Tuesday, December 26, 2023

How The American Republic Was Lost


The states, in turn, joined the Union on the condition that their sovereignty would be protected. The House of Representatives was intended to be a “People’s House,” with representatives directly elected by the people in their respective districts. Senators were to be selected by state legislatures to represent the states to ensure their sovereignty.

To emphasize this point, the Senate was never intended to represent the interests of the people per se; it was intended to represent and zealously guard the interests of the states. By giving elective power to the states, the framers of the Constitution had constrained the role of the federal government solely to the responsibilities delineated in the Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, explained in Federalist Paper No. 45:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.

Those restraints on the executive were irreparably damaged following the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, on Woodrow Wilson’s watch. That amendment established the direct election of U.S. senators by popular vote. This effectively took power from the states, de facto nullifying the Tenth Amendment.

The senators elected by the people for six-year terms no longer represent the interests of the states. While “we the people” are represented by the House, the senators de facto represent nobody but themselves. They become committed to their respective parties’ agendas and personal gain.

Since then, every president has relentlessly pushed and often succeeded in expanding federal boundaries, resulting in an unstoppable growth of governmental size and influence.

The arrival of the Marxist socialist government of Barack Obama further exposed the fatal flaw of the Seventeenth Amendment. A constitutional scholar, Barack Obama was imbued with a mission to fundamentally change the established order and replace it with an ideologically inspired system. He understood early on that there was practically no legal recourse within the government itself for violating the Constitution and ignoring Congress.

Not bound by constitutional constraints, the socialists began the process of gradually dismantling the established law and order. Institutions of marriage and religion, capitalism, the judicial system, individual liberty, and the English language—all have come under assault after having been branded as antiquated, biased, and intolerant. Moreover, Democrats even altered the voting laws to ensure the Democratic Party’s electoral supremacy.

Some may say that it is an exercise in futility to consider what could happen if… Nevertheless, if not for the Seventeenth Amendment, the Senate would not be controlled by political parties, and the states would have a say in any proposed legislation. Obamacare, the skyrocketing deficit, generous welfare programs, the government-run education system, the departments of Energy and Agriculture, open borders, climate change, and a host of programs and executive orders, plus volumes of intrusive government regulations, would never have seen the light of day.

The Seventeenth Amendment trashed the key provision of the Constitution and made the powers of the federal government infinite and undefined. The immense transfer of power away from the democratically elected representatives of Congress to the executive branch has produced an extraordinary imbalance between power and legitimacy.

That is how the Republic was lost, fatefully fulfilling the grim warning of the second president, John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”



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On the Fringe, Red Pill News, and more- December 26





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Trump is Right: Biden Is a Threat to Democracy

The second arm of Biden’s war on democracy is immigration


Weeks before the 2022 midterms, Joe Biden gave a memorable speech in front of Independence Hall. The setting could not have been a more ironic – or disturbing – choice for the content of Biden’s unusually authoritarian remarks. Trump and his movement, he said, represent a threat to “the very foundations of our Republic.” The visuals were likewise ominous: this was a campaign speech, but Biden was flanked by U.S. Marines as he thundered against his political opponents as if they were a foreign enemy.

Since that speech, Biden’s approval ratings have not improved, and he has only grown more reliant on sweeping, demagogic themes. His feeble efforts to sell the country on “Bidenomics” are not working. Americans know that they are not prospering. They see the world is growing more unstable. Biden can’t run for re-election on what he has done; he has no alternative but to rile up fears of Donald Trump.

At a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids on Saturday, Trump hit Biden where it hurts. Biden and his allies “like to pose as defenders of democracy,” Trump said, referencing Biden’s notorious blood-red speech in Philadelphia. But the opposite is true: Biden is the “destroyer of American democracy,” Trump said. Like a “Third World communist tyrant,” Biden “has been weaponizing government against his political opponents.”

The Biden campaign shrieked: “Donald Trump’s America in 2025 is one where the government is his personal weapon to lock up his political enemies.”

Imagine that? A government that locks up political enemies?

Biden’s sycophants in the mass media likewise went ballistic over Trump’s comments. What does Trump think he is doing, calling Biden a threat to democracy? Doesn’t he know that only Biden is allowed to make those accusations?

But Trump’s argument is more convincing than ever, for at least two reasons.

