Sunday, May 31, 2026
Inverse Bigotry
While I don't, in principle, object to politicians respectfully adopting traditions for the sake of their audience, there is something especially bizarre about AOC, a truly radical feminist, wearing a hijab to speak in front of a crowd that appears to be exclusively male, and largely uninterested in what she has to say.
She has unconsciously adopted the traditions of a culture that respects women even less than the one portrayed in The Handmaid's Tale—you know, that horror that Donald Trump is supposedly bringing about in the United States with the help of the docile women who surround him and the openly gay men in prominent administration positions.
All the men around her, with the exception of Mamdani himself, are dressed like the Afghan Taliban, so obviously rejecting the Western society that has welcomed them. AOC spends an inordinate amount of time condemning people who have no intention of oppressing women, but when given the chance, she embraces a crowd that is filled with people who do.
An all-male crowd, from the look of it, except for a woman who likely is either the mayor's or AOC's staffer.
One of the more bizarre things about leftists is their inverse bigotry regarding brown and black people. They so obviously expect them to behave like savages that they excuse behavior that they would never tolerate in white people. They spout out excuses, trot out claims of oppression, and claim that any bad behavior is caused by white oppression.
Poisonous
The Palestinians, who are the new hot group of "victims" in the West, are notably excluded from settling in Muslim countries, which want nothing to do with them. A Palestinian "refugee" from Gaza will be welcomed in Europe, but not in Egypt, Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia. Because they are poisonous to civilization itself.
Selective Open Borders
Opposing the Trump policy clearly doesn't stem from a concern for the illegal migrants per se—they can get a very good deal, in fact, and even the chance to return legally.
What's really at stake is the commitment to open borders. And by that, it's not even a commitment to the principle of open borders, since none of these advocates are up in arms about the fact that Mexico's immigration laws are far harsher than the United States, and Mexico wants nothing to do with feeding or housing illegal immigrants.
It's open borders for the United States, and more generally for First World countries. The goal is to redistribute our income, which amounts to pillaging our country.
But It's a Civil Violation!
I must be missing something in this story. The fact that Vang had a conviction for armed robbery explains why he may have been a priority case for deportation, but it is the fact that he is an illegal alien, not the fact that he committed a crime, that makes him subject to deportation. I don’t understand why a pardon from the State of Minnesota would have any bearing on his impending deportation. If he is an illegal—a fact that I take it no one denies—he is subject to deportation, period. As a matter of policy, ICE might decide to leave Vang alone, but the pardon would have no impact on that. What am I missing?
Labor Theory of Math
DEI math teaching is based on the labor theory of math: your effort, not achievement, is what counts in K-12 grading, and the demand that students get the right answer is white supremacy.
If so, it takes white supremacy to build a bridge or study physics.
It's striking how, during the George Floyd/COVID years, teachers' unions agitated to eliminate standards, and universities seized on the trend, doing much the same. The claim was that testing was racist; the reality was that standardized testing exposed the rot in our educational system.
Deserved Mockery
Generation Z is famously facing more dire financial conditions than previous generations.
We hear that constantly, and I certainly don't deny that in many respects, they have gotten a raw deal. Housing prices are high, and the job market is not particularly aligned with the education they were told would set them up for a comfortable life.
These kids, after all, were convinced that a degree in Women's Studies and Gender Confusion was the path to prosperity as they agitated for a communist revolution.
But you have to admit, these kids have no financial sense. It's obvious when you look at how they spend their money.
It turns out that Generation Z loves to eat out and get food delivered, despite not having the financial means to sustain the lifestyle they feel entitled to. You and I, when younger, made macaroni and cheese, ramen, and inexpensive meals to extend our food dollar.
When this is pointed out, our favorite indeterminate age journalist explains that it is not their fault. As poor people, they don't have the capacity to actually make meals such as mac and cheese, spaghetti with Ragu, salad, fresh vegetables, hummus, or any of the cheaper foods you can pick up at any grocery store and spend a few minutes making.
They have no choice but to order avocado toast for delivery to their door.
Gospel-of-Thomas Talarico
The Gospel of Thomas was not "omitted" from the Bible by "church leaders"; it was never an accepted part of the prophetic writings. Every reference to it in the early Church condemned it as false, used to advance the Manichaean heresy of dual gods of good and evil (and perhaps the Gnostic heresies as well). Any seminarian building a theological argument on the Gospel of Thomas about the true teachings of Jesus should be flunked out of school. And there are a lot of Bible-taught Baptists in Texas who know the difference, not to mention Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and so on.
The Cultural Enrichment Is Real
Georgia Meloni should follow Keir Starmer's lead and step up the surveillance of white Europeans, because they will no doubt overreact to the culturally vibrant, diverse behavior of the Muslim migrants who drive their cars into crowds and jump out to stab people as they try to escape.
It's just part of their culture, don't you know?
