Dumb Things Socialists Promise

 

Socialism is popular!

A Pew study reports that more than a third of American adults view it positively.

How is this possible?

Little has brought more misery — first in the Soviet Union, then in China, Cuba, Nicaragua, now Venezuela …

One reason young people support socialism is because their social media feeds show videos made by popular but economically illiterate people.

TikTok star Madeline Pendleton has 1.6 million subscribers. My new video shows her telling them: “Socialism is working better than capitalism 93% of the time!”

Where does she get 93%?

From a study published in 1986 by self-described Marxists in the Journal of Health Services.

The authors conveniently ignore the United States and other wealthy countries and compare socialist economies to “capitalist” countries like Uganda, Rwanda, and Somalia, some of which were at war.

It’s so stupid. But based on that, Pendleton tells her followers, “We have all the data showing that socialism does work.”

She also celebrates communism because of its “increased life expectancy.”

That’s nonsense, too. People live longest in capitalist countries like Japan (85 years) and South Korea (84 years). Even in the United States (79 years), where more of us die young because we drive more (car accidents), eat more, shoot each other more often, and try more dangerous drugs, we still live longer than people in China (78 years).

Socialism is also superior, says Pendleton, because of “the 90-100% home-ownership rates.”

“One hundred percent,” of course, is just dumb, but China (if you believe the party’s statistics) does have 90% homeownership.

But not under socialism! They achieved that only after privatizing urban housing. Before 1998, when Chinese housing was still socialist, just 20% of Chinese people owned homes.

Recom

Several social media stars rave about China. “Socialism worked in China!” says TikToker Dante Munoz. “They lifted over 800 million people from poverty.”

Again, it’s true that in the last 50 years, China’s GDP went from $156 per capita to more than $12,000. But that only happened after China gave up on real socialism and started embracing markets. Hong Kong, which adopted actual capitalism, raised per capita GDP to $50,000.

Before China reformed, millions of people died of starvation.

Another silly social media star, JT Chapman, tells his almost 2 million YouTube subscribers: “The central idea that unites all socialists is maximizing freedom … democratization of power.”

Democratization? In most socialist countries, there’s only one political party.

A popular TikToker calling himself Rathbone tells his hundred thousand subscribers: “capitalism … prioritizes profits over people … (but) socialism … prioritizes people over profits.”

Likewise, Chapman says socialism offers the “guaranteed right to … health care, food and shelter.”

Well, socialism promises those things and claims to prioritize people over profits, but what people actually get is different.

As Cuban doctors put it in this video, “The Cuban health care system is destroyed … People are dying in the hallways.”

Yet Chapman claims, “Innovation can flourish even when people are not motivated by profit. The USSR gave the world the anthrax vaccine, artificial satellites and one of the earliest mobile phones.”

That is true. But no one uses those phones today. Capitalism just creates much more.

Finally, Chapman says, “Ownership should be collective.”

Collective ownership does feel good. “We’ll share everything!”

But every attempt at collective ownership has failed.

One famous American example: 200 years ago, New Harmony, Indiana, abolished private property, promising a “community of equality.”

The result was famine.

When people realized they could receive just as much barely working as they could working hard, many, naturally, worked less. Within a year, the commune experiment failed, and the property was returned to private hands.

What do these popular social media stars say when I confront them with these inconvenient truths? Sadly, I don’t know. Not one would appear on Stossel TV to debate.

The bottom line: Incentives matter. No one washes a rental car. Few people care much about what belongs to everyone. It’s just human nature.

Capitalism isn’t perfect, but if we want a better future and freedom, capitalism is the only thing that works.

Supreme Court Blocks Order From Lunatic Judge That Would’ve Forced Trump to Unfreeze Foreign Aid

 

President Donald J. Trump clinched another legal win at the Supreme Court, temporarily blocking a lower court’s ruling over foreign aid. Trump mandated a 90-day freeze, which U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ordered must be restored as the president didn’t consider the “extraordinary harm” this action could do. It’s lunacy that these little judges think they can dictate what the executive can do. This ruling should’ve been ignored; Biden dismissed the Supreme Court in student loan relief.

BREAKING: Supreme Court temporarily blocks order requiring Trump administration to release billions in US foreign aid – AP— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 27, 2025

BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court just temporarily blocked an unhinged federal district court order attempting to exercise Article II powers granted only to the President. pic.twitter.com/qmVbmPGMAE— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 27, 2025

BREAKING — The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a lower judge’s order mandating the Trump administration to release billions in U.S. foreign aid. pic.twitter.com/UNLbpfbPc2— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) February 27, 2025

So thanks again to @DianeAxe for sharing the link to the filing with Supreme Court. Many of the points I made below the Trump Administration highlights. Here’s a great passage highlighting the constitutional significance too: 1/ https://t.co/lBLjuWh8ro pic.twitter.com/IJmxofSANb— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) February 27, 2025

4/4 Those are main additional points to those I highlighted before. So now SCOTUS has two important cases to decide . . . all because district court judges entered inappropriate TROs.— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) February 27, 2025

Yet, Trump’s team appealed and blocked Ali’s judgment for now. Ali was confirmed because Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), now governor of Indiana, wasn’t present to block this nomination. The vote on Ali’s nomination was on November 24, 2024. Braun was absent, and Vice President Kamala Harris was licking her wounds in Hawaii. Braun’s vote would’ve deadlocked the Senate and killed the confirmation, but Ali got confirmed on a 50-49 vote.

 This circus over foreign aid could’ve been avoided if people showed up for their votes.

Trump, Vance Put the Mainstream Media in Their Place When Taking Questions at Cabinet Meeting

 

We saw a collective freakout from liberals in the media over the first Cabinet meeting of the second Trump administration on Wednesday. Elon Musk, who as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reminded, works with the president and Cabinet secretaries to get to the bottom of government fraud and waste, was present for such a meeting. As Townhall has been reminding, then First Lady Jill Biden not only attended by led Cabinet meetings during the previous administration. Any outrage is completely misplaced. The meeting was indeed held on Wednesday, where Musk did speak. While President Joe Biden could rarely ever be bothered to take questions, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance had no problem taking them, and put the media in their place in the process. 

The media has made much of Trump’s handling of negotiations for an end to the Russo-Ukrainian war, which began three years ago on Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin was emboldened enough to attack under the particularly weak and ineffective Biden-Harris administration, especially when it comes to foreign policy, and especially after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

Trump later reminded when taking questions that Biden “could have prevented that war,” adding Putin “would have never gone in” and that “the war would never have taken place if I were president.” Polling conducted not long after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine shows that voters agreed with Trump on that assessment. 

In taking a question, Vance referenced the president’s handling of foreign policy, which is not to advertise it to the world ahead of time. “I mean, look, as the president said, we’re not going to do the negotiation in public with the American media. He’s going to do it in private with the president of Russia, with the president of Ukraine, and with other leaders,” he reminded. “I think that’s how this has to go,” he continued, as he “pushed back” against criticism, not just from the media, but also Democrats whom they’re often aligned with. “Every single time the president engages in diplomacy, you guys preemptively accuse him of conceding to Russia. He hasn’t conceded anything to anyone. He’s doing the job of a diplomat, and he is of course the diplomat-in-chief as the president of the United States.”

.@VP: “We’re not going to do the negotiation in public with the American media… Every single time the President engages in diplomacy, you guys pre-emptively accuse him of conceding to Russia. He hasn’t conceded anything to anyone. He’s doing the job of a diplomat.” pic.twitter.com/fZs3owVOq0— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 26, 2025

During that same Cabinet meeting, Trump had actually announced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be at the White House on Friday to sign an agreement to develop rare earth and critical minerals in the country. 

“We’re going to do the best we can to make the best deal we can for both sides,” Trump also later shared about an end to the war, which includes trying to “get as much back as possible” for Ukraine, a line he stressed. At that moment, Vance even joked to Trump that “sir, they want you to negotiate with them instead of about the peacekeepers,” to laughter from those present. 

Once the laughter subsided, Trump reminded that “it’s possible” there may not even be a peace deal, though he hopes there is, “for the sake of humanity.”

Trump also reminded the press about the damage that his predecessor had done and what he had “gotten away with” as “a disgrace to our nation.” The president had a message for the press on this point too, in that they “don’t write the fair thing,” adding “but, you know, the good news is the people see it and that’s why we won the election by so much.”