The first, as Trump mentioned, is Biden’s use of the justice system as a cudgel to take Trump out of contention. Biden’s screeching about “our democracy” would be less absurd if Biden were not actively trying to jail his main political opponent. Biden’s defenders insist he has no connection whatsoever to the scorched-earth legal crusade against Trump, but this is not convincing to those who are not already committed partisans of the left.

No one really believes that these cases would have been brought against Trump if he were not running for office again. Each one of them is based on gross distortions of fact and law.

The likes of Jack Smith, Tanya Chutkan, Letitia James, and Arthur Engoron – Democrats all – have shown they will stop at nothing to destroy Biden’s chief electoral opponent, democracy be damned. Just in case prosecuting Trump does not do the trick, the left is trying to block Trump from the ballot – to save democracy, of course, from the nightmare scenario of Trump winning a popular election.

Beyond Trump, the Justice Department has become obsessed with policing the MAGA movement. According to Newsweek, the FBI is ramping up its targeting of Trump supporters ahead of 2024, even dedicating a special category to tracking them. This is the “domestic extremism” that Biden has spent so much time raving about.

A senior intelligence official told Newsweek, “We’ve crossed the Rubicon.”

Meanwhile, in the name of fighting “disinformation,” the White House has conspired with social media companies to monitor and block speech about contentious topics like the 2020 election – the most secure election in history, of course.

The second arm of Biden’s war on democracy has to do with immigration.

The so-called “Biden border crisis” is a deliberate calculation to subvert the sovereignty of the people and the laws of the United States. There is no other explanation for Biden’s refusal to police the southern border, which has unleashed a historic invasion contrary to the Constitution and the will of the people.

Biden’s invasion is rapidly reshaping the country, and if it is not stopped, the first words of the Constitution, “we the people of the United States,” will soon cease to have any meaning.

Other presidents have been more transformative legislators: Biden doesn’t have any law or program to point to like Social Security or the Great Society. Even still, Biden has done more to undermine the rule of law and shatter democratic norms than any president before him.

The good news is that Biden’s arrogant and ridiculous attempt to claim “democracy” for himself does not seem to be working. Trump is gaining momentum: if the election were held today he would win. And Trump’s populist pitch will resonate louder as Biden becomes even more desperate and heavy-handed in his campaign to save “our democracy” from the people who live in it.



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Here Comes The Begging


Politicians do few things with the fervor and energy of a 12-year-old boy getting his first look at a Playboy magazine more than they do begging for money. Begging is the wrong term; lying and/or badgering is more accurate. They get worked up by it and don’t mind coming off as completely pathetic losers because the alternative would be to spend some of their own millions, which they often amassed while holding the office they are begging for money to maintain. It’s a vicious cycle few people with any sense of decency or shame would ever engage in.

I get emails all the time from Democrats crying about some random “mid-month” or “end of the week” deadline, neither of which is real. I’m sure Republicans do it too, but I’d rather not read their stupidity – what I suspect is bad enough, I don’t need to see the reality of it and find out it’s worse.

David Trone is one of the worst. He’s among the richest Members of Congress because he owns Total Wine and More. If you shop at one, stop. 

Trone holds the record for the most money ever spent on a primary campaign in 2016 when he set $12 million on fire to lose to Jamie Raskin. Imagine being a loser to Jamie Raskin?! How do you live with yourself?

You move districts. Trone ran the next cycle in another Democrat-gerrymandered district next to Raskin’s and won. You spend enough money, and you can polish a turd. 

The one thing I remember about Trone's various campaigns is his willingness to exploit his own family. In his first bid against Raskin, he ran ads saying he was for abortion because of his daughters. I guess he was implying they were either too stupid to understand how birth control works and they were super-friendly with people or he wanted to make sure they never reproduced. Whatever it was, it was gross. But not surprising. Or even the worst Trone would do to sniff power.

In the next cycle, Trone exploited the overdose death of his young nephew to claim he understood the opioid crisis. Imagine having to call your sibling because you wanted to use the worst day of their lives as your campaign prop. What kind of a scumbag does that? That is, of course, assuming he called to give his family a heads-up. Trone is so disgusting there’s a large possibility he just did it because what does he care?

Yet, this rich post-digested food exit port still begs for money from average Marylanders. Because what Napoleonic-complex suffering narcissist want to spend their own money when you can get some cash from our dupes?

Hilariously, Trone personifies the “white savior complex.” A guy who is worth a fortune spends a lot of time telling black people he’ll look out for them. Never mind the fact that his party is the reason so many black families suffer economically and from such high crime in the cities Democrats control.

