Gotta say, enjoyed 2025. Got to do our usual beach vacation but we also tacked on a week up at Lake Tahoe, always an impressive place to be. Job is ok. Writing is fun. And, of course, Trump is President – he’s gone way past what I voted for and is starting in on things I wish to heck I had voted for. In my view, it is all starting to come together.
Altogether, something more than 2 million illegals out of the country – and we didn’t take in millions more. Next year promises a massive increase on that deportation number as the provisions of the OBBB come into play…including a large increase in staffing to get the illegals out. Plus, the Lawfare is running on empty…sure, you can hamstring things up, but only for a while…Trump has mostly won his cases and, in the end, there isn’t a Trump Exception to Article II. He is President. He has all Executive power vested in himself. The laws are all very clear – that nobody has enforced them is neither here nor there: they are being enforced now…and you can only sue so many times before the appellate courts just tell you to go jump in a lake over it…they’ve already ruled repeatedly that Trump can do what the law allows.
The drug trade is being massively impacted by our strategy of hitting it on the logistic side – something I’ve been urging for years. Drug lords come and go. Addicts are addicts. But the low level people who move the drugs and the money have operated with near-impunity…now they have to bet their lives that they can get drugs into the USA and money back down to the Cartels. After a while – and it won’t be a long while – they’ll stop finding people willing to bet their lives even under severe duress. What we can expect now is that the Cartel-owned governments will try to get into the smuggling business…using diplomatic cover to move money and drugs. This will work to a certain extent, but not nearly sufficient to keep the Cartels as powerful as they have been.
We’ve also turned off the spigot of American money which keeps the global Left in power. It can’t be underestimated how much of the sinews of Leftist politics have come from the US taxpayer under the guise of fostering democracy around the world. What we’ve really done is empower those the American Left favors…including using good, old fashioned voter fraud to get it done. That money is now gone…the NGOs are cast adrift…and we see the Right on the rise all around the world in consequence. We’re going to gain allies more and more as the miasma of Leftist power evaporates.
We’re going after corruption here at home – Minnesota is just the tip of a very large iceberg. All up and down the line money has been stolen. You might recall me asserting some years back that I estimated one in three federal dollars is stolen…I’m now thinking one in two…perhaps even two in three. It has been a bonanza of theft and it has all been used to keep the Left in power so they can both steal more and dictate ever more aspects of our lives. It has been going on for decades and nobody has done anything about it…a few small players on the edges might from time to time get taken down (likely because they didn’t share out properly) but nobody went after the system of corruption which has been built up in our country…the very concept that every year more and more must be spent no matter what result we’re getting. That awards are given essentially for having the largest staff and spending the most money. Trump is hitting at that – and this is the core of Leftist power in the USA. If they can’t steal money from us, they can’t survive politically…because nobody would vote for a Leftist unless paid to do so.
The GOP is flush with cash and continues to make large voter registration gains. Vance is the prohibitive favorite for the 2028 nomination and everyone is already quietly starting to line up behind him. Meanwhile, over in Democrat-land, they’re broke and hoping that Newsom can stop the nomination of a Harris/AOC ticket. We still can’t make certain predictions about how 2026 will go but we know that if the MSM is saying it, its a lie. So, the stories of alleged Democrat resurgence are just nonsense…the means to get Democrats to donate…but, once again, the cutoff of money to NGOs is a body blow…whatever else they were doing – no matter how much was stolen – the crucial thing was to launder it back into the DNC. You don’t get a ten million dollar grant to study two-spirit poetry in Sumatra without kicking a lot of that back to the benefactor. Rumor is that ActBlue is being investigated. Do recall that Matt and I essentially exposed this in 2007 with Caucus of Corruption…even back then we found huge numbers of donations for Democrats coming in like $26.59. Nobody donates $26.59. A foreigner donates in foreign currency and that gets converted into US dollars. This money squeeze will increasingly impact all Democrat efforts…from paying people to fill out fake ballots to purchasing rent-a-mobs to emphasize Democrat talking points.
To sum up, I enjoyed 2025 and I’m looking forward with eager anticipation to 2026.
Blogs For Victory 
Anyone who values freedom and prosperity can’t help but be optimistic as we end the first quarter of the 21st century. I agree, Trump has exceeded what I voted for, and he’s only getting started.
I don’t know who this guy is, but he is voicing what I think a lot of us are thinking right now. I don’t see anything here I don’t support. (Well, the qualifications for coming into the country are a little extreme, but make a point about only letting in people who will be productive.) emphasis mine
The term “NGO” is a misnomer, as we’re finding out with the dismantling of USAID. If an organization can’t exist without money from the government, then it’s not a “non government organization.”
I would add to Mr. Sterling’s last sentence WRT to so-called public servants, “while, at the same time, lining their own pockets.”