Islam is the religion of peace, but apparently an awful lot of Muslims didn't get the memo. Ramming incidents are becoming more common in Europe and serve as an easier version of the IED, allowing people to commit random mayhem without all the fuss of building a bomb.
One of the least spoken of features of Muslim migration is that the second generation, born in their adopted countries, is often even more radicalized than the first. Studies in Nordic countries, where they actually keep track of such things, show that 2nd generation migrants (children of migrants) are just as dependent on social services and no more integrated than their parents.
100% Insane
Most of us, on hearing that 20% of Fairfax County, the bedroom community of our nation's capital, are "deportable" or live with somebody deportable, recoil. Even though most are not actively committing crimes, that concentration of migrants distorts how the people who govern our country view the world. The people who govern us don't live like us, and that explains why they don't share our concerns.
If one in five is deportable, that probably explains why housing costs are artificially high. That probably explains why Fairfax County's values differ so significantly from those of the rest of Virginia. That explains why the County has a two-tier criminal justice system that allows predators to roam the streets.
Life-Loser Mayor
In sum, Seattle's budget is too big and Mayor Wilson has been treating the companies and people that pay all those taxes like they are not wanted and not needed exactly when they are most needed. Maybe this week she's finally decided to pull her head out of her DSA backside but I'm not too optimistic. It took her months to fix this one mistake. She'll probably keep mouthing off and watching as the millionaires and big businesses wave, like, bye.
More Mythical Problems
Some things are too on-the-nose to be believed immediately, so when Jonathan Turley read about the City of Ann Arbor, Michigan spending $18,000 to remove Community Watch signs in order to foster "inclusivity," he had to check whether it was a Babylon Bee story or if it was real.
It was, of course, real, because Ann Arbor isn't just a Blue city, but a Blue city with a far-left academic population that considers itself the most virtuous group of people in the world.
And virtue, these days, does not mean what it used to mean, but rather something closer to one-upping everybody else on making symbolic moves that either don't make things better or make things significantly worse.
Now removing Neighborhood Watch signs is an example of the former. Nobody takes Neighborhood Watch signs seriously, and Neighborhood Watch groups almost never really exist; when they do, city authorities work mightily to ensure they do nothing that actually reduces crime. That would be vigilantism, which is a no-no, and these days, reporting a crime is almost a purely symbolic act unless there is blood flowing in the streets.
Activism 101
There is a reason why student performance in schools is tanking fast, particularly in Blue states. As Mississippi is zooming ahead in teaching kids to read because they dropped the stupid liberal methods of teaching and went back to phonics, teachers, administrators, and school boards in Blue areas are focusing their attention and their school funding on indoctrinating children and turning them into leftist activists.
And:
To a certain extent, that used to be true, but that time is long in the rear-view mirror, as is the myth that most teachers are underpaid. While some still are, including new teachers whom the unions work hard to keep underpaid to ensure they can trot out somebody with a low salary, teachers in many districts make far above the median income.
In cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and many others, teachers are well-paid, the schools are grossly overfunded, and the kids are learning basically nothing. Kids can graduate with A averages and also be illiterate.
Public schools in general have plunged in performance for any number of reasons, but one of them is that many of them don't even bother to teach things like reading and math. They exist as jobs programs for left-wing activists and indoctrination centers for the radical left.
Moral Inversion
Now, 20 years later, Haynes has not only been released from prison, but is being paid $4.5 million by the State of Minnesota. His conviction was obviously not wrongful, but Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who is unabashedly pro-criminal, sided with Haynes in overturning his conviction on essentially non-existent grounds. Instead of playing her proper role in our judicial system, representing the public and prosecutors, she colluded with a murderer to spring him from prison and make him a wealthy man.
There is more to the story. My colleague David Zimmer tells it all here. It is impossible to overstate the moral inversion that takes place when we turn government over to leftists.
The Far Left
Thus, Prime Minister Keir Starmer denounced this year’s rally as “peddling hatred and division,” saying “we’re in the fight for the soul of this country.” Hatred apparently meaning love for one’s country, and the soul of the U.K. apparently consisting exclusively in importing millions of unassimilable third-world immigrants.
Dems Prefer Addressing Mythical Problems
Instead of doing the Republican thing of laying out detailed policy proposals and taking veiled shots at the failure of Democratic Party policies, Pratt goes for the jugular.
He asks the simple question: Do you want to live in squalor? In Los Angeles, of all places, which has every natural advantage, and one big disadvantage: Democrats.
Bass is a Democratic Party politician from central casting. Her answer to arsonists who revere Luigi Mangione is to discuss climate change, and her response to allowing residents to rebuild their burnt-down houses is to pile regulations on top of regulations to ensure they cannot do so.
Bass' allies can't figure out how to fight back because Pratt's message is too powerful to ignore. Instead, you get insane attacks on the fan-made videos that mock the establishment. It's not the message, but the medium, because again, that is how Democrats think.
Bass' major problem is that Pratt exposes the insanity and corruption of the Democratic Party machine, and there is no way to deny the basic facts of his case.
