Monthly Archives: July 2025

Wall Street Journal publishes more Epstein birthday book entries & names

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The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (July 25) that Bill Clinton has a handwritten entry in the Epstein birthday book. It allegedly reads, “It’s reassuring isn’t it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible word], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends.”

Leon Black (pic above), the head of Apollo Global Management who paid $158 million to Epstein for financial services, allegedly handwrote a poem which reads:

Blonde, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically
With this net of fish, Jeff’s now ‘The Old Man and The Sea’

Love and kisses, Leon.

An alleged note from British politician Peter Mandelson referred to Epstein as “my best pal,” and included pictures of a tropical island and whiskey.

Former Microsoft executive and billionaire Nathan Myhrvold reportedly wrote in the Epstein birthday book that he was sending photos from a recent trip to Africa, which included lions & zebras mating, where a zebra’s penis was reportedly visible. “They seemed more appropriate than anything I could put in words.”

Billionaire Mort Zuckerman, who owned the New York Daily News at the time, wrote in his letter that “he had searched the newspaper for information about Epstein and joked he was born in Liechtenstein and had a wife and three children.” That begs for clarification.

Victoria’s Secret owner Leslie Wexner, who previously condemned Epstein’s crimes as “abhorrent,” is also in the birthday book according to the WSJ, as well as (pics below) fashion designer Vera Wang, deceased Wall Street mogul Alan Greenberg, and deceased Epstein business associate James Cayne.

The tone of these entries suggests all this was a big joke to these people. The ruined lives of these exploited & abused young girls counted for nothing, yet they are now all regretful they met Jeffery Epstein, etc. Just as telling, none of them have responded to media questions on their birthday book entries.

Donald Trump has denied his typed note & lewd drawing, as he told reporters yesterday before departing for Scotland, “You ought to be speaking about Larry Summers. You ought to be speaking about some of his friends that are hedge fund guys. They’re all over the place. You ought to be speaking about Bill Clinton.”

Okay. Question #1 for Bill Clinton, “What was that illegible word in your birthday note to Jeffery Epstein in his 50th birthday book?”

Recall President Bill Clinton’s public statement on January 26, 1998, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Note in the video that Bill Clinton walked away after declaring his boldfaced lie, and for the record, the audience of politicians in the room roundly applauded him. That’s the ruling class cover-up.

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Political physiology of the Jeffery Epstein cover-up

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Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell in Tallahassee, FL on July 24-25. As a reminder, when Donald Trump was found guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in 2024 in his Stormy Daniels hush money trial, Todd Blanche was Trump’s defense attorney, so the political self-interest here is clear to all.

Another reminder, Ghislaine Maxwell was not only convicted of abetting Jeffery Epstein in his sex trafficking ring, but was also found guilty of two counts of perjury. This makes Todd Blanche’s interview with Ghislaine Maxwell all the more troubling, since he hasn’t reviewed all the FBI Epstein files and therefore wouldn’t be able to keep her in line during questioning if she attempted to lie– as she has provenly done in the past.

Despite this criminal history, Blanche claimed, “Ghislaine Maxwell answered every single question” during the Justice Department meeting, and that she answered them honestly without taking the 5th Amendment. That’s quite a statement, and impossible to verify without transcripts of the interview and the full release of the FBI Epstein files.

Along these same political lines, Trump’s impromptu order to release grand jury testimony, which was denied by the courts, was another red herring in that nothing revelatory or consequential was contained in them. Victim privacy wasn’t asked to be protected, which was the reason for the court’s denial, which once again indicates Trump’s motivation was to distract, instead of reaching truth & justice on the matter.

What we have is a bipartisan cover-up operation that is fooling no one. The Democrats are just as implicated in the Epstein files as Republicans, along with their rich friends & political supporters who solicited the services of Jeffery Epstein for decades. Bill Clinton rode the “Lolita Express” 27 times, so he doesn’t want these files released any more than Donald Trump, meaning any Democratic Party posturing on this is cynical grandstanding meant to score political points while they work behind the scenes to conceal the evidence & facts.

