Sunday, February 15, 2026

Obama's Latest Interview Is an Unbelievable Rewriting of History

 

Former President Barack Obama continues to make the podcast rounds as he joined Brian Cohen in what could only be labeled as one of the most insufferable interviews available on the internet. Obama managed to do what he does best: pretend to take the moral high-ground while having ruthlessly targeted anyone politically opposed to him.

Obama jumped onto the leftist talking point of the Democrat Party being the party of unity, while the Republican party has a monopoly on divisiveness, anger, “us/them” style of politics, and almost laughably equating the Left to Bad Bunny’s recent profane halftime performance that nearly no one in the United States could actually understand.

“That’s their home court,” Obama said. “Our court is coming together. A great example, it wasn’t political, Bad Bunny’s halftime show.”

Of course, by “unity” he means when his running-mate labeled his opponents as racists who would work to reinstitute slavery. Or how about the “basket of deplorables" line from his would-be successor, Hillary Clinton? It seems almost daily that we hear of a leftist politician calling ICE officers Nazis.

The lunacy doesn’t end there. Obama also took shots at President Trump, alleging that Trump has harassed and intimidated states who didn’t vote for him, and claiming that he would have never done the same.

It’s hard to break down just how absurd this statement is. Trump has only had to conduct these large-scale operations in sanctuary cities who are openly and flagrantly defying federal law, and because the Democrat-run states Trump desires to withhold funds from are engaged in billions of dollars of fraud.

Obama also seems to think that he never used his government power to target political opponents after making a claim that is a complete rewriting of the work of his administration. It seems rather hard to forget that the IRS targeted Tea Party aligned groups for increased scrutiny, with James Comey running cover for their political activity, among the countless other activities his administration got up to. Does the Steele Dossier even need to be mentioned? The number of cases are simply too vast to write about.

The good news for conservatives is, that if they have resorted to trotting out Obama to try to clean up their mess, you know that we are winning. If it weren't for him and his ego, Donald Trump would have never come down that escalator and ushered in a new age of conservative governance.

How Do They Come Up With So Many Stupid Goosestepping leninist Democrats?

 

You have to hand it to Democrats, no matter how many times you are certain they can’t do something – be more corrupt, act sleazier, hate the country more, be idiots – they find a way to exceed what anyone thought was possible. In a sick way, it’s an accomplishment – a perverse one, but an accomplishment nonetheless. It’s enough to make you wonder if there is some sort of performance enhancing drug that lowers the bar to the point that you’d need a shove not to clear it. 

The idea of a human being running a 3-minute mile was, for decades, laughable…until Roger Bannister did it in 1954 – finishing in an astonishing (for the time) 3 minutes 59.4 seconds on May 6th. Until then, no one had done it, as the speculation was a human being simply could not run fast enough for that long. In about 100 years of timing running races, no one had ever done what was considered impossible. On June 21 of the same year, the “impossible” record was broken by John Landy. Since then, the record has been broken 17 more times, with countless more runners besting 4 minutes regularly now. 

No one could do it…until someone did it, then everyone started doing it and have been doing it ever since, proving that nothing is beyond the reach of human beings if we really apply ourselves. 

Unfortunately, while that is true for the good things in life, it is also true for the bad, and the bad gets really bad when it comes to intelligence and members of the Democratic Party.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez flew to Munich, German Democratic Republic, this week to participate a security conference where she and her fellow Democrats whine about their claim that the President is a fascist in the home of fascism, “genocide” in Gaza in the places where real genocidal plans were hatches, and climate change in person when they could have simply done a Zoom call and saved the “carbon footprint” of the flight.

What’s the fun in that? You don’t get a “free” trip to a conference in Europe for you and your fiancĂ© if you just video chat in your appearance. I’m not saying she brought her finance with her to Germany, but I do think it weird she’s been “engaged” for years, whatever the reason, when a secondary effect of that is her fiancĂ©’s finances do not need to be included in her financial disclosure forms. With her fellow leftists having their net worth skyrocket to the multi-millions due to the “earnings” of their spouses and all the justified scrutiny that comes with that, I’m just saying that putting off a wedding for as long as possible, in my opinion, makes political sense.

You gotta make hay while the Sun is shining, I guess, and certainly before the sunlight creeps into where all the money comes from…if that’s what is happening. (Just a guess…or one of them doesn’t really want to get married and that’s why they’ve been engaged since 2022.)

In Munich, this intellectual leader of the left was asked a simple question about whether or not the United States would come to the aid of Taiwan if China invaded, as they are desperate to do. This not-ready-for-prime-time-person responded with what could easily be described as an attempt to make Joe Biden look like a genius and Kamala Harris come off like a great orator. 

AOC answered, “Um...you know...I think that uh...this is...such a, ya know, I think that...this is a um...This is, of course, a, uh, a very longstanding, um, policy of the United States, uh, and, I think, what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.”


Can you believe Jeopardy hasn’t called yet?

How does a political party produce someone so, um…articulate and special? How does a political party, that same political party, produce a series of “victims” of a child sex predator – who was a proud member of that same political party – who became entangled with that predator not when they were children, but when they were adults? Can’t they even stage a photo-op properly? 

They can’t, because they don’t mean any of it. Do you really think AOC likes this country or cares about Taiwan or anyone who isn’t obedient, for that matter? Does any part of you genuinely think there is a single Democrat in the House who cares at all about who Jeffrey Epstein abused? 

Democrats didn’t say a word about any of them for 4 years, now they can’t shut up about it. But only about the one man in the “files” who is only complained about by Epstein, as President Trump booted him from his life more than 20 years ago. Everyone else in there is a Democrat – all the people who stuck with him after his time under house arrest for soliciting sex from minors are Democrats. That’s not a coincidence, it’s a pattern. It’s who Democrats are.

So, it’s not that the party produces idiots, although it certainly is a magnet for them, it’s that it attracts horrible people who are awful to the children, women, animals, plant life and everything else that is not them or could hinder their goosestepping march to power. It’s not the 3-minute mile, more like the 3-point IQ. It’s who Democrats are.

Minnesota Insurrection Proves ‘Blue State Model’ Has Failed

 

I wanna talk a little bit about the open defiance of the federal government. I’ve mentioned that earlier, but when you collate everything that Attorney General of Minnesota Keith Ellison has said, Gov. Tim Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, it’s unabashed, unapologetic, insurrectionary rhetoric.

It’s not just that they’ve told Immigration and Customs Enforcement to leave. It’s not just that they’ve told their own police forces and law enforcement in Minnesota, in general, not to come to the aid of ICE. It’s that they’re actually working hand in glove with people on the street.

In other words, they encourage them to take pictures, to harass, to block ICE law enforcement activity. And you get the impression that they feel there’s no consequences.

In other words, they’re saying to the rest of us, the 330 million people outside Minnesota, that we, Minnesota elected officials, have the God-given right to pick and choose which federal laws we’re going to obey. And we are just not going to obey the enforcement of federal immigration law. We don’t really care about 10,000 people coming across the border during the Biden administration per day, but we do care about the federal government rectifying that lapse or that crime, by trying to find out where and who and how to get these people out, in Minnesota.

Nor do they care that ICE, according to its own figures, has rounded up 4,000 people with various criminal misdemeanors and felonies, and got them out of Minnesota. And that has contributed to Minnesota’s low crime rate.

But the problem is this, that they understand that the Trump administration, if they were to enforce immigration law to the full letter of the law, that would include collateral people, that when they’re going after criminals, they say, “Or how about you? You’re in the house. Do you have ID?” And if they’re not, then we’re going to deport them. They don’t want any of that. And they don’t want to turn over people, as I said, in the jails.

And that is a model for what I would call the blue states. Is it new? I mean, the Democrats get very upset when you say, you’re the party of insurrection, going back to the civil rights movement and before, the Civil War.

You know, April 12, 1861, when state’s righters in South Carolina said that we’re not going to honor federal law within the confines of South Carolina, along with six other Confederate states, at that time, who had seceded. And we don’t think federal property belongs to you.

So, this is the tradition that Walz, Frey, and Ellison are relying upon. And it’s an unbroken tradition going all the way from John C. Calhoun, as I said, all the way to Orval Faubus, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, segregationists of the 1960s. And the Left has never really confronted it. They said, well, these were just Dixiecrats or Southerners, and we were on the vanguard of civil rights.

