Trump Invites Auto Execs to the Grand Reopening of the Open Road CAFE

Trump Invites Auto Execs to the Grand Reopening of the Open Road CAFE 1

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Trump Invites Auto Execs to the Grand Reopening of the Open Road CAFE 2

There was a bit of a festive mood in the Oval Office yesterday, and it wasn’t only the spirit of Christmas, with all the holiday trappings. President Trump had invited the heads of all the major automakers, plant managers, and others associated with the industry for a ceremony.

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He was signing the official rollback and reset of the Biden administration’s ruinous, restrictive, and reviled Green revision of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, part of the previous regime’s rabid effort to force the entire country into electric vehicles or onto public transportation.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had started the ball rolling when he took office back in January.

They issued a rule clarification in June that the DoT would be resetting the standards.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today published a final rule, “Resetting the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Program.” The rule explains that the Biden-Buttigieg Administration ignored statutory requirements in CAFE barring consideration of electric vehicles when setting fuel economy standards.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are making vehicles more affordable and easier to manufacture in the United States The previous administration illegally used CAFE standards as an electric vehicle mandate – raising new car prices and reducing safety. Resetting CAFE standards as Congress intended will lower vehicle costs and ensure the American people can purchase the cars they want,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy.

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Yesterday’s gathering and the many happy faces surrounding the president bore witness to relief at the lifting of those onerous requirements.

As David wrote in his piece this morning, the WAAHs! from the climate cultists in the media were loud and mournful, belching hysterically about fumes and dooms.

…Yet here is how Trump’s reforms were framed:

President Trump on Wednesday threw the weight of the federal government behind vehicles that burn gasoline rather than electric cars, gutting one of the country’s most significant efforts to address climate change and thrusting the automobile industry into greater uncertainty…

But the mood in the room and among those of rational thought processes was much more upbeat and, frankly, relieved.

The president of Ford, which has suffered woefully under the mandated EV switch even with substantial reams of government largesse floating their way, had a nearly audible sigh of relief when he basically said, ‘We can go back to making cars people WANT.‘

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And what the Biden administration was requiring of car manufacturers was basically impossible – that their vehicles nearly meet the mileage ratings of EVs. Since they couldn’t and the cost to do so would be prohibitively expensive, while the engineering to do so would render whatever the original purpose – like a pickup truck – of the vehicle moot, American consumers would be forced to turn to EVs. 

…The Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards date back to 1975 and have been tightened over the years to make vehicles more efficient. 

Former President Joe Biden had required automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of passenger cars and light trucks to about 50 miles per gallon by 2031. These stricter standards were expected to stimulate the production and sale of electric vehicles in the U.S. Many of the officials in attendance, including U.S. dealers, said the new standards are more in line with the vehicles customers want to buy rather than the more costly ones automakers have been pushed to produce due to regulations.

Besides the obvious upside for manufacturers, there are any number of pluses for the American consumer, beginning with cost savings. No longer are you going to be paying to build an EV industry that was on perpetual life support, for one thing.

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As this poster notes, the entire scheme was yet one more punishment, stripping freedom of both choice and movement by an anti-American, authoritarian regime.

It was all part of the big squeeze of the Big Scam.

…Trump rolled back aggressive standards put forth by the Obama administration under his first term in office, with Biden subsequently resetting and tightening the CAFE standards under his administration. 

The Biden administration, for example, boosted fuel efficiency requirements by 8% for 2024 and 2025 model years and 10% for 2026, which was far higher than Trump’s 1.5% that was finalized under his first term and applied to car model years 2021–2026. The Trump White House argued that the aggressive standards set under the Biden-era were not feasible to meet with available technologies for gas cars, and that the standards would have compelled consumers to shift to electric vehicles. 

“Today, we’re taking one more step to kill the Green New scam as part of the greatest scam, probably,” Trump continued, adding that a few other scandals could also be considered the “greatest scam.” 

“The greatest scam in American history, the Green New Scam. And it’s a quest to end the gasoline-powered car. This is what they wanted to do, even though we have more gasoline than any other country by far. And people want the gasoline car. They want everything. They want electric. They want to have lots of alternatives. But they do want the gasoline car. Right now, it’s leading away by a lot,” Trump said during the event.

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There’s another bonus to this complete reset – no more stupid geegaws making your new vehicle irritating as…well, poop.

Do you hate this thing? We sure as hell do. 

So does your starter. And your battery.

Cars will be cheaper to manufacture thanks to the elimination of the artificial CAFE-mandated benchmarks.

Besides bringing peace to the world, gearheads sound kind of rapturous about the possibility that Trump has single-handedly saved the legendary V-8 engine.

If there’s one thing Americans love, it’s V8 engines. Big, fast, loud, they’re the American definition of freedom wrapped into a gas-guzzling package. For a few years it looked like that gluttony for fuel could kill the V8, dooming Americans to immediate Stalinism and bread lines, but thankfully our beloved President Donald Trump has a solution: Ending penalties for failing to meet emissions regulations. Now, it’s open season to make the most fuel-inefficient vehicles imaginable, ensuring the V8 lives forever. 

…Automotive News spoke with industry analysts about the rule change, who acknowledged that automakers may well just go back to producing less and less fuel-efficient cars. We’ve already seen Stellantis get a head start, giving the Ram 1500 its Hemi back (and a “symbol of protest” badge, because these trucks are largely bought out of spite), but it’s not the only company likely to benefit here. Even Toyota, known for its rigorous adherence to fuel-efficiency standards, has a V8 prototype in the works. 

Of course, this rule change raises questions around beta cuck lib concerns like “the environment” or “breathable air” or a “habitable planet.” Y’know what those questions are? Communism. They’re anti-V8 in nature, and that kind of thinking is deserving of denaturalization. We don’t want your kind here — we’d much rather have our thirsty, earth-shaking eight-cylinder engines. No, no one’s compensating for anything. Shut up.

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Damn straight.

Ding dong, CAFE IS DEAD.

We can hit the road again the way we want to.

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The ‘Double Tap’ Story Is a Perfect Example of an Information/Psychological Operation

The 'Double Tap' Story Is a Perfect Example of an Information/Psychological Operation 3

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The 'Double Tap' Story Is a Perfect Example of an Information/Psychological Operation 4

Seen in the right light, the “double tap” war crimes story tells us quite a bit about how color revolution tactics are being weaponized in the United States to undermine the Trump administration(s). 

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The term “color revolutions” gained traction under the Obama administration, and it refers to (generally) US-backed regime change operations that use psychological warfare campaigns combined with (often USAID-funded) campaigns to stimulate and organize resistance movements in foreign countries, with the goal of pushing what appear to be democratically-led regime change in target countries. 

The goal, aside from the obvious regime-change objective, is to avoid having to resort to US military action to achieve the objective. The Arab Spring and the replacement of the Ukrainian government during Obama’s term are examples of color revolutions, which take their name from the fact that the opposition adopts colors as symbols of its opposition. 