Pandering to the point of parody, Trone got (probably paid, let’s be honest) Jonathan Jackson to appear in an ad for him. Don’t know who Jonathan Jackson is? You’re not alone. He’s the son of Jesse Jackson, who didn’t go to prison for corruption (Jesse Jackson Jr did). 

Jonathan is in Congress, too, though he just got there and made literally zero impact. But he’s black, and his father is famous, so Trone got him. See, Trone’s opponent is a black woman, so David has to play the “I have black friends” card by digging up a Jackson, one of the few black people a rich, insulated white guy like David Trone could name in a pinch. Jesse Senior is too old, infirm, and has too many illegitimate kids to be an effective campaign endorser – especially if you want to appeal to anyone under 70. 

Hilariously, Trone’s fundraising pitch is about as stupid as having a freshman Congressman do a TV ad for you because he’s black and has a famous dad. He claims Mitch McConnell and those dastardly Republicans are gunning for him. Trone is stupid, but he’s also a Democrat. Whoever the Democrats nominate will A) be stupid and B) will win – this is, after all, Maryland. No Republican, McConnell or not, will spend a penny here. But Trone is hoping his moronic supporters still give him money, thinking McConnell will. That’s a new level of dumb.

With Trone begging, just imagine what other Democrats in areas where their races will be competitive are doing? Just imagine how stupid you have to be to fall for any of it? Then realize that’s what we’re up against next year. 



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‘Our Democracy™’ Is the Opposite of Majority Rule

We can expect the lunatics to try to disenfranchise us under the rubric of thwarting 'insurrectionists'


The recent decision of the Colorado Supreme Court to bar former President Trump from the ballot is just the latest example of antidemocratic election management masquerading as the defense of democracy.

It has become clear in recent years that the term democracy does not mean what it used to mean: namely, majority governance subject to the rule of law. Under this definition, all the warnings about Trump as a threat to democracy never made much sense. Elections are supposed to matter and change things. And he was elected.

The labeling of Trump as a threat to Our Democracy™ means something very different.  This criticism focuses not on Trump’s alleged imperial manner of governance, but rather the substantive policies he has embraced.

Policies important to the managerial class—particularly in areas like foreign policy, immigration, and trade—were supposed to be off limits not merely from Trump, but from democratic control more generally. These were too important to be left to the people, whom elites considered easily misled by “foreign influence” and “populism.”

This is one reason why social media sites have been so thoroughly infiltrated by our intelligence agencies. And this is why so many of the political movements of the last few years—transexual surgeries for children, gay marriage, and now a blatant attempt to rig the 2024 election—originate in the high temples of the managerial class: the courts.

Occupier Government as Precedent

There is some precedent for a democracy limited by a class of overseers. In the wake of World War II, the allies imposed significant restrictions on occupied Japan and Germany to prevent the revival of aggressive nationalism. This included bans on the Nazi Party in Germany, disestablishment of the Shinto religion in Japan, renunciation of divinity by the Japanese emperor, and a variety of formal and informal taboos that constrained these nations’ emergent democratic politics.

These were each democracies of a sort, but they labored under significant limits that thwarted policies that might have otherwise obtained majority support. They were something new:  “occupied democracies.”

Under the circumstances, such restrictions made a certain amount of sense. But precedents from military occupations of defeated enemies are not a good template for our peacetime domestic affairs.

The alarm over Trump is itself alarming. Trump’s politics were well within the American mainstream, liberal even, by the standards of 30 or 40 years ago. If he represented a partial vote of no confidence in the system in 2016, providing such feedback is one of the reasons we have elections. Even though he was elected fair and square—and is about to be again—he was deprived of the same deference, respect, and mandate as all of his predecessors because his enemies were convinced of the sacredness of their middlebrow liberal pieties.

For the ruling class, any outcome that goes against their bipartisan shibboleths—things like funding Ukraine, a strong NATO, and open borders—is anathema. Rather, they only like voting and elections in order to provide legitimacy to the system, buttressing the managerial and administrative power centers in government, which are largely unaccountable to voters.

The idea of a fragile democracy that must be “fortified” to achieve particular substantive outcomes is, in fact, the opposite of democracy. When democracy and elections are managed, someone must be doing the managing, and that someone must deem himself or themselves above majority control.

If the Managerial Class Hates Majority Rule, Why All the Paeans to Democracy?

