Read it.

A Christmas Eve screed from Politico has ignited online mockery, with the outlet claiming ‘far-right’ leaders are weaponizing the holiday by emphasizing its Christian origins amid secular pressures and immigration debates.

The article spotlights Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and others for framing Christmas as a “marker of Christian civilization” being under threat. It accuses far-right parties in Italy, France, Spain, and Germany of repurposing seasonal cheer into a culture war tool, positioning themselves against a “hostile, secular left.”

Roberts highlights Meloni’s defense of traditions, quoting her past remarks: “How can my culture offend you?” in reference to nativity scenes in public spaces. The piece notes Brothers of Italy’s lavish Christmas festival, complete with Santa and ice-skating, as a “spectacle” to rally supporters.

Read it.

“California is on a path to self-destruction. Hollywood is already toast and now the most productive entrepreneurs will leave taking their tax revenues and job creation elsewhere,” Bill Ackman wrote on X, citing a New York Times report that said several billionaires, including Peter Thiel and Larry Page, are preparing to flee the state as a proposed one-time wealth tax ballot measure gains momentum.

Time to leave.

Read it.

Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband’s venture capital firm quietly scrubbed key officer details, including names tied to former Obama officials, as scrutiny grows over the family’s skyrocketing wealth, The New York Post reported Saturday.

Omar’s net worth reportedly surged to tens of millions within two years, coinciding with the emergence of a large fraud scheme in the Somali community in her district.

While nearly 90 individuals have been charged in connection with the alleged $9 billion scheme, including some with direct ties to Omar, she herself has not been charged.

Yet.

UPDATE: Ilhan Omar’s hubby’s $30M firm quietly scrubs names from website – as ‘Squad’ member faces mounting questions on sudden wealth amid Minnesota welfare fraud (New York Post)

Read it.

Left-wing Governor Tim Walz, under intensifying federal pressure, faces a widening Somali-linked fraud scandal in Minnesota. Federal prosecutors state that the scheme currently totals at least $9 billion, with the final figure potentially much higher. Recent reporting by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo alleges that some welfare funds were funneled into an overseas terrorist organization. Now, a bombshell video from a citizen journalist suggests the fraud extends beyond Medicaid into the state’s daycare system.

Newsbusters.

On the night of Christmas — as millions of American Christians celebrated the birth of a savior to a troubled mother — the PBS News Hour thought it was a tremendous occasion for a one-sided discussion on…abortion. The godless tone-deafness was something to behold.

PBS was sharing a piece of their new podcast Settle In, and the guest was pro-abortion activist/journalist Irin Carmon and how she reported on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Anchor Amna Nawaz explained her new book Unbearable “tells the stories of five women in New York and Alabama as they navigate a new post-Roe landscape.”

The opportunity for states to outlaw or limit the killing of babies was, to Carmon, treating women like animals and diminishing their humanity — and obviously, with that world view, the unborn child doesn’t have humanity, killing them isn’t diminishing anything.

Nawaz helpfully asked Carmon to explain her statement from the book about “how incomplete our story of American reproduction has been and how much has been unexpressed, hidden or taken for granted.”

Read it.

There’s been yet another tragic attack targeting Syria’s religious minorities by fanatical jihadists which are allied with the Syrian government of President Ahmed Sharaa.

“A bombing at a mosque located in the Syrian city of Homs during Friday prayers killed at least eight people and wounded 18 others,” authorities said, the Associated Press reports. It was an Alawite religious site that was targeted. Notably this is the same non-Sunni sect that former President Bashar al-Assad belongs to.

It’s not enough to be Muslim—you have to be the right kind of Muslim. Ans any Sunni … or Shia….

Read it.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is furious with journalist Megyn Kelly after she accused prominent Jews in the media – Ben Shapiro and Bari Weiss – of “making antisemites” through their attempts to censor criticism of Israel.”

Well, they’re certainly giving it the old college try.

(If you don’t care about any of these people, feel free to stop reading here… fair warning)

Don’t call them ‘conspiracy theories’—call them ‘spoiler alerts’.

