Subversion works by importing an inverted moral frame and getting the target population to install it as its own conscience.” — Yuri Bezmenov’s Ghost on X

Even in the deep-frozen fastness of midwinter, events and tensions surge, and America awaits . . . Bad Bunny! You perceive that there is some message in the genderfluid Puerto Rican songster’s upcoming Superbowl halftime gig, but what is the message? A 180-degree counterpoint to the earnest bashing and mashing of giants on the field? The official annunciation of Reconquista? A thumb in the eye of President Donald Trump and the white supremacist horse he rode in on?

This bread and circuses routine is looking pretty played out. The bread, of course, is pizza, the Soylent Green of these seeming end-times, underwriting the nation’s romance with morbid obesity (and perhaps with degenerate sex). The circuses — last week’s Grammy Awards, the Winter Olympics tonight, Sunday’s looming Superbowl — give off an odor of utter cultural exhaustion. What will it finally take for Western Civ, and its avatar, the USA, to stop embarrassing itself before God and history, and find better things to do?

You have been following the Epstein papers, no doubt. The sordidness grows like a yeast infection in the body politic, and yet to date hardly one prosecutable crime? What gives with that? Last week’s release of the final super-batch of Epstein papers brought on a harvest of reputations, at least. The docs revealed Microsoft zillionaire Bill Gates conniving with the late (possibly) Jeffrey Epstein to turn pandemics and vaccines into a profitable enterprise, with a spate of email discussions years before Covid got sprung on the world.

Then, it just happened that Mr. Gates sponsored the Event 201 pandemic exercise in October 2019 (with Johns Hopkins and the World Economic Forum), around the same time that the first outbreaks of Covid-19 occurred in Wuhan China with the World Military Games, a sort of Olympics for soldiers. Many athletes from various countries (including the U.S., France, Germany, and others) fell ill with a respiratory infection.

Naturally, you wonder how long, exactly, was the Covid prank in the works and among whom? If Mr. Gates was involved with Johns Hopkins planning Event 201, wouldn’t you suppose he was also in contact with US NIAID, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s agency, and with Dr. Fauci himself? Dr. Fauci had a special talent for augmenting taxpayer funding of his activities with money from outside government, and Bill Gates certainly had a lot of it, plus an obsessive drive equal to Dr. Fauci’s for messing around with viruses. And 2019 was exactly the time that scientists at the Wuhan Virology Institute happened to be experimenting with corona viruses associated with bats. Whoops.

It happens that Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee now looking into the Epstein matter, indicated this week that he was interested in calling Bill Gates to testify about his activities with Jeffrey Epstein. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear from Bill about his adventures in virology? Bill Gates is not a doctor or an accredited medical researcher, by the way. Virology is his hobby.

As a sort of tail on the donkey, an email written by Jeffrey Epstein in 2013 surfaced this week stating that Bill Gates said he caught a sexually transmitted disease from Russian girls and sought help from Epstein getting antibiotics to secretly dose his then-wife Melinda with. It blew up the Internet, but do you detect a whiff of a cockamamie story (no pun intended)? Bill Gates surely had the resources to virtually buy a doctor and have him prescribe whatever Mr. Gates wanted. In any case, Bill Gates’s long-running consort with Jeffrey Epstein has apparently sunk his reputation as a medical philanthropist, so expect him to look for another hobby as he skulks off into the gloaming of ignominy.

Lord Peter Mandelson, Baron of Foy, in Briefs, with Epstein Girl Then, there is the case over in the UK of Lord Peter Mandelson (Baron Mandelson of Foy), erstwhile UK ambassador to the USA, lately cashiered out of the job for his relations with Jeffrey Epstein. Photos emerged of Lord M less than fully clothed with others in Jeffrey Epstein’s troupe, also less than fully clothed. In the notorious 2003 birthday book, he wrote that Epstein was “my best pal.” He received payments from JE over the years and, in return, it appears, Mandelson, then working as a senior minister after the 2008 financial crisis, allegedly forwarded to JE confidential UK government emails, market-sensitive details (e.g., on EU bailouts for Greece, banker bonus taxes, and notes from meetings with US officials in Britain for JE’s investment purposes. Bottom line: Mandelson ruined. Ambassadorship terminated. . .resigned from the House of Lords. . .King Charles III reportedly looking to revoke his title (Baron of Foy), leaving him a mere commoner in ruin.