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Dissolution
As I have written before, I think it is increasingly questionable whether we conservatives can continue to share a country with liberals. It saddens me to say it, but there seems to be little basis for any common citizenship. The Left’s demented reaction to Mangione’s cold-blooded murder is one more data point on that question.
More Red vs. Blue
There are a lot of these kinds of complaints on social media too, claiming that Texas, Florida, and Tennessee made these changes "without a vote." That's not true at all; state legislatures voted on these redistricting plans in all three states, and other red states will do the same. The real difference in this fight is that blue states passed amendments to state constitutions that passed authority for redistricting from legislatures to so-called "independent" commissions to lock in previous gerrymanders. Red states kept redistricting authority where it belongs, in state legislatures, while Gavin Newsom and Abigail Spanberger had to reverse those previous amendments via referendum first before their legislatures could act.
The History of Fantasyland
It is no surprise that those who trust our education establishment are the most ignorant. But the idea that one-half or more of Americans believe that Indians were peaceful until the white man came along is astonishing. It means that they know absolutely nothing about pre-Columbian American history, and they ascribe to natives virtues that the Indians never would have claimed for themselves.
Tribes like the Iroquois, to name only one, were in warfare among the most vicious peoples in history, ranking perhaps even worse than the Assyrians and the Mongols. Indian tribes were pretty much all proud of their martial prowess, and would be horrified to learn that, several hundred years after the fact, they are regarded as having lived in peace and harmony with their neighbors, whom they despised.
Our education system is irredeemably awful, and needs to be blown up so that we can start over from scratch.
Infiltrator
As shown in a number of other instances, Justice Jackson is either a person of extremely limited intelligence or a political operative, rather than a legitimate judge. Her repeated personal attacks on her colleagues are unprecedented, at least in the modern history of the Court. They can best be understood, I think, as part of the Democratic Party’s effort to delegitimize the Court in order to lay a political foundation for court-packing or for disregarding the Court’s rulings in Democratic jurisdictions. Jackson’s role on the Court can perhaps best be seen as that of an infiltrator, rather than a judge.
Tucker is Israel First
Carlson's overall argument is that we should care very much about the behavior of Israel killing people in Gaza. We should all be righteously angry not only at Benjamin Netanyahu but at anyone who supports him. But also, who cares if someone is making light of the Holocaust and celebrating Hitler and Stalin as heroes.
There's no way to square this circle, morally speaking.
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Lear the Hard Way
It’s like Christmas in April. Another two dozen fraud-linked locations in Minnesota were raided by the FBI this morning. Reportedly, Quality Learing Center was among them.
Social Trust is Evaporating
Look at all the countries that Trump so artfully called "s**thole countries," and they all have one thing in common: disdain for the rule of law and a social structure based on what amounts to gangs or tribes that fight for resources, either literally or at least in non-cooperative ways.
That's why the argument that "diversity is our strength" is asinine. Homogeneity may not lead to societal health, but genuine diversity, where people don't share the same basic values and identity, everywhere and always leads to social discord. That is why the idea of the melting pot was so powerful: out of many, one.
Illegal Aliens Have No Birthright
And that doesn’t even count the 50,000 or so Chinese women who come to the U.S. legally each year, simply to give birth to a baby who is absurdly deemed an American citizen. At some point, will the Chinese Communist Party control enough votes to swing a U.S. presidential election?
The current interpretation of birthright citizenship is a disaster that is not mandated by the language or the history of the 14th Amendment. It represents one of several respects in which our national policies are more or less suicidal.
The VP Disappoints
Contrast Ramaswamy’s remarks with Vice President Vance’s during an appearance at a TPUSA event held at the University of Georgia. There he was heckled by someone who interrupted his comments to accuse the Trump administration of supporting “genocide” in Gaza and “killing children.”
“If you want to complain about what happened in Gaza, why don’t you complain about Joe Biden and the last administration? We’re the administration that solved that problem,” Vance said in response to the heckler, after defending what he called Trump’s “peace agreement in Gaza.” Vance’s refusal to address the false premises of remarks such as those above does not derive from any inability to do so. It is pathetic.
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
The Nonexistent Solar Wars
But nobody goes to war over solar panels for the same reason nobody goes to war over candles: they cannot power the things that economies, civilizations, and wars run on. A gallon of jet fuel contains 34 kilowatt-hours of energy in a package weighing six pounds. A lithium-ion battery storing the same energy weighs 250 pounds. That density gap is why every military on earth runs on liquid hydrocarbons, why every container ship crossing the Pacific burns bunker fuel, why every combine harvester in Iowa runs on diesel, and why every 747 landing at Heathrow runs on kerosene. The fact that nobody wages war over solar panels is evidence of their limitations not superiority.
Pure Emotion
Ann Althouse discussing an interview of Elissa Slotkin:
Did she answer the question "What is something Democrats do that is the opposite of alpha energy?" Only vaguely. They're "speaking from wonky details" and not "speaking about your gut and your emotion." Her statement of the problem is, ironically, lacking in the quality she's saying they need.