The current hoax that Pete Hegseth ordered the murder of helpless narco-terrorists who were Hors de combat—out of the fight—and hence not legal targets of military operations is obviously part of a similar campaign that continues despite mounting evidence that the events did not happen as described. 

It all began with the now-infamous video of the “Seditious Six,” in which, out of the blue, six prominent Democrats encourage US military members to disobey “illegal” orders. 

When asked directly what illegal orders had been given, none were provided. In fact, Senator Slotkin admitted she knew none that had been given, but warned that some may be coming in the near future. 

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Hmm. None have occurred, but we all know they are coming, and members of the military had better watch out because they could be prosecuted once a Democrat returns to the White House. 

Days later—quite the coincidence—such an order apparently came from the Secretary of War himself. And all hell broke loose. 

Now, Senator Mark Warner is openly musing that, perhaps, the military should save us from President Trump. A military coup, perhaps? 

As more and more information comes out, unsurprisingly, the original story of the “double tap” has turned out to be utterly false. The narco-terrorists were NOT Hors de combat, and instead were working to save their cargo and call for help. The boat, while not intact, was still seaworthy, and the original mission had not yet been completed. 

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ABC’s Martha Raddatz on Wednesday’s ‘World News Tonight’ about drug boat-gate: “And tonight, new information: According to a source familiar with the incident, the two survivors climbed back on to the boat after the initial strike. They were believed to be potentially in communication with others, and salvaging some of the drugs. Because of that, it was determined they were still in the fight and valid targets. A JAG officer was also giving legal advice. So, again, David, that video will be key and Admiral Bradley will be on the Hill tomorrow behind closed doors.”

It is perfectly legitimate to debate both the wisdom and, in fact, the legality of the strikes against these boats, but even Elissa Slotkin conceded the legality of those strikes initially. “To my knowledge, I am not aware of any illegal orders.” Targeting the boats, or even the narco-terrorists themselves, is legal according to her.

For days, we have been subjected to fevered discussions about international law, the UCMJ, potential prosecutions of soldiers who obey lawful orders, and misleading descriptions from anonymous sources about an event that DID NOT HAPPEN. Yet, even on ABC, which broke the story that the strike was legitimate, the commentators are still discussing events as if they did. 

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It is a hoax, just like the “fine people” hoax. The fact that everybody who is talking about it knows that the narrative is false, they continue to push it. 

Lest you think that Griffin is just spouting off, she is employed by ABC News and speaking to one of the largest daytime TV audiences in America. And her audience is a potent one: AWFLs, who are a key electoral demographic. 

In the space of about a week, we went from “illegal orders may be coming” to “illegal orders happened” to “we will prosecute you if you commit war crimes when we get into power” to…promoting a military coup. 

All based on a hoax. A hoax that, despite all those prior hoaxes being debunked, still took in quite a few Republicans. They believed a false premise, and did the work of the propagandists for them. 

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None of this was coincidental. It is the same playbook as the Russia Collusion hoax, the “suckers and losers” hoax (which is still out there), and countless others. 

These are color revolution tactics. A coordinated disinformation/psyops campaign to destabilize a regime. To put a cherry on the top, Elissa Slotkin was at the CIA. 

Unfortunately, the Obama years showed that color revolutions often work. In fact, the migrant crisis in Europe all began with Obama’s Arab Spring. 

Will it work here? Yes and no. To a great extent, it already has. The country is already destabilized, even if Trump remains in power. Division has skyrocketed, social trust has plummeted, and Biden has imported over 10 million foreigners to change demographics. We are not in danger of a military coup, I think, but the campaign is achieving its goals.  

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So far. The big difference is that the US is much more resilient as a whole than, say, Syria or Ukraine. For the most part, what we have seen is that the Democrats are consolidating control in Blue states and cities, but not at the federal level. These tactics have been divisive, but as Trump’s victory showed, the Democrats’ opposition is far from defeated. They have taken massive tactical losses, especially with the defunding of USAID. 

So the warm civil war continues. 

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Politico: A Third of Trump Voters Say the Economy Is the Worst They’ve Seen

Politico: A Third of Trump Voters Say the Economy Is the Worst They've Seen 5

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Politico: A Third of Trump Voters Say the Economy Is the Worst They've Seen 6

Let’s start with this new poll out from Politico, which shows nearly half of voters now think the economy is the worst they can remember. But critically, it’s not just Democrats who believe this. A large minority of Trump voters agree.

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Almost half — 46 percent — say the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they can ever remember it being, a view held by 37 percent of 2024 Trump voters. Americans also say that the affordability crisis is Trump’s responsibility, with 46 percent saying it is his economy now and his administration is responsible for the costs they struggle with.

Democrats would blame anything on Trump so expecting them to be reasonable or even rational is expecting too much. But 37% of Trump voters don’t have TDS. Presumably this is what they really fell.

This is a thorny topic but I’m going to make the argument that affordability is not a “con job,” as Trump said this week at the White House.

In remarks during a cabinet meeting, Mr. Trump railed against Democrats who have championed the issue, which helped the party secure several off-year election victories last month and is likely to be a defining topic in the midterms next year.

After ticking off what he claimed were trillions of dollars of investments and other economic accomplishments, Mr. Trump called the issue of affordability a “fake narrative” and “con job” created by Democrats to dupe the public.

“They just say the word,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. They just say it — affordability. I inherited the worst inflation in history. There was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything.”

I saw a fact check of this statement by Ken Dilanian, who pointed out that inflation was already down to 3% when Trump took office.

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Trump said Friday: “We took over a mess. The highest inflation in recorded history.”

It wasn’t the highest in history, as CNN and others have noted in numerous articles. Trump could have fairly said the inflation rate hit a 40-year high under Biden in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920 – and Trump didn’t mention that it had declined to 3% by Biden’s last partial month in office in January, the same as the most recent Trump-era figure for September.

Trump’s claim was also incorrect if he meant the Biden presidency set a record for cumulative inflation over the course of a presidential term; the Biden-era increase was much smaller than the increase during President Jimmy Carter’s term.

So Trump is using a bit of hyperbole but inflation under Biden really is the worst we’ve seen since the Carter administration. And while it’s true that the rate of inflation was down to 3% when Trump took office, that’s just the rate of inflation. The real issue, as he mentions in passing, is the cumulative inflation under Biden which we’re all still feeling.

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Here’s another way to look at cumulative inflation which shows things going up about 20% under Biden.

And here’s a comparison of cumulative inflation under Biden compared to Trump’s 1st and 2nd term.

So Trump has a point that things were a historic mess under Biden and have been much better since he took office. But it’s also true that consumers are still stuck with that 20% increase in prices.

Of course there’s a lot more to this. Wages have also gone up cumulatively during this time but haven’t quite kept up with the increase in prices. So you have a combination of sticker shock (everything costs 20% more) plus a slight decline in buying power. Add those together and a lot of people don’t feel great about the economy. That’s the affordability crisis in a nutshell and even though the bulk of it isn’t Trump’s fault, he’s stuck with dealing with it in his 2nd term. Most people don’t blame the guy who was in office when the inflation happened, they blame the guy in office right now.