Next up (looks like): Bill and Hillary Clinton are called by subpoena to testify before Mr. Comer’s House Oversight Committee on Feb 26 and 27. They’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do about how Jeffrey Epstein helped them construct the fabulous engine of wealth known as the Clinton Foundation and its various spinoffs such as the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Clinton Family Foundation, and the Clinton Presidential Library.

This followed a months-long tussle to get the Clintons to submit to in-person interviews under oath in closed session. The Clintons wanted to just hand in some written bull sh*t of their own and leave it at that. They were on the verge of being voted in contempt of Congress — like other political luminaries, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon recently were, with months of jail time — when they gave in. Hillary got all snippy about it yesterday, demanding the hearing go public on TV so she could grandstand. Denied. Curiously, no one is rushing to the Clintons’ defense. You might suspect their many friends and associates smell blood in the water and nobody wants to get wet.

Speaking of things wet and bloody, the final super-batch of Epstein papers has revived rumors of a dastardly Satanic child abuse cult among the anointed. . . all kinds of horrifying activities, such as those represented in Tony Podesta’s art collection. Even the cuckoo story of PizzaGate is back up for review. I can’t state that I actually believe any of it, but the chatter is deafening so you are advised to stand by and see what turns up.

James Howard Kunstler

STOPPING WALL STREET FROM COMPETING WITH MAIN STREET HOMEBUYERS: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to protect the American Dream by making sure that large institutional investors do not buy single-family homes that could otherwise be purchased by families.

• The Order directs key agencies to issue guidance preventing relevant Federal programs from approving, insuring, guaranteeing, securitizing, or facilitating sales of single-family homes to institutional investors.
• The Order instructs key agencies to promote sales to individual owner-occupants through first-look policies (which give individuals and other non-institutional investors the opportunity to buy foreclosed properties before investors do), disclosure requirements, and anti-circumvention measures.
• The Order directs the Secretary of the Treasury to review rules and guidance that relate to large institutional investors acquiring or holding single-family homes.
• It directs the Attorney General and the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to review acquisitions by large institutional investors for anti-competitive practices and prioritize enforcement against certain of those practices by institutional investors in the single-family home rental market.
• The Order directs the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to identify potential large institutional investor involved in Federal housing assistance programs by demanding disclosure of ownership in single-family rentals.
• The Order tasks the White House with preparing legislative recommendations to codify these policies so that large institutional investors do not acquire single-family homes.

PUTTING AMERICAN FAMILIES FIRST IN THE HOUSING MARKET: President Trump is working to make homeownership affordable again after years of Wall Street crowding out first-time buyers and young families.

• For many, homeownership is considered the pinnacle of the American dream and a way to invest and build lifetime wealth.
• However, high inflation and interest rates caused by the Biden Administration have put starter homes out of reach for millions, while large Wall Street investors have snapped up single-family homes in many communities.
• Institutional buyers with vast resources outbid hardworking families, turning neighborhoods into investor rental portfolios instead of communities.
• Large institutional buying and leverage have reduced the supply of homes for owner-occupants and driven up prices in many locales, making it harder for Americans to build wealth through homeownership.
• This Order ensure that Federal housing programs prioritize families, not Wall Street, and sets the stage for legislation to ensure that large institutional investors do not acquire single-family homes.
• People live in homes, not corporations.

DELIVERING ON PROMISES TO AMERICAN FAMILIES: President Trump has undertaken an aggressive agenda to tackle the housing challenges facing American families and make the dream of homeownership accessible again.

• This Executive Order fulfills President Trump’s promise to “immediately [take] steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes.”
• President Trump has also directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities to further drive down borrowing costs.
• These targeted housing and affordability initiatives build on actions President Trump has already taken to put more money in Americans’ pockets.
  • Upon taking office, President Trump blocked all unfinalized Biden era rules, saving the average family $2,100.
  • He signed the Working Families Tax Cuts into law – delivering the largest tax cut in American history and increasing paychecks by over $10,000 for a typical family.
  • His America First, pro-growth, energy dominance, and deregulatory agenda has cut red tape, lowered inflation, mortgage rates, and gas prices, boosted GDP growth, and brought trillions in investments to the United States.
• President Trump continues to focus on ways to provide more relief to Americans from the economic and financial mismanagement of the Biden era, so families can prosper and achieve the American Dream of owning a home.

