Monday, January 19, 2026

Republicans must own Trump’s Golden Age to win the midterms

Joseph Ford Cotto

"What matters politically and economically, because these households feel price increases first and relief last.


"What is coming this year may determine far more than a single election cycle.

"It may determine whether voters believe Republicans are still capable of delivering tangible economic relief in an era defined by anxiety, frustration, and fading trust.

"At the center of that test stands Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, now law, and the broader Working Families Tax Cuts agenda that flows from it. Together, they form the most consequential Golden Age economic story heading into November. Even as their impact is being partially blunted by policy failures emanating from America’s largest blue states and metropolitan areas.

"Voters are uneasy, and the data leaves little room for denial.

"Consumer confidence remains near historic lows despite modest month-to-month improvements. The preliminary January 2026 University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index registered 54.0, only slightly higher than December but down roughly 25 percent from January 2025, reflecting persistent fears over inflation, prices, and labor market softness.

"Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index tells a similarly sobering story. In December, it fell to minus 33, the lowest level since mid-2024. 47 percent of Americans called current economic conditions poor and 68 percent said the economy is getting worse. Separate Gallup polling shows only 30 percent of Americans expect economic prosperity in 2026. Just 36 percent anticipate job growth, dramatic drops from expectations a year earlier.

"This is the environment in which the One Big Beautiful Bill enters its first full year of impact."... .  More...

Starfleet Academy: To Boldly Go Nowhere

The latest Star Trek iteration turns a great American story into a woke farce.

 The American Spectator

Star Trek cadets are now required to get DEI training from an obnoxious lesbian

Breitbart photo

"What is that? A smug lesbian virtue-signaling with her strident Karen Power is supposed to be appealing, someone we can relate to, someone to aspire to? Does that teacher look like she should be training people to handle Starships or blowing whistles at ICE agents in Minnesota?"

"Forty years ago, as a young USA Today reporter, I interviewed Leonard Nimoy about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Nimoy was un-Spock-like giddy about the commercial and critical hit he directed and co-starred in. “The biggest laugh,” he said, “came when McCoy says to Kirk about my still mentally addled Spock [Mr. Spock had “died” two films earlier in the classic Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan], ‘He really has gone where no man has gone before.’ Because if you think about it — how did Dr. McCoy know that this was the line that opened every Star Trek episode?” To which I said, “Maybe that’s the Starfleet credo.” “Good point,” Nimoy said.

"I forgot all about the interview for three years, until I watched a scene in the inferior next film, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, directed by William Shatner. In it, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are hiding from the brainwashed crew in what resembles the Enterprise lighthouse room, near the statue of an 18th century mariner at the wheel of his ship. At one point, the camera pans down from the mariner to the statue’s plinth and the inscription on it, To boldly go where no man has gone before, as the most famous eight notes of the Star Trek theme play.

"My possible small contribution to the legend of Star Trek was more respectful and knowledgeable than anything in the awful Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. The show is so caricaturishly woke, it suggests popular X sci-fi commenter Jon del Arroz could be right claiming it crosses the line into based parody. But that would require the slightest degree of Dr. Strangelovian wit, sophistication, and artistry totally missing from the series." . . .

Free Premiere of Trump-Hating ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Bombs

"You can disappoint the fans. You can enrage the fans. But once you get to a point when they just don’t care anymore, your franchise is dead, as are any hopes of redeeming it. The fans are done, so let me ask Paramount this…"

  The parodical Child, the Babylon Bee just couldn't pass this up: 

Kathleen Kennedy Sad To Leave Lucasfilm Before She Got The Chance To Make A Trilogy About Rey’s First Period


. . . "At publishing time, Kathleen Kennedy was sad to leave Star Wars but said that she would always be proud that she produced a series about a coven of lesbian space witches conceiving children by the Force." . . .

January 6 and later cartoons are even more pertinent in hindsight.

Bookworm Room


Unpolled Conservative

"As a political writer, the period after January 6 was the most overwhelming work period I’ve had in my life outside of prepping for a massive trial. I’ve been working pretty much 12 hours a day, seven days a week for over a month. My time was devoted to keeping up with the day’s news and, when I wasn’t doing that, trying to get my house in order, pay bills, etc.