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Joe Biden’s people spent years trying to argue with people about the economy. Remember the vibecession? This was basically the argument that the numbers were looking good so if people weren’t happy, well, that was just a feeling detached from reality. In fact, a lot of the people pushing the vibecession argument specifically blamed it on conservative media. Basically they argued that Fox News was pulling the wool over people’s eyes, making them think the Biden economy was bad when it was really swell.

I was pretty skeptical of the vibecession argument precisely because it was mostly lefties making a partisan argument which just happened to let Joe Biden off the hook. Back in February, Politico published an article taking a second look at the whole vibecession argument. An economist who looked at it closely concluded the people were probably right to feel down about the economy and the numbers were probably underestimating the problem, at least with a certain segment of the population.

Democrats spent much of the campaign pointing out that inflation had abated by Election Day, even if prices remained elevated from pre-pandemic levels. Moreover, many noted that wages (according to the prevailing statistic that takes only full-time work into account) had risen at a faster clip. These claims were based on observations drawn largely from the Consumer Price Index, an indicator that tracks the prices charged for 80,000 goods and services across the economy.

But the CPI also perceives reality through a very rosy looking glass. Those with modest incomes purchase only a fraction of the 80,000 goods the CPI tracks, spending a much greater share of their earnings on basics like groceries, health care and rent. And that, of course, affects the overall figure: If prices for eggs, insurance premiums and studio apartment leases rise at a faster clip than those of luxury goods and second homes, the CPI underestimates the impact of inflation on the bulk of Americans. That, of course, is exactly what has happened.

My colleagues and I have modeled an alternative indicator, one that excludes many of the items that only the well-off tend to purchase — and tend to have more stable prices over time — and focuses on the measurements of prices charged for basic necessities, the goods and services that lower- and middle-income families typically can’t avoid. Here again, the results reveal how the challenges facing those with more modest incomes are obscured by the numbers. Our alternative indicator reveals that, since 2001, the cost of living for Americans with modest incomes has risen 35 percent faster than the CPI.

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Whether you agree with that or not, even if you think the vibecession argument makes more sense, what’s undeniable is that arguing with voters didn’t work. The 2024 election was a wipeout for Dems.

The same is true now heading into the midterms. Nearly half of Americans (according to the poll above) feel things are really bad. Arguing that it’s a Democratic con job is just the inverse of the vibecession argument the Biden people were making in 2023, i.e. people are being hoodwinked by partisans. It’s a losing argument. And, again, I’d say that’s mostly because the people are right to feel how they feel. Prices are really high thanks to cumulative inflation. Young people can’t imagine being able to buy a home in a lot of places. 

What’s needed is actual relief and that won’t happen overnight. You can’t build more homes over night to help lower home prices. Trump can’t make the Fed lower interest rates, which would help a lot with the cost of big purchases. But here’s the flipside. Dems can’t fix these problems either.

Democrats are doing their best to capitalize on affordability prior to the midterms. Zohran Mamdani won by smiling confidently and promising lots of free things to New York City voters. In reality he can’t deliver anything without help from the legislature and the governor in the form of big new tax increases. To put it bluntly, the DSA has a great sales pitch for people angry about affordability, but they won’t deliver. All they can really do is promise. All Republicans can do is show voters they are making changes and therefore there’s no need to give someone else a try.

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But the worst outcome for the GOP happens if Republicans try to convince voters things are actually fine and affordability isn’t a real concern. It won’t work and voters will get angry if they feel they’re being talked down to by the people they put in place to fix these issues. To wrap this up, President Trump was back on message yesterday.

The White House on Wednesday moved to scrap Biden-era fuel economy requirements, saying the change would help drive down automobile prices. It’s the latest attempt to convince Americans that their bank accounts are better off under President Donald Trump…

“People were paying too much for a car that didn’t work as well,” Trump said. “Now, they’re going to have a great car that’s environmentally friendly, but it’s going to cost you a lot less.”

“It’s going to cost you a lot less,” is the winning message next year. Stay on target.

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Today’s Deep Question: What Did Ilhan Omar Know About Minnesota’s Billion-Benjamins Fraud?

Today's Deep Question: What Did Ilhan Omar Know About Minnesota's Billion-Benjamins Fraud? 7

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Today's Deep Question: What Did Ilhan Omar Know About Minnesota's Billion-Benjamins Fraud? 8

“It’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” Ilhan Omar once observed about American politics regarding Israel. Perhaps that will get exposed as a symptom of malicious projection – on a billion-dollar scale. 

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The massive fraud in Omar’s congressional district, conducted within her Somali ex-pat power base, continues to collapse in federal court. US Attorney Joe Thompson has already won several convictions in the first trial, which then generated a new case of juror tampering and attempted bribery that has yet to be adjudicated. In the meantime, Thompson has opened a second trial of more suspected conspirators in the Feeding Our Future fraud, in which suspicions that federal funds got sent to the terror group al-Shabaab form part of the context around the case. 

The first trial didn’t raise connections to Omar, although the import of the case among Omar’s core constituency certainly raised questions about the possibilities. The second trial has brought the fraud closer to Omar’s orbit, however, and the New York Post’s Chadwick Moore has asked the eternal political-scandal question – what did Omar know about the massive fraud, and when did she know it?

US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered.

Omar (D-Minn.) held parties at one of the key restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners, and one of her own staffers has also been convicted — both for stealing millions. 

Omar even introduced the bill that led to $250 million in fraud. Yet she claims to have been completely unaware of it. 

“[Rep. Omar] knew who these people were. People she personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program,” claimed Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, to The Post. 

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Bill Glahn also contributes to Power Line, along with founders (and my friends) John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson. Power Line and the CAE were practically alone in exposing this fraud and covering the first trial among major media outlets, including the local Star Tribune, which mainly gave it the “isolated incident” treatment. They have relentlessly pursued Omar’s connection to this massive fraud conspiracy, which other Protection Racket Media outlets have studiously ignored or pooh-poohed solely on the basis of Omar’s denials. 

Scott notes the breakthrough nature of Moore’s coverage today in brief:

Moore’s story is the first I have seen to note Omar’s connection to the convicted Feeding Our Future defendant Guhaad Hashi. As I have written on Power Line many times (see, e.g., “Omertà for Omar”), Hashi was Omar’s enforcer. A photo caption in Moore’s story accurately observes: “Guhaad Hashi Said worked on Omar’s 2018 and 2020 campaigns as an ‘enforcer overseeing voter mobilization in the Somali community. He pleaded guilty to running a fake food scheme and stealing millions from taxpayers.” I have used the thumbnail photo of Hashi (at right) instructing Somalis to shut up to accompany just about everything I have written on the Feeding Our Future case.