The White House

New York Communist Muslim totalitarian mayor Mamdani will not pay for the piling trash and inoperable streets. In dictatorships like Cuba, Russia and China, the people are too frightened to protest. In New York City, the woke voters in the majority are too stupid and ignorant to protest. Many of them are Muslim and want a new Iran. They will put up with ANYTHING, so long as it’s not Trump or any other Republican.

The majority in New York City deserve what they’re getting, but they also (perversely) want destruction. As for the minority who voted Republican–they should get the hell out, and hasten the inevitable collapse of the Big Apple. Create great cities elsewhere. Democratic and nonleftist America, on our present course, will be splitting up. Get to freedom while you can. And buy weapons.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Donald Trump did not win the 2024 election because America suddenly became meaningfully more Republican.

He won because voters, many of them independents and crossover Democrats, many of them young, had lost trust in the system and believed he was willing to confront it. I’m the head pollster for Rasmussen Reports. In our final 2024 polling, 42% of Trump’s electorate came from independents and Democrats.

That is not a MAGA monoculture. It is a fragile coalition built on one thing: accountability.

Voters did not elect Trump to manage decline. They elected him to fix things that were not working. That is why DOGE mattered. For a brief moment, it validated what Americans, particularly younger voters, already believed: that the federal government is bloated, corrupt, self-dealing and largely insulated from consequences.

Under-40 voters, the most disillusioned cohort by many measures, were the most supportive of DOGE, the most open to arrests for corruption and the most likely to agree with the statement that “he who saves his country violates no laws” (57%).

Trump’s approval among voters under 40 briefly hit 60% almost exactly when Google search interest in DOGE peaked. That alignment should have frozen Republican politics in Washington in place.

Instead, DOGE was quietly sidelined, and Trump’s approval among younger voters has since fallen sharply into the low 40s. That is not coincidence. It is a signal.

Rather than doubling down on systemic accountability, the last few months have felt unfocused, with counter-signaling on affordability and jobs, infighting, the Epstein saga, renewed foreign entanglements and a governing posture that feels reactive rather than intentional.

Voters are noticing.

Despite Trump’s unsurprising personal approval rating today (net -7), the Democratic lead on the generic ballot has steadily widened to D+6. That should set off alarms. The November 2024 election was Trumpy, not Republican, and off-cycle special elections continue to reinforce that reality. Momentum, enthusiasm and turnout are not automatic for Republicans.

The Republican Party has not helped. Its legislative output is thin. Its ability to deliver tangible wins is questionable. Even the bare minimum — serious accountability investigations — has largely failed to materialize. There is no clear path to a 2026 victory if this continues, which is why what happened in Minnesota mattered so much.

Voters are noticing.

Despite Trump’s unsurprising personal approval rating today (net -7), the Democratic lead on the generic ballot has steadily widened to D+6. That should set off alarms. The November 2024 election was Trumpy, not Republican, and off-cycle special elections continue to reinforce that reality. Momentum, enthusiasm and turnout are not automatic for Republicans.

The Republican Party has not helped. Its legislative output is thin. Its ability to deliver tangible wins is questionable. Even the bare minimum — serious accountability investigations — has largely failed to materialize. There is no clear path to a 2026 victory if this continues, which is why what happened in Minnesota mattered so much.

Losing focus

The discovery of rampant alleged fraud in Minnesota was a gift. It offered a rare opportunity to shift the national conversation away from Republican dysfunction and toward something Americans overwhelmingly agree on.

Three-quarters of voters are angry about the level of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has cited figures as high as $300 billion to $600 billion annually. That is not budget trimming. That is empire-fatal kleptocracy.

This was the moment for a full-scale, anti-blue-state fraud push. Follow the money. Subpoena everything. Make examples. Send every agency in, even the 80,000 armed IRS agents we should have fired. If fraud is that widespread, maybe austerity is not the answer. Maybe arrests are.

Instead, the focus shifted.

ICE was surged into Minneapolis. What could have been a systemic fraud investigation became a performative deportation spectacle. Predictable protests followed. Then escalation: more ICE presence, masks, tear gas, aggressive enforcement.

Within days, the headlines were no longer about uncovering fraud. They were about clashes, optics and ultimately the tragic shooting deaths of two protesters.

The ICE red meat might be cathartic for some. But politically effective, no.

Our polling has been consistent for years on this point. Americans want illegal immigration stopped. That is not in dispute. They want criminals deported. They want the border enforced. But they also want fairness, not brutality, and they recoil when enforcement looks indiscriminate, theatrical or excessive.