To bring you up to speed: Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, podcaster Candace Owens pointed the finger at Israel, suggesting that Kirk’s shifting views on Israel made him a target – and suggesting that Israel and France plotted Kirk’s death. This drew sharp criticism from the Daily Wire‘s Ben Shapiro (Owens’ former boss), journalist Bari Weiss, and the ADL – with Shapiro further accusing Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson of amplifying ‘antisemitism’ by platforming Owens and refusing to condemn her claims, while Kelly says attempts to censor criticism of Israel is in fact ‘making’ people into antisemites.

So – a lot going on here. Prominent Jews are condemning conservatives who haven’t condemned Candace Owens – accusing them of fueling antisemitism, while Megyn Kelly says that in general, attempts to label conservatives critical of Israeli policy as ‘antisemites’ is actually creating antisemites.

Tensions peaked at Turning Point USA’s AmFest conference last week, where Shapiro downplayed the 1967 USS Liberty incident in which Israel attacked a US Navy ship and killed 34 Americans – calling it a ‘mistake’ that’s now largely irrelevant because it happened so long ago.

Read it.

Concealing missile and rocket artillery launchers, as well as loitering munition swarms, within civilian-style transport platforms such as container ships and commercial trucks is a long-established and well-documented tactic in asymmetric warfare.

The latest example comes from a report published earlier this week by The War Zone, which documents a Chinese commercial cargo ship converted into a heavily armed vessel equipped with containerized weapons and high-tech sensors.

“It appears we are getting at least one installment of this in the form of a medium-sized cargo ship packed full of containerized vertical launchers, along with sensors and self defense systems,” TWZ’s Tyler Rogoway wrote in a note, adding, “The message is clear, China is making it known that it could, and likely will, turn ships from its behemoth of a commercial fleet into not just shooters, but arsenal ships.”

The Chinese are obviously taking potential war with the U.S. very seriously. The U.S.—not so much….

The Telegraph (UK).

A statue of the baby Jesus was beheaded at a church on Christmas Eve.

It happened at St Patrick’s Church in Edinburgh’s Old Town, one of the Scottish capital’s most important Catholic places of worship.

Church officials asked the congregation for “prayers for reparation” of the Nativity scene after the incident and said they would “bless the church again”.

Two visitors to the church are understood to have become distressed and taken the baby Jesus figure from the altar ahead of midnight Mass on Dec 24.

Police Scotland said inquiries were ongoing, and it was not believed to be a hate crime targeted at Catholics. The incident is understood to have been mental health-related.

The Telegraph (UK).

A former Veganuary cheerleader has defected to help run a meat-eating campaign.

Toni Vernelli, 54, was head of communications at Veganuary, the annual vegan diet challenge, for nearly six years, having spent decades fighting to end animal cruelty.

But she has now urged people to “forget” the campaign and go back to eating meat, claiming vegan dogma is “not only unhelpful but actually damaging to the fundamental goal of reducing animal suffering”.

Instead, she is promoting a challenge in which three competitive eaters will consume nothing but animal products for a whole day.

Veganuary, launched in 2014 and run by a UK non-profit, is an annual pledge where people give up meat and dairy for a month. Supporters say they want to see a “vegan world” which is kinder to animals and the environment.

But Ms Vernelli said diet change campaigning only prolongs the misery of factory farming because it alienates people who want to help, while putting an “upper limit” on the good they can do.

She has now joined the charity FarmKind, which is launching its own “Forget Veganuary” campaign urging people to give to animal welfare causes rather than changing their diet.

Q: How do you tell a vegetarian?
A: You don’t tell a vegetarian—the vegetarian tells you.

Watch it.

Apparently there are more Canadians who refuse to put up with Wokeness than in the other Usual Suspects such as Britain and Europe. The suggestion is that it could cause Canada to come apart like a Narrative Media “news” story.

Of course, all of these problems are caused by insane judges and politicians, and (unfortunately), like the poor, insane judges and politicians we have with us always.

Read it.

Georgetown University has dropped its partnership with United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese following a report alleging her support for terrorism and antisemitism, according to UN Watch.

Albanese is no longer listed on the university’s website, and her biography has also been removed.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said the organization welcomed Georgetown University’s decision.