There is a contradiction at the heart of the left’s view of Trump and democracy exemplified by the latest machinations of the Colorado Supreme Court. If democracy is so great, what does it say about majority rule that voters are so easily confused, led astray, or fooled by disinformation and their own prejudices? Why care about what such people want?

This is exactly why the managerial class has doubled down so extravagantly on its praise of democracy.  They know democracy has inherent moral authority among Americans, but the ruling elite hates most Americans. So, even though—or rather especially because—the ruling elite wants the opposite of majority rule, they conflate their preferred political outcomes with democracy as a form of deceptive marketing.  Our Democracy™ is an ideology of minority rule by the managerial class fraudulently invoking democracy to accrue unearned legitimacy.

This is all craven, dishonest, and not even terribly subtle. Far from a noble lie, it is an ignoble one.

The latest affront to actual democracy arises from the Colorado Supreme Court’s declaration that Trump must be removed from the ballot because he engaged in insurrection and is thus barred from office by the Fourteenth Amendment. The legal defects of this opinion are extensive, but they have already been covered elsewhere.

The opinion serves as evidence of the managerial class’s contempt for the American people. It forms a pattern along with intelligence agency misinformation campaigns, multiple dubious criminal prosecutions, two partisan impeachments, and an unending stream of hateful propaganda against Trump before, during, and after his service as President.

Furthermore, the substantive goals being protected from Trump are mostly objective evils, like allowing children to sterilize and castrate themselves, tearing down the monuments of our heroic ancestors, funding fratricidal European wars, and flooding our country with infinity third world immigrants until we no longer have a national identity.

They Want to Ban All ‘MAGA’ From Voting

There is another more worrisome aspect to all this. Labeling protests an insurrection has been bouncing around since the January 6 protest of 2021. This is not a fluke.

The hunt for insurrection is now part of our common vocabulary and is a particular obsession of Washington D.C. and its enforcers. The designation of the rowdy protest as an insurrection formed the premise on which a lot of the more serious felony charges for January 6 rioters rested.  

But consider the larger context. January 6 began as a protest of an election full of obvious and not-so-obvious fraud. A fraudulent election result is the opposite of democracy. Far from being enemies of democracy, the January 6 protesters were complaining about a stolen election. If the deeply unpopular Biden wins again through fraud or other electoral machinations, we can expect another and bigger protest.

When some inevitable violence occurs, this too will be called an insurrection and be used as a pretext to track down and harass the left’s domestic political opponents. I also expect the net will expand. In the eyes of the fanatics, even those who do not protest will be guilty of “supporting an insurrectionist” if they vote for Trump, and this will justify their disenfranchisement. Who can forget Biden’s hateful attack on “MAGA Republicans” in Philadelphia last year?

The fast movement of our politics into various “no go” zones in order to oppose Trump has been shocking. These include election interference by intelligence agencies, criminal prosecutions, civil judgments, the abuse of public health protocols, and now a completely obvious attempt to shut down the political opposition.

Just as keeping Trump off the ballot is an egregious attack on every principle of democracy, we can expect these lunatics to try to disenfranchise all of us soon enough under the rubric of thwarting insurrectionists. As with the actions directed at Trump, they’ll first label this authoritarian and undemocratic power grab an attempt to save Our Democracy™.



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We Can’t Let Fossil Fuels Die Because They Keep Us Alive

It's not just cars, leaf blowers, stoves, or even air conditioning. 
What is at stake is much deeper: human dignity.



This is my first Christmas without my dad. As hard as it is for me and my siblings, it’s harder still for our mother, who is having her first Christmas since 1963 without him. Dad’s days in the hospital and subsequent death ushered in a wave of emotions, memories, and ponderings about heaven, sin, salvation, and for me, fossil fuels.

The last item in that list may sound strange, but let me explain. As an advocate for the energy industry, work follows me everywhere, and I love it because I love what I do. But fossil fuels are not just my life, they are life-giving and life-sustaining. 

After his heart attack, Dad had a cardiac catheterization to assess the damage to his coronary artery. A hollow, plastic tube was inserted through the groin. Then, guided by the doctor, it traveled through the blood vessels, sending back data and information. In this procedure, the plastics are made of oil. The needle is forged to the finest of points by heat produced from coal. The medicines used to prevent infection are petrochemicals likely made from natural gas. Right there: fossil fuels.  

A stent was also implanted to keep the blood flowing in a collapsed artery — thinner than human hair, hollow, nontoxic, noncorrosive, flexible, and 100 percent made from oil.  