Yesterday, John noticed that the national scrutiny has also finally included another key public figure from MN-05 – Omar’s predecessor, Keith Ellison. Ellison is Minnesota’s Attorney General, and new evidence implicates him in at least a determined effort to ignore the fraud based in his former congressional district:

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Attorney General Keith Ellison was omitted from the first burst of national publicity. We remedied that omission with a tweet last night, linking to a post that includes a 54-minute tape of Ellison meeting with Feeding Our Future figures, from some of whom he later got campaign contributions. Our tweet was retweeted by Elon Musk:

Musk actually retweeted it twice; Chris Rufo, Libs of TikTok and others retweeted it as well. And the White House linked to our site. So Ellison joins Tim Walz as politicians whose 2026 races are very much in doubt.

What did Ellison know about this fraud, and when did he know it? Glahn and CAE raised this issue in April:

Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s Attorney General, can clearly be heard pledging his support to individuals who would soon become his family’s campaign donors and later Feeding Our Future criminal defendants.

His recorded statements flatly contradict his contemporaneous public statements and raise uncomfortable questions about the intersection between political fundraising and constituent services.

American Experiment has exclusively obtained the complete 54-minute, 44-second audio file of a private December 2021 meeting between state Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison and key figures in the Feeding Our Future scandal.

As I wrote last week, the audio file was named as Exhibit 710 on the evidence list presented to the court by Aimee Bock’s defense attorney, Kenneth Udoibok. The recording was not offered into evidence during the six-week trial that concluded last month, with Bock’s conviction on all seven counts she faced. A timeline of relevant events can be found here.

As a document, it exceeds expectations. Voices can be heard clearly and are clearly identifiable. The highlights, which are many, tend to be front-loaded. I’ve included below some clips from the meeting to highlight a few points.

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Until very recently, all of these reports have gone into the Protection Racket Media void. We have linked to these developments and attempted to raise visibility into the massive fraud machine involving Minnesota’s highest-ranking elected officials. The vice-presidency campaign by Tim Walz should have prompted news outlets to take a harder look at the massive corruption taking place under his governance, but the national media was much more invested in Orange Man Bad coverage than in exposing actual corruption. 

The mainstream media has finally begun taking notice, as Scott and John point out, but why now? Perhaps they are aware of how bad a candidate Walz will be for the Senate, his rumored ambition, or even more so for the 2028 presidential nomination. Or maybe the stink has just become to intense to ignore any longer. That stink is attached to Omar most of all, however, and except for Chadwick Moore, the Protectiom Racket Media is still circling its wagons around the anti-Semitic troll from MN-05. 

How long can that last? Perhaps Joe Thompson will get the last word on that question. 

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And They Call This ‘Journalism’

And They Call This 'Journalism' 9

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And They Call This 'Journalism' 10

The New York Times is, as Andrew Klavan often jokes, a “former newspaper.”

I think he is actually being generous. The Times, as Ashley Rindsberg outlined in his excellent book The Gray Lady Winked, has been manipulating its readers for a century. Still, Klavan’s point is that the Times purports to be a “news” organization, but when it comes to stories that are politically charged, it serves more as an advocacy organization that promotes propaganda. 

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When I saw this story’s headline about Trump’s reforms of the CAFE standards, I almost guffawed at the idea that the Times was presenting it as “news” rather than a thinly veiled Op/Ed. It presents the Trump administration’s reasoning for the reforms as if they were ridiculous, assumes that Biden’s claims about the economic viability of electric vehicles were self-evidently true, and ignores the devastation that Biden-era policies have caused to the auto industry. 

Biden infamously promoted his EV push by driving an electric Hummer. This vehicle has been a flop, as almost all electric vehicles have been for American auto manufacturers, save Tesla. Billions of dollars have been thrown into a black hole, and profitability is nothing but a future dream. 

Yet here is how Trump’s reforms were framed:

President Trump on Wednesday threw the weight of the federal government behind vehicles that burn gasoline rather than electric cars, gutting one of the country’s most significant efforts to address climate change and thrusting the automobile industry into greater uncertainty.

Flanked by executives from major automakers in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said the Transportation Department would significantly weaken fuel efficiency requirements for tens of millions of new cars and light trucks. The administration claimed the changes would save Americans $109 billion over five years and shave $1,000 off the average cost of a new car.

The Biden administration’s stricter efficiency standards were designed to get more Americans to go electric. But Mr. Trump said they “forced automakers to build cars using expensive technologies that drove up costs, drove up prices, and made the car much worse. This is a green new scam, and people were paying too much for a car that didn’t work as well.”

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“Gutting.” 

The announcement on Wednesday was the second part of a one-two punch against policies promoting electric cars, a central pillar of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s strategy for fighting climate change.

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States, and Mr. Biden had adopted a carrot-and-stick approach to reducing these emissions. He offered tax credits to encourage motorists to buy electric cars while requiring that automakers meet stringent fuel efficiency standards to pressure them to sell more nonpolluting models.

Mr. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress got rid of the tax credits earlier this year. They also eliminated fines for automakers who violate the fuel efficiency standards. And now the standards themselves will be watered down.

While auto executives publicly praised the announcement, they have privately fretted that they are being buffeted by conflicting federal policies. During the Biden administration, they invested billions of dollars and reoriented their manufacturing to produce electric vehicles and batteries.

It’s all about the carbon, of course. There is essentially no discussion about whether Trump’s claims that Americans are paying too much for cars because of EV policies, or whether US automakers’ profitability is improved or reduced by either Biden’s or Trump’s policies. Biden, after all, made claims that EVs would do more than reduce carbon emissions (a claim that ignores full life cycle calculations that may challenge that claim), but also that the shift would help revitalize the auto industry. 

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Perhaps examining that claim would add important context to the story. 

The Biden administration rule, finalized in June 2024, assumed that manufacturers would comply by increasing their sales of electric vehicles, which use no gasoline and would help boost the average fuel efficiency across their product lines. Biden administration officials estimated that the rule would lower fuel costs by $23 billion while preventing more than 710 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere by 2050, the equivalent of taking 165 million cars off the roads for one year.

Mr. Trump, who refers to climate change as a “hoax,” initially promised to repeal the rules to end what he falsely called an “E.V. mandate.” But on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he was motivated to weaken the rules in order to lower the price of new cars. The cost of living has emerged as major concern for voters and a political vulnerability for the president and his party.

“Perhaps grudgingly, the president is increasingly realizing that inflation, affordability, the economy are real concerns across the partisan spectrum,” said Barry Rabe, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.

“Perhaps grudgingly.” “Realizing.” Notice the assumptions about Trump’s indifference up to now about affordability. 

Mr. Trump has aggressively repealed dozens of federal climate protections. The rollback of automobile standards comes as the administration is also lifting restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and oil and gas wells while making it easier for fossil fuel companies to extract and burn more coal, oil and gas, the main drivers of climate change.

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Every decision in the world is put into the context of climate change, of course. 

Environmentalists said repealing mileage standards would debilitate efforts in the United States to fight climate change. They also challenged the president’s claim that the proposal would lower costs, noting that the efficiency standards have spurred automakers to produce cars that use less gas, saving people money at the pump.

