Am I a prophet, or what?

 

In an article last week on how the progressive left is trying to turn ICE's anti-illegal-alien sweep into another George Floyd-like uprising, I advised several precautionary actions for my readers, including this one:

Expect there to be another run on firearms and ammunition, just like 2020/21, as those who hadn't prepared in time try to do so at short notice.  If your own supplies are a little threadbare, beat the rush and stock up now, while prices are still relatively low.

In their latest e-circular, received yesterday, SG Ammo, my favorite suppliers, had this to say:

We have seen a sharp increase in consumer demand for bulk ammo orders over the past 8 days. Daily sales volume initially rose 25% to 35%, and now 35% to 45% over the past 3 days when compared to the daily averages of the first week of this month. This also represents an even larger increase from demand in December. While some of this should be expected, as the busy season for selling ammo is generally November to April with a peak in March as income tax refunds get spent, we feel that the elevated demand signals a widespread urge by the consumer to stock up on ammo. In my opinion, it would be wise to stock up now if you need ammo while depressed market pricing lingers from 2025 and before 2026 price increases from the factories begin to force widespread increases in the retail market.

Yep.  It's as I predicted.  People are seeing what's going on in Minneapolis (where the George Floyd riots started in 2020) and realizing that "it's déjà vu all over again".  Many had become complacent since the last ammo shortage, and failed to maintain their stocks;  and others, new to firearms ownership since then, hadn't realized how rapidly ammo supplies can dry up.  They're looking at what's going on and realizing that forewarned had better be (ballistically) forearmed, and they're stacking it high, wide and deep.

I respectfully submit that at a minimum, if you're serious about preparing to defend yourself and your loved ones, you should have 100-200 rounds of quality defensive ammunition, plus another 400-500 rounds of training ammunition (enough for one to two years' practice sessions), for every defensive firearm you own.  Some can't afford that:  for them, I'd advise buying the quality defensive ammo right away (it's always the first to disappear off store shelves), and then accumulating training ammo one or two boxes at a time.

Buy in bulk if you can, because it's cheaper.  If you can't afford to do that on your own, get together with your buddies and put in a single group order so that you all save money.  I usually buy in bulk from either SG Ammo (free shipping over $200, which saves money) or Palmetto State Armory, but there are many other vendors out there.  Shop around and compare prices (not forgetting shipping costs).  However, don't forget to also patronize your local gun store(s).  They're more expensive, sure, but they need to make a profit to survive, and you want them to survive and be available in case you need something in a hurry.

If you're in any doubt about how tight supply can get, read the 2021 Shooting Illustrated article I linked above.  If you haven't yet assured your own reserve supply of ammunition, I strongly suggest you do so as quickly as possible.  I have no doubt that urban crime and unrest is going to escalate further, and may spill over from the cities to smaller towns and rural areas.  Remember the time-honored, age-old truth:  "It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it but not have it".  Truer words were never spoken about defensive weapons and ammunition.

Peter

So... what sex am I, again???

 

I went to a local hospital this week to pick up some CD's containing recent diagnostic imagery.  I duly reported in, and was directed to a small office, where someone would meet me with the CD's.  After a few minutes, a very pleasant young lady came in, handed me a brown envelope, and assured me that everything I needed was inside.

Being a trusting sort (NOT!), I opened the envelope. pulled out the printed records, and glanced at the first line.  One word jumped out at me.  It read, "HYSTERECTOMY".

I blinked, and looked again.  Sure enough, it hadn't changed.  I looked up at the nice lady, patted my (over-ample) belly, and said, "I may look pregnant, but I assure you, I'm not - and I've never had this surgery!"

She blinked in her turn, glanced at the paper, and turned beetroot-red.  "Oh!  OH!  I'm sorry!  I must have picked up the wrong envelope!  Wait just a moment!"

I waited, grinning.  The envelope had not had any name on it, so I presume they'd simply filed them in roughly alphabetical order based on the printed records inside.  In due course, she returned, still slightly pink, and handed me another envelope.  This time, the right records were inside.

I asked, "Do we need to look at the CD, to make sure it doesn't have happy snaps of a hysterectomy instead of my spinal scans?"

Her blush deepened.  "Er... I - I don't think so?"

I left it at that and departed, still grinning.  When I got home and told my wife, she almost collapsed, she was laughing so hard.  We're both looking forward to finding out what images another doctor might see on the CD when he reads it!