Medicines, IV bags, disposable gloves, hand sanitizer, the port in his arm, the numerous beeping machines — in every corner of Dad’s hospital room were products of abundant natural resources, which professionals deploy daily to save lives and heal patients. And we take it for granted.

Those advocating for a “green transition” never tell us what the plan is to make needles and bedpans once we “phase out” of fossil fuels. What is the replacement plan for plastic, rubber, cement, steel, and the millions of products they create?  

Wind and solar make electricity — albeit inefficient, unreliable, intermittent, and expensive. But fossil fuels do so much more, and the Biden administration and environmental leftists pretend to ignore it. For example, the Biden administration passed the so-called Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which threw over a trillion tax dollars at, among other things, “rebuild[ing] crumbling road [sic] and bridges.” But at the same time, a government agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, is restricting the very oil, gas, and coal needed to accomplish this.  

Clearly, Transportation Secretary Buttigieg and EPA Administrator Regan need to sit down and talk.

Every call to eliminate fossil fuels is a call to slowly, incrementally raise the price of all these products making them cost-prohibitive for the masses. Yes, cement and steel are vital to our economy and our quality of life, but so are the millions of affordable, daily-life products like laundry detergent and aspirin. 

I always carry a handkerchief (because my dad did), but most people prefer disposable tissues.  When fossil fuels are gone, tissues are gone. Disposable diapers are gone. Yoga mats and plastic water bottles are gone. Do climate change activist suburban moms know that? Do you think Starbucks can survive without fossil fuels? What about that salad from Whole Foods in a plastic container or even the plastic packaging for meat and produce? Cologne, deodorant, perfume, bathroom cleansers, Swiffer pads, paper towels — sure, that mom may think disposable products are “bad for the Earth,” but a lack of hygiene is far worse for her and her family.

Perhaps I thought these things sitting in Dad’s hospital room to distract myself from the heartache. Perhaps I think these things because it is my job. Either way, I know the world is not ready for fossil fuels to lose this battle. It is not just cars and leaf blowers, stoves, or even air conditioning. What is at stake is much deeper: human dignity — a dignity that elevates us above the harshness of nature and cruelty of illness or allows us to cleanse ourselves from the sweat of labor. 

We do not talk about the “then what” after fossil fuels are eliminated. But I assure you, life as we know it would be absolutely, categorically impossible without them. 

Petrochemicals and a team of amazing doctors at Northshore Hospital did everything to save my dad, but God called him home. Fossil fuels kept him alive long enough for me to say goodbye. 

I will work every day to keep them around for the sake of our lives. 



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Get Out, We're Closed


There was a time when I was in favor of some streamlining of the legal immigration process. It seemed wildly unfair that it could take years and years to immigrate by the rules, especially when the applicant is working within the law and will bring something of value to the country – it will add to America’s greatness. Now, screw it. To hell with everyone trying to move here. Unless you’re coming with a small fortune and something truly extraordinary that will be a serious boost to the country and Americans, stay out. And everyone here illegally, get the hell out, we’re closed.

The Biden administration has decided to play red rover with the world and greased up hands – damn near no one is turned away, all they have to do is claim they’re seeking asylum, that they fear for their lives somehow, and they’re in. They’re in until some random future court date they’ll never show up for or so far down the road that if they actually show up to it, some liberal judge will declare it too cruel to deport someone whose kids were born here and know nothing else.

I don’t care anymore. 

Whatever amount of concern I may have had was trampled by the millions invading from the south and the idiots in the Democratic Party who would like nothing more than the power for themselves importing illiterate third-world countries every couple of months brings them. Nope, they all have to go.

There needs to be mass deportation. I don’t care where in the world you come from; international law requires asylum seekers who fear for their lives to seek asylum in the first country they come to, where the threat to the life you are fleeing does not exist. No human being marching in from Mexico meets that criterion, except for Mexican citizens. Not one single person from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South America, or anywhere has a legitimate asylum claim, nor do I any longer care about any other sad tale of woe they might be able to spin. 

They’re coming here for a better economic life, which is not a legal or legitimate claim for asylum. Get them the hell out. 

Our government, through left-wing ‘non-governmental agencies,” is providing this invading army with money, from a few bucks to a few thousand. I don’t know what the true amount is, nor do I care. One penny is too much. They’re here illegally; toss them out. We shouldn’t give them a damn thing – we should send them home immediately and send them a bill for the cost. 

We won’t collect anything from those people, and I’m fine with that…as long as they never return. 