Are you kidding me? Speaking about their emotions is all Democrats do!
"F*ck ICE!"
"Diversity is our strength!"
"Immigrants built this country!"
"F*ck Trump!"
"No one is illegal on stolen land!"
"Medicare for all!"
Yep, super wonky! Ask a Democrat what his or her (yes, there are two genders) top-five policy ideas are.Africans Should Pay Slavery Reparations
So the British didn’t even have the courage to vote in their own self-interest, against the most grotesquely unfair money grab imaginable. Britain did, indeed, play an important role with regard to African slavery: it stamped it out. It was in Great Britain that the abolitionist movement was born, and it was the British Navy that suppressed the world-wide slave trade, to the great consternation of Africans. In the late 19th Century, the British Foreign Office issued a warning to its citizens not to travel in Africa. Englishmen in Africa were being murdered by tribesmen who were enraged that the British were ending their trade in slaves.
Africans exported most of their slaves not across the Atlantic, but East to the Islamic world. For a millennium or more, Muslim countries were always the largest consumers of slaves. So where do they figure in the U.N. resolution?
The Invasion Continues
I have countless clips of Muslims and Islamic leaders openly asserting that their goal is to destroy Western culture and replace it, and the entire history of Islam is one of conquest and colonization. All those TSA lines in airports exist today not just because Democrats want to make Americans suffer, but primarily because Islamic terrorists fly airplanes into buildings, make shoe bombs, and plot to kill Westerners.
"Diversity is our strength" is only the second-biggest lie we keep being told about immigration; the first is that "Islam is the religion of peace." We keep having the Crusades thrown in our face to explain why Muslims are angry at us, but the Crusades were an attempt to retake the Holy Land from Muslims who had conquered it, the Middle East, and all of North Africa, which, until the Muslims came along with their armies, were Christian and Jewish.
Even the briefest examination of history shows that Muslims invaded Europe countless times, conquered Spain, and had to be kicked out in almost endless wars.
Embrace Their Diversity!
Craig's switch on the issue says little about her. Like most politicians, she takes positions based on her assessment of where the voters are on any particular issue, not on things like principles or what would be best for the country. A politician doing an about-face for political purposes is as surprising as the sun rising in the East.
But this reversal tells you everything you need to know about how radicalized the Democratic Party has become. It is now toxic for a Democrat to have voted to expel criminals from the country. No matter the crime, no matter the danger the criminals pose to the community, it is imperative that we embrace their diversity because they are the ones who give us strength.
Team Columbus
Christopher Columbus, one of the greatest explorers of all time, has become something of a litmus test. If you celebrate the fact that he discovered America and opened the door to one of the most important sagas in world history, you are a conservative. If you think Columbus was a villain, and the European settlement of the formerly-Edenic America was a tragedy, you are a liberal.
Qualification?
A more normal person—more normal than most Democratic Party primary voters—might respond: 1) Everyone had traumas growing up. So what? 2) How does the fact (if true) that you had an unhappy childhood qualify you to be President? 3) If I take it at face value that you grew up in a screwed-up family, why should that make me want you to be my President? If anything, one might think, the reverse.
But in today’s therapeutic society, especially in its blue precincts, spilling the beans about one’s own family dysfunction is apparently a plus. God help us.
Anti-Civilization
The assembled leftists took time out to express their support for “Palestine,” which again raises the question, what does Islamic extremism have to do with Communism? The answer is that leftism is anti-civilization. Leftists will happily endorse any movement or theory that tries to destroy civilization.
They have gotten their way, as civilization in both Cuba and “Palestine” has been thoroughly destroyed. And leftists will continue to cheer on that destruction, right up to the last gasp of the evil regimes that have perpetrated it.
Reminder: Diversity is Our Strength!
Here’s the funny thing. In 2019 the Star Tribune published a 3,000 word page-one story — the most-read Star Tribune story of 2019 — revisiting the issue of Omar’s marriage to her brother. The story drew on documents that had just been released by the state board of campaign finance in its investigation of her 2016 campaign and other social media material we had reported on Power Line.
In my view, the 2019 story proves far beyond a preponderance of the evidence that Omar married her brother for some fraudulent purpose. I think I could persuade a jury of it based on the evidence in the Star Tribune story, though there is much more for anyone inclined to look. The Star Tribune story by itself is full of evidence tending to prove that Omar married her brother. I wonder if Kashiwagi is familiar with the story published by her own paper.
The Power of Words
Liberals have a faith in the power of words that is typical of primitive cultures. They seriously seem to believe that if they pass a law that says, for example, all electricity most come from wind or solar power by 2035, it will happen. It’s the law! Unfortunately, the laws of physics are not impressed. The entire “green” edifice is a house of cards that is rapidly crumbling.
Illegal Aliens Built This Country!
