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US Embassy Offers Large Cash Sums For Groups In Lebanon To Promote America's Image

Via The Libertarian Institute

The US Embassy in Lebanon announced that the State Department is offering grants of up to $250,000 to groups that help promote American propaganda. 

"The US Embassy in Beirut is opening a new Notice of Funding Opportunity for 2026," a statement published this week explained. "We’re looking for partners to implement programs that strengthen ties between the US and Lebanon, with a focus on highlighting US-led peace and stabilization efforts, and advancing digital literacy to help people identify and push back on false, adversarial narratives."

American Embassy in Beirut.

The State Department website says the program is expected to award $500,000 to at least two groups to promote US propaganda in Lebanon.

It adds that the program’s goal is to “strengthen local public understanding of US-led peace and stabilization efforts, and its role as a partner committed to security, economic opportunity, and responsible regional leadership.”

Washington is attempting to broker a peace agreement between Tel Aviv and Beirut. However, Israel is at war with Hezbollah, a non-state military that operates outside of the control of the Lebanese government. 

While Beirut and Tel Aviv inked a deal last month, Hezbollah rejected the agreement because it allowed the IDF to occupy Lebanon until the militia is dismantled. 

According to some of the latest from The Associated Press:

After two days of U.S.-mediated talks in Rome, Lebanon and Israel took steps toward implementing “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon where Israeli forces would withdraw and turn over control to the Lebanese army, the U.S. State Department said Wednesday.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began when the Lebanese militant group fired rockets into Israel days after Israel and the U.S. launched their war on Iran on Feb. 28. Israel invaded Lebanon and has since occupied a large swathe of the country’s south. Hezbollah has been vehemently opposed to the direct Lebanon-Israel talks.

The attempt to negotiate a peace agreement between Tel Aviv and Beirut is making it more difficult for President Donald Trump to end the war against Iran.

🇮🇱🇱🇧 Reports claim the Israeli army is actively paving roads and modifying routes inside the occupied town of Odeisseh, Lebanon

That's despite an agreement with the Lebanese Government where they promise to pull out of Lebanon, eventually...

Source: BintJbeilNews/Writer: Samuel pic.twitter.com/u6R8FgLk1e

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 17, 2026

Iran has linked any ceasefire and peace agreement with Israel ending its war against Lebanon - but Israel has rejected this effort to link the two conflict threatres. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/17/2026 - 17:00

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The Maine Democratic Senate Debate To Replace Platner Was - Quite Something

The field of eight candidates was split into two groups of four, running the top-tier candidates first and dishing the rest out for a second round. By the time it wrapped, these eight took turns explaining why they, specifically, are the ones who can finally unseat an incumbent who has outlasted six presidential administrations, and ended up making Graham Platner look pretty good in the process.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows participated in the first segment. She previously challenged Collins for this same Senate seat in 2014 and lost by 37 points. She is also widely known for trying to remove Trump from the Republican primary ballot in 2024 by invoking the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause, which was shot down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bellows found a new way to look unprepared on stage Thursday night, as she was unable to answer simple questions about her own policy positions.

MODERATOR: "What qualifications do you have to serve in the U.S. Senate?"

Maine Democrat Ashley Webb: "I'm a songwriter and I write my own books." pic.twitter.com/csMIFkmt4Q

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 17, 2026

Asked about the military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, she attacked Collins directly, "What Susan Collins has failed to stop is a completely unstable foreign policy," she said.

Moderator Phil Hirschkorn was forced to point out the inconvenient fact that Collins voted for a war powers resolution limiting Trump's options in Venezuela back in January.

Bellows had nothing. "Forgive me," she said. "A week ago, I was on vacation on a river on the Kennebec, and I've been running for governor for a long time."

She added, "When I need to know the facts, I will," she added. "I'll do my homework."

The most amusing candidate was Ashley Webb, a trans-identifying man whose qualifications for the United States Senate are, objectively, dubious. "I ran for office several times, didn't win, but I did run. And then I'm a songwriter, and then I write my own books, and then I suppose my transparency," Webb said. "I wouldn't lie to the people and I wouldn't deceive the people like we're being deceived right now."

Webb created a viral moment by mistakenly referring to "pork bellying" instead of "pork barreling," the practice of allocating federal funds for local projects.

Checking in on the Maine Senate Debate: “I believe they called it pork bellying by cutting out the pork belly from all the bills, sure that would save a lot of money as well…” pic.twitter.com/Gv66Ks43rh

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 17, 2026

Another clip of Webb that has gone viral is him involves his position on transgender bathroom policy. "With the trans community, we're being dehumanized, they say that we want to hurt people. I don't want to hurt anybody. I just want to use the bathroom and if they want me to use the men's room, I will. But I don't want to be assaulted," he said.

Nobody on either panel closed the sale, and left-leaning media outlets couldn't deny it.

"The debate laid bare the reality of how difficult replacing Platner and mounting a serious challenge against Collins will be," CNN reported. "None of the candidates in Thursday night's debate could replicate the political skills that allowed Platner to emerge as a viral sensation, elbow a two-term governor out of the race and poll neck-and-neck with Collins before he ended his campaign after a woman accused him of rape - allegations he has denied. Shah's delivery was one-note and Bellows' was halting. Wood often turned to his notes. Jackson frequently cleared his throat and changed directions mid-sentence."