The cost can be covered by fining the ever-loving hell out of any company found to be knowingly employing illegals or anyone found to be hiring them under the table to work around their houses (that would be fun for Hollywood).  Make it so painful it shuts down some companies, so damaging that no one dares break the law lest they face harsh punishment. 

Cut off the social services draining our already empty accounts. No one who actually adds value to society is marching across the border illegally – they’re more often unable to read, write, or speak English and illiterate in their native language. Their kids drag down an already near-worthless public school system, especially in urban areas. Aside from headcount, there is nothing of value added on this scale, and the speed with which Democrats have enabled this invasion assures there will be nothing of value coming in the future. 

Assimilation is the only pathway to success for immigrants – learn the language, learn the culture, and become a part of it so you can function and contribute. That’s now frowned upon by Democrats to the point that they actively discourage it. They seek to trap legal immigrants in ethnic enclaves – little versions of the places they’d fled. The only difference with illegals is the scale is larger. 

I get it, a lot of the rest of the world sucks. I don’t care anymore. Fix the dump you’re fleeing; make it better. Do not come here illegally and, ultimately, enable the political party actively seeking to implement the policies here that led to the failed economies you’re fleeing.

My sympathy, my caring, has run dry. Seeing what’s happening at the southern border just makes me angry. We need a wall, we need immediate deportation, we need a catapult to launch people into the Gulf of Mexico. We need illegals, en masse, to be sent back to where they fled, where they paid the drug cartels to bring them here so their friends and neighbors see those thousands of dollars were wasted; the cartels offer no refunds or do-overs. 

It'll hurt, so what? They broke the law, and that has to come at a cost.  Besides, no one ever said lessons had to be free. 

Enough is enough; we need politicians with the figurative anatomy to spit the truth in the truest terms, to stand up and say no more, get out. Then maybe, just maybe, after we’ve gotten rid of the people who came here illegally and punished their accessories for violating our nation’s sovereignty, we can talk about updating the legal immigration system. But an immigration system isn’t broken when you, the people in charge of it, refuse to do anything about the enforcement aspect of it. 

Open the hood of a new car and just start cutting wires and loosening bolts, and you’ll soon find it doesn’t work. The fan might, and the lights could. Depending on what you damaged, maybe it’ll even run a bit. Some things will still work. But the car won’t, at least not for long. That’s what Democrats (and some Republicans) have done with the immigration system. It’s not that it’s broken as much as it is they’ve broken it, and they can fix it by enforcing all of it. Until they do, shut it down. And keep it shut down until they do their jobs or are looking for new jobs because they’ve been tossed out of their current ones. I’m beyond caring about them and their fates, either. Shut it all down, throw them all out. 




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Biden's broken borders, welfare, and America's coming collapse


America’s greatest economist ever was Milton Friedman. (Incidentally, the second greatest, a living treasure, is Thomas Sowell, who learned from Milton Friedman.) In an era before terrorists traveled across national borders, Friedman was a believer in the free movement of people. However, he was not a believer in giving immigrants welfare or votes, for he understood that combining these things would break the system. So, would it surprise you to know that a significant majority of people entering America under Biden’s illegal open border policy are on welfare?

Wall Street has always liked the idea of open borders because it sees people chasing jobs, thereby increasing wealth. A certain sector has also liked the idea of unlettered immigrants who can easily be exploited, but that’s another subject entirely.

Another group that likes open borders is leftists. As this UMinn professor made clear, they loath America, and a country without borders isn’t a country at all.

This is great for Biden because his illegal open border caters to both demographics, Wall Street and the hard left. It’s not often that you get a political two-fer quite like that.

Milton Friedman, who believed in the free flow of capital, also liked open borders. However, he had a very firm caveat: “It’s just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state.” More than that, as Robert Rector explained (and Mitt Romney inartfully tried to explain, too), there’s a problem when those receiving welfare vote:

There is a rough one-to-one fiscal balance between low-skill immigrant families and upper-middle-class families. It takes the entire net tax payments (taxes paid minus benefits received) of one college-educated family to pay for the net benefits received by one low-skill immigrant family. Even Julian Simon, the godfather of open-border advocates, acknowledged that imposing such a burden on taxpayers was unreasonable, stating, "immigrants who would be a direct economic burden upon citizens through the public coffers should have no claim to be admitted" into the nation.