A plurality of Americans now say ICE tactics are too harsh, even while still supporting deportation in principle. That tension is not ideological. It is emotional.

What voters want

Americans do not just want illegal immigrants removed. They want the hiring magnet destroyed. They overwhelmingly support punishing companies that employ illegal labor. That policy outperforms Trump’s personal approval by nearly 30 net points. It is not even close.

So the obvious question follows: What is stopping this administration from going after the employers? Likewise, a federal E-Verify mandate is ridiculously popular. Why have Republicans been unable to pluck this low-hanging fruit?

Is it donor pressure? Fear of market volatility? Is Trump, the tribune of the forgotten voter, being restrained by plutocratic interests? From the outside, it increasingly looks that way.

There was a clean path forward. Keep DOGE front and center. Launch relentless investigations into blue-state fraud hubs. Hammer corporate lawbreaking and worker exploitation. Restore trust through accountability. Instead, the administration chose theatrics over results, and is paying the price politically.536

What do you think? Post a comment.

This can still be fixed, but only if Trump remembers why he was elected. Not to manage the system. Not to appease donors. Not to chase viral moments. Make the System Fear Consequences Again.

Americans are not asking for chaos. They are asking for justice.

And they are still waiting.

Mark Mitchell, New York Post

Governments habitually lie. They lie so often that it is peculiar for governments to claim “authority” on anything other than falsehood. Before the Gutenberg press and general literacy, “authorities” announced self-serving lies in the public square. With the arrival of newsprint, “authorities” disseminated State propaganda as daily news. Radio and television revolutionized the mass manipulation of minds. The adoption of the personal computer, the rise of the Internet, the commercialization of pocket computers posing as handheld phones, and the sticky web of an ever-growing social media complex have made it possible for government “authorities” to reach inside every human brain and squish it into compliance. AI-powered machines now manufacture and disseminate lies faster than human-powered governments ever could.

Most people are only now realizing that — even in so-called “free” countries — government-sanctioned propaganda, censorship, and misdirection are pervasive and routine. To the surprise of citizens taught to “trust the authorities,” the unvarnished truth is a bitter pill to swallow: Governments regularly employ psychologically manipulative, and even exploitative, forms of information warfare against their own citizens. Politicians and generals tell lies to mobilize the American public for war. Economists and central bankers tell lies to justify money-printing that robs from the middle class and rewards wealthy elites. Government regulatory bodies tell lies about the safety of food and medicine before taking lucrative jobs inside the global food and pharmaceutical industries. The Chamber of Commerce calls the offshoring of blue-collar jobs and the importation of slave-produced crap “free trade.”

How can the word “authority” maintain any positive meaning when “authorities” are always wrong?  At least since the First World War, scientific “authorities” have promised that human industry and mass commercialization would kill the planet in the “next few years.”  After Trump thumped Hillary like a drum, Intelligence Community “authorities” concocted an elaborate scheme to frame the MAGA outsider as a Russian agent who threatened national security unless removed from office.  When Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, and the World Economic Forum sank the globe into mass COVID hysteria, health “authorities” promised that children would die unless they sat behind plexiglass-enclosed desks, their parents got experimental injections every few months, and every stranger wore at least three masks!  

Since the Second World War, trust in “authority” has evaporated.  Why?  Perhaps because “authorities” routinely lie, keep secrets, and cover up crimes.  Roughly three-quarters of Americans think the CIA killed President Kennedy.  A top FBI official transformed a rather mundane Watergate scandal into a successful operation for taking down President Nixon after his landslide re-election victory.  President Bush I pushed the “new world order.”  President Clinton “did not have sexual relations with that woman.”  President Bush II gave us endless war with few long-term successes.  President Obama told us we could “keep” our doctors before doubling the cost of healthcare instead.  Secretary of State Clinton was never prosecuted for keeping classified documents on an unsecured private server in her home, but President Biden made sure to send an FBI SWAT team to bust down President Trump’s doors.  

Politicians, prosecutors, judges, and news media mouthpieces told us that 2020’s mass riots, arson, robbery, and murder were justified civil rights “protests” against racism.  Those same “authorities” told us that J6 protesters seeking free and fair elections were “insurrectionists” and “terrorists.”  Now those “authorities” tell us that anti-ICE insurrectionists terrorizing citizens and attacking federal agents are “protesting” for civil rights once again.  When “authorities” describe riots as “protests” and protests as “insurrections,” words mean nothing.