Read it.

On July 13, 2023, Mohamad Barakat, a Syrian refugee, packed up several rifles and handguns 1,800 rounds of ammo, a hand grenade, and a car filled with gas cans on the way to carry out an Islamic terrorist attack at Fargo’s Downtown Street fair aiming to kill thousands of Americans. Instead the terror refugee got into a confrontation with police and died in an exchange of fire.

North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley insisted that there was ‘no evidence of political, racial or religious motivation’. “At this point it seems [no] more notable that he’s Muslim than I’m Lutheran,” he bafflingly argued. He also dismissed footage of Mohamad holding a Koran.

“I can’t discern, from the evidence that we have, any other motivation,” he claimed.

Your tax dollars at work. Merry Christmas.

Jewish Telegraph Agency.

Israel became the first country to formally recognize Somaliland, a self-declared sovereign state in the Horn of Africa, in a decision that was immediately condemned by Somalia and other nations.

“The Prime Minister announced today the official recognition of the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state,” wrote Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in a post on X. “The State of Israel plans to immediately expand its relations with the Republic of Somaliland through extensive cooperation in the fields of agriculture, health, technology, and economy.”

Somaliland’s president welcomed the announcement from Netanyahu in a post on X, adding that he affirmed the region’s “readiness to join the Abraham Accords,” the normalization agreements between Israel and a handful of Arab states that was brokered during President Donald Trump’s first term.

Gothamist.

Tiana Millen, an assistant principal at Cardozo High School in Queens, said this year’s ban on smartphones revealed that many teens struggle to read traditional clocks. “That’s a major skill that they’re not used to at all,” she said.

Overall, Millen said, the phone ban has been a major success at the school, and has helped kids focus in class and socialize at lunch. Foot traffic is moving more swiftly in hallways. Without eyes glued to their phones, more students are getting to class on time. The problem is they don’t know it, she said, “because they don’t know how to read the clocks.”

For years, parents and teachers have blamed technology for a range of lapsed skills — from legible handwriting to sustained attention to reading whole books — even as their proficiency with technology far outstrips their elders. Still, while educators have widely praised New York’s statewide smartphone ban that went into effect this fall, multiple teachers told Gothamist it has also laid bare an unexpected gap: How to tell time.

“The constant refrain is ‘Miss, what time is it?’ said Madi Mornhinweg, who teaches high school English in Manhattan. “It’s a source of frustration because everyone wants to know how many minutes are left in class. … It finally got to the point where we I started saying ‘Where’s the big hand and where’s the little hand?’”

The big hand is over your mouth and the little hand is in your pocket.

Watch it.

Government is the problem, not the solution.

Watch it.

Nick Norwitz (MD Harvard, PhD Oxford) explains it all to you.

Economic Times of India.

More than 550 employees at a Louisiana manufacturing firm received a combined $240 million after the company was sold, despite holding no equity. The payout followed a decision by the owner to share 15 percent of sale proceeds with staff who stayed through layoffs, downturns and uncertainty. The bonuses, averaging about $443,000, rewarded long-term loyalty and transformed lives while boosting the local economy.

Raptitude.

I’ve been reading Lord of the Rings for two months and I’m just at the end of the first part. It’s not because I’m not enjoying it. It’s one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I can remember.

From the beginning, I’ve read the whole thing aloud. I’ve found reading aloud helpful for staying engaged — limiting myself to mouth-speed rather than eye-speed means I won’t rush, miss important details, and then lose interest, which has always been a problem for me.

At first I was anxious to read a 1,500-page book this way, because it would take so long. But, as someone pointed out to me, if I’m enjoying it, why would I want to be done with it sooner?

So I tried slowing down even more, and discovered something. I slowed to a pace that felt almost absurd, treating each sentence as though it might be a particularly important one. I gave each one maybe triple the usual time and attention, ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of pages to go.

This leisurely pace made Middle-Earth blossom before my eyes. When I paused after each comma, and let each sentence ring for a small moment after the period, the events of the story reached me with more weight and strength. That extra time gave space for Tolkien’s images and moods to propagate in my mind, which they did automatically.