Gutting the program would “make cars burn more gas and American families burn more cash,” Katherine García, the director of the Clean Transportation for All program at the Sierra Club, said in a statement. … 

Antonio M. Bento, an economics professor at the University of Southern California, said the $109 billion in savings claimed by the Trump administration was smoke and mirrors. “What the administration is doing is not calculating huge benefits that come from fuel economy savings,” Mr. Bento said. The Trump administration also has stopped calculating the damages from global warming that could result from weaker standards.

“If you count only costs, of course you’re going to have this massive number,” Mr. Bento said.

As you can see, the entire story is framed as Trump’s very questionable claims vs a series of “experts” who spend their time debunking them. 

Nowhere is there an effort to find anybody outside the Trump administration who supports the move. Even though automakers themselves applauded the move, all those quotes were cast into doubt by anonymous claims that automakers are skeptical. 

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If that were true, then these reforms would not change their behavior, of course. They are free to implement the Biden regulations voluntarily, after all. But of course, they will not, because EVs are not profitable for them. In fact, Ford got out of the car business for the most part because they couldn’t make a profit on them, which is why they dropped almost everything but SUVs and trucks, which have different CAFE regulations. 

That’s why there are no Tauruses and Fusions anymore. They make one car: the Mustang, which is a specialty vehicle. They ceded the market because it was unprofitable under regulatory constraints. 

This story was not intended to inform; it used information as a tool to persuade, and it works on its intended audience, which is why its audience is shrinking, and why liberals and conservatives live in different universes. If you only get a distorted view of reality, people who have a different perspective look deluded or malign. 

That is the point. 

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Oh, to Be in England, Where Many of Your ‘Merry Wives’ Can Now Be Welfare Dependents

Oh, to Be in England, Where Many of Your 'Merry Wives' Can Now Be Welfare Dependents 11

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Oh, to Be in England, Where Many of Your 'Merry Wives' Can Now Be Welfare Dependents 12

There’s been quite an uproar in the United Kingdom lately over the premature release of a large part of the proposed budget.

What it’s been called once people have had a chance to dig through it is a ‘tax raid’ of massive proportions based on Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ insistence that she was working against a £30B fiscal black hole.

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Reeves’ budget siphons blood from stones and threatens every facet of what remains of everyday British life.

The ubiquitous British pubs, whose owners complain they have been paying a disproportionate amount of the burden, had been repeatedly promised relief and were horrified to see they’d been tapped again. 

Some pub owners believe it will be the last time for many of them that the government can go to their well.

One pub owner laid out exactly how Reeves’ budget was probably going to mean the last call financially.

A popular Cotswolds pub says it is being pushed to the brink, with drastic price hikes and new reduced hours set to hit customers in the new year.

…The Ship Inn at Brimscombe, known across the Stroud Valleys for its Sunday roasts and canalside location, will raise food and drink prices by between 15 and 20 per cent from January 1.

Staff hours will be cut at the same time, in what 41-year-old landlord Wesley Birch describes as a last attempt to avoid liquidation and “make sacrifices and changes” ahead of what he calls the Budget’s economic fallout.

The pub’s business rateable value is forecast to jump from £8,000 in 2025-26 to £31,750 from April 2026 — a rise Birch says leaves him with no alternative.

“That is nearly a 300 per cent increase!” Mr Birch said.

The landlord outlined how multiple cost pressures were hitting simultaneously. The minimum wage for workers under 18, who made up half the pub’s workforce, has jumped by 24 per cent between April 2025 and 2026.

National Insurance contributions have also climbed by approximately £11,000 this year, adding further strain to the business.

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You’ve got to sell a lot of bangers and brewskis to cover that.

The leaked details were enough to spook a stock market sell-off.

There’s been some budgetary skullduggery, as well. That fiscal black hole Reeves had to fill, which required her to backtrack on every single promise Labour made to win their election, like slashing welfare spending and lifting some of the tax burden from the working class?

Well, it turns out it didn’t exist – Reeves had been fibbing for effect.

Reeves on the brink over tax lies

Chancellor fighting for job after being accused of misleading public over ‘black hole’ she used to justify massive raid on workers

Rachel Reeves misled the public over the state of the country’s finances as she plotted her £30bn tax raid, allegedly to save herself and Sir Keir Starmer.

The Chancellor was at war with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) on Friday night after the watchdog published a blow-by-blow account of its discussions with the Treasury in the run-up to this week’s shambolic Budget.

It revealed that a series of statements in recent weeks from Ms Reeves and her officials falsely represented the fiscal shortfall she faced, preparing the ground for her to raise taxes and welfare spending.

The futures of both Ms Reeves and Richard Hughes, the OBR chief, were in doubt after the Treasury attacked his decision to open up the “private space” for officials to debate forecasts and the effect of policy changes.

Also hidden from the public in budget details not leaked were more burdens placed on the supposedly protected working class by the UK’s insane drive to a Green transition. This determined march into a new Stone Age remains unbroken and, if Labour has its way, lucrative for someone. Just not the working stiff who now, thanks to Labour might no longer have a pub on the corner, either.

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Households face paying billions more in energy bills to fund green subsidy costs that were not outlined in Rachel Reeves’s Budget last week.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) revealed in its latest economic assessment that £1bn a year will be added to household energy bills to fund Ed Miliband’s next auction for renewables projects, known as “allocation round 7” (AR7).

Costs of the scheme were not outlined in the Chancellor’s Budget. Instead, they were revealed in a footnote to the OBR’s Fiscal Outlook report released on the same day.

The revelation will cast doubt on Ms Reeves’s claims that Labour is bringing down the cost of living. It also comes amid a clash between the OBR and the Chancellor about whether she told the truth about the state of the public finances in the run-up to the Budget.

The OBR’s disclosures relate to contracts for difference (CfD), the system under which levies are added to household bills to finance subsidies for green energy projects, including wind, solar and nuclear.

As for the bit about ‘slashing welfare spending,’ well…

Labour voters got snookered on that, too. Reeves did slash some benefits, but they weren’t precisely what the working class had expected. One thing that has working families going mad is how the Chancellor stripped away the two-child cap, which helped with a small allowance for things like childcare or school.

The way the Telegraph works the math, the loss of the cap for working families is actually helping pay for a massive increase in welfare spending, which will put non-working welfare households ahead of modest-income working ones.

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VURT DA ACTUAL FURK?

Families on modest incomes will be £18,000 worse off than jobless parents claiming benefits following Rachel Reeves’s abolition of the two-child cap in the Budget, an analysis has found.

A family with three children that has at least one parent claiming the average rates of Universal Credit (UC), combined with other benefits, will receive up to £46,000 by next year, according to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).

That compares with the £28,000 take-home earnings of a family where one adult is working full-time, and another part-time, on the national living wage.

The disparity will fuel criticism of the Chancellor’s Budget for raising taxes on working people by £26bn to pay for an extra £16bn on welfare spending.

And here is where Chancellor Rachel Reeves twists the shiv she and Labour have already planted in a regular working sod’s back. Who is that extra £16bn in welfare spending raised on the backs of taxpayers going to?