"During that same time period, my friend, the Unpolled Conservative, was sending me his brilliant political cartoons. Today, finally, I looked at them. What struck me was that his cartoons about January 6 were prescient. The Democrats hadn’t yet embarked upon their Kabuki second impeachment but the Unpolled Conservative had already nailed Trump’s defense. Moving forward in time, his cartoons continue to be overwhelmingly accurate, pithy summations of the madness, hypocrisy, and stupidity on the left now that leftists are functioning entirely without brakes." . . .

Sunday, January 18, 2026

Screw Your Comfort: How NATURE Magazine Became a Nagging Preacher

 Watts Up With That?  

This is moral preening masquerading as efficiency. The message is not that emissions can be reduced. The message is that passengers should expect less — less comfort, less choice, less accommodation — and that resistance to this outcome is a problem to be managed.


"There was a time when publication in Nature signaled restraint. Not correctness, not consensus, but seriousness: an awareness of uncertainty, an allergy to grand prescriptions, and a reluctance to turn provisional findings into marching orders. That version of Nature treated science as a method, not a ministry.

"The version now publishing climate-policy optimization exercises like Large carbon dioxide emissions avoidance potential in improved commercial air transport efficiency operates very differently. It does not merely describe the world. It scolds it. It does not explore trade-offs. It resolves them in advance. It does not ask whether its preferred objectives are justified. It assumes they are, and then works backward to discipline behavior accordingly.

"This is not an aviation paper in any meaningful sense. Aviation is the prop. The real subject is moral instruction — how people ought to travel, how airlines ought to behave, and how policy ought to coerce them when they fail to comply.

"The collapse of Nature from scientific journal to nagging preacher is not subtle anymore. This paper is a clean, almost didactic example.

"The authors begin with the now-ritual framing: aviation emissions are growing, technological progress is insufficient, and therefore “efficiency gains will be an important pillar of any decarbonisation strategy” . Notice what is absent already. There is no serious interrogation of whether the scale of the problem warrants the scale of intervention implied. There is no cost-benefit framing in any human sense. The premise is treated as settled.

"From that point on, the paper becomes an exercise in moralized accounting. A single metric — grams of CO2 per revenue passenger kilometer — is elevated to supreme status. Everything that does not optimize this metric is reclassified as inefficiency, regardless of why it exists.

Comfort becomes inefficiency. Choice becomes inefficiency. Redundancy becomes inefficiency. Even economic viability is treated as a secondary consideration, mentioned only as a constraint to be overcome.

"Nowhere is this clearer than in the discussion of seating configurations. The authors write, approvingly: 

“Business and first class seats are up to 5 times more CO₂-intense than economy class seats… An all-economy class configuration would consequently reduce emissions.”

  Greta’s Sweden Is ‘Retreating From Its Bold Green Ambitions’ – Energy has ‘drained out of the (Greta’s) climate campaign’

. . . "Two protesters, a small cardboard sign and a quiet vigil.
"The energy that’s drained out of the campaign mirrors a broader deflation of green ambitions in Sweden and across the continent. Populist groups are pushing back against environmental initiatives, spurred on in part by Donald Trump’s anti-green agenda, and there’s been a weakening of near-term emission-reduction measures, especially where climate and cost-of-living policies have clashed." . . .

Antizionism: A Plot to Kill a Nation

Phyllis Chesler  

"We must reclaim them unapologetically. Zionism is a mainstream political movement advocating for Jewish self-determination and protection in the state of Israel"**. 


. . . "These redemptive scripts are already operating inside feminist spaces, and they are reshaping whose suffering counts, whose testimony is believed, and which women qualify for solidarity.

"A case in point is the denial or minimisation of sexual violence on October 7th. Many feminist organisations or advocates publicly cast doubt on rapes committed by Hamas against Israeli women, because acknowledging these crimes introduces moral complexity and undermines the idea that eliminating Israel is a universal emancipatory act. A few examples will illustrate this.