Some part of me still wanted to rush and get on with it, to make good time, to gloss over the songs and lore to get to Moria and Mount Doom and the other marquee moments of the story. But the more I ignored that impulse, the better the experience got.

By offering the book about triple the usual amount of attentiveness, I was getting about triple the storyness (i.e. meaning, engagement, literary pleasure). Whatever the thing is that I’m seeking when I pick up a novel in the first place, there’s much more of it available at this pace.

Cal Newport.

The recent ?announcement? that Netflix formalized a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s television and film studios, as well as the HBO Max streaming service, got me thinking about an essay that Derek Thompson published on ?his ?Substack titled ?“Everything is Television.?”

“A spooky convergence is happening in media,” he begins. “Everything that is not already television is turning into television.”

Thompson then gives three examples of what he means:

1. Social Media is moving from offering connection to streaming videos (in ?court documents? from this summer, Meta admitted that only 7% of activity on their Instagram platform involves users following people they know).

2. Podcasts are migrating inexorably toward video format.

3. Even AI is shifting toward visual media with the launch of new products like ?OpenAI’s Sora? and Meta’s Vibes.

Television, of course, can mean many things. “When I say ‘everything is turning into television,’” Thompson clarifies, “what I mean is that disparate forms of media and entertainment are converging on one thing: the continuous flow of episodic video.”

The Telegraph (UK).

A teacher in an English school was accused of posing a risk to children and referred to the Government’s counter-terrorism programme after showing Donald Trump videos to his US politics class.

The teacher, who is in his 50s, has told The Telegraph he was “likened to a terrorist” after showing the videos, including one of Mr Trump’s inauguration, to A-level students.

Henley College, a sixth-form in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, with more than 2,000 students, reported the politics lecturer to the local child safeguarding authority, which concluded a referral to Prevent, the Government’s counter-terrorism programme, was a “priority”.

‘Sixth form’ is a two-year program corresponding to 11th and 12th grades in the U.S. Typically British education stops at what Americans would consider the 10th grade, with the final two years only given to people intending to continues to University. Students completing the ordinary course take the test for GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) or ‘school-leaving certificate’ (which used to be called ‘O-levels’), which is sort of the British equivalent of the American high-school diploma. A ‘sixth-form college’ will give students an additional two years of college prep, after which they take the ‘A-level’ exams to find out what university admittance they can expect. It’s the sort of highly-centralized government-centric sytem that underscores the contrast between how the British do things and how Americans do things.

Read it.

Just a few questions, as an example, that senior+ engineers ask:

1. What problem are we actually trying to solve? (Not what solution do we want, but what’s the underlying problem?)
2. Who’s the user here and what’s painful for them? (They try to be specific. “Users” isn’t an answer.)
3. What are we assuming that might be wrong? (Every plan has hidden assumptions.)
4. What happens if we’re wrong and ship this anyway? (How bad is the downside?)

Read it.

Perfect software isn’t the best software. It’s perfect simply because it does exactly what you want, how you want it, when you want it.

It isn’t big either. We have confused “good” with “big”. In the Silicon Valley lexicon, software is only valuable if it scales. It must serve millions. It must capture markets. It must grow continuously.

Perfect software offers a different kind of value: Sufficiency. It’s the virtue of requiring less, not because you lack ambition, but because you have met the need. While growth demands a constant state of hunger, sufficiency offers satiety. And perfect software delivers that because the moment you deem something perfect, you become content.

Only one examples is necessary.

Newly released Epstein file links Trump to murdered newborn baby dumped in Lake Michigan (David McAfee/Raw Story)

These people are not well.

Read it.

“We are preparing to enter the Asia market.” “We are targeting the global market.”

When we hear these phrases, we tend to interpret them in a very specific way:

No meaningful decisions have been made yet.

This is not criticism. It is an observation—one repeatedly confirmed in the field.

Phrases like “the Asian market,” “the European market,” or “the global market” sound like strategic declarations. In reality, they are often admissions that the hard questions have been postponed.

This article is not a GTM framework. It is not a market entry guide. And it is not a collection of success stories.