Ah, the joys of (mis)filing systems . . .

Peter

I agree

 

As regular readers will know, I have literally decades of experience in environments of civil unrest, terrorism, and societal conflict, ranging from more-or-less peaceful demonstrations right through to the worst terrorist acts you can imagine.  I'm frequently astonished at the complacency and ignorance of people who think that "It can't happen here!"  I assure you, it most certainly can.

The expatriate American living in the Philippines, blogging at Come And Make It, appears to understand the reality of our situation, from a different-but-similar perspective.

There was a noticeable lag—roughly a year—[in Iraq after the war] between the collapse of central authority and the full emergence of widespread insurgency.

I see troubling parallels in the United States today. We're in that uneasy "lag" phase: deep instability is already here, with large numbers of people armed and ideologically primed for violence, yet most still hesitate to cross the line into open, sustained conflict. Instead, we see the precursors: fireworks thrown as provocations, screaming crowds, disruptive "stupid games," and tantrum-like escalations when people don't get their way. These are the behaviors of spoiled children testing boundaries.

So far, it's mostly individuals or small groups acting out. But the pattern is clear: one or two incidents beget more, then more still, until the tipping point arrives—and suddenly we have IEDs on interstate highways, coordinated attacks, and true insurgency.

A great deal of money—funneled from foreign governments, wealthy donors, and outside interests—has been poured into inflaming divisions, arming radicals, and eroding trust in institutions. These investments are designed to create exactly this kind of volatile tinderbox.

We are now one stray footstep away from triggering an avalanche of violence that could be very difficult to stop once it starts.

There's more at the link.

I warned earlier this month that the unrest being fomented over ICE and illegal aliens is reminiscent of the artificially-whipped-up demonstrations over George Floyd's death in 2020.  It seems many others agree.  See, for example:

• Minneapolis ICE Shooting Shows Left Wing's Protest Industrial Complex Wants Another 'George Floyd'-Type Riot
• The horns of the ICE dilemma (recommended reading)
• Stumbling Towards A New Civil War

See also the links provided in my earlier article.

El Gato Malo provides this succinct assessment.  Note:  he eschews capitals in his articles.

the "activists" they pay to run around trying to stop ICE are just upping the ante and taking even more unreasonable actions to try to protect the original incursions.

and they are creating incredibly dangerous situations.

on purpose and as a matter of policy.

and when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

this issue is being used to try to drive an irreconcilable social fracture.

it’s being managed like an insurgency in the same city that keeps spawning these (and whose governor and congressional rep (this took place in omar’s district) both look like they’re about to get indicted for massive corruption around immigrants they flooded the area with to sway voting.)

it’s more than a little curious how these folks were all so ready for this within hours.

there is coordination here.

. . .

there’s an actual insurgency being run here by the same political junta that caused the immigration mess.

but this is not going to be 2020. you can feel the national mood turning. people have had enough of being held hostage by these out of control hysteria cohorts.

and at a certain point, you stop trying to convince and realize that you’re basically just at war over a set of fully unreconcilable worldviews.

Again, more at the link.

Note the last sentence above.  It's true.  No reconciliation is possible between the two sides of the illegal alien debate.  One side sees it as a fundamental threat to what it has always meant to be an American.  The other side sees it as a wedge issue to redefine what it means to be an American.

Rudyard Kipling put it well, in a different context:

East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet

That's what we have here - and unless sanity and facts prevail over emotions and feelings, it's going to get much, much worse, more quickly than most of us can imagine.

Peter

Robotic crooks? AI con artists? Computerized criminals?

 

An article at Futurism suggests that we can expect all of the above, and then some.

In a new report, pan-European police agency Europol’s Innovation Lab has imagined a not-so-distant future in which criminals could hijack autonomous vehicles, drones, and humanoid robots to sow chaos — and how law enforcement will have to step up as a result.

By the year 2035, the report warns that law enforcement departments will need to deal with “crimes by robots, such as drones” that are “used as tools in theft,” not to mention “automated vehicles causing pedestrian injuries” — an eventuality we’ve already seen in numerous cases.

Humanoid robots could also complicate matters “as they could be designed to interact with humans in a more sophisticated way, potentially making it more difficult to distinguish between intentional and accidental behavior,” the report notes.