"UN Women, for example, initially failed to acknowledge the sexual violence, issuing only generic statements about civilian protection. It was only weeks later, under pressure, that they explicitly condemned the October 7th attacks and the reports of gender-based atrocities. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch delayed or hedged their statements, questioning the evidence. Influential voices in the international women’s rights movement amplified narratives dismissing the reports as ‘propaganda’. And feminist networks, too many to mention - groups that normally insist “believe women” - suddenly applied caveats and warnings that complaints of rape were being weaponised. In response, the hashtag #MeTooUnlessYoureAJew began trending.

"Sexual violence as a weapon of war is well-documented and recognised globally. It is used to terrorise populations and destroy communities. Yet when Jewish women were the victims, the world fell silent – unable to confront what this brutality meant for a narrative that equates Palestinian resistance with liberation.

"Another example of Antizionism in action in feminist spaces comes from Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls – who also denied that any rapes occurred during the October 7th massacre in a conversation on X with one of our co-founders. She then went even further on a platform known for amplifying Antizionist voices, by claiming that Israel is “normalising state violence” globally. She blamed it for violence in countries like Iran and argued that this prevents her from holding those governments accountable:" . . .  More...

The Left Doubles Down on Rage Week in Education



George Floyd Redux: Renee Good

Laurie Higgins

"When activists obstruct lawful arrests and politicians shout “murder,” the truth is lost: weaponizing a car against police turns ideology into a fatal choice."


"As the whole country knows, a trained leftist agitator was killed by an ICE agent when she intentionally and illegally impeded a legal law enforcement operation. And so, the leftist spinning begins.
"Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, decided to park her car diagonally in the middle of a street to prevent ICE agents from legally arresting immigration scofflaws. She refused to comply with repeated orders to vacate her vehicle and then drove toward or into an ICE agent. Justifiably believing that Good posed a significant threat of death or serious injury to himself or other officers, he shot and killed Good." . . .
. . . But AOC, a reliable opponent of truth and law enforcement, said to reporters, “At the end of the day, what we saw today is a murder. And murders in cold blood need to be prosecuted.”
"AOC’s fellow squad member Ayanna Pressley called the killing a “murder.”
"And liar-extraordinaire Hillary Clinton posted on X that “an ICE agent murdered Renee Good.”
Renee Nicole Good, the mom who was killed by a federal agent after veering her car toward him, was an anti-ICE “warrior” and was part of a group of activists who worked to “document and resist” the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, The Post can reveal.
Good, who moved to the city last year, linked up with the anti-ICE activists through her 6-year-old son’s woke charter school, which boasts that it puts “social justice first” and involves “kids in political and social activism.” …
Good and her wife, Rebecca, 40, who were raising the child together and sent the boy to Southside Family Charter School, a K-5 academy opened in 1972, which has from its inception been “unabashedly dedicated to social justice education.”
It was through her involvement in the school community that Good became involved in “ICE Watch”—a loose coalition of activists dedicated to disrupting ICE raids in the sanctuary city. …
“[Renee Good] was trained against these ICE agents—what to do, what not to do; it’s a very thorough training.” 
. . . "Just wondering, has Jeffries ever publicly condemned his prevaricating colleagues? Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren, Bob Menendez, Adam Schiff, and Joe Biden as “stone cold liars”?" . . . Full article...

"Over its entire four years, the Biden regime imported millions of illegal aliens and gave them generous government benefits with the unstated but obvious purpose of building a bought-and-paid-for political super majority that would guarantee a permanent Democrat-controlled electoral dominance. It was intended to be the capstone of Barack Obama’s pledge to fundamentally transform America.
"But now President Trump has called a halt to this transformation and is in the process of deconstructing this illegally imported voter base through ICE raids, arrests, and deportations.
"So it is that desperate Democrat officials and operatives in so-called sanctuary cities and states are using every device at their disposal to slow and block the destruction of their grand plan to replace, overwhelm, and subjugate their political opponents and the rest of the non-aligned population of the United States. (RELATED: The Media Are Agents of Propaganda)
"Among their tactics is the use of rent-a-mobs and so-called social justice warriors to impede ICE agents from rounding up and deporting illegals." . . .