Meanwhile, the average member of Congress enters office as a salaried “public servant” and exits office a millionaire!  Inside every institution of “authority,” corruption is king!

A writer named Lucas Leiroz argues that revelations within the Epstein documents prove that “nothing legitimate remains in the Western world.”  Predicting the “moral collapse of the elites,” he thinks the “systematic, organized, and ritualized” nature of their perversions and crimes constitutes nothing less than a civilizational “rupture.”  Why?  “When evidence emerges of extreme violence against children, of practices that go beyond any conventional criminal category, the discussion ceases to be legal and becomes civilizational.”  The reason why people are fascinated with this scandal is that it undermines the legitimacy of so many powerful people in positions of “authority.”  The very elites who have been exposed as monsters “continue to decide elections, wars, economic policies, and the fate of entire societies.”

Leiroz sees the Epstein scandal as the final straw for broad swaths of the public.  “How can one continue to accept the authority of institutions that shielded this level of horror?” he asks.  “How can respect be maintained for laws applied selectively by people who live above them?”  Those are good questions.  As “authorities” have been exposed as liars, the public has lost trust in them.  Now that “authorities” have been exposed as “pedophiles, satanists, and cannibals,” the public is disgusted with them.  When members of society “still retain some sense of limits” and members of the “ruling class” behave as if they were “outside the common human species,” the structures of power forfeit moral legitimacy.

Leiroz says, “After Epstein, nothing can continue as before.”  In the months ahead, we will see whether he is correct.  This much is certainly true: For three-quarters of a century, trust in “authorities” has steadily declined.  Over the last couple decades, those “authorities” have proven to be frauds, grifters, and liars.  Now many of these same “authorities” have been exposed as sick and depraved perverts whose actions are, as Leiroz describes, “vile and essentially evil.”  How are ordinary citizens supposed to ignore “absolute evil,” while so many devils maintain positions of “authority”?

J B. Shurk, American Thinker

Melinda Gates reacted to the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails involving her ex-husband Bill Gates, including horrific allegations Epstein made such that Bill was attempting to dose her with antibiotics to fight an STD without her knowledge, by saying Bill and other Epstein associates “need to answer to those things.”

Bill Gates has openly acknowledged, repeatedly, that he believes the world is overpopulated and unspecified steps should be taken to do something about that. He’s trying to buy up farmland in order to control the food supply, and he advocated forcing medical experiments on the American population manufactured by government-subsidized companies with zero product liability.

Are you seriously surprised by evidence he tried to secretly drug his wife after knowingly exposing her to STDs? Bill Gates is a sadist and a psychopath.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

An Olive Garden cook has died after he dunked his own head into a searing hot deep fryer — as his co-workers frantically tried to thwart his gruesome suicide, authorities said.

The employee, who hasn’t been identified, stripped his clothes off and thrust his face into the fryer at the chain’s restaurant in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, last Friday afternoon, the Smoking Gun reported.

A male victim went head first into the fryers,” dispatchers could be heard saying in grim 911 audio.

“I don’t have a lot of details, lot of people screaming, some kind of a burn victim,” another operator could be heard saying.

The cook was rushed a nearby hospital to be treated for his severe burns, but he later died from his injuries, authorities said.

A female employee suffered minor burns after she and several other workers tried to stop the cook from injuring himself even further.

At least one customer also tried to intervene.

Both Olive Garden and authorities refused to release any details about the ordeal, only describing it as a “suicide attempt.”

The restaurant shut down for several days in the wake of the incident but has since reopened.

Democrats have spent years insisting illegal immigrants do not vote, yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries just gave the whole game away.

In a letter to GOP leadership, they demanded a slate of “reforms” to immigration enforcement as the price for funding the Department of Homeland Security, including targeted enforcement, no masks, mandatory use of body cameras, and other demands, several of which I suspect are nonstarters.

I don’t see Democrats getting anywhere with these, but the big thing is that buried in that list is a rather revealing demand:

Protect Sensitive Locations – Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.

Polling places?

They went out of their way to include polling places right alongside hospitals, courts, and churches. There is only one thing that happens at polling places that would matter to illegal immigrants, and it is not the bake sale.

Democrats have insisted for years that illegal immigrants cannot and do not vote, and that the whole issue is a right-wing myth. If that is true, then why is “polling places” even on their list of protected zones for immigration violators? No one accidentally adds “polling places” to a policy letter being negotiated at the leadership level. This is deliberate. It gives away what they are worried about… and what they are counting on.