There is also a political dimension to the transfer state. Elections in modern societies are, to a considerable degree, referenda on the magnitude of future income redistribution. An immigration policy which grants citizenship to vast numbers of low-skill, low-income immigrants not only creates new beneficiaries for government transfers, but new voters likely to support even greater transfers in the future.

The grant of citizenship is a transfer of political power. Access to the U.S. ballot box also provides access to the American taxpayer's bank account. This is particularly problematic with regard to low-skill immigrants. Within an active redistributionist state, as Friedman understood, unlimited immigration can threaten limited government.

So we’ve got open borders and a leftist push for non-citizen voting (along with child and felon voting), meaning we’re two-thirds of the way there.

But what about that welfare component? Well, we’re almost two-thirds of the way there, too, according to a study from the Center for Immigration Studies:

  • The 2022 SIPP indicates that 54 percent of households headed by immigrants — naturalized citizens, legal residents, and illegal immigrants — used one or more major welfare program. This compares to 39 percent for U.S.-born households.
  • The rate is 59 percent for non-citizen households (e.g. green card holders and illegal immigrants).
  • Compared to households headed by the U.S.-born, immigrant-headed households have especially high use of food programs (36 percent vs. 25 percent for the U.S.-born), Medicaid (37 percent vs. 25 percent for the U.S.-born), and the Earned Income Tax Credit (16 percent vs. 12 percent for the U.S.-born).
  • Our best estimate is that 59 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants, also called the undocumented, use at least one major program. We have no evidence this is due to fraud. Among legal immigrants we estimate the rate is 52 percent.

At this rate, in a very short time, we’ll have achieved the broken borders dream of Wall Street and the left. Wall Street will be fine because its members are globalists and because, to the extent the government keeps growing, they’ve already entered into a partnership with the government (i.e., fascism). And, of course, leftists will have their dream of America’s collapse.

Meanwhile, ordinary Americans will soon find themselves living out that leftist dream, which will inevitably result in a failed state. If you want to know what that looks like, it won’t be a socialist paradise. It will be South Africa, Uganda, or another of the earth’s desperate, famine-ridden, violent hellholes.

The Supreme Court, in an utterly misbegotten decision, said anyone in America must get welfare. I suggest that the next sane government cut off all that welfare and let the court revisit it. And while that process is grinding on, lots of those illegal households will self-report.

The upcoming election is our last chance—more of the same or a sharp U-Turn. Nikki Haley, incidentally, is more of the same. She talks tough but caves whenever the left comes calling. Trump and DeSantis have both followed through on their promises, and Vivek Ramaswamy truly is saying all the correct things about saving America. We’ve got choices. Don’t mess this up.



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UMinn professor wants to ‘dismantle the settler project that is the United States.’


Harvard is in the headlines as Claudine Gay appears as the poster child for everything wrong with academia (including) the Democrat party’s protection for the toxic ideologies taught there, as evidenced by Barack Obama stepping in to save Gay’s job. Harvard is hardly unique. Today’s example is a “teach-in” at the University of Minnesota entitled “From Minneapolis to Palestine: Connection Our Movements for Collective Liberation: An Indigenous Perspective.” It’s as bad as it sounds, with one woman clearly stating the goal: “dismantling” (i.e., erasing) America and Israel.

The speaker is unambiguous, concise—and utterly dishonest: 


And you're hearing people on social media saying, like “Oh, land back, like genocide. Does this mean genocide?”

 No. But land back is going to happen. That's going to happen. The indigenous perspective in Turtle Island and how we understand what is also happening in Palestine and what we really want you to take away tonight is, as Anthony said, we're in the belly of the beast, right?

We're all indigenous people who come from nations that are under occupation by the United States government. And of course, the US bank rules on the Israeli occupation. The Palestinian land. They're one and the same really.

And so it's our responsibility as people who are within the United States to go as hard as possible to decolonize this place because that will reverberate all across the world, because the US is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed. Right.

And so we want US out of everywhere. We want US out of Palestine. We want US out of turtle. Island, right. And that the goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States.

“Turtle Island” means the earth itself. Once you understand that, you understand the lie behind her claim that what she’s urging does not mean genocide. It does in every way, shape, and form.

According to the woman, every bit of American land belongs to Native Americans—who were colonizers. Every single tribe lived to destroy nearby tribes. Since America’s indigenous people were completely Stone-Aged, to the point at which they didn’t even have the wheel, one of the best ways to optimize their survival was to kill rival tribes and take their resources. That’s how they lived for centuries.