What keeps getting lost in all this are the rights of the victims, as over 1,000 girls & young women were molested, abused & discarded by this criminal & depraved sex cartel and its clientele. There has been no justice for these victims, as political interests have protected the powerful men who solicited Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) called an early recess to prevent any Congressional action this past week, as Trump tries to evade responsibility for his criminality. All Congress has to do is subpoena the estate of Jeffery Epstein, and the attorney in charge of it would immediately release the Jeffery Epstein “50th-birthday book” to Congress, but that hasn’t happened either. All evidence of criminal relations to Jeffery Epstein have been systematically kept from the public by both political parties as they maneuver to cast ‘conspiracy blame’ onto the other.

All this is meant to protect the existing set-up. A vast fake economy is being insulated from accountability because to expose this criminality would lead to its collapse. Corporate bosses, major celebrities & sports figures are surely on the Epstein client list, and to ‘out’ them would be to prosecute them, which is something that is unacceptable to the ruling class. Capitalism has created these fake heroes and to disgrace them en masse would undermine the authority that has been bestowed upon them by their wealth & celebrity.

ICE immigration raids, #MeToo witch hunts, and slandering anti-Zionist protesters as ‘antisemitic’ are all part of the same reactionary cloth, whose purpose is to attack & scapegoat the working population and keep left-wing political dissent under the thumb of right-wing class rule. Occasionally a prominent politician, businessman, or celebrity needs to be sacrificed to maintain the whole, but never can the entire ruling class be prosecuted. This is the class battle that is being fought now. It is a war for truth & justice, and working people everywhere must take up the fight themselves, otherwise the truth will get buried (as it always does) by corporate-driven, two-party politics.

Tulsi Gabbard has become one of Donald Trump’s leading flak stooges in his campaign to deflect the Jeffery Epstein crisis. Gabbard’s recent attack on Barrack Obama, claiming he ordered a false intelligence analysis to show Russia had worked to help Trump win the 2016 election has truth to it. This has elicited a violent reaction from the Democratic Party controlled media.

Recall that the “Russian interference” campaign began as an attempt to deflect WikiLeaks revelations of the DNC fixing the 2016 primary for Hillary Clinton after Bernie Sanders received an unexpected groundswell of popular support, especially from young voters. Support for Bernie Sanders was deemed unacceptable by Democratic Party bosses. The DNC staffer who likely leaked this information, Seth Rich, was murdered under murky circumstances, and his murder (unsurprisingly) remains unsolved. “Russian interference” then became the Democratic Party & liberal media standard line for the reason Hillary lost to Trump in November 2016. Any left-wing critique of this elite-level corruption & electoral defeat branded commentators as “agents of Putin,” etc.

So what we have now is a political death struggle, with Donald Trump & his MAGA political supporters on one side, and the rest of the ruling establishment on the other. It is the working masses who must intervene with an international socialist program to prosecute & overthrow this entire rotten political system, otherwise there will be no justice for any of the victims of Jeffery Epstein & his elite clientele.

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Ozzy Osbourne 1948-2025

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When a major figure in rock music passes away I typically put on their music as a form of tribute to gain final closure on their artistic significance. Lots of nonsense & false tributes get published after the fact, so doing this helps me gain clarity from media & industry bias. In the end it’s about the music, but I must confess that I’ve always struggled with Black Sabbath & Ozzy Osbourne, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Black Sabbath & Led Zeppelin were the original UK heavy metal acts that formed in the late 1960’s and dominated AOR (album oriented radio) in the 1970’s. Both bands had their strengths & limitations, and honestly I always preferred Led Zeppelin, but I also have all the classic (Ozzy) Black Sabbath records so their legacy needs to be respected.