The candidates on stage Thursday were unprepared, uninspiring, and exactly the kind of opposition Susan Collins should be thanking her lucky stars for. Eight Democrats took the stage looking for a breakout moment and what voters got was more of a blooper reel instead.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/17/2026 - 16:40

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After Trump's 'Election Cyber-F**kery' Speech, "The Game Is Gonna Get Rough Now"...

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“. . . the Democrat Party. . . are morally bankrupt nincompoops who have been beaten by the establishment like the rented mules they are. “

- Kurt Schlichter on X

Strange to relate, in last night’s speech to the nation on election chicanery, President Trump managed to both overwhelm and underwhelm public expectation.

He touched on voting machine shenanigans, registration skullduggery, cyber-fuckery, labor union toolery, ballot fraud, and especially China meddling.

Internal CIA / FBI docs at the time said that China’s policy around the 2020 US election was to “leverage all domestic and foreign elements” opposed to the President to prevent his re-election. The Intel bunch never sent that memo to the White House. They were too busy pushing fake Russia meddling, fake impeachment, and a fake Covid-19 pandemic. Then they declared the 2020 was “the most secure election in history.”

As of yesterday, the President de-classified many thousands of Intel agency documents for the public (and news media) to peruse.

And naturally, the major cable news networks (except Fox) declined to broadcast the speech.

As of Friday morning, The New York Times leads the offensive to disparage the actual news.

He’s Obsessed, that Trump!

The actual news: China hacked over 220-million voter registrations, plus social security files; manufactured and shipped tens of thousands of fake US driver’s licenses to be used in motor-voter states; and paid favored US journalists to write negative articles about Mr. Trump. The Department of Homeland Security reported 278,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in federal elections. But that number was compiled only from states that complied with DOJ demands for voter rolls. California, New York, and Illinois and many other states refused, so the number is probably more than double the DHS figure.

The big take-away was that US Intel agencies withheld all this intel from the President of the US, Mr. Trump, in the lead-up to the 2020 vote.

Yes, there really is Deep State, as seen starkly in a now-declassified memo from the then-chief of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, one Nikki Floris, who wrote “I’m basically running a shadow government at this point” by hiding information from POTUS.

Ms. Floris is now employed as Microsoft’s Director of Insider Risk (former Deputy Attorney General under “Joe Biden,” Lisa Monaco, is President of Microsoft Global Affairs.)

According to the NY Post’s Miranda Devine, in August 2020, Nikki Floris also tried to hoodwink Senators Chuck Grassley and Rob Johnson, telling them the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian op — a gag later ratified by fifty-one former intel officers (including five former CIA Directors) who signed the notorious October letter to the news media.

All of this activity, Mr. Trump averred, amounted to a cover-up of a conspiracy by members of the permanent bureaucracy to overthrow the government. And that is exactly why more than one federal grand jury is convened in Fort Pierce, Florida, right now, to sort out who, exactly, is going to account for these rather grave crimes. The new document release is apt to accelerate the work of US Attorneys there, since declassification is the biggest routine holdup in the process.

On the “underwhelming” side of the president’s speech, there was little mention of the swing-state ballot fraud enabled and conducted by local election officials in Fulton County, Georgia, Maricopa County, Arizona, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Antrim County, Michigan, Mesa County, Colorado, and Philadelphia, PA. But you know that the FBI raided Fulton County election headquarters months ago and seized around 700 boxes of evidence, and then reassigned 260 FBI agents to examine all the material. All that might still be to-come.

Then there is the question of the millions of dollars that Hunter Biden winkled out of China over the years before the 2020 election — records of which were stuffed in his infamous laptop, along with photos and video of his sexual exploits there — and whether Hunter’s father, Joe, was a blackmail captive of China leading up to that election. Stay tuned on that.

Altogether, Mr. Trump’s speech and document drops are obviously an effort to move election reform, the Save America Act, through Congress, where it has languished in a procedural miasma for months due to one man: Senate Majority Leader John Thune. The President’s emphasis last night on China’s election meddling is purposeful in ways not broadly apprehended, but I will tell you:

If Congress does not find a way to vote that bill out to Mr. Trump’s desk before they recess for the rest of the summer in late July, Mr. Trump will invoke an executive order under the National Emergencies Act (NEA) — Public Law 94-412; codified at 50 U.S.C. §§ 1601–1651 — requiring the fifty states to employ all the same provisions that are in the SAVE America Act for the 2026 midterm elections. Under the NEA, the federal courts cannot be used to fight or strike down the executive order; it can only be stopped by a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate.

If that is the course that this takes, you can expect Antifa and the Democratic-Socialist foot-soldiers to take to the streets this fall in a violently-amplified episode of “No Kings” demonstrations — because fair and honest elections with citizens-only voting will mean the end of the Democratic Party, and they know it. Last night’s move by President Trump is only the opening bid of a quickening game against the Deep State, and their partners-in-sedition.

The game is gonna get rough now.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/17/2026 - 16:20

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