Its purpose is singular: to dismantle the flawed mental model that causes market strategies to fail before they even begin.

Supreme Court says Trump can’t deploy National Guard to Chicago as legal challenge moves forward (Melissa Quinn/CBS News)

Supreme Court rejects Trump’s bid to deploy National Guard in Illinois (Lawrence Hurley/NBC News)

Supreme Court keeps block on National Guard deployment in Chicago (Devin Dwyer/Reuters)

Supreme Court blocks National Guard deployment to Chicago in defeat for Trump (Washington Post)

The Supreme Court just handed Trump a rare — and very significant — loss (Ian Millhiser/Vox)

Media Caught Laundering Dem Talking Point into a Legitimate News Item

For the White House, ‘national security’ is becoming the answer to every question (Steve Benen/MS NOW)

Inside the New Fast Track to a Presidential Pardon (Wall Street Journal)

Federal judge says Trump administration must restore disaster money to Democratic states (Kimberlee Kruesi/Associated Press)

Epstein Files Live Updates: Trump Referenced in Some Newly Released Documents (New York Times)  EPSTEIN! EPSTEIN! EPSTEIN!

Trumpland Grades His Epstein Cover-Up an ‘F-Minus’ (Zeteo)

19 States Sue to Block White House Plan to End Gender-Related Care for Minors (New York Times)  All the places you want to avoid in one tidy list.

Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ has arrived for the top 10% (Sam Sutton/Politico)

Trump is talking about Greenland again (Joshua Keating/Vox)

‘He’s a Maximalist’: Inside Trump’s Gilded Oval Office (New York Times)

Heritage Foundation killed by MAGA (Liz Dye/Public Notice)  MAGA is the New Nazi.

Judge green lights NY driver’s license law, rejecting a Trump administration challenge (Associated Press)

Judge sides with Trump over his $100K visa fee (Nick Niedzwiadek/Politico)

Trump’s Immigration Nightmare: It Is Happening Here (Radley Balko/New Republic)

Get Ready to Start Hearing About Aileen Cannon Again (Marilyn W. Thompson/The Atlantic)

Trump’s claims to Venezuelan oil are part of broader ‘resource imperialism’, experts say (The Guardian)

‘It’s perpetuated this news cycle’: Frustration mounts in Trump’s orbit about messaging on latest Epstein documents (Adam Cancryn/CNN)  EPSTEIN! EPSTEIN! EPSTEIN!

Judge blocks Trump effort to strip security clearance from attorney who represented whistleblowers (Joey Cappelletti/Associated Press)

Federal Judge Bars Trump Admin’s Funding Cuts To Sanctuary States

Trump Is Suddenly Looking a Lot Smaller (Jonathan Lemire/The Atlantic)

Donald Trump and Mike Lindell are targeting Tim Walz. Some Republicans are worried that could backfire. (Aaron Pellish/Politico)

The nation’s cartoonists look back on the year that was. (Politico)  Count up how many of them are anti-Trump.

Read it.

As radical Islamist threats continue to plague Australia, politicians are pivoting to policing speech and tightening gun laws on law-abiding citizens—now openly admitting curbs on free expression are needed to shield their multicultural agenda.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has unveiled a sweeping plan to combat what she calls rising anti-Semitism, but the measures conveniently sidestep the core issue of unchecked radical Islamism behind recent attacks, focusing instead on doxxing anonymous social media users and reviewing gun laws.

In a joint news conference, Allan announced legislation that would force social media platforms to reveal identities behind anonymous accounts accused of spreading ‘hate’. “Under Victoria’s civil anti-vilification scheme which starts in 2026, the speaker of a vilifying statement generally needs to be identifiable and held accountable,” she stated.

As usual, women are the vangard of galloping totalitarianism.

Read it.

Britain is now the sort of country where you can get an instant answer to ‘What is the carbon footprint of a sausage roll?’. Yet if you ask, ‘Are we importing risk to women along with importing people?’ our nation state stares at its shoes and starts muttering about ‘complexity’.

Let us begin with two official lines that any half-awake citizen can see are rising at the same time.