No, but when you look at the actual vote of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Act, the Democratic Party voted 60% to 65% in the House and Senate, maybe a little higher, 67%, in one case, to pass those legislations. But the Republicans had a much higher percentage—80% in the Senate and the House on the particular votes were for civil rights.

So, this is something that’s disturbing, that it’s a trademark of over 150 years that the Democratic Party has, maybe it feels that it’s more a people’s party, but they feel they can defy federal law at their own volition.

And again, how do you respond to it? If you don’t respond to it, then you set the precedent that states that are blue can arbitrarily pick and choose which federal laws they want. Although, of course, they want federal monies to come back. And it’s a very dangerous precedent because we’ve seen it in the 1860s, where it led to.

And finally, something else to keep in mind: It’s symptomatic of a larger problem in the blue states. And we’ve kind of flipped the blue/red state paradigm in which we’re seeing 3 million to 4 million people fleeing, for the most part, northern industrial, what we would call in the old days, Yankee blue states, going to the South, which were, traditionally, up until the 1960s, less dynamic societies—more rural, more pyramidal in their economic classes: small group of wealthy, large group of poor, very little middle class—dating back to the Antebellum states.

But what we’re seeing is a complete failure of the blue state model. And the failure is ironic because it’s neo-Confederate. Just like the old Confederacy and the Antebellum South, these blue states are obsessed with race. This is where DEI comes from. This is where, if you’re one-sixteenth of this, or you have DNA of that, you identify, primarily, by your ethnic or racial background and not your common humanity or your common American citizenship. Very similar to the South.

In these blue states and California, from where I’m speaking, there is no middle class. It’s disappearing. It either leaves or realizes that the high tax, highly unregulated, high crime paradigms, and high deficits as well, high debt obligations, in all of these places, like Chicago or Minneapolis or Washington or Baltimore, it’s not a very conducive atmosphere—in Portland, Seattle—for the middle class.

Their downtowns are dying. People are leaving. That’s another trace that we see going back to the neo-Confederate period, that there wasn’t a middle class in the early South. By the way, it’s very ironic that there is a middle class in the South. There is a dynamic economy and there’s less emphasis on race.

Of course, the main neo-Confederate characteristic, all these states feel that they’re unique, they’re chauvinistic, that Minnesotans or Californians or Oregonians are superior morally. And therefore, they have the moral, spiritual, the intellectual right to say, I’m not gonna follow the federal government, if I decide not to.

Now, of course, it’s pick and choose. During the Obama period, they wanted the federal government to suppress state rights, in cases where people question the federal government, who were conservative. But for the larger part, they feel that they’re a law and a culture unto their own.

In conclusion, what’s gonna stop it? People have to identify this blue state model for what it is. It’s a desperate anger, sense of failure, frustration that they cannot create heaven on earth. The high tax, high regulation, green frenzies, woke ideology, DEI, anti-business, billionaire’s tax—all of this is drying up the economy. The crime policies that George Soros DAs, prosecutors—there’s high-crime areas and people don’t want to be there. And they understand that. And their reaction to it is to get angrier, more chauvinistic, and more defiant, especially of the federal government.

If they would relax and say, my gosh, President Donald Trump is gonna send people in to lower our crime rate, to get criminals off the street, to work with us—you think they would enjoy that? No. It’s nihilism. And it’s spreading.

And unfortunately, as I said earlier, in an earlier podcast, there’s nothing in the Constitution about a state leaving the Constitution, the Constitution of the states. But there is something about how federal law, the supremacy clause, supersedes state law.

So, what I’m getting at is all of these states, and Minnesota, now, in particular, are openly defying the federal government, in the tradition that led up to the Civil War and after the Civil War, led to Jim Crow and the crisis and the confrontations of the 1960s.

Final irony: This is all from left-wing, liberal, progressive, enlightened people. And they have chosen a most unenlightened, backward position because the common denominator is they feel that this is a source of power and continuity of their control of government.

Trump, Beware—These ‘Unforced Errors’ Could Hand Democrats a Midterm Win

 

Well, I think the best simile is that there’s a pathway over the mountains, like a pass, but on one side there’s a shear drop, and the other, there’s, on the right side, there is ample room, if you travel close to the mountains and not get near the precipice.

Now, what is the precipice? There is a pathway to save the Republican Congress and thereby to save the Trump counterrevolution. We saw what the alternative was under Joe Biden, but it’ll be much worse in 2028 if a Kamala Harris wins and has a Democratic Congress waiting for her, which she could have, at least at the beginning of it in November.

So, what do we have to look at? What are the perils that you’ll fall over the cliff as you go on the pass to the midterm? The first is these unforced errors. I don’t want to get into who did it or whose fault it is. I’m just suggesting that when you say Rob Reiner after his death, you say something untoward, I’m talking in a strict political sense now, it’s not good.

Why? Because to repeat the Trump success in 2024, you must do three things. You must win black males at 26%. You must win Hispanic males about 55% and get them out to vote. And you must win or come break even with independents. That’s in addition to getting your base out.

But if you make fun of Rob Reiner after he’s dead and not say, you know, not honor the old Latin warning [de mortuis nil nisi bonum], don’t say anything bad, don’t say anything unless it’s good about the dead, then you’re going to offend whom? The independents.

And so, this week we had this strange little meme or video that President Donald Trump was sort of the Lion King, and all of his enemies were various animals that inhabit the jungle. And I think Joe Biden was an ape and all that. But there was the Obamas portrayed as primates.

Now, you could argue two things. Well, Joe Biden was too, so it wasn’t racial or he didn’t care what you thought of it. He didn’t think it was racial. And the Obamas, remember, Barack Obama engineered, tried to engineer his destruction in August, September, October of 2015, before the election, when they called in John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and said, ignore the intelligence, go after Trump. But that doesn’t matter. The matter is there’s a whole history of the United States of racism that equates people who are black with primates.

So, whoever did it in the White House, or whether it was an ad for an upcoming TikTok video, it doesn’t matter, people don’t matter, the independents don’t like that. And you will either lose independent votes or you will lose a week of precious time trying to explain what I just did.

And then finally, as you’re going toward the midterms, there’s a sheer drop, another sheer drop, and that’s called history. Only three times in the last hundred years has an incumbent president in his midterm, first or second—this is Trump’s second midterm—picked up seats. They usually lose seats.

The problem is, in the House, he can’t afford more than four or five seats, depending on these special elections. He could even lose the Senate. I don’t think that’s possible, but it could happen. We saw what happened in 2020 in Georgia when he lost two conservative seats in one of the most conservative states, Georgia, to, not Democrats, but hard leftists. It’s possible.

So, you have to break history’s pattern. George W. Bush did it. He picked up seats. And you can do it. FDR did in his first, I think, 1934 election. You can do it, but you have to do everything right, keep away from the precipice.

So, what’s in his favor? In his favor is he has already enacted the architecture of a radical economic revolution that’s going to pay dividends in March, April, May, and just get better. And that’s based on, not speculation on my part, but fact. The biggest deregulation movement since the Reagan revolution. Tax cuts, and not just tax cuts for affluent people, for waitresses, for people on Social Security, etc. And then there’s energy development. We’re gonna get up to 14 million, 15 million barrels of oil.

So, whatever’s gonna happen in the Middle East, we have a buffer that we’ve never enjoyed before. And then in addition to that, there’s, Trump says, $18 trillion in foreign investment. Just cut it in half and say $9 trillion. That’s nine times larger than Joe Biden’s trillion dollars over four years. So, we’re gonna see massive foreign capital coming in here, creating jobs. The gross domestic product is going to take off with tax cuts and deregulation.

I know Kevin Warsh, he’s a wonderful, professional economist, colleague of mine at the Hoover Institution, he’s absolutely independent, but he will look at this empirically in a way that his predecessor did not. And he will see that there is a lot of growth and there has been a lot—GDP’s up to 5.5, but the inflation rate has gone down. And he will cut interest rates, not radically, but insidiously and continually.

And you put all that together and it’s gonna really make a big difference if the president and his team talk about it daily and compare it to the Biden disaster.