Well. Some of it to Achmed and his harem. Wives. Sorry. In the plural.

He’s getting a bump in benefit payouts for the lovely ladies of his household.

The British government will support up to three – wait, make that four – of your dearly beloveds.

The DWP is handing out more than £6,000 to second wives and third wives in the UK as part of benefits given to people in polygamous marriages – and the amount is being increased from April. 

There’s a set of circumstances in which people who are married to a husband with more than one wife (or a wife with more than one husband) can claim an additional benefits allowance – and it’s all fully legal.

The DWP has confirmed in its benefits uprating list for 2025-26 that ‘additional spouses’ in ‘polygamous marriages’ are being given a 4.8% boost to their benefits from April.

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Now, don’t think that if you’re Bingley Smithington from Bristol, you can do this. Oh, no, no, no. 

This is a paid-for privilege by the British taxpayer strictly reserved for Muslim immigrants. It’s only allowed if you’re immigrated – or floated – to England with your wives already in tow. Polygamy is illegal in the UK for citizens, but it’s okay if you had these squeezables before you got there.

And cha-CHING when you hit the jackpot in England.

…Those who are classed as an ‘additional spouse’ in a polygamous marriage and are above state pension age are currently able to claim an additional £119.50 per week of Pension Credit or Housing Benefit, with no given limit on the number of separate additional spouses who can claim in one household, other than the overall benefits cap per household per year.

From April 2026, this is being increased to £125.25 per week per additional spouse, a 4.8% increase in line with wage growth, which is how Pension Credit is automatically increased each spring, which is another £5.75 per week, or £299 extra per year.

…Although bigamy is illegal in the UK, the act of marrying more than one person at a time – polygamy – is not illegal if the marriages took place overseas.

This is legal where a person has married multiple wives (or husbands) overseas while legally living in a country where this is legally allowed, and then moved to the UK legally afterwards.

In that circumstance, a person now legally living in the UK, who legally married more than one spouse while living overseas, can then see their second, third, and even fourth wife (or husband) all claim an additional £125.25 each per week, as long as that additional spouse came to the UK legally in their own right.

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Isn’t that something?

The Muslim vote – that’s all this is about. Labour needs it and desperately right now.

Kinda sounds like what’s going on with a tinier population in a certain blue state, doesn’t it?

Labour must really be feeling the heat, because, as if the budget wasn’t bad enough, they’ve taken the extraordinary step of postponing four mayoral elections for another two years, which would very likely have gone to Reform.

What she left off the list was facial recognition cameras and software going up all over the country. The council elections for those cities are still supposed to be held this coming spring, but as the Xweet says, it really looks as if anything is possible with Labour backed into a corner like a wounded, not very bright animal.

And cornered they increasingly are. When a popular British TikTokker was recently interviewed, the very first thing he did was apologise for voting for Labour.

‘I thought,’ he said, ‘They were the party of the working class.’

Believing everything they were selling was your first mistake.

I’d say the ‘joke’s on you,’ only it’s the sickest joke I’ve ever watched play out, and I can’t believe it doesn’t end.

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BREAKING: Suspect Arrested in January 6 Pipe Bomb Attack; UPDATE: NBC Identifies Suspect

BREAKING: Suspect Arrested in January 6 Pipe Bomb Attack; UPDATE: NBC Identifies Suspect 13

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BREAKING: Suspect Arrested in January 6 Pipe Bomb Attack; UPDATE: NBC Identifies Suspect 14

It took nearly five years – and a change in administration – to solve this mystery from the January 6 chaos following the 2020 election. The mystery has endured ever since about the identity of the person who placed pipe bombs outside the headquarters of both major parties during the night of January 5, 2021. This morning, the New York Times reports that the FBI has finally made an arrest in the terrorism case, but has yet to name its suspect:

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Federal agents on Thursday arrested a suspect in Virginia on charges of having planted two pipe bombs near the Capitol the night before Jan. 6, 2021, after nearly five years of false leads and frustrated investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.

The suspect’s identity remained unclear for the moment, but the arrest could ultimately provide an answer to one of the most enduring mysteries arising from Jan. 6.: Who planted the bombs on Capitol Hill outside the national headquarters of both the Republican and Democratic parties on the night before a congressional ceremony certifying that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the 2020 election? …

Conspiracy theories have often filled the void left by the lack of an arrest, many of them centered on the belief that the pipe bombs were put in place as part of an inside job by deep-state law enforcement and intelligence officials intended to discredit President Trump and his supporters. 

Fox News also broke the story on cable news networks:

The only data on the suspect is that he is a male, living in Northern Virginia. That does not offer much in the way of motive or potential insider access. Among the conspiracy theories that have emerged is that the perp had served as a law-enforcement or intelligence officer, with one subject of speculation being a specifically named female. The arrest of a male today should put an end to that particular thread of hypothesizing. For now, anyway. 

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Why now? Fox News notes that the DoJ offered a $500,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the perp. CNN also includes that in its report on the arrest:

Investigators reviewed tens of thousands of video files, hundreds of tips and scoured cell phone tower data. They examined data on sales of black and gray Nike Air Max sneakers worn by the suspect – fewer than 25,000 of the shoes had been sold around the time the bombs were placed.

They were thwarted by a number of challenges, including poor surveillance video quality. Given the pandemic era when face masks were common and a cold winter night, the bomber didn’t seem remarkable to any witnesses.

The FBI had offered a $500,000 reward for information that helped investigators identity the person and conducted a thousand interviews, but it still struggled for years to determine who placed the crude bombs on January 5, 2021, the night before then-President Donald Trump would make his last-ditch effort to overturn the 2020 election.

The lack of progress has certainly fed the conspiracy theories. We shall see how well-founded those suspicions could be when the identity of the suspect and the indictment are made public. My best guess: this will turn out to be unrelated to the J6 riot or law enforcement and intelligence agecies, but will be a rando nutcase anarchist. But I’m open to all possibilities.

The DoJ will hold a press conference today, although the timing is still unclear. We will either update this post with new developments as warranted, create a new thread for the presser, or both. Stay tuned. 

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Update:  NBC News has identified the suspect as Brian Cole:

The FBI has arrested a suspect in its investigation into pipe bombs planted near the Republican and Democratic national party headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2021, according to a federal law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

Brian Cole was identified as the suspect in custody, according to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the matter. The arrest marks a breakthrough in a case that has stymied investigators for nearly five years.

The name is unfamiliar to me, and NBC News wisely does not elaborate. Stay tuned for more background, and in the meantime, take social-media sleuthing with the appropriate amount of skepticism. 

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The Green Energy Revolution Was Predicated on a Lie

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The Green Energy Revolution Was Predicated on a Lie 16

Assume, for the moment, you separated the “green energy” arguments from the “climate change” fanaticism. 

It’s difficult, I know, but let’s try a thought experiment. After all, many of the arguments that liberals have made over the years have claimed that transitioning to so-called “green” energy would create enormous economic benefits, and that the benefits of avoiding climate change’s consequences were just one variable in the equation. 