Line one, sexual violence.

The ONS crime bulletin for the year ending June 2025 reports 211,225 sexual offences recorded by the police in England and Wales are up 9% from the previous year. It also reports 72,804 rape offences, up 6% year on year, with rape making up around 34% of all recorded sexual offences.

The ONS, to be fair, sticks in a big asterisk. Part of the rise is not a sudden outbreak of more predators. It is a change in the bookkeeping. That means some of what now shows up as an ‘increase’ is simply behaviour that was previously recorded differently, or not cleanly separated at all, now being captured under a new label. In short, not every uptick is more men doing worse things in dark alleys.

Fine. Caveat accepted. The numbers are still brutal.

Line two, immigration.

The ONS estimates long term immigration at 898,000 in the year ending June 2025. Of those, non-EU nationals accounted for 670,000, about 75% of the total. Net migration in that year is estimated at 204,000.

The Register (UK).

testing, the FAA has confirmed a small plane made a safe emergency landing completely guided by automation at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Colorado.

Garmin’s Emergency Autoland system is built to automatically take “complete control of the flight to land the airplane in an emergency where the pilot is unable to fly.” It can also be activated at the press of a button.

After initial reports speculated that the pilot or pilots may have been incapacitated after the plane, a Beechcraft Super King Air, had pressurization problems, the plane operator assured the public that triggering autoland was a deliberate act by the pilots. No passengers were on board on the flight, which according to the tail number given to the ATC, landed at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport on Saturday afternoon, after flying in from Aspen/Pitkin County Airport, also known as Sardy Field, a small mountain airport measuring just 573 acres.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed in a statement that the “Beechcraft Super King Air landed safely at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Colorado around 14:20 local time on Saturday, December 20, after the pilot lost communication with air traffic control.” The FAA added: “An onboard emergency autoland system was activated. Two people were on board. The FAA is investigating.”

While the aircraft did experience “a rapid, uncommanded loss of pressurization,” the pilots put on their oxygen masks, the CEO of the charter company, Chris Townsley, said in a statement to CNN. Townsley reiterated that the pilots had “made the decision to leave the system engaged,” and “automatically engaged exactly as designed when the cabin altitude exceeded the prescribed safe levels.”

Read it.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have developed a new reactor that converts natural gas (a common energy source primarily composed of methane) into two highly valuable resources: clean hydrogen fuel and carbon nanotubes, which are ultralight and much stronger than steel.

Hydrogen is a promising green fuel because it burns completely, producing only water vapor and zero carbon dioxide. However, the way we make hydrogen today typically involves using high-pressure steam to break apart gas molecules, which releases significant amounts of CO2 as a byproduct.

To avoid this, the Cambridge team wanted to perfect a technique called methane pyrolysis, which converts methane into hydrogen and solid carbon without producing carbon dioxide. However, until now, no one has been able to perform this process efficiently enough for large-scale use because traditional reactors waste too much gas.

Read it.

As the old aphorism goes: “Don’t tax you; don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.” Nobody likes paying taxes, but most Americans accept them as a necessary evil and are willing to pay their fair share, unless politicians waste those tax dollars in extraordinarily—well—wasteful ways, or steal them outright.

I refer, of course, to California, where, as the classic Eagle’s song Hotel California goes: “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

California, it’s no secret, is in deep financial trouble. In 2022, Gavin Newsom bragged about a $97.5 billion dollar surplus. By the 2024-25 budget, that surplus turned into an estimated $73 billion deficit. By the end of 2025, it’s likely far worse and virtually no one trusts state government’s estimates.

Read it.

Christians in Lebanon have declined from a demographic majority to a minority.

Lebanon was majority-Christian starting from the first century (when Christianity was introduced by figures such as St. Peter and St. Paul) until the mid-20th century. Mount Lebanon, which remains the Christian heartland of the country, is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

Lebanon was conquered by the Arab Islamic Rashidun Caliphate in 636 AD following the defeat of the Christian Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire at the Battle of Yarmouk. The Ottoman Empire later occupied Mount Lebanon from its conquest in 1516 until the end of World War I in 1918. Lebanon gained independence from French rule in 1943.