Democrats are proving that there is literally no crime for which an illegal alien can be deported in their eyes. They object to ICE arresting rapists, murderers, child molesters, and fraudsters. Illegal aliens can get arrested 10, 20, 30 times and Democrats will refuse to turn them over to ICE.
They will cover up sex crimes against children to protect illegals, because that is how they roll. They will sacrifice American citizens to protect illegals because illegals built this country, you know.
It is now the official position of the Democratic Party that illegal aliens should vote, and that requiring proof of citizenship would "disenfranchise" millions of people. Illegal aliens should be allowed to remain in the country even if they rape or murder people. That gang members should be allowed to terrorize people. And that protecting Americans is not the primary responsibility of the US government.
Sunday, March 29, 2026
The Government Racket
So, what are “our values”? Liberals always claim to be acting on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged, but those aren’t the ones who get most of the money. Government has largely become a money-laundering operation, in which people who actually do productive work pay taxes, and the government then gives their money to NGOs, consultants, and politically-favored companies, all of which purport to be doing good, but in fact are corrupt rackets.
Thus, to take just one example, New York City reportedly spends $81,000 to $97,000 per homeless person, more than the city’s median income. Does that mean that homeless people in New York are rolling in dough? No, it means that politically-favored Democratic Party constituencies are siphoning off enormous amounts of money while doing virtually no good.
Contradictions
The global left is losing all its favorite regimes, and it is driving them absolutely crazy. Suddenly, they are all about increasing oil consumption, demanding American capitalists save a communist country from collapse, so that the communists can use it as a base to destroy...evil capitalism.
Allies
For one thing, we can evaluate the effectiveness of several nations’ armed forces. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have both performed brilliantly, and in close harmony. Some liberals question whether Israel is a valuable ally. I am not sure why; I think a case could be made that Israel is our only valuable ally. What other nation, besides us, performs with their effectiveness?
Will to Survive
Sunday, March 15 is the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, and the day couldn’t possibly have come at a better time. It looks as if it was planned this year specifically in order to demonstrate the fact that “Islamophobia” is a spurious propaganda concept designed to intimidate people into thinking it’s wrong to stand against jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women.
It’s the best possible time because there have been four jihad attacks in the U.S. in the last two weeks, demonstrating in the most vivid and indelible way possible that criticism of Islam is not only not a manifestation of “hatred” or “bigotry,” much less “racism,” but a healthy manifestation of a society’s will to survive.
Motivations
Speaking of evidence, I have seen no evidence that Boasberg even referred to the issue before him, i.e., the Fed’s building boondoggle. The evidence presented to the grand jury was sufficient to cause them to issue the subpoenas, which is what counts. This is an investigation, not a prosecution.
And what is the point of Boasberg’s reference to conflicting views as to interest rates? They have absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand, the Fed’s building renovation. Jerome Powell is on his way out as the Fed Chairman. He will be gone in two months, so Boasberg’s theory makes little sense.
This is one of many instances of left-wing judges imputing invidious motives to the Trump administration, and ruling on that basis. But such speculation as to motives, inspired by Democratic Party talking points, is improper.
Another instance occurred just a few days ago, when a Democratic Party district court judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security may not terminate the “Temporary Protected Status” of Haitian immigrants, which has been in effect since an earthquake in 2010. Obviously, that judge’s party wants the “temporary” status to be permanent. The judge’s rationale was that the DHS’s decision manifested an animus by President Trump and Secretary Noem against immigrants “of color.” Again, an inflammatory but wholly irrelevant consideration.
Any time a judge says that the Trump administration lacks the power to do something that would be perfectly acceptable if the president were a Democrat, based on the Trump administration’s alleged motivations, that judge is wrong and is acting as a partisan hack. I think the general public would be astonished at how often that happens.
Trump and the GOP Senators need to ram through as many ultraconservative, hyperpartisan judges as possible between now and next January.
The War Against Fantasyland
But imagine what it is like for a sane person to walk into and try to set straight a bureaucracy that thinks "Queering the Map" is a thing, no less a thing that the State Department should spend time and money on.
It's an "Uh, wat?" experience, for sure.
I can't imagine what it is like for Trump appointees who have to navigate the bureaucracies that have become corrupted or so off track that their value is negative and trying to fix them. It must not just be immensely frustrating, but akin to jumping through the looking glass and trying to make sense of it.
Another Example of the Obligation Inversion
So great figures from British history like Winston Churchill and Jane Austen are now “divisive.” One guess as to which group in the Isles claims to feel excluded by any acknowledgment of British history.
Cultural Enrichers
Wajahat is, as with Mamdani, one of the many Islamic immigrants who have immigrated to this country in order to lecture us about how awful we are, and assure us that they are here to change this evil country. If only America could be more like Pakistan!
And:
Given how many of these hatemongers are or have become American citizens, it's hard to see how we can clear them all out of our society in any manner that is constitutional. Perhaps Ali has pointed us to a good idea: make life uncomfortable for them here.