At the very end of the meeting, as the press had been dismissed and were exiting, Trump and Vance even quipped about peacekeepers, with Vance asking, “Sir, how many peacekeepers are going to sit there?”

Pete Hegseth’s Military

 

Did you notice that of all the controversial Trump nominees—Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, RFK, Tulsi Gabbard—the Left went after Pete Hegseth the most vehemently? And he required JD Vance to break that tie. There was a reason for that. He is proposing radical changes in the Pentagon.

Remember where we are right now with the Pentagon. We spend $820 billion a year. It’s about 14% of the entire budget and it’s immune to criticism. It really is. And we are building $14 billion carriers. We’re building $85 million F-35s. We have built $140 million F-22s. And we’re watching, in Ukraine and the Middle East, the entire mode of 21st-century warfare being revolutionized.

It’s more of—not that we’re going to have bad quality, but it’s more quantity than quality. They’re flooding the zones with cheap drones—cheap drones on the ocean, in the air, and on land.

And we’re not there yet. We’re not doing it. So, what Pete Hegseth wants to do is change the entire manner of procurement.

What we have now is more or less a monopoly. We have Raytheon. We have the Boston military group. We have Northrop. We have General Dynamics. We have Lockheed. And the way it has worked is that four-star generals, who have very generous pensions, rotate out. They work for these consortia and then they use their contacts of subordinate officers to favor their procurement.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it but it’s an inherent conflict of interest. And Pete Hegseth is going to stop that. And he can stop it in a number of ways. First is, he can just go back to what we used to do.

We used to say that a military officer cannot be secretary of defense in the civilian role. But the last two were fine men. Gen. [Jim] Mattis, I know him, whom I like, and also Gen. [Lloyd] Austin.

We waived that. I don’t think we should continue to do that. There was a reason we had a law. I wrote that we should waive it for Jim Mattis because I thought he was a superb [choice]. Looking back, I think it puts too much pressure on the military officers to distance themselves. So, it would be better to have that position as a civilian one.

Another thing we’re going to do is, whether we like it or not, we’re going to get rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And he’s already doing it and he’s going to save, I think, billions of dollars. And that has already had a profound effect.

We have record number of recruitment, per day. It’s accelerating, at almost 10,000 a month. And we were down 40,000 or 50,000 recruits. And the military, instead of saying, “This is a crisis,” said, “We really didn’t need 40,000 or 50,000. So, we met our goals.” No, no, no. We were down and now we’re not down.

And you can see that socially, culturally, Pete is trying to associate with the rank and file. Lift weights with him, jog. It’s going to be a people’s person defense secretary.

He’s also not going to tolerate retired admirals and generals that come out of the woodwork during election season, use their rank—they’re still subject to Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is enforced against lower-ranking officers. The statute says that retired or serving flag officers shall not disparage major civilian officials in the executive branch; Cabinet officers, vice president, especially the president.

And yet we’ve seen in these recent news cycles, I won’t mention all of the generals’ names, but they’ve called their commander in chief a fascist, a Nazi-like, a Mussolini character, an architect of Auschwitz, a liar, a cheat, who should be removed sooner—just terrible things, with impunity.

We’re not going to see that anymore under Pete Hegseth.

So, the procurement will be different. Recruitment will be different. Retired officers will adhere to the code. There’ll be no more—less conflict of interest. There’s a lot of fat in that budget with DEI. And he’s basically sending a message that we’re not going to look at the superficial color of one’s skin, or their religion, or their gender. We’re going to look at the content of their character, and more importantly, even than that, the ability to fight well for the United States.

And I think he’s gonna be very successful. He is gonna be very controversial. And that’s why the Left went after him more than anybody else. And I think that the Pentagon budget will shrink and it will be more bang for the buck. And it’s just all welcome.

Germany’s Election Results and the Marginalized Conservatives

 

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There were elections recently in Germany. And as many people and pollsters had predicted, the conservative parties, and there are two of them, won nearly, almost, 50% of the vote.

The Christian Democratic Union, under Mr. Friedrich Merz, will be the—probably the new chancellor. And then there is the Alternative für Deutschland, the AfD. This is the more controversial conservative.

We in the United States wouldn’t see them so controversial. But for European socialists, they are considered ultra-ultra-right. They believe in things like the ability to buy guns or to close borders. And in the United States that would be normative, not in Europe.

But here’s my point, even though they have about half of the support of all German voters, it’s likely that the Alternative for Germany will not be represented. And the seats that will comprise the majority will be made up by either a socialist party or the green party, or both.

Here’s my point, again, there’s a populist, nationalist backlash, a counterrevolution to the craziness of Europe. And we know U.S. Vice President JD Vance has outlined that craziness: low fertility, high energy prices, bans against fracking, open borders, dishonorment, deindustrialization, etc. But the conservatives will not have a voice under their parliamentary democracy, even though they earned a voice. And that’s only going to make them more polarized.

But here’s what I also want to talk about, Mr. Merz said in a speech that given the trajectory of America under President Donald Trump, he’s distancing himself and he doesn’t really consider the United States an ally anymore, at least he said Trump’s America.

Think about that for a second.

Now, I don’t want to go through ancient history, but we fought two wars with Germany. And we defeated them both, but we also came to their rescue. I think we rescued them in World War I from kaiserism. And that allowed them to have a brief romance with democracy. And then we rescued them from Nazism. They paid a terrible price. But they did lose two wars they should have lost. And then we protected them in the Cold War.

But here’s another point, we have right now about 40 bases and over 50,000 American soldiers in Germany. Germany spends 1.5% of gross domestic product. People look up to it in NATO and then say, we don’t have to meet the 2% benchmark that’s required of us over a decade because Germany doesn’t.

Because it’s disarmed. Because they will not frack. And they will not use nuclear energy. And they are ambiguous about their coal. They are paying four times more in electricity. We’ve mentioned before their birth rate is about 1.45. They have open borders. Sixteen percent of their population is not native-born.

So, my point is, they’re not in a strong position. And all they would have to do is look at the voices of dissent on the conservative side that are calling for cheaper energy, closed borders, freer speech, reindustrializing, strong defense. And they’re not. Instead, they’re blaming the United States. And as I said, when you have 50,000 soldiers protecting them in 40 bases, that should speak volumes.

More importantly, they don’t have a source of energy that they can import, especially natural gas after the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was blown up. We don’t know if Donald Trump can solve the Ukraine war quickly or not, or how quickly that pipeline can be fixed. But they’re going to have to import oil from a very volatile—oil and gas, as they do oil—increasingly from the Middle East or from us, liquid natural gas terminals on our southern coast.

So, they’re dependent on us on defense. They’re dependent upon us on energy and on trade. They run, depending on how we calibrate a trade surplus, they’re running somewhere between $70 and $100 billion surplus, predicated on the fact that they have 5% to 6% tariffs. We have 2% to zero. It’s an asymmetrical situation.

So, given the fact that there has been no GDP growth in Germany and all of the other maladies that I mentioned, and the fact that the bulk of foreign aid and military aid that has protected Ukraine has come from the United States, and given the fact that we have soldiers there and we allow them—in a mercantile sense—to run up a big surplus, don’t you think Mr. Merz would say, “Yes, we have differences with the United States but it’s a strong friend”? Or would you expect what he did say, that we were no better or no different than Russia in their relationship to Germany?

I have a piece of advice for Mr. Merz, I’d be very careful for what you say because there’s no law that says the United States has to keep protecting you. There’s no law that says the United States has to keep subsidizing you to the tune of $80 or $90 billion a year. And there’s no law that says that we have to be, as we have been for 85 years, committed to having a sizable presence in NATO and paying 16% to 17% of the budget.

We want to do that. As JD Vance said, we want you to reform. We want you to be the powerhouse of Europe. We want you to be a partner in the Western. But if you don’t want to, we’re not going to force you. We’re not going to force you. It’s your choice, not ours.

Switch 2 games released

 

Confirmed Switch 2 games are few and far between, as Nintendo has only just announced its next console following months of fervent speculation and leaks — but there are some out there.

Though Nintendo’s Jan. 16 reveal was a hardware-focused showcase with just one game to speak of, there have been Switch 2 games confirmed by a small handful of developers in the lead-up to the reveal, with more likely to be announced in the days and weeks to come. In fact, there’s a new Nintendo Direct set for April 2.

All of this will be reflected in the following Switch 2 games list. If nothing strikes your fancy for now, remember that the console will support backward compatibility. Not exactly the most thrilling use of the seemingly more powerful hardware, but know you’ll be playing something if you’re itching to get the console ahead of when your most anticipated exclusive arrives.