The other thing is Trump’s biggest asset was immigration. He stopped it. He didn’t curtail it. He stopped illegal immigration. They said that was impossible, comprehensive immigration—no, he didn’t need any of that. He just followed the law.

But now he’s getting these bad optics and these blue enclaves where it’s organized, the opposition is organized by left-wing money, Antifa, etc. And they want Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be portrayed as Nazis, they want to dox them. So, ICE wears masks. And you know the whole story.

They’re looking, they want to encourage people, they being elected officials—Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. They want people to go out and confront them, and they actually want people to be hurt or worse, to be martyrs.

Why not just stay in places like we saw last week in West Virginia? Four hundred or 500 criminals rounded up. People who are happy. Law enforcement, both state, county, and local, complied. Not in the news, except the dividends that it’s a safer place and the law was enforced. Doesn’t mean you’re going to neglect the blue states. You’re just going to until the midterms.

Look at places like Arkansas or Wyoming or Montana. Just look at places where you have a receptive population and a compliant and cooperative law enforcement entity. And that will give you great publicity that there’s no violence, there’s no protest, but you’re deporting thousands of criminals.

And if you go into a criminal enclave and there happens to be somebody there and you say, I have, by law, I have to ask you what’s your status, and he is here illegally, then deport them. Doesn’t mean you have to neglect the law.

There’s another advantage that Trump has. They’ve raised, I think, $90 to $100 million. They’ve out-raised the Left by three or four times. And the billionaire class of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, not to mention Marc Andreessen or Elon Musk, they have defected, and it’s really hurting the Democrats.

What they’re looking at in California with this billionaire’s tax, you can be a billionaire and have property and investments, homes, but you might only have, I don’t know, $100 million. They’re gonna take $50 million from you on your aggregate worth. That’s not gonna go over well with the billionaire class.

And there, that’s just a foretaste of what Kamala Harris will do if she has a Democratic Congress. So, they’re gonna be able to raise more money, not just from the rank-and-file MAGA people, but from the donor class, which has been historically Democratic.

And finally, there’s known unknowns. We’re at the precipice of radical things that are going on in Ukraine and the Middle East. They could be very bad, but they could also be very good. Mostly, foreign policy does not change a midterm election unless it is dramatic, fundamental, and a peace in Ukraine where you’re not getting 10,000 or 20,000 people killed and wounded a week, total casualties, not just fatalities, or you see that Iran’s government is overthrown and there’s a popular uprising where the United States is not seen as it was in Iraq as an invading foreign occupier, but as a helper of popular descent, that could be enormous.

Just to review, there’s a lot of pros that could disrupt the historical cycle and see the Republicans hang onto the Congress. But there’s a lot of dangers, and you can go over the cliff if you continue to go into places like Minnesota, where they don’t want you, and you don’t really want to be there, but you feel obligated. I can understand that. But do that after the midterms.

And the same thing is true—ignore what history says. This is a whole new ball game. We’ve never seen politics like this, and you can win the midterms even though you’re an incumbent president. And don’t make errors that don’t need to be made.

Just put a czar on social media and say anything that comes through to the public from social media, from the Cabinet, has to be looked at first. Put Don Jr. in it. Put Eric. Just tell him somebody has to be responsible so this doesn’t get out and lose constituencies that won you the election in 2024.

China’s Quiet Infiltration of America

 

I'd like to talk about our two cold wars, the one that we won against Russia and the one that we’re de facto in against China. They’re very different. And I would argue that the 45-year Cold War with Russia was much easier to win, despite their 7,000 nukes, than it will be with China for a variety of reasons that we should all be aware of.

No. 1, Russia was Russia, kind of a pariah state. It was isolated from the so-called free world. Europe was Europe, and Asia and the United States had guardrails against it. There were no students de facto from Russia in the United States. None. Statistically, almost none. There was no conduit for espionage or the expropriation of American scientific and engineering knowledge out of our Ph.D. programs, MBA programs, you name it. There was very little espionage by students. There were very few Russian nationals in the United States. We just didn’t let them in. There was no American investor class in Russia.

Remember how controversial Armand Hammer was? He was the head of Occidental Petroleum. He had the pencil monopoly in Russia. His parents had been living in Russia. They had been pro-communist, at least his father, as I recall. And then they’d gone back to the United States. He’d grown up part of his youth in Russia. He spoke fluent Russian. And he was our de facto business liaison with the communist government. Every time there was a JFK or Nixon or Johnson administration, and they wanted a back channel, they called up Armand Hammer.

I don’t know quite what his sympathies were, but he was about the only one, and he was a pariah. People were angry at him.

Take the example with China today. It’s much different. And funny, there was a sense that Russia had very bad propaganda. People thought that Russians were crude. They thought they were cruel, that nobody liked them in the Third World when they came in.

Even today in Hollywood, have you noticed that almost every villain in every movie is a Russian? He has that kind of guttural Russian accent. He’s got a shaved head. He has a tattoo when he takes off his shirt. He’s covered with tattoos. There’s the three-bar Orthodox cross. It’s a very cruel caricature, but we don’t do that with China.

And remember that we thought we were going to be blown up by Russia. They had 7,000 nuclear weapons. They had the mother of all bombs. I think it was a 50- or 100-megaton bomb they dropped. It was all over our childhood in school. That propaganda wasn’t propaganda. Actually, it was the truth. I can remember having to do drills.

So, we were clear who the enemy was and what they were capable of. China is very different. They were an ally of ours in World War II. But unlike Russia, that we did not include in the Marshall Plan, and we stopped Lend-Lease right after, we had a much more empathetic view.

China was deindustrialized. It didn’t really have a chance. It hadn’t made a deal with Hitler as the Russians did. It had been preyed upon by Japan. And so, there had been American missionaries, not colonialists or imperialists. We never had an imperial project in China. But it was sort of a goodwill. It wasn’t even lost during the Korean War.

We had this good feeling about China, and there are 300,000 students. People in the administration, I don’t know why, are thinking of having 600,000. If you have 1% engaged in active espionage, that would mean you would have 3,000 students who are actively trying to glean information in labs, in research projects, in joint endeavors with American academics, sending that home. Almost every student who leaves the United States and goes home to China is interrogated by the intelligence arms of the People’s Liberation Army.

It’s nothing—the Russians had no such clout. There were almost no, as I said, no Russians here. Three to 5 million people are foreign-born from China. I think 3 million of them who are in the United States are not U.S. citizens. They’re residents. That would be unheard of in the Cold War with Russia.

I don’t know how much investment there is, but it seems like every American capitalist has made a fortune in China. People have suggested it might be trillions of dollars over the last 40 years. I’m not saying they have dual loyalties, but there’s an insidious idea that China’s not really an enemy because of the massive amount of money that has been invested there.

And that means, put the Chinese students, the Chinese residents, the foreign investment, and our history of empathy with China—it’s very, very hard to tell people that China is an existential enemy in the way that Russia was.

And we all know that they played the DEI, woke propaganda card. Especially, we saw that with COVID. It wasn’t just that we were supposed to believe that crazy idea that a sick pangolin or a bat 100 miles away gave the world COVID when the Wuhan lab was right there, a level 4 lab with American expertise, instrumentation, and some money provided by whom? Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak, and others, Francis Collins, perhaps.

And so, what I’m getting at is, every time that we tried to criticize the corruption of the World Health Organization or China, they came back and said, here you go again. You’re racist. You’re racist. This is the Yellow Peril all over again. This is the Rape of Nanking, your style. It was almost as if they had studied the DEI mosaic in the United States, and they had tapped into it in a way that the Russians couldn’t.

They were lily-white, guttural-speaking enemies on the Hollywood big screen. And the result of that is, as we speak today, can you imagine if there were Russian bio labs? One was about 10 miles from here. I used to work there in high school at the packing house. It was used later by this operative of the Chinese Communist Party. There was one in Las Vegas. There may be more.

Can you imagine if the Russians bought farmland next to U.S. high-security military bases? We would have never allowed that to happen. We would have never funded a Russian lab.

So, there are so many different ways that China has infiltrated the cultural, social, economic, political life, the military life of the United States, that they are much more insidious, much more powerful. And of course, they have 1.4 billion people. The Soviet Union at its height, I think, had 240 million. So, they are a much more formidable enemy, and they’re much more adept at knowing where we are strong and especially where we are weak.