Also:
It should be, at minimum, slowing to a trickle immigration from Muslim countries, doing a deep vetting process of all who come, and a campaign to identify deportable Muslims who present any sort of threat, including ideological.
We can't ban Islam, but we can do things that Wajahat Ali and his Pakistani family and friends hate.
Accommodations
Call me hard-hearted, but if you can’t complete a set of tasks in the same amount of time as your competitors, shouldn’t that impact the evaluation of your performance? In the real world, if it takes you twice as long as someone else to complete a task, you are only worth half as much on an hourly basis.
Higher education, at least at the “elite” level, has turned into something of a joke.
Suicide of the West Watch
As recently as 40 or 50 years ago, the idea that Germany might de-industrialize would have seemed absurd. Germany’s status as an industrial superpower dates to the 19th century, and it seemed impregnable. But that was before the “green” movement brought Germany to its knees. The German government’s war on energy, along with other policy failures, have made it increasingly impossible to manufacture products (automobiles, for example) competitively in that country. The result is a looming economic crisis, with third-world status by no means an impossibility.
Talarico's Creepy As Hell
The more you listen to this guy, the more you wonder why the authorities have not searched his hard drive yet. Rather than being an attractive face for liberalism, he is a parody of what leftists think conservatives want or need to hear in order to vote for a Democrat.
He is just another version of the Tim Walz strategy. Democrats think they can find a magic white man who can "code talk" to those of us who identify as one of the six scientifically proven sexes: men.
And:
The man is a low-T version of Beto O'Rourke crossed with California State Senator Scott Weiner.
They Just Say Sh*t
"We're dealing with what we're dealing with right now" is an excuse for the ages. "This is different," he begins, and yet he hasn't worked out how it's different. He just needs it to be different. A dangerous move when you're winging it and don't know the facts of the things you're saying are different. There are a few seconds — 0:26 to 0:33 — where Jeffries knows he's in trouble. He mutters the hilarious line, "First of all, I was not in Congress," and shows a flash of shame before resetting with the all-purpose segue "So we're dealing with what we're dealing with right now."
Saturday, February 28, 2026
We're Wrecking the Islamic Republic
Everyone (including the Iranians) seems to accept that Khamenei is dead, along with many other regime leaders. That’s great. U.S. and Israeli sources say they expect the bombing campaign to last for several weeks, so hopefully there will be enough degradation of the regime and its military to allow a civilian takeover. We will see.
Allegiance
To this crowd, Gu is actually a success story. Perhaps that’s why the corporate press is fawning over her despite her allegiance to an American adversary. She’s the embodiment of the America they promote: an economic zone where citizens of the world can enrich themselves with zero loyalties attached. As Mike Pence put it, “cheap goods are a big part of” the American dream.
But if you understand that the American dream is not about economic enrichment, but rather the freedom to live virtuously and to secure that freedom for posterity by participating in self-government, you understand that Eileen Gu is a failed American and a traitor. Being born in San Francisco did not make her American, in any meaningful sense, any more than wanting to earn more money or being tired, poor, and huddled turns masses of economic migrants into Americans.
America is a heritage descended from the greatest civilizations of the world, refined on the frontier, and dedicated to man’s freedom to dutifully live as he ought. She has gladly welcomed many who seek the same goal — like the family of Alysa Liu, an American Olympic figure skater whose father fled the same country Gu represents. But wanting to enrich yourself doesn’t make you an American, and it’s time to stop humoring the pretense that it does. The proof is in the person of Eileen Gu.
Paging Karen Hughes
One of the most idiotic arguments of the century has been the claim that Islam is a religion of peace.
Whatever else you can associate Islam with, and I have quite a few ideas that I need not discuss right now, "peace" is not high on the list.
Immigration Issues
The Trump administration is looking at the issues implicated in Ilhan Omar’s naturalization. That is what is to be inferred from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon’s comments in the video clip below: “It’s a truism of immigration law that if you commit fraud in the course of obtaining your citizenship…if you lie about your marriage status on which your citizenship depends or you’re familial status or what have you, if you fake any of those documents or you lie that’s a grounds for denaturalization and so I think it’s been credibly alleged that there are serious questions about the circumstances of the paperwork around that naturalization. I’ll just leave it at that.”
The implication of Ms. Dhillon’s remarks seems obvious to me. The Trump administration’s investigation of Omar’s “immigration issues” is news. If the time ever comes when those issues are made public, the weeping and wailing will be deafening. We can only hope that the day comes soon.
Truth
Other than going all nuclear, there is no “net-zero strategy” that will not cause costs to explode and make basic industries unsustainable.
Why?
The Democratic Party wants every single illegal alien who is now present in the U.S. to stay here forever. The obvious question is: why? On what possible theory is this a good thing for the American people?