“Democrats just admitted they think illegal aliens need to be protected at polling places. Why exactly would illegal aliens be at polling places? We MUST fully fund DHS AND pass the SAVE America Act,” Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) posted on X.

That is the obvious question Democrats do not want to answer. If illegal immigrants are not supposed to be anywhere near the ballot box, then immigration enforcement near polling sites ought to be a non-issue.

Related: Tom Homan Pulls 700 Agents Out of Minnesota. Here’s Why That’s Bad News for Democrats.

This comes as Republicans are pushing election reform through Congress with the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act is a straightforward concept: safeguard federal elections by ensuring only American citizens can cast ballots, and that an ID is required to vote.

Schumer’s response has been to smear the SAVE Act as “Jim Crow 2.0” and brand it “racist” and “dead on arrival.” That is the Democrats’ go-to play whenever Democrats feel threatened: slap a “Jim Crow” label on common-sense election rules and scare minorities into thinking Republicans are trying to stop them from voting.

The problem is that even minorities aren’t buying it. As PJ Media previously reported, polling has shown consistent and overwhelming support for Voter ID laws for years. That consensus cuts across both party and race, with huge majorities of Republicans, Democrats, whites, Latinos, and black Americans all agreeing that you should show a photo ID to vote.

Why are Democrats pushing so hard against common sense and trying to help illegal immigrants vote even though they’re not supposed to? Recent census projections show blue states are bleeding population while red states are gaining it, which will shift House seats and electoral votes after the 2030 reapportionment. As people flee high-tax, crime-ridden, Democrat-run states for freer red states, Democrats face shrinking power at the national level. That gives them every incentive to import a new population, shield it from enforcement, and eventually convert them into votes, one way or another.

That’s why Democrats have no qualms fighting so aggressively against overwhelmingly popular election reforms. For them, it’s a matter of survival.

Matt Margolis is a conservative commentator and columnist. His work has been cited on Fox News and national conservative talk radio, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Mark Levin Show, and The Dan Bongino Show. Matt is the author of several books and has appeared on Newsmax, OANN, Real America’s Voice News, Salem News Channel, and even CNN.

Recently, I wrote a piece that received some pushback. I wondered if Donald Trump was making the same mistake as George Bush Sr. did when he broke his “Read my lips: No new taxes” pledge.

If you read my work regularly, you’ll notice a decidedly clear bias towards warnings of doom. It’s not my default position that life is nothing but doom and gloom. On the contrary. I actually have a website that explicitly talks about how good we have things and encourages gratitude for the American entrepreneurs and inventors who made our lives possible. In a universe where most of history was characterized by scarcity, war, slavery, and early death, most Americans today have relatively extraordinary lives.

Everything we have today came about as the result of the hard work of generations of people who left us this legacy. From the Founding Fathers leaving us the Constitution to Grant defeating the South to Rockefeller rationalizing energy to Jobs putting the Internet in our hands, everything we have in the 21st century came from the efforts of countless numbers of long-dead people, as well as (often) our own efforts.

To the degree that one can identify the elements that made the last 250 years so different from any prior period, it was this combination of individual freedom, free markets, private property, and limited government. Those elements laid the foundation for a nation to spread across a continent, become an industrial juggernaut, and become an economic powerhouse able to promote freedom and prosperity to billions of people around the world.

That anger you sometimes see reflected in my writing stems from the government’s efforts over the last 50 years to do just about everything in its power to undermine that success. On almost every front, the government has gotten itself involved in areas where it has no place, no constitutional authority. Moreover, regardless of how ineffective, pernicious, or downright harmful its actions are, nobody ever does anything about it.

1960s: 4.5%

1970s: 3.2%

1980s: 3.1%

1990s: 3.2%

2000s: 1.9%

2010s: 2.4%

2020s: 2.4%

To understand how much of a problem that is, understand that in the 1950s, computers were the size of a house and could do 5,000 calculations per second. Today, a computer fits in the palm of your hand and is literally billions of times faster. Yet our GDP growth is almost half as much. It should be double.

If you want to know why, even though we are so much more efficient and have far better and more tools at our disposal, our GDP is half what it used to be, the answer is the government. Perhaps the only thing that has grown more than computer power over the last half-century is government power.