Update (Feb. 14): Added Fur Squadron Phoenix to the list of confirmed games.

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Switch 2 games list confirmed so far

While the initial Switch 2 reveal trailer left us wanting in terms of non-hardware reveals, here’s every Switch 2 game we know about so far:

• A new Mario Kart — The first Switch 2 trailer featured a recognizable Nintendo favorite — Mario Kart — in what appears to be a long-awaited new entry. Though Nintendo hasn’t given this a name, we have some confirmed details from the short footage shown, including a new track named Mario Bros. Circuit set in a desert environment, and a familiar roster of racers to choose from.

Image: Nintendo

• Bestiario — A turn-based role-playing game inspired by classic PS1-era adventures, its Kickstarter page says it’s coming to current-gen consoles, the original Switch, and its “successor” — in other words, the Switch 2.

• Fur Squadron Phoenix — This sequel to 2023’s Star Fox-a-like Fur Squadron will be launching on both Windows PC and Switch 2 in 2025. If you want to an early taste, you can play a demo on Steam now.

my indie game for 15 seconds👇

Coming to PC and Switch 2 this year.https://t.co/PrQ3IU2Hn2 pic.twitter.com/Qv2sq8oujL

— FUR Squadron Phoenix 🐹 Wishlist now! (@RaptorClawGames) February 10, 2025

• My Time at Evershine — The third entry in the My Time series, which started with My Time at Portia, is set for current-gen consoles and “next-gen Nintendo,” according to its Kickstarter page.

• Synth Beasts — A “monster taming action RPG” that has you use captured monsters on the scientists who created you is coming to both the original Switch and Switch 2, as well as all current and last generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles, according to a Kickstarter page.

• Yooka-Replaylee — The remaster of 2017 Banjo-Kazooie spiritual successor Yooka-Laylee is confirmed for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, as well as “Nintendo” — notably, not the Switch, implying it’s Switch 2.

As well as PC, Yooka-Replaylee WILL be on PS5, Xbox Series and... Nintendo 👀

Peep the latest trailer to get a look at some gorgeous 3D-platforming, new gameplay and beautiful ORCHESTRAL music 😍

Wishlist it now! Wishlist it everywheeeere! 👇 pic.twitter.com/DTbwaFjPgP

— Playtonic (@PlaytonicGames) October 24, 2024

That’s everything we know about so far — though the elephant in the room of Nintendo’s known upcoming games for the existing Switch, and whether they will be coming to the Switch 2 as well, remains…

Forget Defunding, It’s Time to Destroy PBS, NPR and the Left-Wing Industrial Complex

 

Ken Burns makes some good movies. I don’t call them documentaries anymore because they’re riddled with errors and he doesn’t seem to have any interest in correcting the record, just hammering the checks. “Ty Cobb was a racist everyone in baseball hated,” is the gist of what was said in “Baseball,” but it wasn’t true, as Charles Leerhsen showed in his brilliant, “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty.” Burns didn’t answer Leerhsen about where he got his false information from, or whether or not he’d tried to actually verify any of the claims he’d made in his film – being Ken Burns means never having to say you’re sorry.

This indifference toward truth, not to mention reality, is just one reason the entire PBS/NPR infrastructure is not just unnecessary, but needs to be destroyed. 

My closets are free from clutter from PBS tote bags and Rick Steves DVD box set from donating to fund my local station, or any station associated with the Public Broadcasting System. Most relics of the past I can justify at least the existence of in the context of the time in which they were created – unions, for example, were useful in improving workplace safety in a time when if you were killed on the job thanks to employer negligence or indifference, your family was pretty well screwed before them – but most have outlived their usefulness or failed to adapt with the times (like unions).

But it’s not just that these publicly funded outlets are biased, it’s that they are rotten to their core.

They are the playthings for billionaires. For all the whining about Elon Musk leftists do, they embrace the hell out of billionaires when no one is looking.

Laurene Powell Jobs, who “made” her fortune by marrying Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and outliving him, bought The Atlantic a few years ago to be her progressive plaything (it’s amazing how leftists who inherit or fall into wealth have a compulsion to “do something” in politics, I suspect, in an attempt to fool the world into thinking they’ve actually done something with their lives too).

Recom

Jobs recently bought the PBS show “Washington Week,” now called “Washington Week with The Atlantic,” turning what was already leftist propaganda into branded leftist propaganda. If this accidental billionaire can afford to buy a show on the “public” channel, she can afford to pay to put it on a privately owned channel. Taxpayers don’t need to be involved in the operation at all.

Newsbusters reports, “Laurene, one of Kamala Harris’s biggest bankrollers and confidantes, isn’t alone. David Rubenstein has bought himself several chat shows on PBS. As long as you’re a progressive billionaire, no one in ‘public’ broadcasting objects – and nobody inside their bubble cares about conservative taxpayers if and when they object to funding this ideological boondoggle.”

I don’t have a problem with rich liberals buying themselves shows, I have a problem with even one penny of anyone’s tax dollars being used to support that proposition.

Washington Week is Pravda for the progressive state on steroids, with its host, Atlantic chief tool Jeffrey Goldberg, living so far up the backside of the Democratic Party he can see what they ate before it gets digested. But the checks clear, so there’s that. 

DOGE needs to not only cut off taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS, the Trump administration needs to reclaim as much of the money they’ve already blown as possible.

In 2013, NPR built itself a $201 million headquarters on some of the most expensive real estate in DC. If they have that kind of money, they don’t need ours. Given the product they put out, they don’t deserve ours either.

If these “public broadcasters” are going to be dominated by one side, the unpopular side, of the political spectrum, let those people pay for it or let them sell ads. Or let it die, I don’t really care. I just don’t want another penny for tax money to go to it. 

The CEO of PBS made more than $1 million in 2020. According to their filings, “Total expenses were $495 million. However, $178 million were donated broadcast rights and $136 million was depreciation, meaning cash expenses were $181 million (50% of cash revenue), with the largest expense ($76 million or 21% of cash revenue) being compensation for the 591 employees, who received an average compensation of $129,000.”

To hell with them, cut them off. If they have to take a pay cut, good. If they go out of business, I don’t care. They need to be made to sink or swim on their own.

When you mention defunding these propagandists to a leftist drone you inevitably get the standard, “It’s really just pennies that they get from your taxes, an insignificant amount.” Good, since it’s so insignificant they can do without it.

The Trump administration needs to cut off taxpayer funds to every institution that is part of the left-wing industrial complex, which includes every sociology research grant and pretty much every non-medical penny sent to universities and NGOs around the world and in the US.

Make the left-wing donor class pick up the tab or lose the propaganda benefits they rely on from the garbage these dollars belch up. Make them put their money where their mouths are by diverting funds to these endeavors or killing them altogether. Either way, the American people win.

To Keep Winning, America First Must Leverage the Power of Information Operations

 

One of the glorious parts of the campaign that Trump 2.0 is prosecuting against the Deep State is the unprecedented way it exploits the Internet and high technology to take on what’s essentially a mid–20th century government leviathan. After all, it’s come out that the government’s flunky retirements are handled on paper in a limestone cavern, and that Treasury is still running some of its systems on COBOL. Now, I’m not a computer geek, having kissed a girl, but I remember COBOL was a thing when I was in college, and when I was in college, A Flock of Seagulls was a thing.

Moreover, the movement is leveraging outside talent, like X folk hero and heroine @oilfield_rando and @datarepublican, who use their knowledge and technology to interrogate and expose the hidden misdeeds of the Deep State. This is great stuff. This has to be encouraged. There are not just a few dozen or hundreds or even thousands of these kinds of savants out there. There are tens of thousands of more people who have the skills to conduct decentralized operations to support the administration’s war on the Insutions that have made war on us. The Democrats flirted with this kind of mobilization of outside assets to do evil – there were groups of psychopaths who made it their point to hunt down innocent Americans for the crime of protesting on January 6, and it’s hilarious that all the efforts have come to nothing thanks to President Trump delivering justice through the pardons.

This is an information battle as much as anything else – knowledge is power, and fast knowledge is superpower. We are trying to do a few things with information. The most important is to find and identify problems. That’s one of the things DOGE is doing with its algorithms – uncovering the hidden problems within the system. But there are other problems out there that aren’t hidden in the code. Tyrannical bureaucrats hassling patriots and defying the president, for example. While we can’t identify and solve every single injustice out there, we can make a systemic impact by publicly highlighting and correcting selected problems. In other words, if we find something going on that’s symbolic, we publicize it, and then we crush the wrongdoer – loudly and unequivocally.