Coal Isn't Going Away
Of all the dumb things liberals say, one of the dumbest is the claim that China is getting ahead of us on “green” energy. Look at all the solar panels and wind turbines China is manufacturing, liberals say. Sure: they make them and sell them to suckers in the West. When it comes to fueling their own industry, China relies on coal.
Easy Choice
But we are talking about giving up our beloved pets for people who immigrated here of their own free will. They chose to come to a dog culture, and are now demanding that we give in to their demands.
Screw that. If we have to choose between barbarians and our dogs, the choice is easy.
And:
Congressman Randy Fine, in response to Kiswani, said out loud what most of us were thinking and whispering under our breath: if we have to choose between giving up our dogs and giving up the opportunity for our communities being strengthened through Muslim diversity, we would choose to keep the dogs and say goodbye to the Muslims.
This of course caused a firestorm, with the Democrats howling in outrage at this racist comment. Except, what exactly is racist about it? It's not like we are forcing Muslims to get dogs or leave; we are just saying, "if you don't like dogs, go back to where you came from." Trust me, the majority of Americans didn't ask to be swamped by Muslim immigrants, and find it quite rich that they are asking us to adapt to them rather than the opposite.
Rubio '28
Speaking of the presidency: Rubio’s Munich speech reminds us why he is the best leader for the Republican Party, post-Trump. JD Vance is an immensely talented guy, but he lacks Rubio’s lifelong honing of a coherent conservative philosophy, and, even more important, Rubio’s moral compass. There are many who believe that Providence has intervened on America’s behalf at critical moments in our history. I think that a Rubio presidency could be another in that line of providential interventions.
Leftist Imports
But migrants in the 21st century sure spend a lot of time telling people who either have invited them in or tolerated their illegal entry how awful we are, and how much our society sucks. It's a strange complaint, given how much effort they or their parents made to escape the craphole country they fled from.
While it is easy to resent them for their ingratitude, we should also notice that, for the most part, they are merely parroting the line that anti-Western elites have been preaching from Mount Olympus. You could find any of the litany of complaints being hurled at us by migrants being taught to university students and being preached and practiced in elite institutions through DEI programs.
No Limiting Principle
Advocates of wide-open immigration policy never answer the most basic question: how much is enough? Or, put another way, how much is too much? Is there any limiting principle? If every Nicaraguan decides he or she would be better off in the U.S., do we throw out the welcome mat?
Apparently so. If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, things could get really, really crowded.
Go Our Separate Ways?
How did we get to this pass? And what is the path forward? Honestly, I think it is hard to see how those of us who support the rule of law can continue to share a country with those who do not—a group that now numbers close to half of our population. What possible basis for a common citizenship is there, between us and them? I don’t think there is one.
Semi-Secession
I think that what Walz, Jacob Frey, Amy Klobuchar and the rest have in mind is semi-secession: as long as Republicans control the national government, Minnesota will be a law unto itself, accepting dollars from Washington but obeying only those laws with which they agree. When the Democrats are back in charge, their semi-secession will end, at least temporarily.
Importing Violent Crime
Tennessee has a little over two percent of the U.S. population, so, assuming Tennessee’s illegals are no more violent than the norm, that would translate to something like 100,000 violent offenses, 2,000 murders, and so on. There were about 14,000 or 15,000 murders in the U.S. in 2025, so illegals probably accounted for around 1/7 of them. These are the people whom the Democratic Party is determined to keep within our borders. One might reasonably ask why.
And, from Beege Welborn:
What is conveniently overlooked every time one of these types sanctimoniously intones the memorized line is the fact that had that illegal miscreant not been here at all, as it was meant to be, there would have been no crime at all to discuss.
That's the crux of the problem.
Not that they supposedly commit fewer crimes than the citizen population, but that they are here in the first place to do so, period.
The Soft Sciences
Results like these don’t invalidate science, of course. But the “social sciences” are not really scientific. Data are data, but when it comes to social science, we are never going to have Newton’s laws of motion, or Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Social “science” inherently resides in the zone of controversy, and should always be taken with 50 or 60 grains of salt.
Opt For Reality
So Klobuchar is the odds-on favorite to be elected governor in November. Still, I have my doubts. If Walz was yanked from the race because he was likely to lose, and Klobuchar fails to draw any distinction between herself and her predecessor, a failed buffoon, isn’t she vulnerable? If the Republicans nominate a strong candidate—and they have several possibilities, by my count—Minnesota voters may well opt for reality, as opposed to a ginned-up far-left narrative.
Correlations
Liberals, for years, have told us that the flood of illegal immigrants (ahem/ undocumented workers /ahem) was a boon to our economy and to the American middle class. They do the jobs Americans won't do, pay taxes, and make our lives more affordable.
Some of us noticed that with the steady flow and the recent flood of illegal immigrants, certain necessities became ever more expensive. While the cost of maids and lawn care services for the upper classes was kept down, housing costs exploded. It's almost as if there was a correlation between these things.
