmo donation link. The supply list wasn’t water bottles. It was P100 respirators (tear gas grade), military-spec impact goggles, welding gloves for picking up hot tear gas canisters, helmets, body armor, and Sudecon chemical decontamination wipes. That’s a military/law enforcement product most people have never heard of. The Venmo link: @cosechanj. That account belongs to Jenny Garcia. She’s the main organizer of the Delaney Hall protests. Quoted in the American Prospect, Newsweek, and TIME. Listed as the official press contact. She is not a volunteer. She is a professional organizer. Venmo feeds are public. I pulled hers. Payments labeled “Commissary” (money for detained immigrants to buy food inside the facility). “Commissary / phone accounts fund” (keeping detainees’ phones active). “DSA meeting” (Democratic Socialists of America). “Mutual aid.” “F ICE.” Same account. Uber rides. Cumbia dance classes. A cafe called Pika’s Fika. Protest donations and personal spending. One feed. No separation. So who pays Jenny Garcia? She holds three titles at three organizations. Detention Watch Network. DC-based. $7.2 million in assets. Ford Foundation funded. AFSC. Classified as a church. No public donors. Tides Foundation gave them $221K. Cosecha NJ. The @cosechanj Venmo name. Files two 990s. Reports $0 in salaries. Every year. Every officer. Nobody gets paid. Foundation money pays Garcia through DWN and AFSC. She organizes under Cosecha’s name. Cosecha claims to pay nobody. More coming.

@RandPaul DOCS: hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/… "SARS-CoV-2 is an American-created recombinant bat vaccine, or its precursor virus. It was created by an EcoHealth Alliance program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)."

🚨I just got off the phone with a former Iraqi Sahwa commander who served with the Desert Brigade from its founding in 2005 until 2010. During that time, he frequently operated alongside Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines in Ramadi, the capital of Al Anbar Province in western Iraq. He shared some disturbing details about a Marine named Graham Planter. According to the commander, there was a recurring pattern involving their interpreter, who would arrange visits to a local woman running a prostitution house. She had several underage daughters. Planter and a couple of other Marines would go to the house, often setting up an observation point with their Iraqi counterparts. The story took a darker turn when he described how it started. During what was supposed to be a routine raid on the home, they discovered it wasn’t a terrorist hideout — it was a brothel operated by a single mother who had lost her husband. After that first encounter, the visits became regular. Two or three Marines including the interpreter would disappear inside the house for an hour, sometimes up to an hour and a half. The Iraqi Sahwa fighters were always positioned outside, securing the area between the roof and the front gate. They were never allowed inside. The commander was emphatic. He said he was 110% certain that Graham Planter and one or two others were paying for sex with both the mother and her underage daughters.

Anddd THIS is why men DO NOT and SHOULD NOT go to therapy. The prejudice is palpable. What do you think?