What does this accomplish? It helps the individual patriot, of course, and that’s important. But it also shows other potential resister bureaucrats what happens if the proverbial Eye of Sauron falls upon them. They will realize that there is a non-zero chance that, at worst, they go to jail, or they might lose their pension, or, at best, they might find themselves counting igloos in Nome, Alaska.

But there’s another equally important part of this. Every time the administration comes down like a ton of bricks on some out-of-control pencil pusher out in the field, our side understands that we have won. We put a W on the board. Our morale builds. We see President Trump’s promises being kept. We see that there is hope. We see that there is the potential to improve things. And we see that justice is done. The benefits, like helping the victims and terrifying the government flunkies, are important, but this is really an exercise in morale. It makes people understand that their work reelecting Donald Trump was worth it. He earns their trust.

Now, the administration itself is too busy to sweep the Internet looking for outrageous issues to spotlight. This is a job best done by outsiders. It doesn’t take resources away from the official tasks and gives outside folks a way to make a difference. Plus, leveraging outside support gives the administration a huge combat power advantage. The Internet, combined with technology, allows motivated people to use these assets to maximize the ability of the administration to keep moving fast and to react quickly. As a movement, we should formalize this operation. We should have a formal structure that provides a clearinghouse for information for the administration but outside the administration and not subject to Freedom of Information Act requirements and other regulations. It should be a central point of assembly for information from outsiders who want to help, whether by reporting information or gathering it proactively.

What does this all mean? 

Let’s look at my personal favorite of all the departments, the Department of Defense – at least until we change it back to what it should be, the Department of War. The DOD is the biggest of the departments, and there are other factors that make it perfect for this kind of operation. It has a hierarchical chain of command, which gives leaders enormous powers over subordinates – and where there is enormous power, there’s enormous potential for abusing that power. There’s also the secrecy and confidentiality that tends to surround the military – the first rule of the military is don’t talk about the military. This allows abusers to hide their abuse. And there’s been a lot of abuse. I’ve been inundated with service members who claim to have suffered horrible persecution at the hands of their chain of command – COVID pogroms are just one example. No doubt some claims are exaggerated or even false, and that’s why one of the most important tasks for the working group I’m advocating is to screen those out. But there are plenty of real examples of toxic leadership, racial and sexual bigotry under the DEI banner, gross incompetence, and outright corruption. You probably didn’t hear about the Fat Leonard scandal, but a bunch of admirals were taking a bunch of money and hookers from a contractor. If the investigation wasn’t so unprofessional and incompetent, we might’ve seen some very senior people in striped uniforms turning big rocks into little ones. There is waste with money flushed down the toilet. There is arbitrary and obnoxious hassling of service members for demonstrating traditional values. Did you know that in one command, the leadership refused to give command slots to Christians because Christian values weren’t in line with the DEI party line? 

That happened. It needs to unhappen. We need to spot that garbage and nuke the site from orbit.

Maybe there’s a chaplain at some Air Force Base who can’t mention Jesus because that’s “not inclusive.” Perhaps a soldier is being passed through an elite training course based on race or some other nonsense so the generals can point to a token Green Beret. Maybe $10 million of brand-new generators is just sitting there, rusting. All those are entirely plausible, but we’ll never know about them unless we go looking for them. Once we go looking for them, we’ll find them on chat boards, social media, or even through tips.

That’s just an example of one of the many structures we must build within the America First movement to keep this all going past January 20, 2029. For so long, we invested in institutions that held seminars and wrote white papers, and there’s a place for that. Those institutions were critical in preparing for the Deep State takeover under Trump 2.0. But that’s not all there is. We need to harness the limitless potential and talents of our America First base. Of course, since USAID is getting a stake driven through its shriveled heart, it will not fund itself. We need our America First visionaries with a few bucks to invest in infrastructure that will allow us to keep the fight alive. Now, let’s hope we can find some people to write the checks – I’m not worried about finding people eager to do the job.

JD Vance’s Message to European Leaders: Listen to Your People, Don’t Go Hard Left

 

Last week he spoke at the Munich Security Conference but he chose not to speak just necessarily about security issues—i.e., NATO contributions—but rather the larger problem with Europe itself.

And that controversy still continues today. Basically, what JD Vance said was:

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We have to get along—Europe and the United States—we are twins of the Western tradition. But, my God, it’s getting hard for you. You go after and persecute people who object to abortion. You take American tech companies and try to censor them, even when they conduct interviews in the United States.

When Elon Musk talked to President Donald Trump on X, you wanted to—you being the collective of Europeans—censor it. When an election didn’t go the way that the Left wanted in Romania, they wanted to stop it. In fact, others have said within Germany that the Alternativ für Deutschland—if they were to be a majority party in the next election—they might cancel it.

So, he said, “This is not behooving of us.”

They went crazy. Oh my gosh, the defense secretary, the minister of Germany got right up, “This is unsustainable, this is unacceptable.” But nobody said it was untrue. It was absolutely true.

The so-called libertine, free-loving, open society of Europe is very closed. It’s a one-party system, in the sense that they only allow left-wing views. It’s to the left of the radical American Democratic Party.

Germany should be very careful, and also should Europe, because the subtext of that speech wasn’t explicitly voiced but it was there.

And his critics said, “Oh, he’s just talking to the MAGA people at home.” He wasn’t. He wasn’t talking to the French ministers. He wasn’t talking to the MAGA people at home or the American people in general. He was talking to the people of Europe and they support him because we are going to see possible radical changes in the German government, some Eastern European governments, but especially, the French government, and maybe the British government the next time. And they’re going to be national populists.

And he was telling them, “You have a right to stand up.” And do what? His criticism was multifaceted: Close your borders. Legal-only immigration. Up your defense budget. Allow for free speech. We’ve gone through the Biden nightmare at home. We know what it was like to go hard left. Don’t go that way. Deregulate. Cut taxes. Free up the economy.

And they got very angry about that. It was almost as if they knew that was true but they could not admit it.

But here’s the subtext I’m talking about. Germany and Europe better be very careful. Germany’s fertility rate is 1.45. Europe’s, in aggregate, is only about 1.5. We’re at least 1.6.

We said years ago in 2014, “NATO, pay 2% of gross domestic product and hold your own and pull your own weight.” And now it’s 10 years, 11 years later and we still have nine NATO countries that will not do it, especially Germany. They only spend 1.5%. Their energy is four times ours. And BMW and Audi and Mercedes cannot compete.

Why? Because they’ve gone full Green New Deal, so to speak, and shut down coal, nuclear, natural gas plants. They have 16% of the population was not born in Germany. France is almost as bad. And they do not assimilate, intermarry, and integrate like we do. They are looking at this huge Russian-Ukrainian war on their borders where maybe 1.5 million people have been killed or wounded or missing.

And they’re critical of the United States that pays the greatest proportion of the NATO budget and who puts Europe under its nuclear shield. And they are damning us.

They run a $240 billion surplus with trade. And how do they do it? Because we’re lazy and unproductive? No, we are more productive and we have cheaper power rates and a more open economy than they do but they have asymmetrical tariffs. Add it all up and Germany is in a very dependent place. So is Europe.

JD Vance was trying to speak truth to power, so to speak. And they didn’t want to hear it. And what’s going to happen in the next year, people in Europe are going to rise up—these populist movements. And I think what he’s telling all of them, this could be another start of a wonderful relationship because these fossilized, ossified governments do not reflect the people of Europe.

Trump’s Counterrevolution in Washington

 

I want to talk about the Trump counterrevolution, not the revolution.

There’s been a lot of false information—what the Left calls misinformation, disinformation—about what’s going on in these first 30 days. It hasn’t even been 30 days. It’s reminiscent of FDR’s first hundred days, and they call it the MAGA revolution.

It’s not a revolution. It is a counterrevolution. There’s a big difference. This is a restoration. Let’s use the word “Trump restoration.”

We don’t know really—we don’t really appreciate what we’ve been through with eight years of the Obama revolution and the four-year, more radical third term of Barack Obama, using or employing the wax effigy of Joe Biden. A revolution that we’ve experienced was a cultural, economic, political, social revolution.