Similarly, a shocking thing happened to the murder rate. During the surge in immigration and the corresponding increase in the "criminal justice reform" and "defund the police" movement, the murder rate (and other crimes) soared dramatically, but under Trump, even with those liberals running major cities, the murder rate dropped like a rock.
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Amnesty
The working theory on the federal bench seems to be that every single person detained by ICE was detained either by mistake or contrary to law. They rule, nearly always, in favor of the detainees, ordering their immediate release. Once release occurs, Judges close the cases with no further proceedings, so it cannot be appealed. What is ICE supposed to do then? No conclusion has been reached on the validity of the individual person’s immigration status. If ICE moves to re-arrest, are we just going to do it all over again, Groundhog Day-style.
Cornerstone
In her prepared remarks at the town hall last night, Omar was calling for the abolition of ICE. Omar was the first politician I ever heard calling for the abolition of ICE, which she did at the special DFL endorsing convention that served her up on Father’s Day (June 17), 2018. On the second ballot the delegates selected her to be the DFL candidate to succeed Keith Ellison in Congress. I was there. Fifth District Democrats accredited me to cover the convention. Like slavery in the Confederacy, the abolition of ICE — i.e., illegal immigration — has now become the cornerstone of the Democratic Party.
Choose Civilization
I have tried many times to communicate how insane one of the fundamental principles of leftism really is: it requires us to deny fundamental truths. Human nature is something that is real. Evil exists and must be fought. There is a necessary cruelty required to maintain social order and ultimately civilization itself.
It may seem cruel to imprison people, but unless we do, cruelty itself wins. The choice isn't between empathy and kindness on the one hand and cruelty on the other. It is between controlled, limited cruelty and the breakdown of civilization itself.
The Fraud Queen
For one who began life in a Kenyan refugee camp, Ilhan Omar has done very well. Not only is she a darling of the Left, she is now—suddenly—wealthy. In the space of a year or two, she has gone from having virtually no net worth to having a $30 million fortune. Nice work if you can get it.
Ordinary Competence
Leftists have no regard for the First Amendment when it comes to core values like your ability to disagree with them. So it makes perfect sense that they invoke it in defense of their own criminal acts, including interfering with police operations, assaulting an officer with a motor vehicle, biting a portion of a finger off an ICE officer, resisting arrest, smashing windows and destroying vehicles, spray painting obscenities on other people’s property, and so on. These distinctions are not hard to draw, and a police force with ordinary competence is perfectly capable of seeing off the left-wing criminals.
Nice Try, Tim
One point of clarification: there has been some confusion, deliberate on the part of Tim Walz and others, about the cooperation that ICE is getting from local law enforcement. The confusion arises from the fact that most people don’t know the difference between a prison and a jail. Minnesota’s Department of Corrections—our state prisons—are cooperating with ICE and honoring ICE detainers when they have prisoners about to be released. But that is a very small number. It is the county and city jails, from which a much larger number of prisoners are released, that are not cooperating.
Suspend It All
Minnesota’s elected officials, led by Tim Walz, have not just failed to cooperate with ICE, they have effectively made it impossible to enforce federal law here. By making their state a jurisdiction where federal law does not govern—something we have not witnessed since 1861—they can be said to have effectively seceded from the Union. I think it would be entirely reasonable for the federal government to suspend all payments to Minnesota under all national programs—Medicaid, highways, education, everything—on that basis.
Expendable
My only other observation is that Pretti’s supporters, a group that includes every elected Democrat in Minnesota, do not take seriously the fact that interfering with law enforcement officers in the execution of their duties is a serious crime. That is exactly what the “protesters” in Minneapolis are doing, and yet Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Amy Klobuchar and the others are cheering them on and exonerating them from all fault. This is an extraordinary abdication of responsibility on the part of Minnesota’s elected leadership. It has led, so far, to two deaths.
Party of Fraud
For reasons you and I know instinctively, Democrats are defending a system that is throwing at least half of all the money that was appropriated to help people in need to fraudsters ripping off the system. The money goes to the fraudsters, to people overseas, and into the coffers of the Democratic Party and elected officials.
Now that it is getting exposed, Democrats are going nuts. The anti-ICE protests are at least partly about distracting from the fraud investigations, and partly to activate the thugs who are intimidating not just federal law enforcement officers, but the FBI agents and others digging into the systematic fraud.
It is impossible to overstate how corrupt the system is here, and how willing the Democrats are to use every lever of power, including the deployment of brownshirts, to keep the federal investigators away from their secrets.
Elmi to Omar
Sree Iyer fancies himself an inventor and out-of-the-box thinker. I don’t know about that. I won’t vouch for him. In the video below, however, I can say that he rightly directs attention to David Steinberg’s 2019 Power Line post “Tying up loose threads in the curious case.”
Iyer draws on David’s post to explain a strand or two in the tangled web of deceit woven by Omar to cover up her 2009 marriage to her brother. Would that Iyer could do for Omar what Nick Shirley has done for our local Somali daycare centers.