Worse yet, robots designed to assist in healthcare settings could be hacked into, leaving patients vulnerable to attackers.

Rounding out the cyberpunk dystopia vibes, according to the report, is that all the folks who were put out of a job as a result of automation may be motivated to commit “cybercrime, vandalism, and organized theft, often targeted at robotic infrastructure” just to survive.

Law enforcement needs to evolve rapidly to keep up, Europol says. For instance, a police officer may need to determine whether a driverless car that was involved in an accident did so after receiving deliberate instruction as part of a cyberattack, or whether it was a simple malfunction.

. . .

Advanced weapons have already “spilled over into organised crime and terrorism, impacting law enforcement,” the report reads. “There has also been a reported increase in the use of drones around European infrastructure, and there are examples of drone pilots selling their services online, transforming this criminal process from crime-as-a-service to crime-at-a-distance.”

In short, it’s a troubling vision of the future of crime, facilitated by rapidly evolving technologies.

There's more at the link.  The original Europol report may be found here.

This is hardly surprising, of course.  Criminals have always used every technology ever invented, as soon as it's come along (and often before law enforcement has thought about its criminal misuse, or considered countermeasures).  Today, however, the threat is greater than ever before.  There must be enough well-trained and -experienced drone operators in Ukraine and Russia alone that every criminal organization in Europe could hire a troop of them.  As that knowledge and experience proliferates, particularly in South American drug cartels (who are already using drones as offensive weapons against each other and against law enforcement, and using them to fly drugs and other contraband across the US border), we're sure to see police forces and other agencies setting up their own specialist units to tackle the problem.

I remain equally concerned about the use of drones by "ordinary" criminals to survey streets and neighborhoods, looking for targets of opportunity.  Examples:

• There are a number of gangs stealing cars to order.  If you want a specific make and model of car, you let the gang know, and they'll find one to steal for you.  A number of high-end autos have been exported in response to such interest.  A drone-equipped operator can fly over neighborhoods all across a city to find the vehicle(s) he wants, and choose those in the most vulnerable areas or homes for further attention.
• If a given suburb is popular with wealthier people, gangs can fly drones over it to check on security systems and precautions they use.  If they find a more vulnerable home, they can plot ways to approach the house under cover of garden vegetation, or plan rapid egress routes after they've broken in.  They can also monitor the frequency and routes taken by security patrols.
• Left-wing and progressive groups are doxxing the names and addresses of ICE agents and other law enforcement personnel.  If you happen to live near one, you and your family might find yourselves caught up in (potentially violent) demonstrations against that address and those living there.
• Kidnapping and human trafficking are in the news almost every day.  Using drones, the perpetrators can look for likely victims and observe them for long periods, to establish their patterns of life and determine when they will be most vulnerable to attack.

Those are just a few of the ways in which criminals can benefit from technology, or we can suffer because they have access to it.

Peter

Nothing succeeds like excess - Rolls-Royce edition

 

I'm still giggling at a highly sarcastic and snarky article about how truly over-the-top a personalized Rolls-Royce luxury car can become.  A tip o' the hat to the anonymous reader who sent me the link.  Here's just one paragraph to whet your appetite.

Rolls-Royce says the BLACK BADGE GHOST GAMER was "delivered to a tech entrepreneur", which somehow surpasses the American dog mom buyer of the SPECTRE BAILEY for obviousness. It also explains why the new owner wasn't worried about what women would think of his new car, because meeting a girl will be a theoretical concern for his entire life. Rolls-Royce, I should note, does not specify that the commissioning buyer is a man, but I am dead certain a woman's hand did not touch this car at any point in its construction.

There's much more at the link.  I won't steal the author's thunder by reproducing it here;  and besides, you really need to see the pictures to appreciate the length to which some car owners will go.  Fortunately, they can pay Rolls-Royce (a lot!) to take them there.

Go read the whole thing.

Peter

He has the right of it

 

Aesop, whom we've met in these pages on many occasions, is back from his blogging hiatus and demonstrating that sarcasm, acerbic wit, and not giving a damn do, indeed, convey points of view very well.  Here he is discussing the US dollar and fiat currency in general.

