Open Thread

Never heard of Franklin the turtle until Hegseth posted a meme using the character – apparently a well-beloved children’s book character and the Canadian author is very, very upset that Franklin was used for some based memes. So, be sure to check them out so you can know what is inappropriate:

And, apparently, Franklin has been hanging out with Amazona of late:

So, whatever you do, don’t make any inappropriate Franklin memes. And don’t laugh at them because the Liberals say That’s Not Funny.

So, the Somali community of Minnesota is neck deep in fraud – and, guys, I am confident it is the tip of the iceberg. In fact, my bet is that immigration (legal and otherwise) over the past 20 years is heavily driven by criminal Cartels sending people here, getting them on benefits and then raking off a substantial amount. This is why Blue States are trying to refuse Trump demands to hand over the list of people on welfare…because that would expose the fraud. It can’t be emphasized enough how much theft is driving the opposition to MAGA. Sure, you get your true believers on the Left, but most people involved – especially in leadership – are bought, corrupted and corrupting. Trump is a threat to their gravy train.

I doubt very much we’ll actually go to war in South America. This is all a pressure campaign – ultimately not on any government down there, but on the Cartels who actually run things. El Salvador and Argentina are showing there are patriots in Latin America who can change things by ruthless action. But we can also see how hard it is for one to get in, and how much local and global opposition arises. And outside those few bright spots, it is a morass of cowards and criminals running things simply to keep themselves on the gravy train.

Securing our border and lighting up the mules at sea is rapidly generating an acute crisis. To maintain their position, the Cartels have to bribe the politicians and pay for thugs to go after those who can’t be bribed. What Trump is doing – in my view – with the military build up is putting pressure on people who are starting to feel less and less pressure from the cash-strapped Cartels. They can ease that pressure by either turning over power to patriots, or turning on the Cartels, themselves. It is a high stakes gambit, and we’ll see if Trump can carry it off.

19 thoughts on “Open Thread

  1. Amazona's avatar Amazona December 4, 2025 / 10:54 am

    Do you believe this?

    • Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook December 4, 2025 / 11:17 am

      I’m not sure that I do (believe it), but then, nothing surprises me anymore.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona December 4, 2025 / 11:32 am

        It is extremely detailed, yet some of the details are odd. For example, the long wait in the dining room prompting JD to go check on things in the kitchen, the SS agent waiting till the last minute to drug the food, and no one noticing what he was doing.

        And then I go my go-to response to pretty much anything I read or hear: qui bono? Who benefits if this is true? Who benefits by keeping it secret? Who benefits by printing the account now, in an obscure Substack article?

      • Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook December 4, 2025 / 12:12 pm

        I could only find one other obscure site that had the same story. Given that it supposedly happened 60 days ago, it’s highly suspect.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona December 4, 2025 / 12:43 pm

        It does go to explain why/how some people believe the most bizarre outlandish stories, though. I’m thinking it might be part of the psy-ops stuff Dr. Malone talks about, the planting of ideas and “information” in peoples’ minds.

  2. Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook December 4, 2025 / 11:23 am

    Another gem from Jeff Childers at Coffee & Covid:

    At age fifteen, I bought my first car—a heavily used but loyal Ford Maverick, the Mustang’s unloved cousin—for $500 lawn-mowing money, from a Cambodian refugee with broken English and an irresistible sales pitch consisting mostly of shrugs. The seat covers hid both the shredded foam and the missing lap belts. But it ran, and I adored it with the same protective endearment as people who love their scruffy, three-legged rescue dogs.

    Fast-forward to today: kids can’t get a reliable used car for less than $5,000. And a genuinely decent new one? You’re lucky if you get off the lot without signing away less than $50,000.

    In 2016, the Heritage Foundation estimated that the CAFE Standards added $6,200 to the average price of a new car. That was in 2016 dollars, and if you glance back at the chart above, it was before Biden cranked the regulatory vise so tightly you could almost hear the auto industry’s ribs cracking.

    So yesterday, Trump cut the cord. He’s putting CAFE out of its misery.

    “We’re officially terminating Joe Biden’s ridiculously burdensome, horrible, actually, CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards that impose expensive restrictions and all sorts of problems for automakers,” Trump said. “And we’re not only talking about here, we’re talking about outside of our country, too,” he added for good measure.

    Outside the country, like California. All the special California “waivers” allowing the Golden State to impose even stricter emissions rules? Gone. Automakers hated those waivers because they forced everyone else to pay for California’s virtue-signaling, since manufacturers don’t want to produce one car for normal people and one car for the Church of the Sacred Prius.

    Carmakers just grit their teeth, meet the harshest standard, and pass the ever-increasing costs on to all of us. But not anymore. Bam.

    image 5.png

    Senator Cruz, who attended the signing along with a small crowd of auto executives, focused on one thing— the cost of cars:

    image 4.png

    Don’t miss this: The Democrats’ prized political issue was even in the name. Specifically, yesterday the White House and DOT launched the “Freedom Means Affordable Cars” initiative. Under it, NHTSA proposes resetting fuel-economy baselines for model years 2022–2031 and then inching them upward at a sane, human pace rather than Biden’s regulatory moonshot.