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The argument was simple: nobody sacrifices anything by pushing forward the green revolution, because “renewable” energy is cheaper anyway, and many new industries will spring up during the transition. Oil companies are lying and just want to protect their profits, and skeptic like me are just tools of the oligarchy. 

Yeah, well, nobody who made those claims actually believed them, and the realities are actually worse than many of the advocates themselves believed because they never bothered to think deeply about the costs and benefits of the policies they were flacking for. They saw dollar signs for themselves and increased political power, and that’s all that mattered. 

As insane as American energy policies have been at times, the “green” lobby in America has made far less headway than in Europe. 

Europe has been committing economic suicide, which, I suppose, is totally on brand since they are destroying themselves every way possible. 

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European politicians pitched the continent’s green transition to voters as a win-win: Citizens would benefit from green jobs and cheap, abundant solar and wind energy alongside a sharp reduction in carbon emissions.  

Nearly two decades on, the promise has largely proved costly for consumers and damaging for the economy.

Europe has succeeded in slashing carbon emissions more than any other region—by 30% from 2005 levels, compared with a 17% drop for the U.S. But along the way, the rush to renewables has helped drive up electricity prices in much of the continent.

Germany now has the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world, while the U.K. has the highest industrial electricity rates, according to a basket of 28 major economies analyzed by the International Energy Agency. Italy isn’t far behind. Average electricity prices for heavy industries in the European Union remain roughly twice those in the U.S. and 50% above China. Energy prices have also grown more volatile as the share of renewables increased.

Europe is deindustrializing in pursuit of Net Zero. As these countries export their production to places like China, they are strangling their own economies, as those other countries emit much more carbon dioxide while producing the same goods. 

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On net, European policies have ensured that more carbon dioxide is emitted in total, which is exactly the opposite of their stated goal. 

But let’s stick to the economics. European leaders claimed that they would become an economic superpower by focusing on green energy. Yet the opposite has happened. As the United States and China have continued to grow, Europe has completely stagnated. Germany, which used to be the beating heart of the European economy, has seen its GDP shrink as it has been tearing down nuclear plants. 

The “green economy” claims were not just wrong; they were a lie. A fairy tale spun by a transnational elite who saw an opportunity to seize control of entire sectors of the economy, grab massive subsidies to create a fantasy. 

Think “California High Speed Rail” on a scale that makes that one look like a pimple on an elephant’s behind. Instead of billions, think trillions. John Kerry was arguing that the West should pour 3-5 trillion dollars a YEAR into the green energy scam. 

Trillion. A year. 

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You see the results in Europe. That is what the Democrats have been trying to do in America. 

Whatever you think about CO2 and climate, it’s impossible to argue that these policies have produced the promised results. CO2 levels are still climbing, and China is increasing its energy production and carbon output at a rate that makes the Western industrial revolution look slow. 

What’s infuriating is that most of these advocates knew they were selling a lie. 

And yet we are called the “science deniers.”

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Don’t Fall For Fake News on Israel, Young People, Says …

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Don't Fall For Fake News on Israel, Young People, Says ... 18

Maybe they can wipe it away, like, with a cloth. And they definitely should.

Not that we should ridicule Hillary Clinton for this message, which is as gutsy as it is likely to prove futile. She’s a sharp enough politician, once her entitlement stops coming into play, to know the direction her party has taken on Islamist terrorism. She knows where the political incentives lie. 

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And yet, Hillary refuses to play along, to her credit (via Instapundit):

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a stark warning this week, arguing that young Americans are increasingly turning against Israel because they are consuming misleading and often fabricated social media content about the Gaza war. 

Speaking at an Israel Hayom summit in New York, Clinton said that young people were being influenced by “totally made up” videos depicting alleged Israeli actions in Gaza, many of which she claimed were nothing more than stylized pro-Hamas propaganda.

Clinton noted that more than half of young Americans now receive their news primarily from platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, where short, highly sensationalized clips often spread faster than verified information. She warned that these platforms prioritize emotion over context, leaving users vulnerable to narratives that ignore decades of Israeli security dilemmas, Hamas terrorism, and the broader regional picture. 

Clinton lamented that her attempts to have conversations with young people over the Gaza War have been fruitless, noting that students “did not know history, they had very little context, and what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda.”

First off, Hillary’s position in support of Israel should not surprise anyone. She and Bill Clinton have criticized Israel and pushed the two-state solution throughout their foreign-policy careers, but they have not made the mistake of tipping over into outright “river to the sea” idiocy. They have supported Israel against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, even if their preferred approaches papered over those conflicts rather than dealt with them directly and finally. There are plenty of Hillary’s actions and policies as Secretary of State to criticize, but she was and has been as firmly in support of Israel as the previous version of the Democrat Party would embrace. 

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One could have assumed that Hillary merely went along with that older framework, but if so, it would be easy for Hillary to bend in this wind now. She’s standing up for liberal democracy in its fight against Islamist terrorism and totalitarianism when it counts, not just when it was easy. Even if she didn’t want to go the Full Palestinia, Hillary could just have kept her mouth shut and vented Trump Derangement Syndrome 24/7. There’s a yuuuuge market for that these days. 

Instead, Hillary is acting like a Cassandra at Troy or Jeremiah before the Babylonians arrive. She has to know that her intended audience will reject her warnings, and nevertheless, she persists. (If you know, you know.) And Hillary is absolutely correct in her analyses, as well as her prophecies:

”It’s not just the usual suspects. It’s a lot of young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand. A lot of the challenge is with younger people. More than 50 percent of young people in America get their news from social media,” Clinton said. 

“So, just pause on that for a second. They are seeing short-form videos, some of them totally made up, some of them not at all representing what they claim to be showing, and that’s where they get their information,” continued Clinton, who previously served as a US senator from New York.

That’s true as far as it goes, but it’s not the entire problem. Hamas propaganda doesn’t just come through TikTok and Instagram; it comes from the Protection Racket Media, too. American media outlets have run outright propaganda as news almost since the October 7 war started two years ago. Remember when every major US outlet accused Israel of destroying the Al-Ahli hospital based on Hamas’ accusation, when sunlight showed the hospital still standing and operating? It took the NY Times a week to finally add an “editor’s note” to admit only that Hamas had “failed to make [the] case.” 

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And Hillary also misses the fact that these young people are not just responding to “short-form videos,” but years of indoctrination into anti-Semitic tropes and pro-Hamas propaganda in Academia, and even in primary and secondary education. That indoctrination has made two generations susceptible to Hamas and Iranian propaganda that the Jews are the settlers in their ancestral land, where they have lived and worshiped the same God for 3,500 years, rather than the Arab colonizers who showed up in the Levant in the 7th and 8th centuries, whence the ‘Palestinians’ descended. 