Wages since 1985 have cratered. Case in point, my parents' combined household income in 1985 was at the 50th percentile at the time, i.e the mid-point, nationally. Or notionally. Mine is currently at the 90th percentile nationwide, all by my ownself, IOW, better than 90% of US households. But for me to have the purchasing power they enjoyed near the household median in 1985, my paycheck would need to be larger than it is by seven- to ten-fold. IOW, I make 500% of what mom and pop did, yet the purchasing power of my income is only about 40% of what theirs was then. That's how much nothing my fiatbux "Real wages" command currently, and how badly "Real wages" have dropped.

Gold is gold, which is why the spot price is USD$4500/oz as I write this, compared to +/- USD$300 in 1985. That means a dollar in 2026 is worth less than 7% in real terms what it was 40 years ago.

. . .

For Common Core grads, that means your dollar now is worth less than 5/1000ths - 0.005% - of what a dollar was worth in 1932. ($1 x 0.065 x 0.07 = 0.00455. QED) A dollar currently is worth less, in real terms, than the cost for the ink and paper to print it. Maybe write that down on your hand in Sharpie, lest ye forget. We don't need zinc pennies anymore, because $1 bills are the new 1/2¢ coin. And the only people who've figured that out are EVERYONE who's selling you anything, worldwide, and why all your s***, from cars to houses to Happy Meals,  has zoomed in price. Gold hasn't zoomed. Your dollars are simply worth Jack, and S***. That's how inflation works, with the Treasury printing fiatbux three shifts a day, and inflating the unbacked money supply by trillions, year after year. Fun times, dead ahead. 

. . .

This reality is why Fiatbux - dollars, francs, yen, renminbi, whatever - are all finely engraved toilet paper. Don't make me do a retard crayon talk here. The only things that have cratered harder than "real wages" since 1985 are Russian armored regiment performance, or possibly Minnesota fraud investigations. Even Catholic church child abuse investigations have improved more than real wages since 1985. To suggest otherwise makes CNN economic reporters and hosts on The View sound wise. 

. . .

Sometime between tomorrow and death, most of the world is going to discover firsthand what the inhabitants of Weimar, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela all learned about financial reality. It isn't going to be pretty. In a Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff kind of way. Mind the drop.

Just saying.

There's more at the link.

Of course, he's saying nothing new to those of you who've been following our discussions on this blog over the past few years.  We most recently addressed the problem less than a week ago.  Nevertheless, there are relatively few people, in my experience, who actually understand the issues and/or will reorient their lives in such a way as to live according to reality as it truly is.  Most people will continue to spend money, not on things of lasting worth or that will retain their value, but rather on what the Bible calls "riotous living":  weekends in Vegas, fashionable clothes, fancy frou-frou imitations of coffee, and so on.  If most people would spend on true necessities what they spend every month on such fripperies, they could prepare themselves and their families for hard times and sleep easier at night.  However, most don't bother.

If you want a glaring example of evidence about our present situation, it's actually the absence of a piece of evidence.  It's simply this:  What happened to the audit of US gold reserves in Fort Knox that we were promised?  Where is it?  Where are the results?  The subject has literally vanished from view.  My conclusion is that it's being deliberately suppressed;  and if that's the case, then I can only assume that our gold reserves simply aren't there any more.  Where they are, and/or what happened to them, I have no idea:  but if we had them, there's no reason at all why we, the people who (in theory) own them, just as we own (hah!) our government, should not be told about them.  I'm pretty sure the powers that be understand full well that if they aren't there, they no longer underpin the value (such as it is) of the US dollar, so they'd rather ignore them and pretend the problem doesn't exist.  Trouble is, after we've been lied to and misled so often by so many administrations, nobody with two or more working brain cells trusts the deafening silence which is all we hear about the subject.

(If you think differently, I have this bridge in Brooklyn, NYC I'd like to sell you.  It's beautiful!  You'll make a mint out of charging people tolls to cross it!  Price on application.  Cash only, please, and in small bills.)

Oh, well . . .

Peter

A very sobering statistic

 

This headline caught my eye yesterday:

Day 1,419: The Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Just Surpassed Soviet War With Nazi Germany

This week has marked another grim milestone in the nearly four-year long Russia-Ukraine war. The conflict has just entered its 1,419th day - which means it has officially surpassed the entirety of the historic Soviet campaign against invading Nazi Germany, which lasted 1,418 days from June 1941 to May 1945.