    For example: under Trump’s proposal, average fuel economy targets would hit roughly 34.5 mpg by 2031, instead of Biden’s 50.4 mpg fever dream. NHTSA says that one change alone saves consumers around $109 billion—about $1,000 per car or truck.

    Senator Cruz also noted that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill already zeroed out all noncompliance penalties for failing to meet impossible CAFE targets. That was the helpful setup. Yesterday was the knockout punch.

    The message discipline was tighter than a drum, and the automakers heard the beat. “We look forward to working with NHTSA on environmentally responsible policies that also allow us to offer customers the freedom to choose the vehicles they want at prices they can afford,” Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa said. (They own Jeep and about thirteen more brands.)

    What most pundits miss is that Democrats handed Trump an “affordability” katana— and he’s now swinging it around, with gusto.

    Everyone focuses on money printing as the big driver of Bidenflation. And absolutely, that played the starring role. But the chart at the top of this post tells the other untold part of the story: regulations themselves quietly ratcheted prices upward. Biden’s team made everything more expensive on purpose. Trump is now dismantling that machinery— and racing down the political highway at 90 mph.

    Cutting suffocating regulations is the lowest of low-hanging fruit, and Trump is shaking the whole tree.

    Democrats might regret turning “affordability” into their rallying cry. It just gave Trump the political cover to bulldoze one of their most cherished regulatory temples—and hand working families cars they can actually afford again.

    • Amazona's avatar Amazona December 4, 2025 / 11:37 am

      We can count on the spin being TRUMP SLASHES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!

      This is already a theme that pops up sometimes in the overheated, over-emoting, TDS comments online—-that Trump is destroying the Earth by getting rid of vital EPA standards, and/or letting endangered species be hunted to extinction. Naturally, not a single “journalist” asks a question a real journalist would ask, such as “what regulations have been removed and what is the end result?” or “what animals have been removed from protected lists, and why, and why are they in danger now?”

    • Mark Noonan's avatar Mark Noonan December 4, 2025 / 12:40 pm

      I also hear Trump is waiving some rules and allowing the Japanese to export to the USA a light pickup truck which will retail at about $23,000. Regulations had kept it out – It wasn’t “safe”, you see? Even though the Japanese drive it a bazillion miles are year with no trouble – and this will put pressure on US automakers to also come out with inexpensive vehicles. This just shows Trump really does understand trade – knows that some of the companies complaining about one thing are perfectly fine with another that benefits them. Trump just told US automakers: make cars. Build. Compete. And in that will come the higher quality vehicles which are less expensive.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona December 5, 2025 / 10:24 am

        Brian Cole, the DC Pipe bomb suspect

        I understand that Tapper’s script described him as a “white supremacist straight Christian Trump supporter” and Tapper said no, even as a seasoned media whore he wasn’t willing to try to sell that.

      • Mark Noonan's avatar Mark Noonan December 5, 2025 / 12:14 pm

        Well, you see?, he was white until racism and climate change got hold of him!

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona December 5, 2025 / 1:25 pm

        On Friday morning, the mainstream media started pushing the narrative that Cole is a Trump supporter who “believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.”

        “Here’s (a) problem the democrats have. They pushed the narrative that the pipe bomber was a Trump supporter pissed off about the stolen election, but now we find out that Cole was gathering components for the bomb at least a year before the election. So it couldn’t be a pissed off Trump supporter mad about a stolen election as they kept telling us.”
        ……………………….
        An unidentified FBI agent said in a probable cause affidavit filed Wednesday that Cole allegedly bought multiple items in 2019 and 2020 that were consistent with the components used to make the pipe bombs.

  3. Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook December 5, 2025 / 8:10 am

    Laugh for the day (NY AG Letitia James commenting on the failure of a Virginia grand jury to re-indict her on bank fraud charges after the original case was dismissed on a technicality)

    James has denied any wrongdoing. In a statement Thursday in response to reports that a grand jury did not re-indict her she said, “As I have said from the start, the charges against me are baseless. It is time for this unchecked weaponization of our justice system to stop.” (emphasis – mine)

    • Amazona's avatar Amazona December 5, 2025 / 10:28 am

      As a Grand Jury only hears what the prosecution tells it, I would love to see a transcript of that hearing to see what, exactly, they were told about Saint Letitia. A Grand Jury indictment is nothing, more or less, than an opinion based on the information given to the jurors.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona December 5, 2025 / 1:32 pm

        As one example, if the jurors are told the technicality still exists, they would naturally fail to indict.

  4. Amazona's avatar Amazona December 5, 2025 / 1:30 pm
    • Amazona's avatar Amazona December 6, 2025 / 4:18 pm

      But “they will want to fight” like the bullies in Kenosha, and then will whine and whimper and play the victim when they are the ones bleeding.

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