Saturday, February 07, 2026

Midterm Palpitations

 

Recent regional special elections have seen Democratic candidates win a number of special election races.

Now energized left-wing politicos remind the nation daily that every incumbent president, except three over the last century, has suffered substantial midterm losses in Congress.

Polls show President Donald Trump suffering an average 11-point negative unfavorability rating.

So Democrats promise to soon stop all new legislation and end Trump and his counterrevolution itself.

But the left will never offer any alternative agenda on the economy, the border, crime, or foreign policy.

Instead, the new Democrat-Socialist Party views the Biden disaster of 2021-2024 not as a result of his puppeteers’ toxic policies of open borders, 21 percent aggregate inflation, dead-end green energy subsidies, DEI mandates, trans fixations, and an appeasing foreign policy that led to wars abroad and emboldened China.

Instead, they now blame those catastrophic years on former President Joe Biden’s own enfeebled state — as if he were merely a hapless, debilitated messenger for their otherwise superb radical message.

So, absent a positive agenda, Democrats will simply run all their state and federal campaigns as if Trump, their satanic monster, is on every ballot.

Their Trump obsessions result in three now well-worn strategies.

The first, of course, is still more chaos.

The left believes that the unending 2020 riots cost Trump the election.

Ever since, they have sought to concoct a nihilist replay — whether the Tesla hysterias, the perpetual threats of government shutdowns, tough-guy talk of open insurrection against the federal government, or the current, performative-art, anti-ICE violence in Minneapolis.

They concede that most Americans still support Trump’s closed borders and legal-only immigration, but hope they want a return to “normalcy” even more.

The more violence, Nazi-invective, and sheer craziness the left can instill — storming church services, ramming ICE vehicles, taking over the streets, or boasting of armed resistance — the more they believe that voters will blame not them, the instigators, but Trump, the target of their insurrectionary madness.

In Democrats’ blinkered reckoning, voters supposedly would prefer 10,000 illegal aliens methodically and daily swarming the border instead of seeing Minneapolis in utter neo-Confederate revolt.

Second, Democrats seize on every Trump art-of-the-deal excess or coarse putdown.

They scream that narcissistic Trump’s new ballroom has wrecked the White House. Or madman Trump was on the verge of fighting our NATO brethren in Greenland. Or cruel Trump wrecked our relationship with the lovable and blameless Canadians.

Democrats grant that voters sincerely like Trump’s secure border, the new trade agreements that correct past asymmetries, a rearming NATO, a defanged Iran, and the end to Maduro’s communist thugocracy — but not Trump’s messy art-of-the-deal means to achieve those desirable ends.

They scream that Trump talked crazily of making Canada a 51st state, not that it was finally shocked into promising to pay what it owed back in NATO contributions, securing its side of the border, and addressing its massive trade surpluses with the U.S.

So, Trump needs to avoid the very melodramas the left wants to exploit, which detract from his own undeniable accomplishments and the Democrats’ previous disastrous record.

Third, Democrats still rely on their ossified partnerships with the media, academia, and popular culture to mouth the old talking points.

So we are told ad nauseam that Trump caused the “affordability” crisis.

Or Trump is still Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s puppet.

Or Trump was an Epstein groupie.

Or Trump’s trade war crashed the economy.

Behind this stale Democrat boilerplate lies a deep fear that the Nietzschean Trump, just as he beat all their lawfare ambushes, will also do the impossible and avoid losing the Congress in November.

And they should fear.

Trump’s catalysts for a booming 2026 economy are already in place.

No one can now stop massive deregulation, new tax cuts and incentives, recalibrated tariffs, unprecedented foreign investment, record energy development, and the new emerging technologies.

All that is needed before the midterms is not controversial new initiatives, but more focus on the current boom in GDP, lower inflation, and increased purchasing power — all in contrast to Biden’s inflation disaster.

Voters still support closed borders and deportations of criminals and the millions who swarmed in under Biden.

But the best way to remind them of a secure border is to concentrate on partnering with red and purple state and local law enforcement for the next few months.

Each week, the thousands of systematically deported criminals in these jurisdictions will contrast with the thousands of violent offenders who are sanctuaried and protected in failed blue states.

And without the smokescreen of the ICE psychodramas, there are a lot of Democrat fears — like the vast Somali fraud in Minnesota, the even greater welfare scandals emerging in California, and the antics and verbiage of the hard left, like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and the herky-jerky Gavin Newsom, who turned California’s natural paradise into a man-made purgatory.

Scott Bessent Calmly Shuts Down Senator Warnock’s Anti-Tariff Rant

 

Senator Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, blasted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, blaming President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs for month-after-month declines in manufacturing jobs and for leaving small businesses in his home state struggling to keep pace with large manufacturers. Bessent responded calmly, arguing that while the numbers may not yet reflect it, the Trump administration’s economic policies are rapidly laying the groundwork for a manufacturing boom, securing trillions of dollars in foreign investment, and dismissing outlets like the Wall Street Journal as out of touch with Main Street.

“Thank you, Chair Scott, and welcome, Secretary Bessent,” Warnock began. “President Trump promised that his administration would usher in a, quote, ‘Golden Age’ of American manufacturing. In September 2024, at a rally in my home state of Georgia, Donald Trump said, quote, ‘We’re going to have a manufacturing boom.’ Secretary Bessent, we’re now more than one year into the Trump administration, yes or no. Has there been a manufacturing boom in the United States?”

“There are the beginnings of a manufacturing boom,” Bessent replied. “We have intentions, factory groundbreakings, sir.”

“So your answer to that is yes, there’s been a manufacturing boom?”

“That we are at the beginning of a manufacturing boom.”

Sen. Warnock went on to pin the struggles of American businesses on the president’s tariff policies, citing a Wall Street Journal article that placed the blame for the manufacturing downturn squarely on tariffs.

“Okay, you and I could agree to disagree,” Warnock responded. “But more importantly, manufacturers are telling us something different. Manufacturers are struggling because of the president’s policies, and that’s what they keep telling us, and the facts keep telling us. In fact, just this past Monday, the Wall Street Journal published this article entitled, ‘U.S. Manufacturing is in Retreat and Trump’s Tariffs Aren’t Helping.’ I request consent to enter this article into the hearing record, Mr. Chairman.”

“Secretary Bessent, do you know how many manufacturing jobs the United States has lost since Liberation Day in April 2025, when the president first announced his tariffs?” Sen. Warnock asked.

“Yes, Senator, because you were out of the room, but it was already brought up,” the Treasury Secretary quipped.

“We do many things. I don’t need you to tell me where I was,” Warnock fired back.

“Seventy-two thousand,” Bessent said. “And I will point out that the Wall Street Journal is not called the ‘Main Street Journal,’ and they care more about Wall Street than Main Street.”

“Sir, I’m not asking you to opine on the Wall Street Journal. I have three minutes. Just answer the questions that I’m actually asking you. So, 72,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Thank you for answering the question. Manufacturers shed workers, shed workers, in each of the eight months after President Trump unveiled his tariffs on what he called Liberation Day. I would submit that it’s a strange liberation and a curious freedom that leaves you unemployed.”

Even worse, smaller businesses are struggling to keep up with the tariff chaos. Big manufacturers may have the resources to shift suppliers. And I need you to understand the spirit of my questions. I spend a lot of time talking to the people in Georgia who’ve given me the great honor of representing them in the United States Senate. And so, this is about them. And especially our small businesses. They don’t have the ear of the President. They don’t have access to Mar-a-Lago. And so, they’re not able to insulate their company from the worst of the tariff. Secretary Bessent, small businesses without the same resources or unfettered access to the President, what should those businesses do for relief if they can’t get into Mar-a-Lago?

“Again, sir, small business competence is up,” Bessent replied. “And we are seeing that the One Big Beautiful Bill gives the full expensing for equipment, factories, and ag structures.”

“They are telling us that it’s more expensive to make basic things,” Warnock replied. “We are moving in the wrong direction. The facts don’t lie. The president lies often. But the facts don’t lie. In fact, if you’re saying we’re at the beginning, basically your answer to those small businesses is wait a little while. Is that the answer?”