Red Army forces eventually drove Nazi troops back from the Volga River all the way to Berlin, before seizing the German capital. But in today's war, the 1,419th day is just another in a long one in a tragic and grinding war of attrition, where it is believed each side has lost literally hundreds of thousands.

. . .

On both sides, a whole generation of young men is being wiped out.

There's more at the link.

We too often focus on the geopolitical and/or military and/or strategic and/or statistical aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war.  However, that misses the human tragedy that is playing out for both countries.

All nations involved in the two World Wars lost a significant proportion of their brightest and best young men.  After those wars, their absence was noteworthy in that the performance of most of those countries (in any sphere you care to name) was less than expected, and lower than pre-war forecasts would have anticipated.  My father, who fought in World War II, often said that the reason Britain descended into socialist chaos so fast after the war was that too many of the future leaders who could have kept her on track were dead.  Leaders tend to make themselves vulnerable simply by leading, because they're priority targets in war.  An army without effective leaders at all levels - NCO, junior officer, field officer, etc. - is a losing army, and, by extension, so is the nation that uses it.

We don't know what the future holds for either Russia or Ukraine, but we do know for certain that a lot of their young men aren't going to be there to help them.  Both countries will suffer from this loss for decades to come.

May the dead of both sides be forgiven their sins, if that is possible, and may they rest in peace.

Peter

"Fifty people control the culture"

 

So says Ted Gioia, whom we've met in these pages before.  Here are a couple of excerpts from his long and interesting article.

After three decades of total connectivity, here’s where we stand:

• Four movie studios still control Hollywood.
• Four subscription platforms account for two-thirds of home movie streaming.
• Three major record labels own most of the hit songs.
• Five publishers account for 80% of the US book market.
• Just one company controls 60% plus of the US audiobook business.
• Etc. etc.

During this same period, print media collapsed—thousands of newspapers and magazines simply disappeared. Online media survived, but just two companies (Alphabet and Meta) now swallow up most of the ad revenues.

And here’s where it gets even worse. If an indie media outlet wants to attract some of this ad money, it needs to reach readers—but it relies on those same two companies for access. To compete with Google you need help from Google.

It’s a mystery to me why this is legal. But it is.

Google is already squeezing digital publishers like they’re mangoes at a Jamba Juice. Publishers have already lost 25% of their traffic from Google, and fear that number might soon reach 60%.

The concentration of power at Google is mind-blowing. It controls around 90% of search traffic. All that total connectivity we envisioned in the early days of the web is mostly reliant on this one company.

You can try to bypass it with apps. But guess what? Two companies control most of the app store business—and one of them is (again) Google.

Can you see what’s happened? Power in the digital world is even more concentrated than in the real world.

Just one company controls around 40% of online shopping. Two companies control two-thirds of US music streaming. The same is true elsewhere online. Because of network effects, no new entrant can compete effectively against the dominant incumbents.

If you take the CEOs of all these businesses—in movies, books, media, etc.—you could fit them in [a] single school bus, with seats left over.

There's more at the link, including more details on the "favored fifty" and how much they control.

That's a truly scary thought.  I knew that five companies controlled almost all TV networks, and a few giant publishers controlled "traditional" book publishing - but I hadn't realized how far that level of concentration had spread.

What it means, of course, is that if anyone wants to do anything that the "favored fifty" (or enough of them, at any rate) would rather not see succeed, they can throttle it to the point of strangulation without even raising a sweat.  If they don't publish it, nobody will be able to access it.  If they don't publicize it, nobody will know about it.  If it becomes any sort of a threat, they can buy it with their pocket change and simply shut it down.  The developer or author or owner won't be able to refuse their offer, because he/she/they will go broke if they don't.

A prime example may be seen in Minneapolis and Minnesota right now.  All the focus of the news media is on ICE's law enforcement activity there - ignoring the truly massive fraud investigations going on into multiple aspects of the state's government, which look likely to dwarf anything that's happened elsewhere.  (California, where investigations are just beginning, might take the crown there, but it's too early to tell yet.)  Most of the powers that be in the news and social media circles are shutting down anything that goes against the "party line".  (That's also why they're so eager to silence Elon Musk and X [formerly Twitter] - because he allows people to speak freely.  They daren't allow that on their platforms, and they're going to do their best to silence any that do.)