Black Sabbath had a great drummer in Bill Ward, and an amazing guitar player in Tony Iommi, with an adequate bass player in Geezer Butler who wrote good lyrics which is always welcome in any band. Add to this a frontman who couldn’t really sing in Ozzy Osbourne, who became the Prince of Darkness, and you have Black Sabbath. For me the best Black Sabbath songs include: “Paranoid”, “War Pigs”, “Fairies Wear Boots”, “Sweet Leaf”, “Into the Void”, “Supernaut”, and “Hole in the Sky”. Cover artwork was always a band weakness, as the blurred image on Paranoid (1971) is probably the worst album representation of a great rock record– ever.

Drugs & alcohol eroded the band’s power, and by the end of the decade Ozzy was kicked out for his excesses. He rebuilt himself as a solo act with an outstanding heavy metal outfit that included guitar prodigy Randy Rhoads, Rudy Sarzo on bass & drummer Tommy Aldridge. All this came to an end in Leesburg, Florida in 1982 when Rhoads was killed in a private plane crash under murky circumstances involving an unwell road crew member who piloted the plane while under the influence of drugs & alcohol. According to a Rudy Sarzo biography published in 2006, Randy Rhoads was killed trying to steer the homicidal pilot from kamikaze crashing his airplane into the band’s parked tour bus as he attempted to kill his ex-girlfriend inside. It’s this type of rock & roll excess that defined Ozzy’s controversial career, be it animal cruelty, drugs & other degenerate antics.

After the tragic death of Randy Rhoads, Ozzy became a parody of himself, with his 1980’s music bordering on embarrassment, but his persona always carried him through. In many ways Ozzy Osbourne personified the rock star whose primary talent was his persona. It carried him into reality TV and the creation of Ozzfest, a heavy metal festival which he repeatedly headlined. If less is more, then Ozzy Osbourne is probably the least talented rock artist of his era who (for better or worse) became a superstar. Since Ozzy’s music was so much about death & doom, it’s hard to deeply mourn his passing. In many ways he embraced death, so it is more of an inevitability then devastation for fans.

Final thoughts on persona

Ozzy Osbourne was above all a persona. When you become a performer for an audience you need to have an act. For Ozzy it was his persona as the Prince of Darkness. For all his limitations as a performer, Ozzy had “it,” that nebulous indefinable quality of being able to capture & hold an audience. Ozzy Osbourne was born to be a rock star, and probably couldn’t have been successful at anything else. Inspiration can be taken from that in that he knew exactly who he was and always stayed true to himself. People are drawn in by that because many don’t have the brains or guts to be who they really want to be.

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Intersecting Hollywood dramas & documentary filmmaking

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I have written previously that the 21st century is the beginning of the golden age of documentary filmmaking. The internet now provides ambitious artists with the means & material necessary to make a movie on any subject, and distribution is more readily available. This means the rules have changed, and of course the Hollywood film industry doesn’t like this. In fact, it is fighting this with everything they’ve got as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now their main tool (weapon) of choice in creating new dramatic films.

But technical gadgetry & AI special effects can only take filmmaking so far, and its limitations are already being reached. The quality of Hollywood films now is generally poor. Audiences who thirst for challenging & stimulating content aren’t finding it in the multiplexes, whose vapid content is generally a form of dumbed-down propaganda.

Sports movies: a critical analysis

Hollywood sports movies are generally disappointing because they fail to capture the “spirit of the game,” emphasizing fictitious drama over hard realities. See Moneyball (2011), perhaps the best baseball book ever published (2003), which became a watered-down sports-drama starring Brad Pitt. Actors aren’t professional athletes, and their attempts to portray them are usually unconvincing & clichéd.

To this movie-lover, the best Hollywood sports movies are The Longest Yard (1974), Bull Durham (1988), and The Great White Hype (1996), which had engaging scripts revealing a deep respect & understanding of that particular sport. Most of the rest of Hollywood sports movies are lame-to-unwatchable because they lack these qualities. Note that this phenomenon also applies to films about musicians & artists. Documentaries on such subjects are almost always more worthwhile because of the authentic footage, voices & artistry on display. Hollywood sports flicks suffer from a lack of genuineness created by an inherent weakness in these types of movies that few filmmakers can overcome.