Yep – whatever might have been intended, what they’ve become is the means whereby the Ruling Class does things outside the disclosure requirements of government service. You can’t have the employees of the EPA sue the EPA for a settlement from the EPA which imposes requirements on the EPA which are not legislatively valid…but you can form an NGO and do it. Progressives built them because their original idea of “the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy” ran afoul of the fact that sometimes the demos don’t vote the way the Progressives want. The Left needed a way to control things no matter how the votes went.
IMO, we need to change the laws on tax exempt status:
1. The religious body doing religious things – tax free. But this is the priest in his pulpit. The church (synagogue, etc) is tax free. The money needed to pay the priest and staff is tax free (with stiff restrictions on how much priest and staff may be paid). The monk/nun in their abbey. Beyond that, sorry guys: gotta be taxed. Not having a whole raft of things going on which aren’t actual religious practice being subsidized by the taxpayer.
2. The charity doing charity. Not “public outreach”. Not “community organizing”. Charity – providing food, clothing, medicine, education and housing to poor people: that’s charity. And the organization claiming tax exemption based on being charitable is to be audited every year and no more than 10% of all money collected may be spent on salaries and benefits. You aren’t allowed to expend even a dime on advertising nor are staff travel expenses allowed.
3. No arts and such – let rich people subsidize that like they used to. Since we got the taxpayer to pick up the artist’s dime we’ve got monstrous garbage…Medici’s gave us Michelangelo.
So according to some politicians, fraud is just “cost of doing business” … And now you know why we are $30 trillion debt. We keep electing unqualified stupid people. STOP IT
RINO Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s Office Dismisses Daycare Fraud Allegations as ‘Cost of Doing Business’
Another historical European Church burnt to the ground. What a coincidence. Allow Muslims into the country and Christian places become destroyed. Muslims do not belong in western societies. Period. God made the planet a big place for a reason …
Another European Landmark Lost: Historic Vondelkerk Church Burns on New Year’s Eve (VIDEO)
This is, without question, the most DYSTOPIAN headline I have ever read …
Socialist Zohran Mamdani Sworn In as NYC Mayor in Abandoned Subway Station — Places Hand on Quran as He Becomes First Muslim Leader of America’s Largest City
On the Quran??? FUCK HIM. DESTROY HIM.
If Bill were still on this side of life, he would be smiling at every single comment in this thread. Much like I am now.
Go forth and live the best life you can in 2026 and damn the progs to hell, where they belong.
When you look at the ugliness and negativity they choose to believe/inhabit, in a way they already live in hell, but one of their own making.
I don’t know why there seems to be infighting amongst conservative pundits but I wish they would stop. I’m talking about Candace Owens, Megan Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, etc., etc. I only read the headlines, because I don’t listen to, or read any of their commentary but they all need to relax and realize they are merely pundits, who offer opinions, of which many don’t even listen to. Neither of them are MAGA leaders and never will be. Their egos and sensitivities remind of liberals and I believe they are simply going for shock value and clicks, and it’s not good for the conservative movement so I wish they wold all STFU
Finally a solution, at least for weak-kneed Congress Critters:
Dog show people have been using these for years as male dogs are supposed to be intact to qualify for dog shows but an intact dog can present all sorts of problems, most of them behavioral. So exhibiters have been implanting fake testicles to make their male dogs look intact so they can be shown, and others (all male, I am sure) do so because, I speculate, they identify far too much with their dog’s junk, or lack of same. They are called “Neuticles” and were developed by a man who did so because (and I am not making this up) he was concerned about his dog’s “mental health”. Supposedly his recently neutered male dog went to lick himself and “noticed something was missing” and gave his owner a quizzical look. So, in what has to be a blatant example of projection, it was determined that a dog’s sense of self-worth hinged on what was between his legs even if it was a fantasy.
This opens up so many avenues of comment it is probably a good idea to just stop here.
I agree. It looks like they are falling into the Identity Politics trap, basing everything on how they FEEL about certain PEOPLE. When any of them has a calm, objective, disagreement with a POLICY I’m happy to see what he or she has to say but what I’m seeing (and like you I skim or ignore it) seems to be just emoting over things that tick them off. And—much more important—-it is all being gleefully exploited and blown up to represent a massive “schism” within the entire movement. (Bombshells illustrating the walls closing in and representing an existential threat to the movement, no doubt.) When and if these people come out against the core principles of the MAGA movement that will be different. But for the most part what I am seeing is the liberty associated with the Right in exercising the freedom to disagree, in contrast to the rigid lockstep of total submission to the current narrative being demanded by the Left at any given time.