It was very similar to the French Revolution under the Robespierre brothers. You should remember what they tried to do. They changed the days of the week. They renamed things. They tore down statues. They went after the churches. Does this sound familiar?

This revolution that we’ve experienced—everything was up for sale. Everything was negotiable. We invented a third gender and rammed it down people’s throats. We tore down statues. We said 1776 was no longer the foundational date. It was 1619.

We changed the very mechanism that we vote. We went from 70% of the electorate voting on Election Day to 70% of the electorate not doing that, either through mail-in or early voting. That was a radical change that had no discussion. It was done by fiat. It was incredible.

We looked at girls sports and we destroyed it. We said that transgendered biological males that were now transgendered females could compete. They won over 600 medals they took away from hardworking female athletes. We had drag shows among young children. It was an effort to change the entire Constitution. We forget that.

They were trying to bring in Puerto Rico as a state and Washington, D.C., to get four instant senators. They were proud, they said, that they were going to pack the Supreme Court. Hadn’t been done—hadn’t been tried since 1937. And it was an object of disgrace ever since but they were proud to try it again.

They talked about making states—the Senate look like the House. They wanted—and a lot of them were advocating, it was not fair that one senator in Wyoming, to take one example, is worth 250,000 votes but a senator in California represented 20 million. They wanted to change the makeup of the Senate.

They wanted to get rid of the Senate filibuster. Remember that.

They wanted to bring back neo-Confederate nullification. Six hundred jurisdictions, in the manner of South Carolina in 1832, or on the edge of the Civil War in 1860, when Confederate, neo-Confederate Southern states said, “The federal government’s law does not apply to us. Tariffs, Yankee tariffs—no, no. We are going to override them.” Andrew Jackson almost invaded the Carolinas over that—South Carolina.

And so these jurisdictions said, “Federal law doesn’t apply here. We’re exempt. We have our own laws. You cannot—federal immigration law does not apply here. It applies everywhere else, to you, you, you, but not to us.”

So this was a revolutionary movement. Movies were different. Sports were different. Take a knee.

And Donald Trump came in and it was not sufficient to say we’re going to stop the madness of $37 billion. We’re going to stop the madness of being short 40,000 or 50,000 military recruits because of this DEI coupled with the amelioration and Kabul. We’re going to stop the appeasement of China.

But that wasn’t all. He said, “The government is broke. We’re going to go through all of these agencies. And finally, for the first time in the history of this country, when somebody says they’re going to cut federal spending and drain the swamp or cut the administrative—we’re going to do it. And there’s going to be no changing names, except to go back to traditional names, and we’re not going to topple statues. And if you break the law and you’re on campus and you’re on a student visa, you’re gonna go back home.”

So we’re in the midst of a counterrevolution. It’s not revolutionary. You know what it is? It’s a return to normalcy. It’s a return to common sense. It only looks revolutionary to revolutionaries. But to the rest of the people, it is a counterrevolution to restore normalcy and bring the country from the far-left fringes back home again.

This Dem Rep Made Everyone Dumber at the DOGE Oversight Hearing This Week

 

he Department of Government Efficiency Oversight Subcommittee hearing on February 12 certainly wasn’t dull. We had “d**k” pics being whipped out, another Democratic congresswoman peddling election denialism, and overall Elon Musk derangement syndrome. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) chairs this subcommittee on DOGE, so you knew fireworks would fly. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), who is Greene’s archnemesis on the Hill, did what she did best: spew nonsense around the room like Trump “allegedly” being elected and casting Mr. Elon Musk as an unelected bureaucrat. Yes, admittedly, this isn’t Crockett at her worst, but such talk, I was told, was in support of armed rebellion.

WATCH: Low IQ Rep. Crockett says Donald Trump was "allegedly elected" & calls Elon Musk an "unelected bureaucrat."

"If you are trying to conduct audits & figure out where the waste, fraud & abuse is, I don't know why you would go to some tech guy..." pic.twitter.com/q4RTuHPqlw

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 12, 2025

Mazie Hirono is breathing a sigh of relief.

Jasmine is officially the dumbest lawmaker on the Hill.

This jobs report consists entirely of data from before President Trump took office.

I guess I should thank you for pointing out the failure of Bidenomics. https://t.co/p3jpsBeNEw

— Alex Pfeiffer (@Pfeiffer47) February 7, 2025

Then, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) called Elon a “d**k,” and did not shy away from using charged rhetoric to voice his outrage over DOGE doing its job in uncovering all of the liberal pork projects that have bled taxpayers for years. Oh, and his "d**k pic" was just an image of Mr. Musk during his remarks. These people truly have nothing. 

CNN: "Do you think that calling Elon Musk a dick is effective messaging?"

REP. GARCIA: "Well, he is a dick...The American public wants us to bring ACTUAL WEAPONS to this bar fight!"

These people are unwell & dangerous. https://t.co/hqSDMqIq47 pic.twitter.com/WucneFIJfv

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 12, 2025

Rep. Garcia brings a “d*ck pic” to the DOGE subcommittee hearing but presents a picture of Elon Musk.

He says Elon is giving back “absolutely nothing” with his work on DOGE.

This is false. According to the U.S. debt clock, DOGE has already saved the American taxpayer over 86.6… pic.twitter.com/x8SrbkGS0k

— Media Lies (@MediasLies) February 12, 2025

Finally, and I must agree, it's beyond words that the person testifying in defense of all the wasteful spending was a blind man.

Not to be insensitive. But it’s beyond ironic that the Democrat’s witness defending the govt‘s horrific record on finding waste and fraud.. is an actual blind man. pic.twitter.com/Kh8zvTFHHM

— Rob Schmitt (@SchmittNYC) February 12, 2025

 You cannot make this up. What a circus. 

***

As an aside, DOGE, keep doing your thing, fellas:

Pretty close 😂 pic.twitter.com/B12N7Oa36L

— PBD Podcast (@PBDsPodcast) February 12, 2025

Ohio Dems Want to Regulate Ejaculation. Yeah, This State Is Going to Be Red Forever.

What the hell is this? I get why Ohio Democrats are doing this, trying to be cute with the whole ‘regulate our bodies’ narrative that no one cared about in 2024. Abortion and female voters did not save Democrats, who obsess over the weirdest issues that will keep this party in the political wilderness. I’m not complaining—it’s just funny that we were the ones who were framed as being ‘weird,’ specifically Vice President JD Vance. Again, when you dug just a little, it was Tim Walz and the rest of the Democrats who proved to be the aberrant clowns of the 2024 cycle. And now, this bill targeting ejaculating males only reinforces that Democrats are unserious, leaderless, rudderless, and without a central message (via Newsweek): 

NEW: Ohio lawmakers have proposed a new law that bans men from ejaculating without intent of conception, would fine men up to $10,000 per ejaculation.

The bill was brought forward by Democratic State reps Anita Somani and Tristan Rade.

Men would be charged with a felony under… pic.twitter.com/yKb7Q1rZIY

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 13, 2025

A bill proposed to the Ohio statehouse will make male ejaculation without intent to have a baby, a fineable offense of up to $10,000.

The bill has been proposed by State Representatives Anita Somani and Tristan Rader, who wrote it to point out what they see as the absurdity of rules that control women's bodies but do not control men's. It has not been formally introduced to the House Floor yet. 

Per Somani and Rader, men would face a $1,000 first offense, $5,000 second offense, and $10,000 subsequent offense fine to "discharge semen or genetic material without intent to fertilize an embryo." 

To the shock of no one, this bill is dead on arrival. The fact that it was even put forward is an embarrassment. However you feel about abortion, it does deal with ending human life. This bill is about sperm and regulating it, which is creepy, weird, and all sorts of ‘WTF.’ 

The Republicans are focusing on reducing regulations, getting a budget passed, bringing down the cost of living, getting our fiscal house in order with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency, re-establishing primacy aboard, and bringing back the excellent job-creating and investing climate under the first Trump presidency. 

Democrats in Ohio are obsessed with sperm. They want to establish the sperm police. What a bunch of weirdos. 

Please keep doing this, Democrats. You’re only working to help the GOP have a generational grip on power.

Two Independent Journalists Took a Blowtorch to the 'Censorship Industrial Complex'

 These two have been up on the Hill before outlining the increasingly illiberal and creepy censorship mentality that’s engulfed the Democratic Party, the progressive activist wing, and its leeching into the mainstream media that have pundits who defend this Politburo nonsense. Michael Shellenberger of Public and Matt Taibbi of Racket News have been two of the most visible independent reporters who have been made uneasy by the actions of the Biden administration.