Kudos to Hillary Clinton for speaking the truth in the face of both irrationality and futility. She will bear some cost from that, even if it’s just a slide into Cassandrian irrelevance among her own political factions. The rest of us had better wake up to the true scope of this problem, however. The core of it isn’t social media, but the corruption of American education by radicals and foreign money that has tranformed it into an indoctrination industry that churns out moral idiots and benighted fools by the bucketload. 

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Psychotherapist Opens Up About Trump Derangement Syndrome

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Psychotherapist Opens Up About Trump Derangement Syndrome 20

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal telling us what most of us already knew: Trump Derangement Syndrome is actually a real thing. 

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He was not trying to make a political point, but rather to explain that in his practice, about 75% of his patients are experiencing an obsession with Donald Trump that is warping their lives. 

Is “Trump derangement syndrome” real? No serious mental-health professional would render such a partisan and derogatory diagnosis. Yet I’ve seen it in my own psychotherapy practice. Patients across the political spectrum have brought Donald Trump into therapy not to discuss policy but to process obsession, rage and dread. Their distress is symptomatic, not ideological.

Clinically, the presentation aligns with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders: persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation and impaired functioning. Patients describe sleepless nights, compulsive news checking and physical agitation. Many confess they can’t stop thinking about Donald Trump even when they try. They interpret his every move as a threat to democracy and to their own safety and control.

Call it “obsessive political preoccupation”—an obsessive-compulsive spectrum presentation in which a political figure becomes the focal point for intrusive thoughts, heightened arousal and compulsive monitoring.

I initially viewed this as an ideological reaction, an understandable response to a polarizing figure. But over time the symptoms took on a more clinical shape. What once looked like outrage now presents as a fixation that distorts perception and consumes attention.

One patient told me she couldn’t enjoy a family vacation because “it felt wrong to relax while Trump was still out there.” Others report panic attacks or trouble sleeping after seeing him in the news. Their anxiety has outgrown politics and become a way of being.

At the group level, the pattern functions like a culture-bound syndrome, a condition shaped by shared social triggers within a specific context. From a diagnostic standpoint, it overlaps with obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and trauma-related syndromes. While not a formal diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it reflects the same symptom patterns and behavioral mechanisms used to define emerging conditions. By that measure, this presentation merits serious consideration.

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TDS is not a diagnosis in the classic sense, but rather a description of a phenomenon where people begin organizing and understanding their lives around a boogyman who happens to be Donald Trump. Trump becomes the eye of the hurricane, around which all their fears, troubles, and disappointments seem to center. 

TDS is hardly a revelation to any of us who have been the victims of people whose obsession is the evils of Donald Trump. Many, or most of us, have been ostracized from some version of polite society for making the mildest comment about agreeing with Trump about anything. There is no rational conversation to be had, just as having a conversation with somebody who believes that some version of Critical Theory can interpret everything in life. 

Try to have a conversation with somebody dedicated to gender ideology. It is impossible. We exist in two different universes. 

Alpert is not trying to make a political point about whether Trump is a good or bad president. Instead, the issue is that the obsession with all things Trump is distorting lives, communities, and our ability to function as a country. On the most basic and personal level, if you can’t enjoy a vacation because somebody—anybody—else walks the earth and is able to speak, the problem isn’t him, but you, and it’s important to regain the ability to smell the grass. 

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When the Nazis were taking over Europe, Americans could walk and chew gum at the same time. You can mobilize to fight what you consider evil and then go to a movie to relax, right? When the organizing principle of your life is one thing and one thing only, something is wrong. 

Alpert wrote a subsequent piece for The New York Post about the reaction to his Wall Street Journal article, in which he points out that the reaction to his original essay proved his point. 

Alpert got to experience TDS in real time. 

Last month, when I published a column asking “Is ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ Real?” in the Wall Street Journal, I expected it to spark lively debate.

I didn’t anticipate a live demonstration of the very pathology I’d described.

My column outlined a pattern I see in my psychotherapy practice every week.

I call it “obsessive political preoccupation,” a presentation that resembles an obsessive-compulsive pattern in which one political figure becomes the center of intrusive thoughts, heightened arousal, and compulsive monitoring that takes over a person’s mental bandwidth. … 

As soon as my column was posted online, the response illustrated my point with almost clinical precision.

Many of the loudest critics merely reacted to my use of the term “TDS,” not to my explanation.

Their retorts, immediate and emotional, displayed the very pattern I described: impulsive, catastrophic thinking driven by feeling rather than reflection.

In trying to disprove the phenomenon, they demonstrated it dramatically.

Two days later, I discussed the piece live on Fox News, and the reaction intensified.

The segment was calm and clinical.

But once the clips hit social media, they were stripped of context, paired with heated captions, and fed into outrage feeds.

The surge of emotional messages I received was immediate and relentless.

Some accused me of defending a fascist.

Others called me a “pedophile protector,” and one self-identified therapist suggested I must be a pedophile myself.

Several messages, including voicemails, wished me dead.

These weren’t fringe accounts, but people who publicly describe themselves as compassionate, trauma-informed, or dedicated to mental health work.

Their reaction is exactly what concerns me as a clinician.

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I got to see this last year, when a Minnesota state senator casually signed onto a bill that classified Trump Derangement Syndrome. It was not really intended to make it a legal classification—there was no way it would become law, obviously—but rather to needle his colleagues about their own obsession with Trump. 

He wasn’t the chief author. He just attached his name to it as something of a joke. After having been called horrible names such as “Nazi,” “fascist,” and “white supremacist,” he didn’t worry about offending his colleagues with a bit of a jibe. 

He got death threats. The phones rang off the hook, and the emails were vicious. My wife got to see it all. It became her life for a bit, dealing with all the hate. You would think that he had called Democrats “bitter clingers” or “deplorables.” 

The critics who condemned the piece re-enacted the pattern in real time.

Their outrage became their evidence.

Their feelings became their argument.

They proved my point more clearly than anything I could have written — and that’s why we need to talk about these symptoms openly.

Our society encourages people to “trust their truth,” to follow every impulse and to label ordinary discomfort as harm.

Too many in my profession have encouraged this view

They now celebrate it — when directed at the “right” targets.

I see the consequences daily, as a patient tells me she’s stopped speaking to her father because he “voted the wrong way,” or a couple avoids family gatherings because a relative supports Trump.

These are educated adults who have adopted the idea that emotional discomfort equals danger.

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There is nothing wrong with dedicating some of your bandwidth to fighting for your beliefs. In fact, that is, if done properly, good citizenship. I respect people who use their time and effort to fight for their values, as long as they do it thoughtfully. Even if I think they are wrong, even tragically so. 

But raw emotion is now valued over rational thought, and the evidence that one is moral seems to be irrationality itself. The more irrational you are, the more “passionate” you are about justice. Smashing the Magna Carta and throwing soup at paintings is, for some people, morally persuasive. 

TDS is ruining lives, undermining society, and destroying social trust. Everybody, especially those who suffer from it, has their lives degraded. 

Arguing with somebody suffering from TDS is like trying to reason with a schizophrenic. There is no common frame of reference. Where does one begin? 

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