"
Nevertheless, Good’s death has become a rallying cry for all those Democrats and radicals who want to preserve what’s left of their imported illegal alien voting scheme. And they are not about to let the inconvenient facts of Good’s justifiable death get in the way of impeding the dismantling of that political base by federal immigration officers."

Saturday, January 17, 2026

Why Images Of Iranian Women Lighting Cigarettes With Khamenei's Photo Are Going Viral

 NDTV  

Now, if our keffiyeh-clad pro-Hamas Gen z-ers stay consistent, they should be rallying in support of the Ayatollah. Tunnel Dweller


"A striking new protest trend involving Iranian women is rapidly spreading across the global internet, drawing attention to growing unrest within Iran. Viral videos show women lighting cigarettes by burning photographs of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an act widely viewed as a direct challenge to the country's political and religious authority.

"The trend, which was first witnessed in Canada in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, has now resurfaced and spread widely across social media platforms worldwide. Clips circulating on X, Instagram, Reddit and Telegram have been viewed and reposted thousands of times, turning the act into a powerful symbol of defiance that observers say is increasingly difficult for authorities to contain.

"Burning the image of the Supreme Leader is considered a serious offence under Iranian law. By combining this act with smoking, an activity long restricted or discouraged for women, the protesters appear to be deliberately rejecting both state power and strict social controls, including mandatory hijab enforcement and limits on women's personal freedoms'." . . .                                                                                                                                                             The end of Iran’s brutal reign of terror will benefit the entire world    "What do these countries have in common? Argentina, Australia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Kenya, Kuwait, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States. The answer is that all have been on the receiving end of Iranian terrorism, either directly or through a Tehran-backed proxy, such as Hezbollah.                                                                       " "Think about that list. What possible interest could the ayatollahs have had in, say, Buenos Aires, which lies 8,500 miles from Tehran? In 1994, a militant drove an explosives-laden van into a Jewish community centre, killing 85 people and injuring more than 300. Argentine prosecutors followed the trail back to Iranian state officials." 

Life with Mamdani

Broc Smith

NYC taxpayers to shell out $200K for woke groups to study slavery reparations  

If Joy Reid ain't happy...
. . . "Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) also ripped the plan, saying “how are we even gauging the criteria for eligibility on this?”

“New York banned slavery in 1827,” she said. “Are we going to do a genealogy search for only people who can trace their ancestry back to that time?

“Is the city going to pay for the descendants of anyone who was ever enslaved? If my Sicilian ancestors were enslaved in the Middle Ages, does that make me eligible for the study? This is truly ridiculous political theater, and a total waste of taxpayer money.” . . .

Mamdani Is Making Democrats’ Communist Fantasies Come True 

  "Mamdani is openly embracing Marxism and staffing his administration with people hostile to the fundamental principles of the republic.

. . . "Take, for example, how the Biden administration issued an unconstitutional moratorium on residential evictions. During the height of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions. Then-President Joe Biden extended the moratorium before the Supreme Court struck it down 6-3. The Supreme Court previously ruled the CDC “exceeded its existing statutory authority” by issuing the moratorium in the first place.

"That was the “warmth of collectivism” in practice: The property belonging to the landlord was treated not as the fruit of his labor, protected by right, but as a resource the state could collectively take control of in the name of a collective emergency." . . .

And so it begins...Recall Mamdani

  . . . New York does not provide for recall elections of mayors. Removal from office must be done from Albany, or by a “committee on inability” made up of five local officials. If enough pressure from voters is placed on the right points, the city might be eventually liberated from the 1.1 million New Yorkers who voted to make turn it into a pre-reunification East Berlin dump blistered by decay and scarcity. It’s a longshot. Hardly likely. Yet it’s an effort that has to start somewhere, and soon.