The difference from other subjects of Hollywood films is that the public is usually very familiar with celebrity athletes, sports, music, etc, so the audience is harder to fool on the big screen. Movies are about creating an ‘illusion of reality’ with scripts, actors, special effects, etc. Network (1976) & House of Cards (2013-2017) are brilliant examples of bringing political reality to life through film fiction. Politicians & business executives generally hide their intentions & actions, so Hollywood filmmakers can exploit that gap in understanding more readily & effectively because the public is often unaware of these realities. Conversely, sports are rabidly followed by the masses, and thus their level of comprehension is far greater from the start, which makes sports movies unsatisfying to many movie buffs, especially sports fans.

War movies: documentaries vs dramatic re-enactment

War movies are an area of filmmaking that provide room for Hollywood-type dramatization and documentaries to be artistically successful. This is because the subject is far too broad for just one genre to tell the whole story. The best documentaries on war include The World at War (1973), a 26-part UK production on WWII narrated by Laurence Olivier. The authentic footage & participant interviews are its greatest strengths. But what is missing are the individual acts of bravery, heroism & drama, and that’s where dramatic films can fill in the gaps.

Das Boot (1981) is a German/UK production on the life of a German U-boat crew in 1943, a perilous time for these sailors. It has riveting action & drama, bringing their terror to life on the big screen. The World at War has a chapter titled “U-boats in the Atlantic,” which relates the objectives, strategies and history of this war theater. The U-boats had the potential to win the war for Nazi Germany if Hitler had used them properly, and it wasn’t until mid-1943 that the Allies solved the U-boat problem by exploiting aircraft with radar. This is an instructive filmmaking example of a documentary & a fictional thriller complimenting each other. If you’ve seen them both, then you have a much greater understanding of the subject from both a military & human perspective.

Midway (1976) is a Hollywood war movie that splices actual US Naval war footage with dramatic Hollywood filmmaking. The Navy war footage was shot in 16mm, and then blown up to 35mm and weaved into the fictional drama. This movie has many stars, but the editing-in of authentic war footage is what makes it all come together. Film clips from war dramas 30 Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) & Tora Tora Tora (1970) were also used, along with newly shot warbird & aircraft carrier footage at sea. Miniature models were filmed on a lake in California to great effect for recreating the destruction of the Japanese carrier fleet at Midway in June 1942. Midway is one of the best Hollywood war movies because of how it edits authentic Naval footage with dramatic film scripting.

Ken Burns best documentary project is arguably The Vietnam War (2017), and probably the best film on the subject to date. In the Year of the Pig (1968) is the other essential Vietnam War documentary. Many dramatic Hollywood Vietnam War movies had been made previously, the most notable & popular include: Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986) & Full Metal Jacket (1987). Until Ken Burns’ definitive documentary, these Hollywood productions were among the best film documents on the subject. What Ken Burns did was to render these Hollywood productions less important by creating a definitive documentary. Apocalypse Now and Platoon no longer have the impact they did when they were released because a documentary has artistically eclipsed them.

What this process reveals is that just about any important film subject (based on non-fictional events) needs a definitive documentary, and when it is made, it renders all Hollywood dramas on the subject less vital. This is a dialectical process of discovering truth, first through fictional drama, then through documentary authentication. This is why documentary filmmaking is the true future of movies as an artform.

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WNBA CBA issues coming this fall

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The WNBA is now a speculative bubble, and the only way players can significantly increase their salaries is to take ownership of the league for themselves. Expansion fees are now so high that owners won’t agree to any significant payroll increases during the next CBA negotiations starting this October. WNBA expansion fees for the newest franchises in Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia were $250 million each, compared to $50 million paid by the Golden State Valkyries who began play this season.