On Wednesday, both reporters testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the “Censorship Industrial Complex.” The entire hearing will be posted below. However, their opening statements mentioned a familiar agency whose actions have been uncovered, thanks to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which would be USAID. Both had lengthy opening remarks, with Taibbi noting that right-wing misinformation does exist, but growing up a Democrat, he wasn’t afraid of differing views, even nutty ones. He felt his arguments in the arena of debate could and would neutralize bad ideas from taking hold.

Instead, Democrats and liberals want no debate and have weaponized the institutions of government to go after their political enemies. Taibbi and Shellenberger were part of a crew of reporters who analyzed and wrote about the Twitter Files, the extensive and chilling system of censorship and thought control built at the social media company with the help of the FBI. After these stories about the censorship operation were published, the IRS opened an investigation into Taibbi. These activities ceased and will continue to be dismantled, thanks to Trump retaking the presidency in 2024.

Here are Taibbi’s opening remarks, provided by Mr. 'Camus' who also transcribed it:

    Opening statement by Matt Taibbi: "Two years ago when Michael and I first testified before your weaponization of government subcommittee, Democratic members called us so called journalists, suggested we were bought off scribes, and questioned our ethics and our loyalties. When we… pic.twitter.com/couTLqHCVc
    — Camus (@newstart_2024) February 12, 2025

    Two years ago when Michael and I first testified before your weaponization of government subcommittee, Democratic members called us so called journalists, suggested we were bought off scribes, and questioned our ethics and our loyalties. When we tried to answer, we were told to shut up, take our take off our tinfoil hats, and remember two things."

    "One, there is no digital censorship, and two, if there is digital censorship, it's for our own good. I was shocked. I thought the whole thing had to be a mistake. There was no way the party that I gave votes to my whole life was now pro censorship. Then last year, I listened to John Kerry, whom I voted for, talked to the World Economic Forum."

    "Speaking about this information, he said, quote, our first amendment stands as a major block to our ability to, quote, hammer it out of existence. He complained that it's really hard to govern because people self select where they go for their news, which makes it quote, much harder to build consensus."

    "Now, I defended John Kerry when people said he looks French, but Marie Antoinette would have been embarrassed by this speech. He was essentially complaining that the peasants are self selecting their own sources of media. What's next?"

    "Letting them make up their own minds? Lastly, building consensus may be a politician's job, but it's not mine as a citizen or as a journalist. In fact, making it hard to govern is exactly the media's job. The failure to understand this is why we have a censorship problem. This is an Alamo moment for the First Amendment."

    "Most of America's closest allies as both, Rupa and Michael have pointed out, have already adopted draconian speech laws. We are surrounded. The EU's new Digital Services Act is the most comprehensive censorship law ever instituted in a Western democratic society. Ranking member Raskin, you don't have to go as far as Russia or China to find people jailed for speech. Our allies in England now have an online safety act, which empowers the government to jail people for nebulous offenses like false communication or causing psychological harm."

    "Germany, France, Australia, Canada, and other nations have implemented similar ideas. These laws are totally incompatible with our system. Some of our own citizens have been harassed or even arrested in some of these countries, but our government has not stood up for them. Why? Because many of our bureaucrats believe in these laws."

    "Take USAID. Many Americans are now in an uproar because they they learned about over $400,000,000 going to an organization called Inner News, whose chief Jeanne Bourgeault boasted to Congress about training hundreds of thousands of people in journalism. But her views are almost identical to Carrie's. She gave a talk once about building trust and combating misinformation in India during the pandemic. She said that after months of a really beautifully unified COVID nineteen message, vaccine enthusiasm rose to 87%."

    "But when, quote, mixed information on vaccine efficacy got out, hesitancy ensued. We're paying this person to train journalists, and she doesn't know that the press does not exist to promote unity or political goals like vaccine enthusiasm. That's propaganda, not journalism. Bourdieu also once said that to fight bad content, we need to work really hard on exclusionless or inclusionless and, quote, really need to focus our ad dollars toward what she called the good news."

    "Again, if you don't know the fastest way to erode trust in media is by having government sponsor exclusion lists, you shouldn't be getting a dollar in taxpayer money, let alone 476,000,000 of it. And USAID is just a tiny piece of the censorship machine Michael and I saw across that long list of agencies."

    "Collectively, they bought up every part of the news production line, sources, think tanks, research, fact checking, anti disinformation, commercial media scoring, and when all else fails, straight up censorship. It is a giant closed messaging loop whose purpose is to transform the free press into exactly that consensus machine. There is no way to remove this rod surgically. The whole mechanism has to go."

    "Is there right wing misinformation? Hell, yes. It exists in every direction. But I grew up a Democrat and don't remember being afraid of it. At the time, we figured we didn't need censorship because we thought we had the better argument."

    "Obviously, many of you lack the same confidence. You took billions of dollars from taxpayers and you blew it on programs whose entire purpose was to tell them they're wrong about things they can see with their own eyes. You sold us out. And until these rather tires tiresome questions are answered, this problem is not fixed.  

    Thank you."

Here are parts of Mr. Shellenberger’s opening remarks:

    Chairman Jordan, Ranking Member Raskin, and members of the Committee: thank you for inviting my testimony.

    Nearly two years ago, I testified and provided evidence to a Subcommittee of this Committee about the existence of a Censorship Industrial Complex, a network of government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, government contractors, including Stanford Internet Observatory, and Big Tech social media platforms that conspired to censor ordinary Americans and elected officials alike for holding disfavored views.

    […]

    The latest is the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. Last October we published a report that noted that USAID had funded the creation of a Censorship Industrial Complex in Brazil, complete with third-party “fact checkers,” committees of experts in charge of deciding for the entire society what the truth is on any given issue.[iv] And, after I published the Twitter Files - Brazil, last spring, the Attorney General of Brazil opened a formal criminal investigation of me, which is ongoing.

    In 2021, USAID even published a so-called “Disinformation Primer” that called for “advertiser outreach” to “disrupt the funding and financial incentive to disinform.” Such “advertiser outreach” was precisely the advertiser boycott strategy used by groups with ties to the US intelligence community. These groups, with uncritical support and amplification from the media, were able to use this strategy to successfully get Facebook and Twitter to censor more content.

    […]

    In my March 2023 testimony before the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, I described the emergence of the “Censorship Industrial Complex” comprised of a vast and coordinated network of government agencies, academic institutions, and private organizations that had been working together to suppress lawful speech under the guise of combating “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

    […]

    We still do not know how much money other US government agencies have routed to censorship advocacy, in part because they hide the money through multiple shell organizations. An investigative journalist from Romania in 2021 denounced USAID for “hiding the flow of media development money” to supposedly independent journalists around the world through an “offshore structure… US public money -> Delaware -> Eastern Europe -> Sierra Leone -> Mexico.”

    The CIA whistleblower whose complaint became the basis for the 2019 impeachment of President Trump relied upon reporting by a supposedly independent investigative news organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which appears to have effectively operated as an arm of USAID. In a censored 2024 documentary by German television broadcaster NDR, a USAID official confirmed that USAID approves OCCRP’s “annual work plan” and approves new hires of “key personnel.”

    The journalistic collaboration behind the documentary revealed that OCCRP’s original funding came from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the State Department and quotes a USAID official who says, OCCRP founder Drew Sullivan is “just nervous about being linked with law enforcement. If people who are going to give you information think you’re just a cop, maybe it’s a problem.” It appears that this was the beginning of OCCRP’s practice of hiding US government funding.

    OCCRP does not operate like a normal news organization. Its goals appear to include interfering in foreign political matters, including elections, with an eye toward causing regime change. Sullivan told NDR that his organization had “probably been responsible for five or six countries changing over from one government to another government… and getting prime ministers indicted or thrown out.”

    As such, it appears that the CIA, USAID, and OCCRP were all involved in the impeachment of President Trump in ways similar to the regime change operations that all three organizations engage in abroad.

    This one example fits the pattern. The government employees and contractors who have engaged in information operations and censorship advocacy over the last decade have been overwhelmingly focused on silencing populists. That is as true in the United States as it is in Europe and Brazil.

    Two years ago, I described the reasons for this. Since then, our understanding of the development of the Censorship Industrial Complex over the last two years has deepened.