Read it.

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse,” Osama bin Laden said at the beginning of his talk taking credit for the 9/11 attacks.

The line launched a thousand geopolitical analyses, was quoted by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times and was pored over endlessly by experts who completely missed the point.

Osama bin Laden was not talking about great powers or nations, he was talking about Islam.

“There is only one goaL,” Bin Laden continued, the supremacy of Islam. He followed that up with a quote from a Hadith that is known to virtually every Muslim, but to all too few non-Muslims. “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad.”

The Foundry.

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul released the latest edition of his annual “Festivus” report Tuesday detailing over $1 trillion in alleged wasteful spending in the U.S. government throughout 2025.

The newly released report found an estimated $1,639,135,969,608 total in government waste over the past year. Paul, a prominent fiscal hawk who serves as the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement that “no matter how much taxpayer money Washington burns through, politicians can’t help but demand more.”

“Fiscal responsibility may not be the most crowded road, but it’s one I’ve walked year after year — and this holiday season will be no different,” Paul continued. “So, before we get to the Feats of Strength, it’s time for my Airing of (Spending) Grievances.”

Read it.

’ve felt for years that the U.S. was heading toward something like a civil war. It could be as serious as the unpleasantness of the 1860s, just different. The red people and the blue people in the U.S. really dislike each other; they can’t even talk to each other. When things get to that stage, things are typically solved by force; I expect that’s what’s going to happen. Very likely during the next three years, while Trump is still in office. He’s the perfect catalyst.

It’s going to be exacerbated by the long-term migration trends. If we look 100 years down the road, it’s pretty clear that with modern travel and communications technologies, the migration of people from poor countries to rich countries all around the world will accelerate. Eventually, the U.S. won’t even exist in its present form. Of course, that’s true of every country. The colors of the map on the wall have been running since Day One.

I hope a catastrophic upset doesn’t happen in the near future for any number of reasons. For one, it won’t be any fun. For another, I’m a huge fan of traditional America. It was a unique institution in world history—the only country ever founded on the concepts of free thought, free markets, and individualism. A civil war—regardless of what form it takes—would likely overturn those things.

While I hope things mellow out, hope isn’t the best foundation for making plans.

Read it.

Two men inspired by Islamic state ideology were convicted on Tuesday in Manchester, England, of plotting what prosecutors said could have been one of the deadliest antisemitic attacks in British history.

Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were both found guilty of preparing terrorist acts between December 2023 and May 2024. Saadaoui’s brother, Bilel Saadaoui, 36, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about an act of terrorism.

Prosecutors told jurors that Saadaoui and Hussein had “embraced the views” of Islamic State and had a “visceral dislike” of Jewish people.

Jewish Telegraph Agency.

On the first day of AmericaFest, Turning Point USA’s convention in Phoenix, Ben Shapiro lit into a host of conservatives that he said were “frauds and grifters.”

He listed Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Steve Bannon as “charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.” Together, he said on Thursday, they presented a danger to the conservative movement.

Shapiro was extending an assault that he began earlier in the week during a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a heart of conservatism that has been thrown into turmoil by its president’s backing of Carlson after Carlson hosted the Holocaust denier and avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes on his podcast.

An Orthodox Jew and avowed supporter of Israel, the conservative pundit has been mounting a public effort to repudiate antisemitism and similarly aligned forces within his own party. His campaign comes as the GOP’s younger flank have become increasingly disillusioned with American support for Israel in the aftermath of its war in Gaza.

The reason it’s Not Going Well is that “The Right” doesn’t have the same dog in this fight that Ben Shapiro and the Jewish Telegraph Agency do.

I understand that Jews in general are very sensitive to sniffs of antisemitism because they’ve been on the receiving end of genocidal expressions of the same, but that doesn’t justify going all Hunt for Heretics and Sinners on people who have different points of view that, quite frankly, don’t actually comprise meaningful antisemitism.

This is the same sort of CrimeThink expedition in which the Left has been engaged for the last fifty years; it doesn’t look any better when worn by pro-Israel people, and actually hurts the cause they nominally support by providing fodder for the real antisemites who are watching from the sidelines rubbing their hands with glee.