Can anything be done about this concentration of power and influence . . . or is it too late?  I fear the latter may be true, because the "favored fifty" can buy any unprincipled Congressional representative or Senator (which means a goodly proportion of them) and prevent restrictive laws from being passed.

Any solutions come to mind, dear readers?  If so, please share them with us in Comments.  (Please do not suggest actions that are criminal.  I won't allow this blog to turn into a bloodbath, theoretical or otherwise.)

Peter

Minneapolis has been planning its insurrection for a long time

 

Through a couple of links on the Internet, I came across this tweet from Insurrection Barbie.  I've checked out some of the references she gave, and they're legitimate.  I'm going to reproduce it in full here, because I think it deserves the widest circulation.

Minnesota has spent years building an infrastructure of ICE watch patrols, NGO backed rapid response teams, and politically wired nonprofits that can flip from ordinary life to street mobilization in minutes. 

The key to Minnesota’s rapid mobilization is not Twitter activism. It is an on the ground surveillance and response network that local reporters have already documented in detail. A Star Tribune investigation into the “organized resistance to ICE” in Minnesota reads like a field manual for modern grassroots intelligence operations.​

In south Minneapolis, volunteers spend hours driving what they openly call ICE patrols. Phones are mounted on dashboards. Every sighting of a suspicious SUV, every cluster of federal jackets, is recorded and dropped into Signal and WhatsApp groups that run silently in the background of daily life.​

Those chats are not small. A single Spanish language group described by local reporting grew from a few dozen members to hundreds as the federal crackdown began. One message that ICE is at a gas station, grocery store, or apartment complex can draw a crowd in minutes.​

Volunteers position themselves near schools, mosques, and high risk housing, phones ready. Their job is to film, warn, and, when they choose, physically interpose themselves between agents and targets.​

When roughly 2,000 federal agents arrive in a region that has spent years quietly building an anti enforcement machine, confrontation is not a question of if but when. 

The sequence looks like this:

• ICE surge and visible raids trigger heightened patrols and chat activity.
• A lethal incident happens. Video, rumors, and initial reports hit group chats and local media at the same time.
• ICE watch networks push urgent alerts, including locations such as the Whipple Federal Building and specific hotels.
• Within hours, local NGOs and national groups issue public calls to action. Protest times and locations spread across social media and encrypted channels simultaneously.

One organization appears repeatedly in any serious look at Minnesota’s anti ICE apparatus: COPAL, short for Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina. COPAL is not just another advocacy group. It runs a formal immigrant defense “rapid response” program that sits at the heart of Minnesota’s ICE watch system.

By late 2025, COPAL’s immigrant defense program had trained more than 10,000 people, a staggering number in a single state. Those trainees do not just sit at home. They plug directly into the Signal chats, patrol rotations, and rapid response networks that are now colliding with ICE in Minnesota’s streets.

The Vice President of COPAL is a DACA recipient who sits on the Board of Directors as well. His name is Edwin Torres DeSantiago and he has served on the leadership teams for the campaigns of:

    1. Tim Walz
    2. Peggy Flanagan
    3. Senator Tina Smith
    4. Senator Amy Klobuchar

He also sits on the Board of Trustees for the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, showing his integration into elite institutional circles as well as movement politics.

They have a direct earmark from leading Democrats. 

COPAL publicly credits Representative Ilhan Omar and Senator Amy Klobuchar for securing federal funds for COPAL and partner ACER to develop the Primero de Mayo Workers Center in Minnesota’s 5th District.

COPAL’s own statement thanks Omar and Klobuchar for their leadership and notes that these federal dollars will be invested in worker organizing and community power on Lake Street.

That also explains why the anti-ICE demonstrations ramped up so sharply just as Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz was being pilloried for turning a blind eye to such mega-scale corruption and misuse of taxpayer funds over so many years.  ICE's activities provided a distraction around which left-wing opinion could mobilize, and use it as a smokescreen to divert attention to Federal and other investigations of the missing billions of dollars in entitlement and aid funding.  The news media has, in large measure, lapped it up.  Independent and social media appear to be continuing the investigation, but are battling to publicize what they're finding, because every major news outlet is "distracted" from the subject (and, since most of them are themselves left-wing or progressive in orientation, are likely grateful for the excuse).

Thanks to Insurrection Barbie for a very enlightening tweet.  I'll be following her on X from now on.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 294

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.