“You ask about manufacturing?” Bessent said.

“That’s right. I’m asking you about this manufacturing boom. Will we see something different a year from now?”

“We are going to see it. I was just in my home state, Senator Scott’s state, South Carolina, that we are seeing a boom there,” the Treasury Secretary replied. “And I believe Georgia has very good pro-business policies. I’m sure you will see a boom there also. The factory build intentions are quite high.”

Rather than pressing for specific figures on the manufacturing boom Bessent cited in South Carolina, or asking how that growth might spread across the rest of the country, Sen. Warnock spent the remainder of his time offering his own assessment of the manufacturing economy. He continued to pin rising costs, from groceries and electricity to health care and small businesses, on the Trump administration, blasting it for problems the administration has repeatedly said are the legacy of the Biden era. 

I’ll tell you what I see. I see as I talk to folks that it’s more expensive to build things in America. I see that we’ve lost 72,000 jobs a year into this administration. We’ve lost manufacturing jobs every month since he called for Liberation Day. And meanwhile, folks who are working in these small businesses trying to make their lives work, they’re seeing higher costs. They’re seeing their costs go up for groceries. They’re seeing their costs go up for electricity. They’re seeing their costs go up for health care. And I think the American people are still waiting for a solution. So far, we haven’t seen one coming out of this Trump tariffs regime. The Baptist preacher is done. I have no time left.

Despite Warnock’s view of the matter, in 2025, several countries and multinational corporations announced massive new investments in American manufacturing, totaling in the trillions, and commitments the Trump administration argues were secured only through its tariff policies. 

While that manufacturing boom has yet to fully register in nationwide economic data, the administration insists that, at the ground level, manufacturers are already praising the tariffs and that those massive investments will soon translate into measurable gains across the country

Wednesday, February 04, 2026

Why Minnesota Is Becoming America’s New Nullification Crisis

 

In the months before the April 12, 1861, firing on Fort Sumter, there were lots of sharp divisions in the North about the proper reaction to the first seven Confederate states that had already left the Union.

Not all Unionists believed that war was inevitable. Some, in fact, were happy to be done with the departing South and thus see their stain of slavery gone from the Union. Similarly, others agreed that the emerging Confederacy was not worth the trouble and costs of war, and the secessionists could just form their own nation and stew in their own backward, servile juice.

But after Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln—who was hated as much by the Confederates as President Donald Trump is by the woke and socialist left—gained a consensus that the Constitution had no clauses about any lawful departure from the union. But it did operate under a clear supremacy clause that made state obstruction of federal law and occupation of federal property veritable sedition.

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Lincoln and the preservationists felt that they easily had the moral high ground of abolition versus the continuance of slavery. Nor did they want a North America of fragmenting, warring nations in the manner of Europe.

Something similar is emerging over Minnesota, the South Carolina of our age.

Once sanctuary states, cities, and counties had established the precedent that, with impunity, they could nullify federal immigration law, then what followed was a logical and mounting descent into the current open defiance of the federal government. How odd that self-described progressives are now acting out the visions of prior kindred nullificationists and neo-Confederates from John C. Calhoun to George Wallace.

The reaction of the rest of the nation, especially its conservative half, to Minnesota resembles the 1861 disconnect in the North over the insurrectionary states.

Some believe that if Minnesota wants to protect its approximately 1,300 jailed illegal alien murderers, rapists, and assorted felons, so be it, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement should leave such a dysfunctional and dystopian state to its own self-destructive path.

In this way of “See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya” thinking, Trump should stick to the red and purple states, clear them of criminal aliens with the help of local enforcement, but without the organized performance-art leftist resistance. Then he could contrast the nation with the difference between low crime, noncontroversial deportations, versus the blue-state model of protecting illegal alien criminals and their indifference to the mayhem they inflict on the innocent.

If Minnesota further wants to be a state like 1861 South Carolina that openly defies the federal government, then also so be it. But it should accordingly not expect federal funding for its pick-and-choose approach to federal law and property.

Has Minnesota forgotten that, like blue-state America, it cheered on Barack Obama’s Justice Department when it successfully sued Arizona in 2010, insisting that it was Obama’s right as a federal custodian not to enforce federal immigration law at the border—and thus not legal for Gov. Jan Brewer to use her state resources to enforce a federal law that derelict federal officers would not?

But on the other hand, contemporary Unionists objected that such live and let suffer is defeatist. Moreover, there are millions of Americans inside insurrectionary Minnesota who do not support their neo-Confederate leaders. Millions in Minnesota properly see themselves as Americans first and Minnesotans second.

In this line of argument, just as Lincoln refused to give up federal armories, property, and offices inside the South—most notably Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor—to insurrectionists, so too the Trump administration has an obligation to protect federal property and offices in Minnesota and to enforce federal law throughout the nation, at least if it is to continue as a nation.

Very soon, Trump will have to decide which strategy is preferable and politically viable before the midterms.

Meanwhile, Minnesota’s highest elected officials have ordered local and state police not to protect federal immigration officers from the very street violence that they fuel. Indeed. Gov. Tim Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey, and Attorney General Ellison are actively encouraging Minnesotans to obstruct federal officers from enforcing federal laws—despite the mounting violence that follows their collective prompts.

The three know that organized and well-funded groups organize the protests and incite the violence. And perhaps the trio even welcomes would-be martyrs to use their vehicles to ram ICE officers or to arrive at protests armed with military-grade, semi-automatic pistols with plenty of magazines and ammunition to spare.

Walz and company further quietly accept that they could easily mitigate the violence by simply turning over roughly 1,300 criminal illegal aliens in various Minnesota jails to federal authorities. To do so would lessen the chances of violence, make Minnesota a safer place, and expedite the rotation of ICE out of Minnesota.

But, of course, Walz, Frey, and Ellison have no such intentions, given their schemes are elsewhere.

Given the failure of an increasingly socialist Democratic Party in 2024 to offer a more popular and convincing agenda than Trump’s, it believes its future lies in an increasingly redistributionist America, fueled by unlimited, unaudited immigration from the former Third World. It views as a political asset millions of arriving poor in dire need of massive federal health, food, housing, and education subsidies and entitlements, imbued with DEI victimhood, and nursed on America as toxic at its birth and ever more pathological ever since.

So, for the Minnesota state officials, screaming for ICE “to get the f— out of Minnesota” is more than mere braggadocio. It is a reminder that the Democratic Party wants a safe place for illegal immigration, the fuel of a future dependent constituency—as the architecture of the recent massive Somali fraud attests.

Democrats also believe that the more turmoil, the more violence, the more resistance, and the more a general sense of chaos and unrest swirl around the Trump administration, the more they can drive down its popularity before the midterms.

They still cherish the months of riot, violence, and arson in the George Floyd “summer of love” in 2020 as critical in defeating Trump.

Now as then, the Left believes it can create a lose/lose dilemma for Trump: send in the National Guard to restore order, and he confirms that he is a “Nazi” and using the “Gestapo” to quell “peaceful” protests. Stand down, and the Left owns the street, exasperating the MAGA base that mysteriously Trump has allowed the criminal left to nullify the enforcement of federal law in near-secessionist fashion.

There are other Democrat agendas, both short- and long-term.

The Minnesota Democrat apparatus either knowingly turned a blind eye to, protected, or silently partnered with the architects of likely the largest theft of federal welfare and entitlement monies in U.S. history—largely by the Somali community, both immigrants and their second-generation apparatchiks. The Democrat elite counted on the prophylactic cry of “racist!” to exempt the Somali community from any legal accountability. And so far, it seems right in that assumption.

And the public?

Polls reveal its trademark ambiguity. A majority voted for Trump to enforce immigration law, close the border, end illegal immigration, and deport those who broke federal law. But that hope and the reality of implementing it are two different things—especially when a state like Minnesota has not just institutionalized illegal immigration but nearly canonized foreign nationals illegally residing in the U.S.

To sum up public opinion, the proverbial people want all criminal illegal aliens deported as soon as possible, and they may even support the deportations of all 10 million-12 million illegal aliens who came en masse, unaudited, and with the de facto blessing of the Biden administration.