UPDATE: Vance declines to draw a line against rising influence of antisemitic figures in Republican party  Let the panic begin!

Read it.

1. Notice that these three are all women.
2. Notice that what these Karens do is exactly what the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center does.

UPDATE: US bars five Europeans it says pressured tech firms to censor American viewpoints online (Fatima Hussein/Associated Press)

UPDATE: US Bars 5 Europeans Over Tech Censorship Push

UPDATE: U.S. Bars 5 European Tech Regulators and Researchers (Steven Lee Myers/New York Times)

UPDATE: Trump Admin Bans Anti-Free Speech EU Globalists From Entering US

The Times (UK).

Taxpayers will be kept in the dark about how much public money is being spent so that union officials can have paid time off work, under the government’s workers’ rights reforms.

Despite new figures showing that last year almost £107 million was spent on so-called facility time, Labour has scrapped powers to cap it and removed the requirement for public bodies such as the NHS and schools to declare it in the future.

At the same time, the right to be paid to carry out union duties has been extended to equality representatives in workplaces to allow them to focus on equality duties.

Democrats pull this shit all the time in the U.S. Fortunately our Constitution gives is tools to pry this sort of information out of them, and a political system that enables people like Trump to erase it.

Read it.

A federal judge ruled Monday against a California school district’s policy ordering teachers to hide kids’ transgender identities from their parents, in a ruling that a lawyer hails as the definitive end to gender secrecy policies in the Golden State.

“The court has fully and permanently dismantled gender secrecy policies across the state of California,” Paul Jonna, a partner at LiMandri and Jonna LLP and special counsel to the Thomas More Society, told The Daily Signal on Tuesday.

The office of Attorney General Rob Bonta, D-Calif., told The Daily Signal that it filed an application to stay the injunction.

Read it.

A 14-year-old boy was molested by an Egyptian culture-enricher at a bus stop in the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia. The alleged perpetrator has been apprehended, and is now in custody.

Read it.

The military reported its best recruitment numbers in more than 15 years in 2025, according to the Pentagon.

“In 2025, the department exceeded our annual active-duty recruitment accession goals across all five services,” Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness Anthony J. Tata said Monday.

Tata credited President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth with the influx of new recruits.

Trump and Hegseth “are focused on our troops and our mission, and on ensuring that we remain the most lethal fighting force on the planet,” Tata said.

The Other McCain.

For many years, conservatives criticized “liberal bias” in the news media, but the bias is not ideological so much as it is partisan. Most journalists seem to wake up in the morning, pour themselves a cup of coffee, and then go looking for ways to help the Democratic Party or, conversely, to hurt Republicans. Every aspect of major media coverage is shaped by this crude partisan calculus, and none of the allegedly objective journalists acting as “Democratic operatives with bylines” seem to have the slightest shame about their completely one-sided coverage.

The Foundry.

The Washington Post published an article Monday that fabricates two quotes attributed to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.

Roberts sent an email Sunday to Heritage staff announcing personnel changes at the organization. Washington Post reporters Jacob Bogage and Isaac Arnsdorf claim to have obtained the internal email, although the two quotes they cite from Roberts are noticeably different.

Below are the quotes from the Post’s article compared to Roberts’ email (emphasis added).

CATO.

Over half of Americans (55%) don’t know how Social Security is funded. Less than half (45%) know that today’s workers pay for current retirees, and that future workers will pay for their benefits when they retire. Nearly a quarter (23%) believe that their Social Security taxes are saved in a personal account for them. Another third (32%) say they don’t know how Social Security is funded.

It’s Free Government Money! What could possibly go wrong?

The Cato Institute’s August 2025 Social Security Survey of 2,200 Americans, conducted by Morning Consult, reveals that many Americans are deeply confused about how Social Security works, what it’s for, and what the future holds. Despite the program’s central role in retirement planning, the public lacks a basic understanding of how it’s funded or how much it pays.

And yet these people have a vote that is equal to yours. (By definition, half the population of any area are below average IQ.)