Communism’s 45 Goals for America

. . . "So how did the Soviets go about this?  They sought to weaken the United States internally by slowly turning individual Americans away from a country governed as a constitutional republic to one with a more sympathetic view of communism.  That way, the Soviet Union believed they could win the Cold War without open warfare." . . . 

. . . "Mamdani isn’t trying to cloak collectivism in the guise of a temporary response to a pandemic or some other crisis; he is openly rejecting individualism and staffing his administration with people hostile to the fundamental principles of the republic. In that sense, Mamdani is proof of where the Democrat Party truly stands." . . .  More at The Federalist...

Unearthed filing shows top teachers union funneling millions to far left orgs: 'Social justice unionism'

 Fox News  

"The NEA has long-faced criticism for focusing on political advocacy and far-left ideology rather than the best interests of students." 

 

 "One of the nation’s most prominent teachers unions funneled millions of dollars in union funds to far-left activist groups, ballot initiatives and social justice organizations, according to federal labor filings.
"A November Form L-2 disclosure from the National Education Association (NEA) filed in November and obtained by the North American Values Institute (NAVI) shows 2024 fiscal year spending that involved millions given to social justice-oriented groups and far-left causes.
"The NEA, which boasts more than 3 million members, sent $300,000 to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a liberal dark money group Fox News Digital has reported on extensively, and tens of thousands of dollars to the Tides Foundation network, which Fox News Digital previously reported has ties to anti-Israel protests and a variety of far left causes."   More...

Meanwhile so many teachers must purchase teaching aids with their own money.

Stop investigating fraud or else!

 Stop investigating fraud


   "It’s an ignominious end to an otherwise unremarkable political career. Tim Walz has announced that he is ending his campaign to be re-elected for a third term as governor of Minnesota in the wake of a growing scandal over welfare fraud in the North Star State, with many of the alleged perpetrators members of the local Somali-American community. Walz’s disastrous turn as Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick in 2024 earned him a reputation as a political doofus. Now he is the highest-profile casualty of the failure to stop the elaborate – and lucrative – alleged theft of potentially billions of dollars from US taxpayers.
   "The full scale of the scandal is still only now becoming clear. Federal prosecutors say that dozens of people have been convicted for their role in multiple schemes, including attempts to bilk state agencies for money meant to deal with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. One estimate puts the amount of money stolen at $1bn, but others suggest that the true cost could be potentially significantly more.
   "Republican Representative Mike Haridopolos said the entire affair should be treated like “the mafia”, with the activities akin to “organised crime”, while former House oversight committee chairman Jason Chaffetz has demanded top Minnesota law-makers testify before Congress and account for how the alleged fraud went undetected. Those law-makers would be likely to include Walz, of course, despite the fact that he will be unemployed come January." . . .More...

Hunter Biden’s baby mama calls for ex-first son to be arrested after failing to keep child support deal

NY Post  

"Despite the recent heartbreak, Navy believes her father will go to heaven and even stated “she ‘could not wait to get to heaven'” so she could “be with (her) dad” who “lives far away and is really busy.' ”

"Hunter Biden’s former girlfriend and the mother of his 7-year-old daughter has called for the disgraced former first son to be “incarcerated” over his “antics” in failing to hold up his end of their child support deal.

"Lunden Roberts urged an Arkansas judge Tuesday to reopen the long-running case between the former lovers and arrest the felonious 55-year-old until he complies with the agreement they settled on in 2023, according to court records viewed by The Post.

“ 'Incarcerate him in the Independence County Detention Center as a civil penalty until he purges his contempt by complying with this court’s orders,” the motion read.

"Roberts, 34, had initially settled her dispute with Hunter after he agreed to hand over the proceeds of a “specified number” of his art pieces to his then-4-year-old daughter, Navy Joan Roberts, who is only identified in the motion as “MC [minor child] 1.”

"As part of the agreement, Roberts dropped her demand that her daughter be allowed to take the Biden last name and agreed to slash her monthly child support payment demand from $20,000 to $5,000.

"Hunter Biden had long denied fathering the young girl until a court-ordered DNA test confirmed his paternity in 2019." . . .

"My daddy is loved by everyone, Mommy!"