I have gone back and forth on Kelly—-after her embarrassing antics in that debate when she tried a headlines-grabbing “gotcha” and just ended up looking like another Leftist hack, she seemed to get herself back on track and was coming across as a genuine journalist. I have been a huge Carlson fan, and still have trouble understanding how and why he went off the rails so badly, not because he is offering a different perspective but because he seems to have done a 180 from his old positions and beliefs. But I am still not seeing pushback against MAGA per se, just some carping about the way Trump is doing some things.
I think there is room for legitimate disagreement with Trump. Lauren Boebert’s recent disagreement with Trump is a good example. He did something that is detrimental to the state of Colorado, and I don’t see a reason for it. But she didn’t come out shrieking like a harpy calling Trump a big old poopy-head, she just said she thinks he is wrong.
“President Trump decided to veto a completely non-controversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously. Why? Because nothing says ‘America First’ like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in Southeast Colorado many of whom enthusiastically voted for him all three elections,” Boebert said in a statement posted by journalist Kyle Clarke.”
Naturally, the Complicit Agenda Media jumped onboard with the accepted narrative. A quick Google search shows the Usual Suspects parroting the same claim that she “blasted Trump” and gleefully identified this as just another example of the “schism” in MAGA. “Boebert’s break with the Trump veto marks another notable schism between Trump and some of his most loyal allies in the House of Representatives.” (Note the clever weasel-wording—though the statement clearly says she “broke with the Trump” VETO the phrasing is designed to imply she broke with Trump, period, and not just that she disagreed with (“broke with”) the veto itself.
And BTW, the Kyle Clark linked in the first paragraph is wrongly described as a “journalist” though he is quite clearly nothing but another Leftist hack. (When he was new to Colorado he had a story that blatantly misrepresented something. I don’t remember now what it was, but it was so clearly a fabricated version of what was said that I wrote to him about it, and he actually wrote back to me saying “I prefer my interpretation”. Admitting that his story was not based on the fact of the actual story but just on the way he chose to interpret it summed up his entire philosophy of reporting, and he is notorious in Colorado for being the most blatantly and transparently biased reporter on local TV. The brief comment linked in the paragraph was just an X post in which he chose to interpret Boebert’s statement as “blistering”.)
But that is just Same Old Same Old. The good NEW news is that in a couple of days MTG will be a former member of Congress. The country has not collapsed/blown up because of tariffs and the predicted benefits are already being seen more to come as the situation rebalances itself. And the good news is not just national, not just what is happening in our country but even the rest of the world. “Europe’s Radical Migration Ideas Are Becoming Reality
There’s no shortage of obstacles to sending would-be migrants to third countries—but the continent is committed to giving it a try.”
The winds in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming have died down from their 100-120 MPH raging and SW Florida is absolutely sparkling this morning with sunshine reflecting off the water and the palms gleaming as if they have been polished. I had some big trees in my yard in Wyoming die off and the wind didn’t just blow them down but plucked them out of the ground and deposited them on the other side of the fence, so friends are going up there this weekend to cut them into firewood and I don’t have to deal with stumps when it is time to replant this spring. The sunshine and rain going well into November meant so much good grass the horses are going into the winter fat and sassy, and the ant side of my personality is happy to see a hay barn full to the roof in preparation for the winter, which is getting off to a nice late start.
It is so nice to be happy and optimistic about a New Year for a change. I felt this way last year, but with a small mental ? because though we had dodged the bullet of a Harris presidency (with who knew who would actually be running the country) there was still the possibility that the efforts to undermine Trump would be as successful as they were last time. This year the ? is minimized and morphed into wondering just what the battles will look like with less concern about the outcomes because Trump has learned a lot and finally has a good crew behind him.
Which naturally leads into this observation
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G9liiK7XUAENY9-?format=jpg&name=900×900
The first of the two links I just posted is an X post by an entity named “Call to Activism” which evidently could be more correctly called “Roll Call to Stupidity”. The poster self-identifies as “a leading progressive platform that works to expose corruption, defend democracy, and uplift voices fighting for truth and justice” smugly preening in the pretense that it does, actually, represent the intent to, as illustrated in its logo, “Stand up for Decency”. None of which is borne out by the facts on the ground, which show the opposite on all counts.
Setting aside the many comments on this toxic nonsense, ranging from the observation that Trump knows the cameras are ALWAYS on him to the opinion of a physical therapist that he was not “dragging his leg” to the question of how can someone just turn on and off a condition that causes one to “drag” his leg, what this effort shows is the rapid shift by the Left to merely trying to attack Trump on alleged weaknesses, physical or mental or even both. (One might call this their “Hail Mary” play of desperation, if not for the conflict between that and the antipathy of the Left to anything religious.)