Shellenberger said that while this censorship push is in retreat in the United States, it remains systematic in Europe, Australia, Britain, and Brazil.

We Are Totally Going to Crush the Democrats' Puny Lawfare Offensive

 Everybody needs to calm down and take a deep breath – the DOGE revolution is not in danger because a bunch of obscure district court judges in blue jurisdictions have signed ridiculous temporary orders purporting to limit President Donald Trump’s ability to actually be president. Don’t listen to the black pill battalion. We’re not losing this fight. We’re going to win it. Listen to the vice president – JD Vance has gotten a lot of heat because he pointed out that this is a legal farce. As usual, he’s right. And, to the extent there is a constitutional crisis – which there isn’t – it was brought on by uppity jurists hoping to distract the administration from its mission by embroiling it in a separation of powers fight. Except that’s not going to happen. The President and JD Vance are not going to fall for it. What they will do is use the judiciary to police its own misbehaving members, and when it’s all done, these legal fights will solidify the administration’s ability to act decisively in the future.

There are a few things non-lawyers need to understand. The first is that this nonsense will not stand. There are many reasons why, but the most important reason is that these emergency temporary restraining orders (and the injunctions that will likely follow) are legally meritless. Once a serious court gets a look at them, they will end up on the ash heap of judicial history.

The next thing to understand is that after this fight, Donald Trump will be more secure in his ability to be president than he has ever been. This kind of nationwide injunction will go extinct like the dinosaurs, passenger pigeons, and alternative pronouns in government correspondence. Why? The most obvious reason is that the orders are legally ridiculous, but the other key reason is that Chief Justice John Roberts is fully aware of the danger to his institution that this phenomenon poses.

We’re going to win this fight. We just have to fight smart.

Let’s back up a little. Doesn’t it seem like these orders are crazy? Your gut is correct – they are crazy. They are also obnoxious, as they are the result of blatant judge shopping. Have you noticed that just about every one of these judges is an Obama or Biden appointee? That’s not an accident. They didn’t just get lucky in the judge lottery. It’s no coincidence that one of the judges is a big donor of Democrat freak Sheldon Whitehouse – he’s not black, so they might have met at Sheldon’s beach club. The leftists find a venue where they know they will have a sympathetic ear who doesn’t care about the law. Next, they file a nonsense pleading and get the handpicked judge to sign their proposed order – yes, lawyers often draft orders and give them to the judge to sign. Right at the threshold, these cases are the result of cynical gamesmanship. But it gets worse.

I was an active lawyer for 30 years, including in the federal courts. I’ve never gotten an emergency temporary restraining order. I don’t know anyone who’s gotten an emergency temporary restraining order. The rules for getting emergency temporary restraining orders are so onerous, and the judges so reluctant to grant them, that it’s an exception to the exceptions-level kind of thing. But it’s easy when you’re a Democrat suing Donald Trump! For litigants who are not suing Donald Trump, there is a whole list of things you have to show just to get a regular restraining order, much less one issued at 1 AM on a Saturday morning when the opposing party hasn’t even had the opportunity to respond. Among those showings is “irreparable harm.” In one order, the anti-Trump plaintiffs claimed that the “irreparable harm” was that they weren’t going to be able to read a government website about some DEI nonsense and, therefore, their patients were going to die. That’s simply crazy. Yet, the judge nodded and signed.

Another requirement is standing. You must have suffered or be about to suffer an injury that would allow you to sue. Many of the suing groups can’t show any kind of individualized injury. The judges don’t even care.

Nor do they care about the consequences of their usurpations of executive power. You have judges saying that cabinet officers can’t have computer access to what’s going on in their own department. Well, that seemed a little too insane, but the revised order said that the secretary can have access, but the secretary’s people cannot, as if the secretary is going to sit down at a terminal and personally do data entry and deletions for the entire department. This is craziness. The judicial branch cannot micromanage the executive branch. But that’s what these orders purport to do.
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As a lawyer, watching this – much like watching a lot of the lawfare they have waged against Trump both in and out of office – is difficult because it’s utterly insane. You need to understand that the stuff you see happening with Trump and his administration never happens in non-Trump court cases. Not ever. Not even a little bit. And for normal people – that is, not-lawyers – this must look even worse. Just a few months ago, you elected Donald Trump to do all the things he’s doing, and now you have a bunch of handpicked pipsqueaks in robes ordering that he may be president, but he can’t do any presidenting.

So, the question is, how should Trump react to this stuff? Exactly how he has been – by playing it smart and playing the long game that will get victory over these tactics and solidify his position for the future. That requires the patience to use the legal process to work this through. We’re not going to fix it; we’re going to let Chief Justice John Roberts get his own house in order. It’s going to take time. It’s going to be annoying. But it will be successful, and we will be much better off when it’s over.

Conservatives, being the abused life partners of American politics, are always suspicious and on edge, and a lot of them were wondering why Trump just doesn’t tell these ridiculous robed rejects to go pound judicial sand. After all, as it has been famously observed, Chief Justice Roberts has no divisions.

The regime media, and the Democrats, to the limited extent they are different, absolutely freaked out when JD Vance stated the obvious – Donald Trump could just refuse to obey these orders. The courts can’t stop him through hard power; the fact is that the only power the courts have is the respect the other branches grant it, respect that is earned by observing norms and ruling fairly. The fact is that the ultimate power of one branch to simply refuse to accept the overreach of another branch is, itself, one of the checks and balances within our constitutional system.
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Democrats, the regime media, and other dumb people will tell you that that’s not a thing. This week, they’re demanding total obedience to whatever any court says at any time instead of the opposite position they held before January 20, 2025. But even they agree that, at some point, the judiciary can overstep such that the executive is not obligated to obey. Imagine that some judge in East Dakota ruled that Pam Bondi was constitutionally obligated to charge Donald Trump with treason for talking to Vladimir Putin on the phone and ordered that a charge that he wrote be filed and then found Donald Trump guilty of it on an emergency basis at 3:30 in the morning on a Wednesday and that Trump must be taken into custody in the next 15 minutes. Sure, most of the lawyers on cable and social media would think this was cool, but they are idiots. Normal people and perhaps 20% to 30% of Democrats would agree that Donald Trump would not be required to honor that ruling and surrender at the local federal penitentiary. Everyone agrees that there’s some line where the executive branch shakes its head and says, “No, you can’t do that, judicial branch.” The question is whether we are there yet.

We’re not even close to being there yet. Donald Trump has not disobeyed these dumb orders, nor should he disobey them for now. While it’s frustrating for us to watch the Democrats try to keep DOGE from uncovering their massive fraud, this is the smart way to proceed. It’s smart to give the judiciary a chance to correct its own errors, and Chief Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court will do that. He’s an institutionalist. There is no way he will put his institution at risk of being sidelined by jumping on the hand grenade that is these ridiculous rulings.
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Trump is smart to let the judiciary fix its own mistakes. Keep in mind that part of the reason the Democrats sought these orders is to provoke Trump to act precipitously and to disobey the courts, thereby creating the constitutional crisis they claim exists but really doesn’t. Instead, Donald Trump should read the orders narrowly and work around them where he can. His people should appeal all of them and let the system do its job. Eventually, these silly decrees will all get tossed out and there will be established precedent banning such antics in the future. SCOTUS has no desire to referee a couple of hundred stupid district court orders on micro-topics, like requiring the DOGE people to put new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out.

It’s going to take time and it’s going to be frustrating. For the enemy, that’s a feature and not a bug. We just have to be chill; it’s a Zen thing. But that doesn’t mean we have to do nothing. Administration leaders like JD Vance should continue to point out the obvious – that these antics are lame and that the executive branch holds all the cards. We should mock these ridiculous rulings, which will make normal people mad at the Democrats. Using his superpower of making his enemies take up the banner of the worst causes possible, Trump has the Democrats loudly siding with bureaucrats and corruption. Finally, the administration and its supporters should loudly publicize the unethical aspects of this campaign, like the connection between some of the judges and NGOs, as well as partisan anti-Trump comments by some of these judges that demonstrate partiality. When a judge rules, he puts his credibility on the line, and some of these judges don’t appear to have much. Let America see their bias in living color.
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Mostly, we need to calm down and wait. They’re not going to stop us. These orders will fall. It won’t be tomorrow, but it will be soon enough. When it’s all over, Trump is going to be in an even stronger position because this weapon will be taken from the Democrat arsenal. And that’s a big problem for them because they really don’t have much else to throw at us.