But that said, they want the act of deportation of the non-criminal to be out of sight, out of mind—as if magically they can simply disappear and thus either self-deport or assemble at ICE stations eager to be sent at no cost home.

For now, Walz, Frey, and Ellison are upping the rhetoric, fanning the violence, and talking openly about how best to nullify federal law and impede federal enforcement. They are convinced that they have galvanized national opposition to the hated Trump, smothered the Somali fraud scandal, and stopped ICE deportations of their constituents.

In all of those assumptions, they have little idea they are following the Confederate script to the letter. And like their spiritual forefathers of 1861, they grow ever more cocky, boastful, and defiant as they create martyrs, spread narratives of victimhood, and daily slouch toward another Fort Sumter.

Monday, January 26, 2026

Tim Walz Caves, Will Work With Trump and Tom Homan. Is This Why?

 The situation in Minnesota is out of control, and finally, happy hands lunatic Tim Walz has chosen reason, deciding to cooperate with Trump officials in the wake of the recent shooting of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis last Saturday. It sparked another round of outrage from the Left, who claim, without evidence, that he was executed. Meanwhile, some conservatives claimed wrongly that he was about to commit mass slaughter before he was shot—Pretti was carrying a firearm at the protest. He didn't have his carry permit, which, before everyone gets huffy about that, is only a $25 fine and is not considered an offense where his gun or his Second Amendment rights would be stripped, as in a domestic violence situation. 

The incident created a total mess on messaging, and now Trump is stepping in to clean up the mess, appointing Tom Homan, who I assume is going to be the point person, not just of the overall operation in the state, but with Walz personally in resolving this matter (via Fox 21/Associated Press): 

Walz’ office said the call was “productive.” 

“The Governor made the case that we need impartial investigations of the Minneapolis shootings involving federal agents, and that we need to reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota,” his office wrote in a release. 

Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both Minnesota residents and U.S. citizens, were fatally shot and killed by federal immigration officers in separate incidents in Minneapolis. 

Trump agreed to talk to the Department of Homeland Security about ensuring the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation, Walz’ office said, and also agreed to look into either reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota or working with the state “in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals.” 

.Why the change of heart, Tim? For days, you’ve been on a psychopathic rant against federal immigration officers, comparing the situation to the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, making not-so-subtle remarks about being at war with the federal government, and finally saying that what’s happening in your state, which you’ve allowed to devolve into anarchy, is not so dissimilar to the Nazis and Anne Frank. It’s crazy. You’re a crazy person, Tim—and screaming nonsense on a bullhorn atop a metal fence is mental patient antics.  

It’s now led to another person getting shot and killed over your incessant lies. But there could also be the issue of the anti-ICE signal chat being exposed, where some top Minnesota Democrats, who allegedly include Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, might have something to do with it. Reporter Cam Higby posted the contents of this chat over the weekend, showing a vast, coordinated effort to disrupt ICE operations. Some could argue it’s a blueprint on how to commit acts of domestic terrorism. 

They're Scattering: Anti-ICE Leftists Consider Fleeing Country After Signal Chat Got Exposed

 

They got exposed, but that doesn’t mean they’ve gone away or stopped. They’re a roach infestation. These leftists in Minneapolis, causing mayhem for our law enforcement, had their secret Anti-ICE chat on Signal exposed, but new ones have been established, and the older ones nuked from existence. 

Still, the chats revealed a coordinated system from which these psychopaths could engage in targeted harassment and assault of federal law enforcement. Reporter Cam Higby dropped this nuke over the weekend, and now they’re scattering. Some said they’re fleeing the country and going to Cuba, which was amusing:

Here are some of the contents from the initial story Higby dropped over the weekend. RedState broke down the mayhem even further, diving into the funding and who was on it. We know that ‘Flan,’ the alleged codename for Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, was part of this chat, along with Alex Pretti, the latest leftist shot and killed by immigration officers, which led to the second wave of lefty mayhem in the city. Pretti was carrying a firearm, though he didn't have his proper ID with him*, at this protest, but things went awry, and he was killed. Again, interfering with federal law enforcement operations will lead to dire consequences for the agitator. The Left claims this was another execution. The bodycams from the Border Patrol agents involved are being analyzed.  


You’ll notice emojis next to people’s names. Here’s a key for what those emojis mean.   

The highlighted positions are the most crucial. Most are self explanatory. Mobile patrols spend their entire “shift” searching for suspicious vehicles.    

When they find one they send it to the group so that “plate checkers” can compare with their database and see if it’s a known federal vehicle or if the patrol can make the confirmation so that the database can be updated.  

[…]  

A new group chat for each zone is made each day. The chats are dated, and deleted at the end of each day.   

This is likely to avoid detection, record keeping, and consequences.    

My mid-day, the group chats hit maximum capacity (1,000 people)    allowed by signal and people who are not chasing federal agents are asked to leave to create room for those who are.   

The dispatch calls also reach maximum capacity constantly. I believe it’s 50 people maximum. Which means, at any given time in each small zone, there are 50 people chasing agents.  

[…]  

THEY ARE EVERYWHERE AND LOCAL POLICE ARE COOPERATING.   

Here an “observer” calls out a possible agent but says she’s just out walking her dog so can’t continue on.  

Dispatch called for “backup”   

Also below is a message indicating that local PD may get involved if ICE “hinders public safety”


California’s ‘Futureland’ High-Speed Rail Is Still Stuck at the Station

 

In 2008, California voters approved Proposition 1A, giving the green light to start planning a high-speed railway connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles, which would be built by 2020 and cost around $35 billion. Well, it’s 2026, and the Golden State’s “Futureland-esque” project is woefully over-schedule and over-budget, now projected to cost around $135 billion.

“It was Disney’s future land. It was trains that would travel as fast as 220 mph. They would move people from LA to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes. LA to San Francisco was supposed to have been finished about five years ago, and as you noted, [cost] $35 billion. The price tag could be as high as $135 billion [today].

“Now the project is woefully over budget—woefully behind schedule. And you know, Jack, in 2019, when Gov. [Gavin] Newsom gave his inaugural speech right after he was elected, he noted the problems that were happening with high-speed rail at that time. And he said, in a very interesting way, we don’t have the money to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles. And the project has been subject to not enough oversight and not enough accountability.

“And he was absolutely correct about that.”

The Anti-ICE Signal Chat in Minneapolis Has Reportedly Been Infiltrated…and *That* Name Looks Familiar

 

Joe wrote about the shooting of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis. It was another incident where Democrats screamed bloody murder, the liberal media repeated the same line, and social media was aflame. We don’t know if this was murder or not. We need an investigation, and the state of Minnesota must start cooperating with federal immigration authorities unless they want to create more situations where people get killed. Pretti was armed with a handgun during the kerfuffle that led to him being shot.  

The city is once again a war zone, but reporter Cam Higby dropped a bombshell last night: the anti-ICE Signal chat that’s been used to coordinate operations against federal immigration agents and officials has been infiltrated and exposed. Higby got inside and learned as much as he could. Pretti was a member of the group, along with an alleged former campaign strategist for Tim Walz. Also, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is in the chat, too.

You’ll notice emojis next to people’s names. Here’s a key for what those emojis mean.  

The highlighted positions are the most crucial. Most are self explanatory. Mobile patrols spend their entire “shift” searching for suspicious vehicles.  

When they find one they send it to the group so that “plate checkers” can compare with their database and see if it’s a known federal vehicle or if the patrol can make the confirmation so that the database can be updated. 

[…] 

A new group chat for each zone is made each day. The chats are dated, and deleted at the end of each day.  

This is likely to avoid detection, record keeping, and consequences.  

My mid-day, the group chats hit maximum capacity (1,000 people)   allowed by signal and people who are not chasing federal agents are asked to leave to create room for those who are.  

The dispatch calls also reach maximum capacity constantly. I believe it’s 50 people maximum. Which means, at any given time in each small zone, there are 50 people chasing agents. 

[…] 

THEY ARE EVERYWHERE AND LOCAL POLICE ARE COOPERATING.  

Here an “observer” calls out a possible agent but says she’s just out walking her dog so can’t continue on. 

Dispatch called for “backup”  

Also below is a message indicating that local PD may get involved if ICE “hinders public safety”

There is a home base for this operation, though Higby has yet to determine its location. 