Those of us in the real world scoff at the efforts and their feebleness and transparency. Those of us who share the president’s general age range and physical characteristics of skin, hair and eye color have personal experience of the physical phenomena of thinning skin, ease of bruising and accumulation of damage to joints over three quarters of a century, and just laugh at the utter stupidity of trying to attach deep and ominous meanings to simple indications of normal aging. How many hundreds or thousands of times has Trump put repetitive strain on the same knee as he swung a golf club, yet we are supposed to be breathlessly attributing some serious and meaningful and sinister meaning to occasional favoring of the knee, especially when rising from a chair or car or golf cart seat.
As I type this the back of my left hand looks severely bruised and nearly black. I bumped it on the mechanism under my car seat when I was trying to retrieve a credit card I dropped between the seat and console. Slightly bumped. Barely felt it. And I have a big band-aid on my arm where I scraped it, lightly, on the corner of a cabinet door, and broke the skin. These are the kinds of things that are just a part of aging, particularly in those of us with certain genetic backgrounds. We always burn easily in the sun, bruise easily and cut easily.
But the frantic, toxic, hysterical Left is so desperate to find something—ANYTHING—they can cast as negative and then use against the president that they scramble to try to make something meaningful out of nothing. “He’s got a bandaid on his hand! What can we say that means? We can claim it’s—it’s—it’s an INJECTION SITE! Yeah, that’s the ticket! For what? What is he “injecting”? Well, maybe it’s some form of speed, like Ritalin, to offset his declining mental capacity. Wait—we’re claiming he keeps falling asleep—can’t have him taking stimulants and also falling asleep. Even factoring in the stupidity/gullibility of our base, that would be tough to sell. So what else could he be injecting? How about this—it’s something to offset whatever is making him “drag his leg”? Or chemotherapy for hidden cancer! Or drugs to deal with dementia! Why not all of the above, depending on the “anonymous sources” we find/invent? Brilliant!” Tiny voice from the back corner: ” Why wouldn’t he just have the injections somewhere other than the backs of his hands, where they wouldn’t show? Response: Because shut up they explain, you MAGA mole! “
The comments on bruising easily reminded me of an episode I experienced. About 20-25 years ago a new doctor was ready to turn my husband in for spousal abuse. She kept asking me, in an odd intense way, if I had friends, if I had a good support system, if there were people in my life I could turn to if I needed help. She finally just blurted out “Does your husband hit you?” Well, my husband had been described as “Opie’s big brother”, genial and wholly non-violent, and I just laughed. So she asked me why my entire torso was covered with fist-sized, fist-shaped bruises.
I peeked under my gown and laughed. “Oh, that’s just from the babies!” I explained—which turned out to be a somewhat incomplete explanation. So I told her we had new crop of foals, and the day before was when they had their first experience at having their hooves trimmed. My role was to lean against a six-week-old baby horse and press it against the stall wall, holding onto the bars of the stall to brace myself, to restrain it while the farrier taught it to have its feet picked up and trimmed. The babies did not like this and bucked and fussed trying to escape, and the result was that I had many bumps from baby horse heads and shoulders on my chest and stomach. This was always a fun day, a rite of passage every year as we handled each new baby, calmed it, and taught it how to do what the big horses do, and the bumps and thumps were just part of it all—-they didn’t even register. At least not until a doctor asked about the resulting bruises. Evidently not everyone looks like she has gone few rounds with a heavyweight boxer just because she was training baby horses, but I did. It’s just part of my genetic heritage.
And it’s worse as I get older. So when a heavy purse slipped off my shoulder onto my forearm and slid down to my wrist, I knew I would have a long black bruise on the arm within a few hours. Trump probably doesn’t even register it if a golf club slips sideways in the bag and hits the back of his hand. It’s just a day ending in Y though the Agenda Media and their flying monkeys do try their best to make something out of it.
This, Seeing Truth in the Age of Information Overload, is an excerpt from a longer article I still have to read, but even this segment of it contains a lot to think about.
One of the comments by the author is this: “What is your actual basis for seeking to believe something?” I’ve found the most common reasons are: to eliminate discomfort from the world being difficult to understand; to seek comfort belonging to a group; to validate one’s ego; or to gain power over others.” This is a version of my own filtering process: to ask “qui bono?” or “who benefits” by believing such-and-such? His version is more complicated and demanding than mine, and important, as is mine.
And, sadly, the opposite is true, from “the other side”—that is, from those of us who were not swayed by the media programming efforts, although (and I admit this shows bias on my part) the demonization of the Left is based on actual, observed, documented, verifiable actions and not just on propaganda, not just suggestions of why they should be held in low regard and distrusted. (ie: The Left really DID celebrate the murder of Charlie Kirk, and really DID lie about him to try to justify this.)
One thing that kept occurring to me as I read, and re-read, the linked article was that I could agree with some of it, consider some of it for future consideration to see if after thinking and maybe even researching I still agreed with it, and possibly disagree with some of it, all without rancor or defensiveness because of the way it was presented. And that, to me, is a valuable trait in any discourse.