Today, the government intrudes on practically every single aspect of our lives, from mandating the ability to remotely turn off our cars to requiring those tags on our mattresses to telling us the makeup of our neighborhood. And sadly, while government operatives, both politicians and bureaucrats, are busy promoting the butchering of some children and the trafficking of others, they fail at the basic responsibilities of government, such as maintaining law and order, keeping our borders secure, and not sending money to dead people.

The government’s tentacles are everywhere, like a cancer that knows no bounds and for which there is no cure. Of course, theoretically, there is a cure for all of this: elections.

However, the government has somehow managed to manipulate them so that, regardless of who gets elected in either party, we basically get the same policies. Sure, some things may change around the edges, but for the most part, the Swamp reigns, and nobody does anything about it. The budgets basically remain the same, the programs largely stay the same, and the controlling elites basically rotate between government, NGOs, and corporate boardrooms.

And here’s where my piece talking about Trump betraying his voters comes into play. I could spend my time showcasing the great things he has done, and he has done many, but I focus on the fact that if he doesn’t deal with the gun pointed at the head of the Republic, none of that matters.

For Democrats, cheating is simply their MO. Between importing new illegal voters, manipulating the voting apparatus, and fighting Voter ID, Democrats have basically wiped out GOP representation in New England, even though 30-40% of the population in those areas is Republican. Democrats will destroy the Republic the next time they get power, and if Donald Trump doesn’t start acting like a leader with something to fight for, there won’t be anything left to fight for.

Once back in power, Democrats will kill that American goose. They will manipulate voting rules to turn the country writ large into the dysfunctional cesspools they’ve created in Illinois, Maryland, California, etc. They will expand the problems of San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, et. al., into the suburbs and eventually across the country. They will utilize every lever of government power to eviscerate the foundations of freedom that made the country great in the first place.

But it doesn’t have to be. But unfortunately, we’re watching Senate leader John Thune betray Americans on easily the lowest hanging fruit ever in American history, the SAVE Act. You can say that Trump doesn’t run Congress or the Senate, which is true, but he is still the president with the largest soapbox on the planet, on an issue so powerful that even a majority of Democrats support it.

Trump should call on and or call out every GOP Senator who is standing in his way. He should do rallies in their states and encourage citizens to reach out and sway them. He should use every available lever of power to convince the Senate to pass the SAVE Act.

The reality is, the SAVE Act (which isn’t perfect, as it currently doesn’t outlaw the insane policy of letting illegals have Social Security numbers) and its companion deportations are where the rubber hits the road relative to a free Republic. Literally, if we do not put in place guarantees for honest elections now, the country will be as blue as the California House delegation within a decade.

The SAVE Act is not sufficient to guarantee honest elections, but it’s a first step. As for my regular warnings of doom, I wish I could spend my time commenting on the new arch going up in Arlington or the new White House ballroom, but the reality is, those are of no real consequence. If Donald Trump doesn’t focus on guaranteeing secure elections, neither will matter because both will end up as symbols not of a great hero who saved the Republic, but rather of the man who failed to save it when he had the chance.

Vince Coyner, American Thinker

According to the bookies, Sir Keir Starmer is odds-on to leave No 10 this year, and if they are right, history might look back on Feb 4 as the day his departure became inevitable.

With two U-turns in the space of a day, with his political guru Morgan McSweeney standing on a trapdoor, and with Angela Rayner biting at his ankles, Sir Keir’s authority has been shredded.

Even before the Mandelson row exploded underneath him, Sir Keir was the least popular prime minister on record, dismissed by the public as useless and by his own MPs as a deadbeat.

Rumours of a leadership challenge had been dominating Labour politics for months, with only the timidity of his rivals keeping him safe. May’s local elections – despite Sir Keir’s attempt to game the result by cancelling lots of them – were seen as the moment of maximum danger.

All that has changed, though, with the wholly avoidable scandal brought down on Labour by Sir Keir’s highly controversial, and possibly career-ending, decision to appoint Lord Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to Washington in February last year.

Sir Keir was the man who promised to “turn the page” on the chaos and scandals that dogged the Conservatives, but instead he has put his party at the centre of the biggest political betrayal since Profumo. The anxiety felt by Labour MPs over the opinion polls (dominated for a year now by Reform UK) has turned to anger.

Whenever prime ministers are toppled mid-term, there is a moment when the mood turns irreversibly against them, even if they manage to limp on for a while longer.

Gordon Rayner, The Telegraph