How can the new owners in Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia afford payroll increases with a $250 million entry fee? They can’t. Therefore that franchise value must go to the players who create the league value, otherwise the disparity between ownership revenues and players’ salaries will become highly contentious, threatening a destructive labor stoppage. The NFL, MLB & NBA have all experienced work stoppages in the past which hurt their leagues. At this crucial point in its development, the WNBA can ill-afford one itself, yet that is where it is heading.

WNBA franchise valuations have ballooned, with the average team value jumping from $96 million in 2024 to $269 million in 2025, according to GoLocalProv, a 280% increase in value in just one year [!]. The jump in WNBA valuation is entirely attributable to irrational exuberance & TV money, as the WNBA has secured a new media rights deal worth $2.2 billion over 11 years.

Caitlin Clark (2025 averages: 16.5 pts, 5.0 reb, 8.8 asst, 1.6 stl), personifies the irrational exuberance, as she has become the face of the league. Caitlin Clark adds value to the WNBA because: 1) she’s a transformative basketball player, and 2) she’s white– not necessarily in that order. The racialist aspect of this is not a good sign for the WNBA. Note that this is not Caitlin Clark’s fault, it’s the fault of ESPN and the media executives who encourage this.

WNBA minimum salary for players with 0-2 years of experience is $66,079, while players with 3+ years of experience have a minimum salary of $78,831 for the 2025 season. The highest-paid players can earn the super maximum salary, which is currently around $241,984, according to ESPN. The players naturally want a bigger piece of the pie as the league grows, but it is likely that the WNBA has already had its biggest growth spurt. It’s impossible to keep growing at a rate of 280% per year. The only other industry that does that is crypto.

So what the WNBA players face is a political choice of insisting on owning their league, or being salary-stunted by traditional ownership. “Pay us what you owe us” is an empty protest that will fall on deaf ears, as owners want to make money, and with such a high WNBA start-up cost the only way to do that is for owners to keep players’ salaries depressed. The only fair solution is for the players to become owners in the franchises they play for, as that’s where the money is.

But instead, the WNBA players have taken up a protest campaign, which may rally some support initially, but history shows that when the CBA negotiations come around, fans won’t be so sympathetic. Sports is entertainment, nothing more, and if these WNBA players strike over salaries that are already higher than what many fans make, they will be seen as greedy & selfish, just like the MLB players in 1994, the NFL players in 1987, etc.

When this much money is involved, it becomes a Marxist issue of worker control over production vs. exploitation. Instead of complaining about this unfairness, WNBA players need to take control of their game by becoming owners themselves, otherwise they will get cut out of the profits and be castigated by casual fans who view striking players as unappreciative of their privilege.

After all, sports is entertainment, and fans can turn off the TV and do/watch something else anytime they feel like it. What basketball players do isn’t essential, so the only way working people & youth (the vast majority of their fans) will get behind them is if they take a revolutionary stance at the next CBA– demonstrating actual leadership against ownership oppression. Any other position is acquiescence to the status quo, which inspires no one and is a losing proposition for the players.

NFLPA corruption: A serious lesson for the WNBA players

When it comes to representation in CBA negotiating, the WNBA players would be well advised to look at the current NFLPA situation where union representatives withheld evidence of ownership collusion from the players after QB Deshaun Watson signed a five-year, fully guaranteed $230 million contract in March 2022. Owners clearly colluded to suppress NFL player contracts after that deal and the players weren’t informed of this by their union representatives after evidence came to light in the courts. The NFLPA kept ownership collusion a secret from the NFL players for three years, until ESPN reporter Pablo Torre, broke the story a few weeks ago.

Union representatives who aren’t rank-and-file members, in any industry including the WNBA, are tools of management & ownership whose job is to keep labor in line and working for suppressed wages. These union representatives are nothing more than well-paid lackeys who collaborate with ownership to maintain their cushy jobs, salaries & benefits. This applies to teachers, auto & factory workers, municipal employees, etc.