Former President Condemns Trump Administration, Ignores Chaos Erupting in Minnesota

 

ormer President Barack Obama has called on the Trump administration to reconsider its approach to widespread deportations after an armed 37-year-old man was fatally shot at a protest in Minneapolis on Saturday morning. 

The 44th president said that this fatal shooting should be a “wake-up call.” 

“This has to stop. I would hope that after this most recent tragedy, administration officials will reconsider their approach, and start finding ways to work constructively with the Governor [Tim] Walz and Mayor [Jacob] Frey as well as state and local police to avert more chaos and achieve legitimate law enforcement goals.” Federal officials say that local law enforcement won’t work with them to deport violent illegal aliens. 

After the shooting, protestors blocked roads and started fires. Leftists started attacking people whom they assumed were federal agents, including one streamer who filmed someone dragging him out of the car. 

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Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the federal government deports 10 times the number of illegals in Texas without fatal shootings and riots because local law enforcement works with the federal government. 

Sunday, January 25, 2026

I got all my EDM albums from Digitally Imported

 

i heard all the ATB, John Digweed, Sasha, Teisto, ferry corsten, Paul Oakenford, Nick Warren, Danny Howells, off Digitally Imported off Winamp in 1997 – 2014 when it was 32 kbps MP3 streams. I used streamripper and have mp3s onto my hard drives. i got viruses, but i did it anyway. I was listening to KQRS, 93x rock music on the radio in my car or in my room. This was different. I also had Gnutella networks and Edonkey going on Windows 98 SE and Windows XP. My first EDM album was 2016 and i kept collecting until 2024 with 100 albums. i had rock albums and country music albums in 1990s. It was pretty good when I played Neverwinter Nights, Unreal Tournament, Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction, Icewind Dale, Quake 3 arena, Half-life, black and white, diablo 1, Warcraft 3, Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 and Guild Wars through 56K in the 2000s with Winamp also open in the background playing hard drive mp3s. I did what people do now on shoutcast about 27 years ago. i didn’t have festival money or vacation money to go anywhere. i used to read reviews off discogs.com

Monday, January 19, 2026

A Wisconsin Mom Was Threatened With a Lawsuit After Speaking Up for Her Disabled Daughter

 

Wisconsin mom Amanda Vogel objected to the way her daughter's school treated the girl, who is wheelchair bound, during a musical program. While the program happened in 2023, Vogel shared the video to social media late last year as the reason why she decided to homeschool.

It's something millions of people do every single day. But the Pittsville School District didn't like that and threatened Vogel with legal action if she didn't remove the video from her social media accounts.


Here's more:

A Wisconsin school district called the local police on a mom who posted a viral TikTok video of her wheelchair-bound daughter being separated from her peers during a choir concert, The Post has learned.

Cops showed up at Amanda Vogel’s home twice last year before the School District of Pittsville, about 130 miles west of Green Bay, sent her a cease-and-desist letter accusing her of defamation in a pressure campaign to get her to remove the viral post.

“Parents don’t surrender their constitutional rights when they speak about their children’s education, and shouldn’t have to respond to law enforcement at their home for a social media post like this,” Cory Brewer, an attorney for the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) representing Vogel, told The Post.

Vogel had recorded her daughter being left on the sidelines while her classmates were given active roles.

While the incident took place in 2023, Vogel posted the video on TikTok this past December to voice disgust at how her daughter was treated by her school.

“Watching her be placed off to the side while her peers stood together, and realizing no one noticed before the concert, was it for us,” Vogel captioned the video. “The solution was so simple. A row on the floor that included her.”

“If something this visible was going unnoticed, what else was being missed when we weren’t around?”

WILL shared the letter that was sent to Vogel from a law firm representing the district. Here's what that letter said:

Please be advised that Renning, Lewis, & Lacy s.c., by the undersigned attorney,represents the School District of Pittsville (“District”). I am writing you on behalfof the District regarding your recent harassing and defamatory post on TikTok,which has resulted in millions of views and thousands of comments – many of themthreatening and disturbing. Your post includes the faces of several staff membersand sufficient information that members of our community have identified you andyour child as residents of the District.

The District has an obligation to maintain the safety of all students, staff, andcommunity members present on our property for legitimate purposes. Indeed, as aWisconsin public school district, we have the responsibility to maintain aneducational atmosphere, to protect educators, support staff, property, and, mostimportant, to preserve the safety and well-being of our students who are present tolearn.

We have reached out to you through local law enforcement to request that youremove the TikTok video. You initially agreed to remove the video, but did notfollowed through until after several hours and a second visit with the Police Chief.

Due to your conduct, the District hereby demands that you cease and desist fromengaging in any additional harassing and intimidating behavior toward Districteducators and support staff.

The District will keep us apprised whether you comply with the above demands. Ifyou ignore these demands, the District will report your conduct to law enforcementand explore pursuing appropriate legal action against you, which includes, but isnot limited to, seeking a court order prohibiting you from continuing to defame theDistrict and recovering damages related thereto.

Be further advised that I have also informed District staff of their right to pursue appropriate legalaction on their own behalf, in regard to your harassment and defamatory comments.


WILL, in turn, sent a letter to the law firm on behalf of Vogel, and here's some of what it says:

We represent Amanda Vogel. She has sent us your letter dated December 19, 2025,which you sent on behalf of the School District of Pittsville. We are sending you thisletter as a rejection of your unlawful demand that Ms. Vogel cease and desist fromexercising her rights under the First Amendment.

First, we find your letter odd as coming from an attorney. You claim in the letter thatMs. Vogel defamed someone, although you don’t say who. You say that words in apost she made on TikTok were defamatory, but you never identify the words. Finally,you do not cite any cases that would show that anything that she said was defamatoryunder Wisconsin law.

Your reticence and ambiguities make your letter hard to respond to, perhapsintentionally so, but we will do our best.

First, let’s deal with the lack of an actual plaintiff. In your letter, you say that yourepresent the School District of Pittsville. We assume you know that under the FirstAmendment, the school district, as a governmental body, cannot make a claim fordefamation. It was recognized in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 299,84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L. Ed. 2d 686 (1964) that “prosecutions for libel on government have (no) place in the American system of jurisprudence.”

In fact, the First Amendment is not only a shield here for Ms. Vogel’s opinions about how the school district treated her daughter (which will be discussed below) but canalso be a sword to defend her right of free speech. As a governmental body, the SchoolDistrict of Pittsville violated her First Amendment rights by sending the police to herdoor to tell her to stop speaking in public about the district (which will also be discussed further below) and by hiring you to send a letter intended to intimidate her.

Second, you have not identified anything that she said in her post that wasdefamatory under Wisconsin law. In her TikTok post, she has a short video of herdaughter sitting in her wheelchair separately from the other children in her classduring a music program, and then she says as follows:

We did not plan to homeschool.

We tried our best to set up a good foundation for her to be successful and included at school. 

Unfortunately, there is only so much parents can do ontheir end. Watching her be placed off to the side while her peers stood together, and realizing no one noticed before the concert, was it for us. If something this visible was going unnoticed, what else was being missed when we weren’t around?

#inclusionmatters #inclusiveeducation #homeschooljourney #parentingmoment

Her post was quite simple. She believes her daughter was excluded from a schoolprogram because her daughter is disabled. In her opinion, that was mean andperhaps indicative of other instances of exclusion of which she was unaware. As a ...result, she was going to consider homeschooling her daughter.

Can you please tell us which of the words in that post you claim to be defamatoryunder Wisconsin law? If you do not, we will assume that you cannot, because none of the words are actually defamatory.


WILL Deputy Counsel Cory Brewer, who was featured in the video, said, "After the mother posted the video and said she was considering homeschooling her daughter because of what happened, police showed up at her doorstep. She was asked to take the video down. And then the district hired an attorney to threaten her with a defamation lawsuit simply for speaking about what happened to her child."

"Parents have the right to speak up for their children. Using legal threats to silence a parent is outrageous," Brewer continued. "That's why the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty is stepping in to defend her First Amendment rights."