Of course, even if she denies Native American history, the speaker is fully aware that the only way to “decolonize” America is to kill people. Decolonization (which means colonization by different people) happens with force.

It’s unlikely that the people she wants to kill are the blacks or Hispanics, who are currently “Allies.” She wants to kill whites and probably the Asians and East Asian Indians who are insistently doing well academically and in commerce. Ironically, young, college-educated Asians and East Asian Indians consider themselves Allies, too. They’ll find that, like good, loyal, patriotic German Jews, they’ll be in the gas chamber, too.

The madness goes on with the claim that the U.S. is the “greatest predator empire that has ever existed,” which needs to be erased “everywhere.” Currently, the following is the extent of this “great” U.S. Empire (endnotes omitted):

The United States currently administers three territories in the Caribbean Sea and eleven in the Pacific Ocean. Five territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) are permanently inhabited, unincorporated territories; the other nine are small islands, atolls, and reefs with no native (or permanent) population. Of the nine, only one is classified as an incorporated territory (Palmyra Atoll). Two additional territories (Bajo Nuevo Bank and Serranilla Bank) are claimed by the United States but administered by Colombia.

That’s it. In other nations, we have a military presence either because we’re still maintaining stability almost 8 decades after those places went crazy and became “predator empires” or because the nations hosting our military desperately want us (e.g., NATO)—or at least want our money.

We have a cultural presence worldwide because, since WWII, even while disdaining us, most of the world desperately wants to be like us or “us” as we once were: Affluent, safe, and apparently having fun. That’s our “empire.”

The woman’s expressed desire to remove America from the “turtle” means erasing America. That doesn’t happen without bloodshed.

The same genocidal mania is evident in the woman’s demand that America get out of “Palestine.” To the extent America is in Gaza or the West Bank, where the self-styled ‘Palestinian’ people live, she’s there in the form of the uncounted billions she’s sent to the leaders of the PLO (Arafat was worth $10 billion when he died), the Palestinian Authority (Mahmoud Abbas is worth at least $100 million), and Hamas (the three leaders of which are worth a combined $10 billion). Obviously, the speaker doesn’t want the money to stop.

What the speaker wants is for America to stop supporting the State of Israel. She doesn’t care that the Jews are the indigenous people and the Muslims the colonizers. All she knows is that Israel has been associated with the U.S. since the Soviet Union sided with the Arabs in 1967.

What the woman envisions is what Hamas and its fellow travelers in the worldwide “Palestinian Empire” demand: a Muslim nation “from the river to the sea.” And she surely knows that the people calling for that dream, whether in Gaza or elsewhere, are open about the fact that this requires Jewish genocide.

If you’re interested, you can see the whole 2-hour event here, but I think we’ve got the gist of it: Kill Americans, kill Jews, and ignore every other “colonizing” nation in the world, which would be every nation in the world. Our academic institutions are utterly toxic, and they should be destroyed by all legal means available, which means, in practical terms, defunding the heck out of them.

UPDATE: The speaker is Melanie Yazzie, a professor at UMN Liberal Arts. I was so focused on her words that I forgot to mention that fact. Her bio is what you'd expect:

Melanie K. Yazzie is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. She writes and teaches about a range of topics, including Navajo/American Indian history; (neo)liberalism; settler colonialism; Indigenous feminisms; Native American studies; social movements; urban Native experience; political ecology; queer Indigenous studies; biopolitics; water; media; Marxism; and theories of policing and the state.

Dr. Yazzie has held numerous fellowships. She was a Katrin H. Lamon Residential Scholar at the School for Advanced Research (2018-19), a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow (2016-17), an Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellow (2015-16), and a Ford Foundation Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship (2011-14).

She has published over a dozen articles and book reviews in Gender, Place & Culture, Environment & Society, Wicazo Sa Review, Studies in American Indian Literature, American Indian Quarterly, Social Text, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, Society, Native American and Indigenous Studies, New Mexico Historical Quarterly, and American Quarterly. She is coauthor of Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation (PM Press, 2021) and The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save the Earth (Red Media, 2021). 

In addition to her academic work, she engages in extensive public intellectualism and community organizing and activism. She co-hosts and produces the podcast Red Power Hour and serves as lead editor for the open-access journal Decolonization. She is the advisory board chair for Red Media, an independent press and media project that centers Indigenous intelligence in all its forms. She also organizes with The Red Nation, a grassroots Native-run organization committed to the liberation of Indigenous people from colonialism and capitalism.



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