This is why the emerging WNBA CBA is now a cutting edge sports issue. The WNBA’s new found success presents the current players with an opportunity to take control of their industry by representing themselves. For this they need to be a united fist of rank-and-file players, insisting on a fair stake in ownership, otherwise they will eventually be crushed by ownership duplicity with union/management collaboration.

These same issues apply to every industry globally, but they are more highlighted here because because sports gets so much media attention. WNBA players taking control of their negotiations and insisting on becoming the owners of the game they’ve created & built themselves is the key to a labor victory for the players. It is the only way to garner lasting public support for their cause without alienating their fans.

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The Jeffrey Epstein cover-up & MeToo campaign complicity

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The Epstein ‘client list’ which had been promised to be revealed by Donald Trump has now been officially denied by Attorney General Pam Bondi. The public outrage over this ranges from grassroots MAGA Trump supporters who feel they’ve been lied to, to everyday people who want justice for these crimes of pedophilia & sex trafficking. What has been notable this past week has been the silence from the MeToo campaign, which purportedly claims to be protecting women from such predators.

The fact is the MeToo campaign is a political tool of the Democrats who have no interest in exposing Jeffery Epstein’s client list, as many of its supporters and party members were connected to this criminality. Bill Clinton, Donald Trump & Prince Andrew are among the most prominent names on that undisclosed list, which now officially doesn’t exist.

Most people with any intellectual faculty believe Jeffery Epstein was murdered in prison in August 2019, and everything since has been a FBI cover-up. The MeToo campaign which came to prominence in November 2017 has made no statements on the recent government denials of any Epstein client list. How is this to be explained?

The MeToo campaign is an attack dog used by the Democratic Party to silence left-wing artists & political dissent. It uses terms such as safe space for women to justify attacking men, particularly working class straight white men. For nearly a decade it’s been a propaganda war, with MeToo claiming women are always the victims, women are always to be believed, facts don’t matter, etc.

But this propaganda only holds true for MeToo when accusing someone outside the ruling elite. Within the ruling class lurks the most dangerous sexual predators who are protected by their wealth & privilege, and MeToo has shown no interest in prosecuting those individuals. A Google search of ‘MeToo & Jeffery Epstein’ shows no recent articles.

MeToo is the political flipside of MAGA Trump racism & sexism. MeToo is meant to attack & divide working people, through toxic feminism, while offering no real justice against those sex offenders who are most dangerous to the public. MeToo prosecutions are always politically motivated to silence any real dissent on the left.

The MeToo campaign began in earnest with taking down Kevin Spacey on false sexual assault charges because of his role in House of Cards (2013-2017, season 1-5), a powerful political streaming series on Netflix that educated viewers on the inner workings of government corruption at the highest levels. This revealing series had become intolerable to the ruling establishment. After Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, MeToo became a primary propaganda vehicle for the Democratic Party in its attacks on leftist figures.

MeToo claims to be a movement, but there is no popular support for this reactionary feminism which has nothing to do with equality & justice. The MeToo campaign is really about Democratic Party led feminist oppression of men and deflecting the blame for its own political & social criminality. It’s a tired act based on false narratives.

MeToo is largely despised by the public at this point. Democratic Party DEI initiatives dovetailed with the MeToo campaign to create a reactionary climate where white supremacists could reasonably claim they were being discriminated against, thus creating a social groundswell for Trump’s politics. This was a major reason Biden/Harris lost to a fascist in 2024.

The MeToo campaign has nothing progressive to offer. It is a slander campaign meant to intimidate & subdue the masses through false narratives & political intimidation. Exposing MeToo lies gets you branded as a ‘woman hater’, the same way those protesting Zionist genocide of the Palestinian population are slandered as ‘antisemites’. MeToo is a slander campaign with ruling class bias, attacking the truth while protecting class privilege.

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