The Media Proved How Truly Awful They Are by Posing This Question to Jay Leno

 

Photo by John Salangsang/Invision/AP

Caring for someone with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia is challenging, on a good day. This writer's uncle spent a decade caring for her aunt with Alzheimer's. She didn't recognize him, or their adult children, nor did she remember that one of their daughters died of cancer in 2013. It was a long road, but one handled with grace and tremendous love.


Comedian, car enthusiast, and former Tonight Show host Jay Leno is facing a similar road. His wife, Mavis, also has advanced dementia, and Leno is her caregiver. The couple has been married for 45 years, having met at the Comedy Store in L.A. in 1976. They married in 1980.

So Leno said he was stunned when a member of the media asked him if he planned on getting a girlfriend while caring for his wife.

Here's more:

As the Tonight Show alum has acted as a caregiver to wife Mavis Leno during her battle with advanced dementia, he’s faced some shocking questions about his personal life.

“My favorite thing was—this is the most Hollywood thing,” Jay recently recalled on Life Above the Noise With Maria Shriver. “A guy said to me, ‘So, are you gonna get a girlfriend now?’”

The question surprised Jay, who responded, “‘Well no, I have a girlfriend. I’m married. Married 45 years.’” 

To which he recalled the other guy saying, “‘Yeah, but you know what I mean.’”

But the comedian emphasized he is not interested in seeing other people. “No, we’re kinda in this together here,” Jay explained about taking care of Mavis through sickness and health, joking, “‘Honey, I’ll be with my girlfriend. I'll be back later.’”

“You take a vow when you get married and people are stunned,” Leno, “they’re so shocked that you live up to it. Why?”

Why? Well, the reporter who asked this question has neither loved nor been loved. If he had, he would know that marriage vows mean "in sickness and health," not "until you have dementia, then I'll find a side piece." Leno is fulfilling the vows he made 


Our media, on the other hand, are absolutely garbage. We need more men like Leno and fewer like whatever reporter asked that question.

The Common Denominator of the Issues Troubling Me Most

 

person 1: We had 16 issues that were troubling, and we had head-to-head battles between them, and we’re down to four issues. And the out I want to give you, Victor, is maybe consider these things like the horsemen of the apocalypse. There are four of them that are riding shoulder-to-shoulder as opposed to one. 

Maybe you don’t want to go that way. Maybe there is one of these—they are the ruin of cities, the destruction of the nuclear family, the ignorance of children following 16 years of education in America, and the growth in secularism or irreligiosity.   https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=THEDAILYSIGNAL5568853728

Maybe there’s one of those issues that you find most troubling, but are they all sort of equal in your eyes? What’s your take on this? 

person 2: They’re all part of the same monster. They’re all components. The lack of education means that things don’t work. And the blue state, blue city ideology politically ensures that they don’t work. And the morality behind that without a divine sanction shows that they’re not going to work. 

We could go on to all 16. It’s all part of a component. It’s like the hind legs, the horns of the Revelation beast, you know what I mean? It’s the tail. And it’s a combination in these blue states where the schools do not train the people. The family is completely destroyed. People are atheist.  

And then the blue city tries to address those pathologies by giving, giving, giving, and taking from somebody else who’s productive and the productive people leave, and so a [Chicago] Mayor [Brandon] Johnson or Gavin Newsom or Jasmine Crockett or Elizabeth Warren they’re just the same person with a thousand faces. They really are.  

They must have a factory somewhere that makes these people because they all are privileged, whether political power or financial power, and they feel that they want to experiment on the body politic like it’s a white rat, we’re lab rats.  

Let’s just try, I know, we’ll mandate mileage, and Ford will have to spend $30 billion on the Ford Lightning, and then we’ll tell them to bill it that it’s a wonderful truck, and then people will buy it.  

They’ll pay $80,000, and then they’ll discover that when they’re out on the trail, and they’re loading it up with camping equipment and pulling a boat, it doesn’t get 300 miles. It gets more like 100. 

And now we’re going to cancel that $33 billion project.  

That’s what they’re going to do. And all of these experiments don’t work. The windmills don’t work. The solar panels are not cost-to-benefit efficiently. 

And maybe fusion nuclear power will save us. Maybe more natural gas. Gavin says now he’s going to give 2000 permits. What good would that do, Gavin, if you pump the oil, if you can’t refine it. Especially if you can’t refine it to your very, very, very specific unique one-out-of-50 state requirements for gas.  

And you’re going to import gas from Japan probably if you shut down these refineries because there won’t be anybody who can make it because no other state makes it because nobody’s state is as crazy as your state.  

And so, all this component we’ve talked to is—I’m not trying to be too depressing on Christmas Eve—but it’s all very worrisome.  

But what is good about this country is still the majority. And there’s an antithesis to that. 

I try to read the letters as many as can from our viewers and they’re just really heartwarming. “Dear Mr. Hanson, my husband and I worked side-by-side in a factory for 40 years. We bought our house. We have 10 grandkids. My son went to the Gulf War. I went to Vietnam. He went to the Gulf War.” 

It’s just really inspirational stories about the people who keep the country going. And it is that model. I think they’re finally saying we’re kind of the proverbial sleeping dragon, and we’ve been poked and poked and poked and poked and ridiculed and made fun of.  

We’re sick of the late-night comics, we’re sick of the deplorables, we’re sick that people call us garbage, we’re sick of being called sexist, racist, nativist. We’re not going to listen, we’re not going to take it anymore. And I think that … 

person 1: Yeah, no more fetal position, yeah. 

person 2: No more fetal positions. Make it all go away. 

And then there’s one other element to all of this. 

[Donald] Trump, whatever people say about him, I’ve said he’s crude and he’s uncouth, but I mean it in a superficial sense because crudity is being mean to people. 

I don’t mean rhetorically. I mean depriving them of economic advantages or getting them blown up in Kabul or not protecting the country’s national interest or a 9.1 inflation rate in one year. That’s cruel. That is cruel. And Trump’s not doing that. And all you have to do is look at the Wall Street Journal and look for the adverb unexpectedly. 

And you will see unexpectedly there’s 4.2 growth. Unexpectedly, the inflation rate went down to 2.7. Unexpectedly, most of the jobs that were gained were for citizens and most of the jobs that were lost were for non-citizens.  

Unexpectedly, there was a record year in military recruitment. Unexpectedly, there is almost no illegal immigration.  

So things are getting very good and I have a feeling that when you combine this calculus of 10 trillion dollars in foreign investment with another 10 trillion in nuclear fusion plants and AI and biotech and all these new technologies that are starting to be reified and the deregulation and tax reductions in the Big Beautiful Bill. 

And [Secretary of Interior] Doug Burgum, gosh, I mean, he’s going full blast. And 14 million barrels almost. They’ll get up to 15. That’s incredible. 

person 1: It’s terrific. 

He put out a great analysis of the BS of the wind power the other day. Just really, really quite impressive and almost sinful that these lefties with these turbines, each turbine itself, whatever power could actually generate is less than the power it takes to make the damn thing. So why make it? 

person 2: We just drove back from Stanford on Pacheco Pass, and they’re the biggest turbines I’ve ever seen. It was winter and not one was moving. There was no wind. Nothing. Nada.

And then I’m out at my farm, and I have 44 [solar] panels, and we have had an inversion layer prior to two weeks with no sun. We didn’t see the sun for two weeks. And now we have four days of rain. 

And I looked, there’s no generation.  

I’m talking to you from the grid and for all the talk about wind and solar, they’re not working in California when it’s an inversion layer and it’s raining.

Right now, we’re dependent on one nuclear plant at Diablo Canyon for 20% and the rest is either imported coal-generated electricity from our neighbors or hydroelectric from Oregon or our own hydroelectric or our own natural gas. That’s it.  

It doesn’t work, and I think people will find that out, I hope. And I think we’re going to have an economic renaissance in the first two quarters of next year. I think we’re going to have economic growth well over 4%. I think inflation will be down below 2%.  

It’s hard to predict, but I think interest rates are going to fall, and we’re going to see a big—a huge—boom. And we saw this in 2019 and then COVID hit.  

And I will guarantee you that the Left will think of something. They’ll either try to shut down the government if they win in the midterm. They’ll try to do something.  

But they will not enjoy the bounty that their fellow citizens will have.