Wisdom From the Founders: Ignorance and Freedom

 “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”—Thomas Jefferson

Another brilliant quote from Jefferson. First of all, to be “free,” a people need to know what “freedom” is and, more importantly, where it comes from. Licentiousness is not freedom, yet that is what the Left, in the guise of the Democratic Party, is trying to teach American today. As Edmund Burke so wisely pointed out, “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” People aren’t “free” if they can’t control their own passions and lusts; they are enslaved by them, and will eventually be destroyed by such.

Freedom comes from God, Who is the source of all things. “All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” That is from the American Declaration of Independence, of course, written by Thomas Jefferson. Notice that the “Creator” “endowed” us with certain rights, and one of those is “Liberty.” Freedom’s source is God. He defines it, tells us how to obtain it, the restrictions thereon, and how to maintain it. It’s why He is the greatest enemy of the totalitarian Left. The less we know about this freedom (“ignorance” in the Jeffersonian quote above), the less chance we have of obtaining freedom, or being “in a state of civilization.” Barbarians—those who live selfish, uncivilized, unvirtuous, ungodly lives, cause others to live in fear. Those who live in fear do not live in freedom.

Thus, Jefferson is 100% accurate. No society ignorant of the true Source and nature of freedom, has been, or ever will be, truly free. It is absolutely no surprise, to the wise, that the farther America, and the world, has moved away from the principles Jefferson enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, the more barbaric, and less free, people have become. They don’t know God. Thus, they won’t know, or have, true freedom.

Elon Musk recently said, “If you get a trillion dollars of economic growth, and you cut the budget deficit by a trillion - between now and next year - there is no inflation… And if the government is not borrowing as much, it means that interest costs decline. So, everyone’s mortgage, their car payment, their credit card bills, their student debt, the monthly payments drop. That’s a fantastic scenario!”

Both Donald Trump and Elon Musk are/have been businessmen and thus know how to operate within a budget, and indeed, that any business or organization must do so. Politicians rarely worry about it because they are spending other people’s money and have an endless supply. Government can either borrow what it wants or print money. Both of those scenarios are, except in emergencies and for only very short periods of time, very harmful and inflationary to an economy. Witness the Biden years.

What Musk is proposing in the quote above is common-sense economics for government, something every government should have, but rarely does. Frankly, Trump didn’t do it very well his first term, but he seems serious about it now. But cutting government spending is the last thing the Democrats and the Deep State want. Government spending buys votes—the highest priority to any politician, especially to Democrats. Also, Democrats, being Marxist Leftists, believe that government is the solution to all of mankind’s ills, especially if run by them. Economizing government is utterly anathema to those people. Thus, they are screaming, hollering, crying, cursing, lying, and doing everything they can to hinder what Trump and Musk are trying to do.  

But, from what I gather, the American people—by and large—are in favor of this much-needed government diet. Most people have enough sense to realize that every entity must have a least a measure of frugality and cannot wastefully spend money it doesn’t have. To be $36 trillion in debt is obscene. Only the ignorant don’t know that. They are the ones who will be enslaved to government.
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And they will continue to vote Democrat. They want their free lunch. Seventy-five million of them voted for the most incompetent, freedom-denying, yea, frightening Presidential candidate in our nation’s history. Yes, ignorance and freedom are, as Mr. Jefferson said, directly related.

But the rest of us don’t want to pay for it any more.

The Left, i.e., the Democratic Party and the Deep State, have a vested interest in keeping the American people ignorant of the above common sense economic principles. They have controlled the Department of Education for generations now, and thus countless millions are completely ignorant of the basics of economics, and other principles of limited government, virtuous republicanism, and the true source and proper restrictions upon freedom. Mr. Trump’s biggest battle with the Left will probably be over the Department of Education. He has called for the DOE to be “closed immediately.” The Left will fight that to its dying breath. Ignorance is the only thing that keeps them going.

An ignorant people—either willfully or unwillingly ignorant—will eventually be enslaved by a totalitarian government, by demagogues who will buy their votes with their own money to their own destruction. No nation can be, ever has been, or ever will be ignorant and free. Jefferson had it exactly right. And that applies to America as well.  It is one of the major, most important battles that we face today, and we’d better win it or future generations will only know government tyranny. That so many want that, and vote for such tyranny, shows how far into ignorance and decadence America has already fallen.

Mythologies About Musk

 Here are some of the untruths told about Elon Musk and DOGE:

"Musk has no right to cut USAID."

Elon Musk and his team are not cutting any federal programs.

They are auditors. They were given legal authority under a presidential executive order creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
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Its mandate is to identify waste, abuse, fraud, and irrelevance in the federal budget at a time when the U.S. is $37 trillion in debt.

The agency will expire on July 4, 2026.

Ultimately, Musk can propose program cuts, but Trump holds the authority to approve or reject them. He may or may not act on all, some, or none of the DOGE recommendations.

"No one elected Musk."

Like hundreds of government officials, Musk was appointed by an elected president to run an agency that does not require Senate confirmation.

Musk is as legally legitimate as the national security advisor and his National Security Council, none of whom require Senate confirmation.

Does the left believe former national security advisor Jake Sullivan, who made decisions far more pivotal than Musk, had no authority to do so because he too was neither elected nor confirmed by the Senate?

"It is a dangerous precedent to give a private citizen billionaire like Musk so much power."

In fact, Musk has far more legal authority than did FDR's best friend Harry Hopkins. Hopkins moved into the White House and de facto set U.S. foreign assistance policies toward Stalin's Russia.

Musk's position is more akin to past captains of industry like Henry Ford, Henry Kaiser, and William Knudson appointed by FDR to run the wartime economy.

None of them were either elected or confirmed by the Senate. All of them helped to save a poorly armed U.S. after the debacle of Pearl Harbor.

"Foreign aid is ending."

Hardly.

Foreign aid, which in all its manifestations in various cabinets and agencies is reaching nearly $80 billion per year, is not ending.

One of its distribution centers, USAID, may be vastly curtailed or bundled into the State Department. But the important bulk grants to allies like Israel or friends like Egypt or aid in times of famine relief and natural disasters to the needy abroad will remain. And these programs will be strengthened and saved precisely because they will be trimmed of skimmers and scammers.

"It is illegal to end USAID."

USAID was created by an executive order in 1961 by then President John F. Kennedy in response to congressional legislation codifying foreign aid and allowing the president to execute the statute at his discretion.

Nearly four decades later, in 1998, Congress passed another law reifying Kennedy's USAID as a formal agency but still within the executive branch.

But neither law mandates that Trump bundle all or even most foreign aid in USAID. He can disperse money as he sees fit throughout the cabinets. And he can keep whatever funds or programs he chooses under the aegis of USAID should he wish.
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"Trump cannot impound any USAID money legislated by Congress."

That legal question apparently depends on whose ox is gored.

Neither Congress nor the courts have ever, in blanket fashion, either approved and sustained a line-item presidential veto or outright banned any form of presidential impoundment.

But recently Joe Biden, as both vice president in 2016 and president in 2021, set a precedent that an administration most certainly can impound or delay congressionally passed funding as it pleases.

Infamously, Biden publicly bragged that on a trip to Ukraine, he had threatened that government by withholding $1 billion in approved U.S. foreign aid unless it immediately fired Biden enemy prosecutor Viktor Shokin.

That condition was never discussed in any congressional aid authorization (and was the sort of act the left would impeach Trump for in 2020).

More flagrantly in 2021, Biden abruptly and permanently stopped all construction on the border wall. And he impounded those congressionally approved construction funds through a variety of gimmicks.

Biden, remember, without Congressional approval, gratuitously canceled student loan obligations, issued blanket loan amnesties, and promised to ignore or work around court prohibitions of his illegal acts.
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"China will be delighted by USAID cuts."

False. China will be likely upset by the Trump cuts.

Beijing finds its own concrete development projects far more effective than USAID imposing American cultural agendas abroad. Beijing likes self-destructive American aid like LGBTQ activism, transgender chauvinism, and anti-conservative American media.

Does anyone believe China was angry that the USAID created a vast gender studies program at the University of Kabul or had the U.S. embassy there advertise its pride activism, or itself snagged $40 million to engineer deadly viruses?

So, China will be quite unhappy that organs like the New York Times and the BBC are having their USAID subsidies ended. After all, they, along with China, so often vilified their shared existential nemesis -- Donald J. Trump.